The largest campaign of killing rats in history is set to poison millions of rats on the sub-Antarctic island of South Georgia. Scientists say the campaign planned for 2013 and 2014 will restore beautiful South Georgia to the position it once held as the world's most important nesting sites for seabirds.

    It was sailors in the late 18th century who unintentionally introduced rats to what had been a fresh environment. “If we can destroy the rats, at least 100 million birds will return to their home on South Georgia,” says Tony Martin, a biology professor at the University of Dundee who was invited to lead the project.

    South Georgia is by far the largest island to get rid of animals that destroy native wildlife after being introduced deliberately or accidentally by people. Though rats and mice have done the most damage, cats, foxes, goats, deer, rabbits and other species have been targeted in the campaigns around the world.

    South Georgia is seven times the size of New Zealand's Campbell Island, currently the largest area ever killing rats. The successful war against Campbell Island rats was carried out in 2001 with 132 tons of poison dropped from five helicopters.

    “New Zealand pioneered the techniques for ridding islands of rats and in fact our operation on South Georgia is based on New Zealand's technology.” Says Martin. “Some New Zealanders will be helping our campaign, including our chief pilot, Peter Garden, who was also chief pilot for the projects at Campbell Island and Rat Island, in the Aleutian chain of the north Pacific.”

    The second and third stages in 2013 and 2014 will involve dropping as much as 300 tons of poison from the air onto every part of the island where rats might live. It is a huge operation, carried out during the stormy southern autumn when the rats are hungry and the risks of poisoning native wildlife are less than in the spring and summer months. “Ideally we'd do in winter but the weather makes that too risky,” Martin says.

    The ecological payback will be priceless. But Martin says, “The full benefits will take decades to arrive, because some of these birds are slow to hatch.”

    “You can't stop the waves from coming but you can learn to surf.”

    This is the title on a poster of the spiritual teacher, Swami Satchitdananda who is pictured wearing a loincloth（腰布）while staying down on a surfboard riding the ocean waves. It's a far-reaching reminder that no matter how hard we try, sometimes we will make mistakes. Life brings us trouble at times, and we carelessly make trouble for ourselves. It can't be helped. 'Learning to surf' is a metaphor（暗喻）for becoming good at handling life's difficulties and successfully repairing errors or mistakes that we may have made.

    Since we are all mistake-prone（易于犯错的）, to varying degrees, it's necessary for us to master the art of making effective repairs and corrections. We should, of course, by all means make our best effort to do it “right” the first time, but being human, our best efforts won't always prevent us from having moments or days when we wish that we could do that one over again. Since we can't always do “do-overs,” the next best thing is to correct our mistakes, and the best way to start this process is with an apology.

    Making an effective apology is both an art and a science. It requires the fulfillment（完成）of a number of conditions that must be met in order for both parties to feel satisfied with the outcome. The first thing to keep in mind is exactly that both parties must feel complete and satisfied with the outcome in order for things to get back on track after the breakdown.

    There are a number of components that increase the possibility that an apology will be effective. These conditions and guidelines apply to all relationships. They include patience, responsibility, sincerity, etc. With them, the chance of a successful apology will be high.

    When we have confidence that harm caused to the relationship through unskillful choices can be fully healed, we are motivated to use the methods that we know work to keep our relationship in the best possible condition. The belief that the trust, harmony, and love can be fully repaired, and perhaps even become more than it was prior to(在前面的) the breakdown, encourages us to hold a standard of excellence. And then we work hard to use every incident that occurs in the partnership to become stronger at the broken places. There is surely some work involved in the process at becoming good at repairs, but the rewards of a close, delightful, trusting relationship are well worth the effort!

    Three boys were enjoying themselves in their hometown of Bovina, Mississippi .However, their lives were turned upside down when they discovered the jawbone of a Mastodon (齿乳象).

    Brothers Shawn and Caid Sellers and cousin Michael Mahalitc found the prehistoric bone in a piece of earth that was recently plowed (犁、耕)."I thought it was a log," Caid said. "I tried to pick it up and it was really heavy and I saw teeth on it." The bone weighed about 50 pounds. They eventually got the bone to their home and fitted it in their tub (浴盆), but it took their collective strength, might and a golf cart, to carry the large Mastodon bone.

    "They didn't expect to find that," Michael's mom said. "Now that they have, I believe that they will be more aware of their surroundings and what they're digging up when they are digging and playing."

    "We've gotten a lot of petrified (石化的) wood and Civil War relics from the area and that's what I thought it was," the brothers' mother said. "This is our first set of teeth we've found. So we thought it was their imagination. We were quite surprised to see that it was not their imagination."

    They were exploring near the brothers' home. Lo and behold (真想不到), they saw what they thought resembled a fossil. It was the curator of paleontology (古生物负责人) of the Mississippi Museum of Natural Science, George Phillips, who first identified the bone as a "very mature individual."

    The Mastodon was a mammal who lived during the prehistoric times. They had long tusks and trunks, like elephants. They were clearly different from their modern-day counterparts, as well as woolly mammoths (猛犸).

    A video recording from Xinhua (9th, Nov. 2017) showing Arabella Kushner, US President Donald Trump's granddaughter, singing Chinese songs and reciting Chinese literary classics caused another Internet sensation (轰动) in China Wednesday night.

    In the video clip, Arabella, wearing a traditional embroidered Chinese dress, greets President Xi Jinping and his wife Peng Liyuan.

    The six­year­old sings two songs Our Fields, Beautiful Fields, and My Good Mom. The former, written in 1953 and adored by Chinese teenagers for decades, expresses one's love and affection for the motherland and nature. The latter is a popular nursery rhyme widespread in China.

    She also displayed knowledge about Chinese literature by reciting Three Character Classic, a Confucianist volume to educate young children, and two ancient poems of Li Bai, Watching the Fall of Lushan Mountain, and Departing from Baidi City in the Morning.

    Xi spoke highly of the child's Mandarin abilities and said her performance deserved an "A Plus". He said Arabella was already a star in China and hoped she would visit China one day.

    Numerous media websites and netizens reposted the video. It has received 2.3 million clicks on Sina Weibo, China's popular social media platform, as of press time.

    "What a talented and smart girl she is!" Weibo user Yumeiren said. "I hope she can make more contributions to fostering China­US friendship in the future."

    Earlier this year, during President Xi's visit to the United States, Arabella has already performed for the president and his wife at the Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Florida, on April 6. Standing alongside her parents, Arabella sang Jasmine, a Chinese folk song with her brother Joseph.

    Top Music Festivals

    Festival season is just kicking off, and there is a lot to look forward to in the upcoming months.

    Pitchfork Music Festival

    Anyone who likes indie (独立的 )music and up-and-coming artists will have an amazing time at the Pitchfork Music Festival in Chicago's Union Park. This is an indie rock heaven that explores more underground and lesser known bands than the other big Chicago summer festival, Lollapalooza,

    Date: July 14-16

    Location: Chicago, Illinois, USA

    Music Type: Indie rock

    Price: S126-S2, 700

    Essence Music Festival

    No matter what time of the year it is, New Orleans is an amazing place if you love live music. The Essence Music Festival is a celebration of well-known artists like Diana Ross, Chaka Khan, and Mary J. Blige.

    Date：June 29-july 2

    Location: New Orleans, Louisiana, USA

    Music Type: R&B, Soul, rock

    Price: S75-5365

    Sziget Festival

    Budapest knows how to run a party, and Sziget is one of the biggest celebrations of music and culture in all of Europe. You can expect to find favorite artists like Bad Religion and Mac DeMarco playing here during this three day festival.

    Date: August 9-11

    Location: Budapest, Hungary

    Music Type： Eclectic, Indie rock

    Price: 65-275(around ＄70-＄296)

    Flow Festival

    The Flow Festival is a great excuse to explore the city of Helsinki. Artists including Lana Del Rey and The XX will be playing, among many others. Come to this festival to enjoy your selves with an earth-friendly belief.

    Date: August11-13, 2017

    Location Helsinki, Finland

    Music Type: Rock, soul, Jazz

    Price, 99-185(around ＄106-＄199)

My dearest daughter,

    As I looked across at you sitting on the sofa watching The X Factor, I noticed that you are no longer a child, and that having just celebrated your 14th birthday, you are now a young woman starting a journey into becoming an adult woman. As I looked at you, I remembered myself at 14, and the vastly different places we are beginning this journey from.

    Your identity as a mixed-race young woman, with an English father and a Pakistani mother, has already influenced how you place yourself in this world. As yet, you are unaware of the personal struggles that I took at the age of 25 to marry. How it felt when my mother refused to come to my wedding. The sharp criticisms of the Asian community that such marriages do not work out and always end in divorce (离婚). The confidence I had to grow, as we chose to live in a multicultural community, as I refused to be shamed into living in the white suburbs (郊区).

    Then, at the age of 30, I became your mum with all the joys and struggles this brought, as I refused the Asian traditions for a new baby's arrival. From your birth, your life could not have been more different from mine. I was brought up on a council estate (地方政府建的住宅群), within a close extended Muslim family, through which poverty, racism and neglect were mixed. I was never given the freedoms or the opportunity to experience new things. Now, as I hear you play your piano, I am grateful that you have these chances.

    So many doors were closed to me as a young person, and as I fought for small steps of freedom, I soon learned that it was better to do what I wanted without the knowledge of my parents, and so lies and tricks became part of my life too. The pressures to obey, to be a "good Muslim" girl and keep the family honor, were choking. Behind closed doors at home, the neglect and abuse (虐待) took place. It was hidden, I felt the shame, lived with the fear and suffered together with my sister and two younger brothers. Oh, the power we thought our parents had over us! I was convinced that one day my father would indeed beat us so hard that leaving us for dead, he would, as his threats said he would, bury us in the large back garden, and tell the school he had taken us back to Pakistan for good. My sister and I longed for a different blue sky to live under.

    As a daughter of immigrant (移民) parents, I carried their hopes of a better education for their children—my own veins (血管) pulsing with the hard-work ethic (道德) and need to be grateful for the opportunity of a free education. And it was education that provided me with the strength to find my own blue sky. I fought to leave home to go to university at the age of 18, and never returned to live with my parents again.

    Now as you explore your mixed-race heritage, which I hope we have supported you to do with visits to Pakistan and ensuring you go to multi-cultural schools, I want you to take the very best of all that is Asian with you as you become a woman.

    The struggles of identity (身份) and belonging will come but I hope that we have given you a strong foundation from which to explore these struggles. All the chances and freedoms that I only dreamed of as a young woman, I have offered you. I have chosen a different path of loving you as my daughter, with an unconditional love that many consider "western".

    I want you to know that although your journey has been vastly different, I am excited as I watch you standing on the threshold (门槛) of becoming a woman for all the adventures and possibilities the future holds for you.

    May you fly your blue sky with grace, confidence and hope as you find your place in this beautiful and crazy world.

    Loving you now and always. Mommy