Italy is one country where beauty is prized more than any other virtue(美德). That is, except in the small town of Piobbico, the self-declared World Capital of Ugly People. The road sign at the edge of the town even warns visitors that they are entering the ugly zone. People who consider themselves ugly have been gathering in Piobbico since the 1960s. That's when Ugly Club president Telesforo Lacobelli established a dating agency for women who believed they were too ugly to attract husbands. Lacobelli believes that he is ugly himself because he has a short nose in a country where long or large noses have always been considered beautiful.

    People from around the world travel to Piobbico to tell their sad stories of ugliness. During the annual Festival of the Ugly, which occurs on the first Sunday of every September, hundreds of people gather in Piobbico's town square to elect the president of the Ugly Club. Lacobelli wins the election every year. The Ugly Club has over 20, 000 members. They carry ID cards that grade their ugliness from bearable to extreme. A prize is awarded to Ugly Club members who qualify as extremely ugly.

    The Ugly Club president insists that ugliness is a virtue. Since beautiful people get a lot of attention for their beauty alone, they have to work hard to prove their other virtues. Ugly people, on the other hand, are genuine and do not have to prove anything to anybody, according to Lacobelli.

    Lacobelli is a spokesperson for ugly people everywhere. He believes that the uglier one is, the better life can be. Though the club enjoys making fun of beauty, especially beauty contests, Lacobelli has a serious side as well. He believes that too many people suffer from financial and emotional pressures because they don't meet society's standards of beauty. The fact that beautiful people are more successful in the workforce is a problem that Lacobelli has attempted to bring forward to the Italian public and government.

    The key to effective cross-cultural communication is knowledge. First, it is essential that people understand the potential problems of cross-cultural communication, and make a conscious effort to overcome these problems. Second, it is important to assume（假定）that one's efforts will not always be successful, and adjust one's behavior appropriately.

    For example, one should always assume that there is a great possibility that cultural differences are causing communication problems. One should respond slowly and carefully in cross-cultural exchanges, not jumping to the conclusion that you know what is being thought and said.

    William Ury's suggestion for heated conflicts is to stop, listen, and think, or as he puts it "go to the balcony" when the situation gets tense（紧张的）. This helps in cross-cultural communication as well. When things seem to be going badly, stop or slow down and think. What could be going on here? Is it possible that I misinterpreted what they said?

    Active listening can sometimes be used to check this out—by repeating what one thinks he/she heard, one can confirm that he/she understands the communication accurately.

    Often intermediaries（调解人）can be helpful in cross-cultural communication situations. They can translate both the essential meaning and the manner of what is said. For example, they can tone down strong statements that would be considered appropriate in one culture but not in another, before they are given to people from a culture that does not talk together in such a strong way. They can also adjust the timing of what is said and done. Some cultures move quickly to the point; others talk about other things long enough to establish a relationship with the other person. If discussion on the primary topic begins too soon, the group that needs a "warm up" first will feel uncomfortable. An intermediary who understands this can explain the problem, and make appropriate adjustments.

    Adrian Lamo, a Colombian-American threat analyst and former hacker, died in Sedgwick County, Kansas on Friday, at the age of 37. He was best known for passing on information that led to the arrest of Chelsea Manning.

    Lamo first gained media attention in the early 2000s for breaking into several high-profile computer networks, including those of The New York Times, Yahoo, and Microsoft, ending in his 2003 arrest when he eventually turned himself in.

    However, Lamo gained worldwide ill reputation in 2010 for disclosing to the FBI that the U.S. soldier, Chelsea Manning had leaked confidential information to Wikileaks. Manning had reached out to Lamo via a messaging app and told him that he had gained access to hundreds of thousands of classified documents and had leaked to Wikileaks a video of U.S. military forces in a helicopter machine madly gunning down journalists and Iraqi civilians. But, Lamo chose to report him and informed the U.S. military of the leak.

    Held responsible for the biggest leak of classified data in U.S. history, Manning was declared guilty by court martial and was sentenced to 35 years in prison, but was granted mercy by former President Barack Obama, who said his prison term was "disproportionate".

    Looking back on his decision to give up Manning, Lamo told US News and World Report in 2017 that it was "not his most honorable moment".

    However, he added that he had learned a lot from the experience, including that "you can't really know a person or their motives unless you've sat where they sat and seen the situation through their eyes, no matter how much you believe you do".

    Disease, poverty, hate, love — Charles Dickens' stories opened his readers' eyes to the most important themes of his age. Two hundred years later, his stories still speak volumes across the world, proving that Dickens' legacy (遗产) was far greater than just "great-literature".

    February 7 marks the 200th anniversary of the writer's birthday. To mark this date, BBC writer Alex Hudson listed six things Dickens gave the modern world. Let's take a look at two of them.

    A White Christmas

    Dickens is described as "the man who invented Christmas"— not the religious festival, but the cultural aspects that we associate with the festive season today.

    In the early 19th century, Christmas was barely worth mentioning, according to critic and writer Leigh Hunt. The committee which ran the Conservative Party even held ordinary business meetings on Christmas Day — unthinkable in the West nowadays, when everyone but the most necessary workers takes at least three days off.

    Many people believe that Dickens' popular descriptions of the festive period became a blueprint for generations to come. In his classic novel, A Christmas Carol, he not only put forward the idea of snow at Christmas, but also painted a picture of glowing warmth —“home enjoyments, affections and hopes".

    In his biography of Dickens, Peter Ackroyd wrote:" Dickens can be said to have almost single-handedly created the modern idea of Christmas."

    "Dickensian" poverty

    Dickens was one of the first to take an honest look at the underclass and the poor of Victorian London.

    He helped popularize the term "red tape" to describe situations where people in power use needless amounts of bureaucracy (官僚作风) in a way that particularly hurts the weaker and poorer members of society.

    "Dickensian" has now become a powerful word for describing an unacceptable level of poverty. In 2009, when the president of the Association of Teachers and Lecturers in the UK wanted to talk about poverty in some areas of Britain, she did not use words like "terrible" or "horrific", but rather described it as "life mirroring the times of Dickens".

    Duolingo — iOS/Android

    Have you ever wanted to learn another foreign language? You might say: "English is hard enough  I don't want to go through that again."

    Relax — learning a foreign language doesn't always mean you have to sit in class and take endless exams. An app named Duolingo has been designed to help you memorize new words and grammar in creative ways, such as online lessons, games and interesting exercises.

    Named "the best language-learning app" by The Wall Street Journal, Duolingo currently offers 30 languages, including English, French, Spanish, German, Italian, Portuguese, Irish, Dutch, Danish, and Swedish.

    Headspace: Meditation & Sleep— iOS

    With homework to finish tests to prepare, it can seem like you don't have a moment to relax and gather your thoughts. What's to be done?

    Meditation(冥想)may help, and here's an app to get you started. Headspace teaches you to face some of the toughest problems of everyday life. It has courses on work and productivity, personal growth and how to deal with troubling emotions like anger and fear. There are also courses designed specifically for kids and students about dealing with distraction and homesickness.

    And, if that isn't enough, Headspace can help us with the biggest single cause of stress and anxiety: lack of sleep. The combination of the app's calming voices and relaxing music will help you get a good night's rest, ready to face the challenge of the next day with optimism and energy.

    Gentle Wakeup — Sleep & Alarm Clock with Sunrise — iOS/Android

    Every device(仪器)has an alarm function these days. But what does this app have to offer?

    The makers of Gentle Wakeup believe people can wake up w ell. The key is that the app wakes with light rather than sound. It offers a better move out of sleep through a "Sunrise" — a light slowly, gradually becomes brighter, just as the sun does. But the sunrise is only half of the waking process: The light grows for 20 minutes before you are eased out of your sleep by the natural early morning sounds of birdsongs. The makers believe users of the app will never wake up in the same w ay again: "Start getting awake by light and you will never w ant to wake up by sounds again".

    Forest: Stay focused — iOS/Android

    Though phones make life more convenient, many people feel that they are addictive. Forest is a clever intervention(干预)designed to make people understand that there's more to life than phones.

    Here's how it works: you plant a seed in the app and the longer you stay away from the phone, the more it grows. From a seed, it becomes a tree and then a forest at last. The makers say, the "sense of responsibility and achievement will encourage you to stay away from your phone and focus on what's important in life". And Forest has received some good review s from users, who say that's exactly what it does: "It's a phone game that gives you time rather than taking it away."

    Do you know that junk food isn't healthy? Of course you do! Do you eat it anyway? Of course you do! But a new study shows teaching adolescents about the ways food companies fool them into thinking junk food is cool can encourage kids to fight back—by eating healthier.

    The pull of junk food can be super-strong. It's designed to tasty; which makes eating well one of the great health challenges of our time. Everyone from doctors to the government has been trying to handle it. Yet we keep eating junk food.

    Professor Christopher Bryan says, "Food companies want you to want junk food." They spend millions of dollars coming up with new ways to^ promote junk food consumption. They hire scientists to make new junk food almost irresistible. They might do this, for example, by adding more sugar. Rats fed junk food for six weeks will even walk across a floor that gives them electric shocks just to get more of such food.

    Food ads often make unhealthy junk food seem healthy by featuring professional athletes, fit-looking pop stars and smiling, active teens. "We thought when the students learned this, it would matter to them," Bryan says. He worked with 8th graders at a Texas school. Half of them got a lesson Bryan created. It focused on the ways junk food is advertised, or marketed. A second group received lessons that focused on health. These lessons informed students junk food is had, and that foods like apples or carrots are a better choice. The students learned a bad diet can lead to major weight gain, and that being overweight puts people at risk for serious diseases. They also learned how eating well now can keep you healthy when you're older.

    After the lessons, the kids in both groups were asked how they felt about junk food. Most didn't have positive feelings about these unhealthy foods.