One day an ant was drinking at a small stream and fell in. She made desperate efforts to reach the side, but made no progress at all. The poor ant almost exhausted was still bravely doing her best when a dove saw her. Moved with pity, the bird threw her a blade of grass, which supported her like a raft, and thus the ant reached the bank again. While she was resting and drying herself in the grass, she heard a man come near. He was walking along barefooted with a gun in his hand. As soon as he saw the dove, he wished to kill it. He would certainly have done so, but the ant bit him in the foot just as he raised his gun to fire. He stopped to see what had bit him, and the dove immediately flew away. It was an animal much weaker and smaller than herself that had saved her life.

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    BEIJING — China's education authority will tighten the widely criticized policy of “extra credits” for the national college entrance examination to ensure a fairer chance for all exam-takers.

    Under the policy, high school students who win awards in national Olympic competitions could get "extra credits', up to 20 points for the national college entrance exam. Students with talent in sports and students who are from ethnic groups can also benefit from this policy. The extra credits have increased these students' chances of being admitted by famous universities. Some parents were found to have helped their children fabricate(伪造)award experiences or falsify qualifications to get extra credits.

    “It has harmed education equality，” the ministry said.

    Xiong Bingqi, vice-chief of the 21st Century Education Research Institute, said the policy is designed to help students who have special talents but may be weak in academic performance to have a chance to receive higher education. It will still be needed but it is time to make the rules fairer," he said.

    The ministry said it will reduce the range of competitions whose winners can get extra credits, and limit the winners, privileges.

    The new policy will apply to students who begin high school in 2011, it said.

    Chen Lei, a mother of a 10-year-old girl, said she welcomed the ministry's policy adjustment as she does not want her daughter to become an Olympic competition geek.

    But not all the Chinese parents welcomed the new policy. “It is like a thunderbolt for me. My 13-year-old son has spent so much time studying Olympic math, and participated in so many technological competitions during vacations. It is useless now,” said Dong Wen, a 43-year-old mother.

    A student said, “Many students have changed the current study plan, and they can abandon the competition. I will be interested in learning the courses which can improve my abilities.”

    Yuan Guiren, minister of education, told China Daily that the reform is an attempt to consider the overall quality of an applicant. “But the country will not stop the national college entrance  examination as it is still the most objective way to evaluate talent in China,” he said.

    Dogs are wonderful companions all their own, but they can also help change your life so that you're more accepting of new friendships. A new study studied how dogs' brains responded to the human voice and found that “the human brain responds to dog emotions the same way it responds to human emotions” and that the dog's brain does the same.

    Dogs are pack animals, so in terms of pet ownership, your dog will prefer to stay with you rather than somewhere alone. Think about how this concept applies to friendship. People today are getting more and more used to spending time on social networking, email, and text. While all methods of communication are good, there is nothing like seeing your friends and hearing their voice. With good friends, sometimes a look explains everything, and you can only get this when you're together hanging out in person.

    Let's face it, dogs never hide their feeling. They let you know what they enjoy doing most, whether it is chasing a ball, going for a walk, or getting a treat. For people, it's harder to be open with your emotions. But in order to truly find a friend, you'll need to let go of your fears and put trust into your friends. The reality is that you'll never make everyone you meet happy one-hundred percent of the time, so if your friends and family think you're great, put aside the need to be liked by everyone.

    Dogs wait for you to come home and are so happy to see you again that they practically do a happy dance when you walk through the door. Friends, on the other hand, are sometimes so busy that even hearing from a friend becomes an unwelcome interruption. Rather than avoid calls or emails, make a point to talk to friends on a regular basis.

    A couple near Pittsburgh finally removed an alarm clock from inside their walls. It had been stuck there for more than ten years.

    Every night between 6:50 and 7:50, the alarm clock stuck in the living room wall rang. Sylvia and Jerry Lynn heard the alarm ring at the same time every evening for 13 years. And they finally had the clock removed after their story gained national attention.

    Keith Andreen and Dawn Michelucci work for Low-Cost Heating and Air Conditioning. They came to get the clock out of the wall through the couple's garage.

    “This is the first time that I had to remove a clock from inside a wall,” Andreen told CBS Pittsburgh.

    Jerry accidentally dropped the clock down an air vent (通风口) while making home repairs in 2004. The couple expected the clock to die after a few months. However, its battery remained undamaged even as it was pulled from the wall. Jerry said they finally got used to the nightly alarm and even considered it “kind of cute”. So he chose to leave it in the wall as a conversation starter. “You're sitting around playing cards and it goes off,” he told Inside Edition. “Is that an alarm clock? Why is the alarm clock going off? It's in the wall.”

    After 13 years, Jerry said the clock looked almost exactly how he remembered it when he dropped it in the wall. “It is a travel alarm clock,” he said. The couple plans to keep their nightly routine going by placing the clock in their room and keeping the alarm set for 7:50 p.m.

    Is any economist so dull as to criticize Christmas? At first glance, the holiday season in western economies seems a treat for those concerned with such vagaries(奇思遐想)as GDP growth. After all, everyone is spending; in America, retailers make 25% of their yearly sales and 60% of their profits between Thanksgiving and Christmas. Even so, economists find something to worry about in the nature of the purchases being made.

    Much of the holiday spending is on gifts for others. At the simplest level, giving gifts involves the giver thinking of something that the recipient would like--he tries to guess her preferences, as economists say--and then buying the gift and delivering it. Yet this guessing of preferences is not easy; indeed, it is often done badly. Every year, ties go unworn and books unread. And even if a gift is enjoyed, it may not be what the recipient would have bought if they had spent the money themselves.

    Interested in this mismatch between wants and gifts, in 1993 Joel Waldfogel, then an economist at Yale University, sought to estimate the difference in dollar terms. In a study, he asked students two questions at the end of a holiday season: first, estimate the total amount paid(by the givers) for all the holiday gifts you received; second, apart from the sentimental value of the items, if you did not have them, how much would you be willing to pay to get them? His results were gloomy: on average, a gift was valued by the recipient well below the price paid by the giver.

    In addition, recipients may not know their own preferences very well. Some of the best gifts, after all, are unexpected items that you would never have thought of buying, but which turn out to be especially well picked. And preferences can change. So by giving a jazz CD, for example, the giver may be encouraging the recipient to enjoy something that was ignored before. This, a desire to build skills, is possibly the hope held by many parents who ignore their children's desires for video games and buy them books instead.

    Finally, there are items that a recipient would like to receive but not purchase. If someone else buys them, however, they can be enjoyed guilt-free. This might explain the volume of chocolate that changes over the holidays. Thus, the lesson for gift-givers is that you should try hard to guess the preference of each person on your list and then choose a gift that will have high sentimental value.

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