Why not write in a foreign language? If people feel free to choose their profession, their religion, and even their sex, why not just decide which language you want to write? Ever since Jhumpa published In Other Words in Italian, people have been asking me, “Why don't you write in Italian, Tim? After all, you've been in the country 35 years. What keeps you tied to English?” Is it just a question of economic convenience?

    Certainly economics can be important. It was the factor that pushed Conrad to abandon his Polish mother tongue. If it is not possible to publish at home, or to publish there as one would wish to publish, then one is likely to go elsewhere. And if to publish elsewhere one has to change language, then some authors are willing to take that step.

    Something of the same logic has driven many writers from Africa, Asia to write in French and English in recent years. There is also the fact that people in Europe and the West are interested in the countries they grew up in. Just as in the nineteenth century, novelists like Thomas Hardy could “sell” their familiarity with peasant life to a middle-class metropolitan public, so these writers have interested us with stories that might seem common in their home countries.

    There is also a real internationalism in the decision to change language. If you have “a message” and if English is the language that offers maximum spread, then it would seem appropriate to use it.

    All these make sense. Critics tend to pay attention only to those who have made a success of writing in a new language. In April 2014, a New York Times article essentially listed young literary stars who had switched to writing in the main Western languages. At this point, the native English speaker almost begins to feel at a disadvantage for having been born into the dominant culture. Should we perhaps head for Paris, like Beckett or Jonathan Littell, just to be between two worlds? Or look for something more exotic(异国的) and have ourselves translated back into English afterward? However, one fact is that changing languages doesn't always work.

    I did write a novel in Italian. But after rereading it, I decided against it. My work lost power with the switch of language. My real subject matter still had to do with England and it was to my home culture that my books were addressed. The second language never seems to mean quite as much as the first. In any event, after my early experiment, I never went back to write in Italian. Changing language is not the only way to bring energy to your writing.

    Lots of people buy books and products from Amazon, an online seller. They offer and pay over the Internet and the books are shipped through the mail or a delivery service like FedEx.

    One day, people could get their Amazon deliveries from an “unmanned aerial vehicle”—a timely vehicle that looks like a toy helicopter. And instead of waiting days to get the parcel, it could be at the buyer's home in half an hour or less. The company is working on a fleet of tiny vehicles they call “Prime Air”. The vehicles are also known as “octocopters”. On their website, Amazon says, “One day, Prime Air Vehicles will be as normal as seeing a mail trucks on the road today.”

    The U.S.'s Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) is working on safety regulations for unmanned flying vehicles like the Prime Air copters. Those regulations will make sure the copters are able to fly safely where they need to go. Once the FAA has put its rules in place, which could be as early as 2016, Amazon will be ready with its fleet of tiny flyers. The process could take as many as five years.

    The new delivery service would likely be available only in the United States, at first. The copters the company is testing now can handle packages up to five pounds (2.3kg) and they have a range of 10 miles (16 kilometers).

    Other companies are also looking at using unmanned flying vehicles to deliver their products. For instance, Domino's Pizza in the U.K. released a video showing a “DomiCopter”, delivering a pizza. That video may have been a publicity stunt（噱头）. In any case, just like Prime Air's octocopters, the DomiCopters don't have clearance（许可）to take off just yet.

    Fikiri Kiponda's path from accountant to marine (海洋的) conservationist was sparked by a chance encounter.    After securing his dream job, Kiponda decided he wanted more. He wasn't quite sure what he was looking for until he ran across some turtle hatchlings.

    He didn't know it was turtle. Fortunately enough he got the right person to ask and he got motivated. That person was Nkindi, a staff member at the Watamu Conservation project who later invited him to volunteer on the project. He later left his accounting job and fully devoted himself into the world of sea turtles. Now，he runs and spends his time nursing critically endangered sea turtles back to health.

    Sea turtles have been around for nearly 110 million years and are now considered highly endangered. Their preservation rests on activities of conservationists such as Kiponda as these turtles face numerous threats and signs of their extinction in the next 50 years.

    Local fishermen traditionally catch them to supplement their own low catch rates and sell them for their oil. As changes are made to accommodate more hotels for tourists, there is less available beach land for turtle nesting.

    Kiponda's passion has now spread to his community, changing their attitude towards sea life preservation with his “by-catch release programme.”

    Through this program, fishermen are now paid for returning turtles accidentally caught in their fishing nets. The healthy ones are tagged and released into the marine park while he takes care of sick and injured turtles back to health.

    Before the launch of pioneering spirit like this, turtles caught by fishermen were used for their meat and their oil extracted (提炼) for its medicinal properties.

    “Releasing the turtle back into the ocean is a very good feeling, like, you feel like you've done something concrete and I guess everybody would love to do that...so I guess it's unique work.”

    On June 23, 2010, a Sunny Airlines captain with 32 years of experience stopped his flight from departing. He was deeply concerned about a power part that might run out of all electrical power on his trans-Pacific flight. Regardless of his concerns, Sunny Airlines pressured him to fly the airplane over the ocean at night. When he refused to put the safety of his passengers at risk, Sunny Airlines' Security removed him out of the airport, and threatened to arrest his crew if they did not cooperate.

    Besides that, five more Sunny Airlines pilots also refused to fly the aircraft, expressing their own concerns about the safety of the plane. It turned out the pilots were right: the power part was faulty and the plane was removed from service and finally fixed. Eventually a third crew operated the flight, hours later. In this whole process, Sunny Airlines pressured their highly experienced pilots to ignore their safety concerns and fly passengers over the Pacific Ocean at night in a plane that needed maintenance. Fortunately for all of us, these pilots stood strong and would not be frightened.

    Don't just take our word. Please research this yourself and learn the facts at www.SunnyAirlinePilot.org. Once you review this shocking information, please keep in mind that while their use of Corporate Security to remove a pilot from the airport is a new procedure, flight crews' lacking confidence is becoming common at Sunny Airlines, with recorded events occurring on a weekly basis.

    The flying public deserves the highest levels of safety. No airlines should maximize their gains by pushing their employees to move their airplanes regardless of the potential human cost. Sunny Airlines' pilots are committed to resisting any practices of damaging your safety for profits. We've been trying to deal with these problems behind the scenes for quite some time; now we need your help. Go to www.SunnyAirlinePilot.org to get more information and find out what you can do.

    He was a poet known for the nostalgia he describes in his poems. Now, it's time: for us to express our nostalgia for this great writer.

    On Dec 14, 2017, the famous Chinese poet Yu Guangzhong passed away in Taiwan. Born in 1928 in Nanjing, Jiangsu, Yu studied in Sichuan when he was young. At that time, he had showed great interest in Chinese poems and spent a lot of his free time trying writing poems himself. Then he managed to publish his first poem at the age of 20. A year later, Yu and his family moved to Taiwan. He lived and worked there until his death.

    Nostalgia is Yu's masterpiece in which he expresses his homesickness for the Chinese mainland when he was in Taiwan.

    Published in 1971, the poem remains highly popular among Chinese speakers worldwide. Even those who know little about literature are familiar with lines from the poem. The poem is included in Chinese high school textbooks.

    Besides his achievements in poetry, Yu was also a successful essay writer, critic and translator. He once translated English poet Siegfried Sassoon's poem In Me, Past, Present, Future Meet into Chinese. It is regarded as an accurate and powerful translation, in which the most famous line is “心有猛虎, 细嗅蔷薇” for “In me the tiger sniffs the rose”.

    Yu spent his whole life writing. “The reason why I stick to writing till today comes down to my passion for the Chinese language,” he once said in a 2015 interview. He then added that this passion was strengthened by his love for his mother and His motherland.

    Now, let's appreciate the poem Nostalgia.

    When slaves were first brought over from West Africa to the southern parts of America, they brought along with them aspects of their own culture—religion, dance,language, music, and cuisine.A mix of the two cultures eventually appeared.The religious dance of the ring shout turned into modern dances like the Charleston, and tribal chants slowly transformed into sorrowful hymns (圣歌) sung by slaves that described their hardships.

    These soulful accounts by slaves of the severe climate and conditions began to be called “the blues”,which continued in popularity among African Americans after the Civil War.This music increased in popularity into the early 1900s when many black musicians became an important part of the music industry.

    The slaves that had been brought over were from all different regions of West Africa, but they worked together until they gradually formed a common culture.This strengthened the identity of their music that, in the 1950s, eventually led to the beginning of rock and roll.The Beatles, the most influential band of the 1960s, are often determined as the accelerator that resulted in the ideology (意识形态) surrounding music that is still around today.The freedom and individuality associated with that time period brought forth a whole culture surrounding music.It was not just music any more, but a lifestyle.

    Over the decades, music has developed into such a vital part of society and pop culture.Musicians are glorified, with tons of adoring and screaming fans.The modern technology of present day has allowed for a greater gap between the creator of the music and the fans, as well as a widespread commercialization of music.However, criticisms of modern pop music often arise due to its mass production, and now there is a lack of the same soul and quality of naturalness and simplicity in music that was rising in the early 20th century.