In the middle of the 20th century people were worried about whales.The number of whales killed worldwide came up to 66,000 per year.However,people weren't worried about the whale as an endangered animal.Instead,they were worried about the whale industry,which would disappear if there were no whales.In 1946,the International Whaling Commission was established.It limited the whale hunting for every country and controlled the whale industry.But the commission recognized that the limitation wasn't enough.They set a worldwide law against hunting whales with only two exceptions: the hunt for scientific research and "aboriginal whaling".Aboriginal whaling allows some countries to hunt a limited number of whales because it is a part of their culture.Some countries like Japan and Norway don't care about the law;they make excuses to hunt whales and sell the products.They only care about the money.

    Many fishermen complain that dolphins,also a kind of whale,steal their fish.Therefore,they kill thousands of them.In fact,this is not the truth.In reality there are so many fishermen who steal the fish from each other.Some whale hunters say that they catch the animals for scientists.They have to research what whales are eating.For that, they kill them and look into their stomach.The truth is that they only want to sell the meat.Today scientists want to observe live whales for their research.

    Many whale families are not protected and thousands of them are killed.Nobody knows if all whale families would survive,even if humans end all whale hunting today.The pollution of the oceans increases fast and the poison gets into the bodies of the animals.Many of them get sick and die.The human being has killed 90%-95% of many whale families.Others are already extinct.

    Today some international organizations try to protect whales.They make reports to explain how important and endangered whales are.Now people are becoming more interested in whales and a complete new industry has developed,whale watching,which you may want to learn about.

    The World Bank is warning that the West Africa Ebola outbreak could seriously harm the economies (经济)of Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone unless action is taken quickly. World Bank President Jim Yong Kim spoke to reporters recently to discuss the effects of the Ebola spread.

    "Our findings show that if the virus(病毒)continues to spread, the economic cost to these countries could grow eight times by 2015. This would be a big catastrophe to their already weak economies," said Kim.

    Mr. Kim says, "saving lives and preventing new spread" is most important. The bank has given $117-million for an "immediate help." The World Bank President says the SARS outbreak between 2002 and 2004 showed how a disease could damage economies. 800 people died from SARS and the economic losses were up to $40-billion.

    Mr. Kim says SARS and the H1N1 outbreak of 2009 taught that fear and avoidance resulted in about 90-percent of the economic losses. That means the disease is causing two levels of economic damage.

    "There are two kinds of contagion(传染). One is connected with the virus itself and the second is connected with the spread of fear about the virus," said Kim.

    The World Bank thinks the losses to the economies of Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea will be big .Mr. Kim says losses could be about $97-million at the moment.

    Mr. Kim says fast action is necessary. He says getting the disease under control is still far away. That is because there are not enough health care workers in the affected areas. The World Bank President says the most important measure is to act quickly in order to limit economic losses.

    It began as a game: High school and college students studying computer technology figured out they could use personal computers to break into telephone company computers and make free, long-distance telephone calls. These young computer talents soon gained the name "hackers".

    Police arrested a few hackers, but many went on to even more complex hacking. One of them was arrested for making illegal telephone calls and later he used a phone to change a police officer's credit records to get back at the officer for arresting him. He also used a computer to change his college records to give himself better grades.

    As hackers gained experience  they began invading computers at banks, airlines and other businesses. In one case a hacker instructed an airline's computer to give him free airplane tickets.

    The U.S. government is worried that hackers may break into its networks of defense computers. The government's secrets are easily attacked because thousands of government computers are connected by telephone lines that hackers can get into.

    In November 1988, a college student entered a U.S. Defense Department computer network called Arpanet. The hacker injected a computer program that made copies of itself throughout Arpanet. Some hackers use viruses to destroy all the data in a computer. But in this case, government officials shut down the network before the program reached every computer in the system. Shutting down the system angered many researchers who were using the computers. The hacker turned himself in to the police and he was charged with a crime.

    The incident put the spotlight on computer hacking in the United States. Many companies have hired experts to protect their computers from hackers, and many computer experts now advise companies on how to protect their computers.

    The U.S. government believes foreign governments have hired hackers to try to break into top-secret defense computers.

    Experts disagree over whether a computer network can ever be safe from hacking. But in the future, some of the most outstanding minds in the U.S. will be working to frustrate the attempts of computer hackers.

    As a senior high school student, my future is always on my mind. To be exact, thoughts of the future have kept me up countless nights and made me worry enough to do poorly on more than one test. Because of this, words of wisdom are a source of comfort. Steve Jobs gave a speech to Stanford's graduating class in 2005 and his words resound repeatedly in my mind whenever I think about my future.

    It wasn't always like that, though. It started when I became a junior, when college came into view. It's the first big step to making your life your own. So when Jobs discussed his life as a student, some fears were eased. He, too, felt the need to attend college to make something of himself. He faced what many are extremely afraid of: uncertainty. His lack of understanding caused him to stop attending college and focus on what he felt was important. His story had a happy ending, of course, since he certainly turned out well.

    This doesn't mean that students shouldn't attend college, but rather that they shouldn't worry so much. You'll get where you need to go, even if your path is a bit more winding(蜿蜒的)than you'd like.

    Jobs talked about the hardships in his work. His love of his work helped him carry on and he got where he was meant to be, which restates the point: don't panic.

    One particular part of his speech stayed with me. Steve Jobs quoted(引用)the saying "Stay hungry, stay foolish" and it has become my motto. Staying foolish is realizing that you are still a fool, no matter how much you've learned or experienced. There is always more to explore. Staying hungry is wanting to find those things about which you are still uneducated.

    Steve Jobs's level of success is attainable, and I aim to prove that. With the will power to go into the world living every day like it's my last and allowing the future to take care of itself, I will do great things. In the last moments of my life, I'll be proud of what I have done and hope to have all the wisdom a person could wish for.

    Andrew Ritchie, inventor of the Brompton folding bicycle, once said that perfect portable bike would be "like a magic carpet... You could fold it up and put it into your pocket or handbag". Then he paused: "But you'll always be limited by the size of the wheels. And so far no one has invented a folding wheel."

It was a rare — indeed unique — occasion when I was able to put Ritchie right. A 19th-century inventor, William Henry James Grout, did in fact design a folding wheel. His bike, predictably named the Grout Portable, had a frame that was divided into two and a larger wheel that could be separated into four pieces. All the bits fitted into Grout's Wonderful Bag, a leather case.

    Grout's aim: to solve the problems of carrying a bike on a train. Now doesn't that sound familiar? Grout intended to find a way of making a bike small enough for train travel: his bike was a huge beast. And importantly, the design of early bicycles gave him an advantage: in Grout's day, tyres were solid, which made the business of dividing a wheel into four separate parts relatively simple. You couldn't do the same with a wheel fitted with a one-piece inflated(充气的) tyre.

    So, in a 21st-century environment, is the idea of the folding wheel dead? It is not. A British design engineer, Duncan Fitzsimons , has developed a wheel that can be folded into something like a slender ellipse(椭圆). From beginning to end, the tyre remains inflated.

    Will the young Fitzsimons's folding wheel make it into production? I have no idea. But his inventiveness shows two things. First, people have been saying for more than a century that bike design has reached its limit, except for gradual advances. It's as silly a concept now as it was 100 years ago: there's plenty still to go for. Second, it is in the field of folding bikes that we are seeing the most interesting inventions. You can buy a folding bike for less than £1,000 that can be knocked down so small that can be carried on a plane ——minus wheels, of course ——as hand baggage.

    Folding wheels would make all manner of things possible. Have we yet got the magic carpet of Andrew Ritchie's imagination? No. But it's progress.

    "I really wrote it for me. It was what I found funny and what I liked". Those are the words of J K Rowling, author of the enormously popular "Harry Potter" books. The quote refers to the first in a series of novels featuring a young character who has carved out a permanent place for his creator in the world of children's literature.

    Joanne Kathleen Rowling was born in England in 1965, and wrote her first story at the age of six. She was in her mid-20s when the idea for the Harry Potter novels came to her, during a long train ride. By the end of that journey, she says, the character of Harry and the school for wizards which he attends were more or less fully formed in her mind.

    It would be several years, however, before the novel was completed. By that time, Rowling had been through a failed marriage. Living on welfare as a single parent, she wrote about Harry Potter while sitting in an Edinburgh café with her daughter asleep beside her. She could not have dreamed of the fame and success which Harry would bring her in the years to come.

    Harry Potter is not your average superhero. He is 12 years old, skinny, wears glasses, and tends to worry a lot. Yet, he has captured the imagination of children and adults the world over, and has introduced millions to the joys of reading.

    Harry's appeal stems from his role as a very ordinary boy who finds himself in extraordinary situations. Orphaned as a baby, Harry spends the next 10 years being mistreated by the awful relatives with whom he lives. On his 11th birthday, he learns that he possesses magical powers and is admitted for training at the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.

    The adventures of Harry and his friends at the school are superbly narrated by J. K. Rowling. She manages to lead her millions of readers deep into the world of the supernatural, while at the same time dealing with the fears and emotions of the ordinary human world. Many feel that this is the real magic of Harry Potter.