As has been all too apparent in recent days at Balcombe, few issues cause greater concern than energy policy. Many village communities feel their countryside is being ruined by the power-producing machines of wind farms; yet they never take “ direct action”, even though the planning laws put them at a severe disadvantage. And the generous subsidies(财政补贴),which encourage the expansion of wind power, are not favorable to the village communities and set landowners in conflict with other residents.

    Those who disagree with the rapid expansion of wind farms state that the damage they cause is out of proportion to the benefits they bring, because their energy output cannot match that of the carbon-based power stations they are supposed to replace. Supporters insist that wind must be part of a mix of renewables, nuclear and carbon, and that the country is committed to meeting EU(European Union) targets for non-carbon energy generation.

    Against this background, the fact that there is an argument within the Government over whether to publish an official report on wind farms impact on the countryside becomes even more extraordinary. The two parties in the coalition government are in disagreement over what it should say.

    We have some advice for the two parties :publish the report ,and let the country be the judge. Even if it contains evidence that wind farms are harmful, it will hardly be a pleasant surprise to people who do not like them. Equally, supporters must argue their case by acknowledging the concerns and explaining why they are either misplaced or worthy of much attention.

    The suggestion that further negotiations are to take place to produce an “acceptable” report suggests that the politics of coalition government are doing the country harm in a certain way. Given the sensitivities involved ,all the information should be available so that people can reach their own conclusions, rather than being left with the suspicion that facts are being replaced by political beliefs.

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    People from all over the world visit Disneyland to have fun, not to get sick. But last week， an outbreak of measles（麻疹）spread from the Southern California theme park. As of Monday, January 19, at least 52 people have got the easily spread illness.

    The majority of the reported cases of measles are from people who visited the park before. According to the California Department of Public Health, these people were exposed to the illness at Disneyland from December 17-20.

    Officials believe the cause is likely someone who caught measles abroad and visited Disneyland, but this has yet to be proved. However, in 2014, California had its highest measles infection rate in nearly twenty years. There were 66 cases of measles reported in the state―23 of them in Orange County, where Disneyland is located.

    Measles spreads very easily. It can be caught from coughing and sneezing. Crowded areas like theme parks are especially suitable for its spread.

    The illness starts with a fever and develops into symptoms including a cough， runny nose, red eyes and so on. About three out of ten people infected with measles will develop another health problem, including an ear infection or pneumonia(肺炎).

    The best way to guard against measles is to get vaccinated(打疫苗). An unvaccinated person is 35 times more likely to catch measles than someone who received a vaccination.

    Do you know that November is National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo)? You can find the NaNoWriMo Young Writer's program at ywp.nanowrima.org. It is a challenge（挑战）to write a 50,000-word novel in one month.

    The program began in 1999 in San Francisco with only 21 members. Later year, more than 400,000 took up the challenge. The writers can choose what they want to write about. On November 1st, writers visit the website and start to update（更新）their word count. They can communicate with other writers there as well. All the writers have to stop writing on November 30th.

    It is okay if you have never written a book before. The website provides lesson plans and workbooks for beginners. You can use them to improve writing skills in your novel. Then you can start planning what your novel will be about.

    Are there any books published（出版）from the NaNoWriMo program? Here are a few:

The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern

Water for Elephants by SaraGruen

Entrychats by Cecile Duquenne

    Are there any young readers who want to join in this program? If you want, we hope you can write the best novel. If you have not heard of NaNoWriMo, but you have a good story in mind, join us!

Foreign visitors to the UK might be disappointed when they learn that not everyone there speaks like Harry Potter and his friends. Usually, there's an assumption by many non-Brits that everyone in Britain speaks with what's known as a Received Pronunciation (RP, 标准发音) accent, also called "the Queen's English". However, while many people do talk this way, most Britons speak in their own regional accents.

    Scouse, Glaswegian and Black Country – from Liverpool, Glasgow and the West Midlands – are just three of the countless non-RP accents that British people speak with. There are even differences in accents between towns or cities just 30 kilometers apart. What is even more disappointing is that not speaking in a RP accent may mean a British person is judged and even treated differently in their everyday life.

    In a 2015 study by The University of South Wales, videos of people reading a passage in three different UK accents were shown to a second group of people. The group then rated how intelligent they thought the readers sounded. The lowest-rated accent was Brummie, native to people from Birmingham, a city whose accent is considered working class.

    However, there is no need to be disappointed though you are not speaking in an RP accent. In fact, doing the opposite may even give you strength.

Kong Seong-jae, 25, is an internet celebrity from Seoul. After studying in the UK, he picked up several regional accents. He's now famous for his online videos, where he shows off the various accents he's learned. "British people usually get really excited when I use some of their local dialect words, and they become much friendlier. I think it makes a bit of bond between local people and foreigners to speak in their local accent," he said.

    So if you're working on perfecting your British accent, try to speak like someone from Liverpool, Glasgow or Birmingham. You may not sound like Harry Potter, but you are likely to make more friends.

    Over the years, Brian Wansink, director of the Food and Brand Lab at Cornell University, has studied such things as how far Americans typically drive to buy food, how many times we refill our plates at all-you-can-eat buffets and how we organize our kitchens. In the mid-2000s he famously coined the phrase "mindless eating"(and wrote a book by that name) to focus attention on all the bad dietary decisions we make without really thinking about them.

    His new book, Slim by Design: Mindless Eating Solutions for Everyday Life, aims to change the design of restaurants, school lunchrooms, office cafeterias and homes so that the mindless choices we make will be more healthful ones. Some examples:

    Keep kitchen counters clear. No visible snack food, no bread, no nuts — not even breakfast cereal. In Wansink's research, "women who had even one box of breakfast cereal that was visible — anywhere in their kitchen — weighed 21 pounds more than their neighbor who didn't."

    Trick yourself into drinking less wine. "We tend to focus on the height of what we pour and not the width, so we pour 12 percent less wine into taller wineglasses than we pour into wider wineglasses." And the shape of the glass is not the only variable that affects how much we drink. Wansink writes: "Because red wine is easier to see than white wine, we pour 9 percent less red wine whenever we pour a glass."

    Wansink said his researchers also found that people ate less at restaurants when sat in well-lighted areas near windows and doors, than in darker areas or in the back. They ate less if they were offered a doggie bag, or to-go box, before they got their meals: apparently the idea of getting a "free" second meal outweighed the impulse (冲动) to clean their plates. Workers who frequently ate at their desks weighed 15.4 pounds less, on average, than those who didn't. Fruits and vegetables kept on the top shelf of the refrigerator were eaten at higher rates than those on lower shelves.

    The point, Wansink says, is to consider findings like those and change your environment or habits. Then you won't have to think about it: You'll just eat less.

    A study involving 8, 500 teenagers from all social backgrounds found that most of them are ignorant when it comes to money. The findings, the first in a series of reports from NatWest that has started a five-year research project into teenagers and money, arc particularly worrying as this generation of young people is likely to be burdened with greater debts man any before.

    University tuition fees (学费) are currently capped at £3, 000 annually, but this will be reviewed next year and the Government is under enormous pressure to raise the ceiling.

    In the research, the teenagers were presented with die terms of four different loans but 76 per cent failed to identify the cheapest. The young people also predicted that they would be earning on average £ 31.000 by the age of 25, although the average salary for those aged 22 to 29 is just £ 17, 815. The teenagers expected to be in debt when they finished university or training, although half said that they assumed the debts would be less than £ 10.000. Average debts for graduates are £ 12, 363.

    Stephen Moir, head of community investment at the Royal Bank of Scotland Group which owns NatWest, said. "The more exposed young people are to financial issues, and the younger they become aware of them, the more likely they arc to become responsible, forward-planning adults who manage their finances confidently and effectively."

    Ministers are deeply concerned about the financial pressures on teenagers and young people because of student loans and rising housing costs. They have just introduced new lessons in how to manage debts. Nikki Fairweathcr, aged 15, from St Helens, said that she had benefited from lessons on personal finance, but admitted that she still had a lot to learn about money.