Black History Month is also known as the African-American History Month. It is celebrated all over the United States of America and Canada in the month of February, while in the United Kingdom it is celebrated in October. Each and every school and university conducts various activities to make the generation aware of the importance that African-American history holds in the nation. The electronic media is filled with themes inrelevance to the occasion, and many activities are carried out across the country to remember the contribution made by African-American citizens in the development of this nation.

    Black History Month was first started bya famous African-American historian Dr. Carter G. Woodson in the year 1926. February was chosen as the month to celebrate the African-American history because it was the birth month of two of the most highly valued people among African-Americans. These were President Abraham Lincoln, who freed the slaves, and Frederick Douglass, who was also the first vice presidential nominee (被任命者) amongAfrican-Americans. Initially, Black History Month was known as the “NegroHistory Week”. This was Dr. Woodson's attempt to encourage awareness amongcitizens about the contribution of African-Americans towards the building of the nation. It was only in the early 1970's that the name “Negro History Week”changed to “Black History Month”. And later, in the year 1976, the entire monthof February was declared to be the National African-American History Month, orthe Black History Month.

Every year, National African-AmericanHistory Month is celebrated by many activities with various ideas and themesfor the younger generation. In 2013, Black History Month celebrates the 50^th anniversary of the March on Washington at which Martin Luther King, Jr. gavehis famous speech “I have a dream”. It also marks the 150^th anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation (解放黑奴宣言). The theme for Black History Month in 2014 is “Civil Rights in America” remembering the important milestones by African-Americans and others in the battle for civil rights and equaltreatment under the law.

    I was blind, but I was ashamed of it if it was known. I refused to use a white stick and hated asking for help. After all, I was a teenage girl, and I couldn't bear people to look at me and think I was not like them. I must have been a terrible danger on the roads. Coming across me wandering through the traffic, motorists probably would have to stop rapidly on their brakes. Apart from that, there were all sorts of disasters that used to occur on the way to and from work.

One evening, I got off the bus about halfway home where I had to change buses, and as usual I ran into something. "I'm awfully sorry," I said and stepped forward only to run into it again. When it happened a third time, I realized I had been apologizing to a lamppost. This was just one of the stupid things that constantly happened to me. So I carried on and found the bus stop, which was a request stop, where the bus wouldn't stop unless passengers wanted to get on or off. No one else was there and I had to guess if the bus had arrived.

    Generally in this situation, because I hated showing I was blind by asking for help, I tried to guess at the sound. Sometimes I would stop a big lorry and stand there feeling stupid as it drew away. In the end, I usually managed to swallow my pride and ask someone at the stop for help.

    But at this particular evening no one joined me at the stop; it seemed that everyone had suddenly decided not to travel by bus. Of course I heard plenty of buses pass, or I thought I did. But because I had given up stopping them for fear of making a fool of myself, I let them all go by. I stood there alone for half an hour without stopping one. Then I gave up. I decided to walk on to the next stop.

    People who multitask all the time may be the worst at doing two things at once, a new research suggests. The findings, based on performances and self-evaluation by about 275 college students, indicate that many people multitask not out of a desire to increase productivity, but because they are easily distracted and can't focus on one activity. And “those people turn out to be the worst at handling different things,” said David Sanbonmatsu, a psychologist at the University of Utah.

    Sanbonmatsu and his colleagues gave the students a set of tests and asked them to report how often they multitasked, how good they thought they were at it, and how sensation-seeking (寻求刺激) or imperative (冲动) they were. They then evaluated the participants' multitasking ability with a tricky mental task that required the students to do simple mathematical calculations while remembering a set of letters.

    Not surprisingly, the scientists said, most people thought they were better than average at multitasking, and those who thought they were better at it were more likely to report using a cellphone while driving or viewing multiple kinds of media at once. But those who frequently deal with many things at the same time were found to perform the worst at the actual multitasking test. They also were more likely to admit to sensation-seeking and impulsive behavior, which connects with how easily people get bored and distracted.

     “People multitask not because it's going to lead to greater productivity, but because they're distractible, and they get sucked into things that are not as important.” Sanbonmatsu said.

    Adam Gazzaley, a researcher at the University of California, San Francisco, who was not a member of the research group, said one limitation of the study was that it couldn't find out whether people who start out less focused tend toward multitasking or whether people's recognizing and understanding abilities change as a result of multitasking.

    The findings do suggest, however, why the sensation-seeker who multitask the most may enjoy risky distracted driving. “People who are multitasking are generally less sensitive to risky situations.” said Paul Atchley, another researcher not in the group. “This may partly explain why people go in for these situations even though they're dangerous.”

    The Asian country announced yesterday that China was putting tariffs or taxes on about $3 billion worth of imports from the U.S. The tariffs are on 128 American-made products, ranging from pork and fruit to steel pipes. This will make it more expensive for America businesses to sell those products in China. And China says this was done as a response to the tariffs that the U.S. recently put on imports of Chinese steel and aluminum.

    Meanwhile, U.S. President Donald Trump says more tariffs, new ones worth as much a $50 billion are being planned by the U.S. on additional goods from China. So, one big question is, will all this cause a trade war, when countries take turns putting tariffs on each other 's goods, causing prices to rise?

    We don't know yet. The U.S. and China ship hundreds of billions of dollars of goods back and forth every year. So, the tariffs we've seen so far are a tiny part of that. And America's treasury secretary says the U.S. and China are talking behind the scenes about how to prevent a possible trade war.

    But a number of experts are concerned this could turn into one and so are some stock investors. The Chinese tariffs were a major factor in a drop of the U.S. stock market yesterday when the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 459 points. But just like it's hard to tell if a trade war is on the horizon, it's also hard to tell what kind of effects one could have decades down the road.

    Bad news sells. If it bleeds, it leads. No news is good news, and good news is no news. Those are the classic rules for the evening broadcasts and the morning papers. But now that information is being spread and monitored in different ways, researchers are discovering new rules. By tracking people's e-mails and online posts, scientists have found that good news can spread faster and farther than disasters and sob stories.

    "The 'if it bleeds' rule works for mass media," says Jonah Berger, a scholar at the University of Pennsylvania. They want your eyeballs and don't care how you're feeling. But when you share a story with your friends, you care a lot more how they react. You don't want them to think of you as a Debbie Downer."

    Researchers analyzing word-of-mouth communication—e-mails, Web posts and reviews, face-to-face conversations—found that it tended to be more positive than negative, but that didn't necessarily mean people preferred positive news. Was positive news shared more often simply because people experienced more good things than bad things? To test for that possibility, Dr. Berger looked at how people spread a particular set of news stories: thousands of articles on The New York Times' website. He and a Penn colleague analyzed the "most e-mailed" list for six months. One of his first findings was that articles in the science section were much more likely to make the list than non-science articles. He found that science amazed tines' readers and made them want to share this positive feeling with others.

    Readers also tended to share articles that were exciting or funny, or that inspired negative feelings like anger or anxiety, but not articles that left them merely sad. They needed to be aroused one way or the other, and they preferred good news to bad. The more positive an article, the more likely it was to be shared, as Dr. Berger explains in his new book, "Contagious: Why Things Catch on."

The Tokyo Olympics have been postponed until 2021. That delay offers a chance for reflection. The International Olympic Committee wants to make the games more popular with young people. To that end, it is introducing new events, such as skateboarding, surfing and climbing. Why not go further and let national teams compete at video games? Electronic sports such as "Fortnite", are vastly more popular than strange Olympic sports like curling (冰壶). In fact, they are more appealing than most mainstream sports. Only 28% of British boys aged 16-19 watch any traditional live sports; 57% play video games.

Some may complain that e-sports are not proper sports. Many parents, observing their teenagers sitting on the sofa all day shouting "Quick, pass me the shotgun!" at a screen, would agree. Yet video games are highly competitive, with professional teams that play to packed stadiums. There are perhaps only 200 tennis stars in the world who can make a living from playing in major competitions. By contrast, "League of Legends", a fantasy game played by teams of five, supports over 1,000 on good wages. Its World Championship final last year was watched by 44 million people.

Those against e-sports offer moral objections, too. They are addictive. Prince Harry has called for "Fortnite" to be banned for this reason. They are violent. At a time of global disharmony, it is bad idea to make virtual (虚拟的) killing an Olympic sport. The Olympics aim to promote peace.

Neither of these arguments is convincing. The idea that an activity, rather than material, can be addictive is controversial among doctors, as is the existence of a causal (因果的) link between gaming and violence. And the belief that warlike sports have no place in the Olympics is hard to agree with history. Wrestling was introduced in 708 BC. It is still there.