As we know, Meizhou Island is a famous place of interest in Putian. My pen pal from Australia, Sam, would like to visit it very much. He is coming here for a holiday next week. He is planning to stay here for seven days. He has never come to Putian before, so he needs to know something about it. The weather is the most important thing that he would like to know. He wants to know what he should get ready for the trip and what kinds of clothes he has to take with him. Here is the seven-day weather report for Putian.

        Have you ever dreamed about sending a letter to yourself or your friends in the future? While express mail(快递) is a fast way to send your letters, there is another type of mail appearing in China as a new business—future mail.

     “The letter should be sent next Mother's Day and not a day earlier!” Lin Xiaofan, acollege student in Shanghai, tells one of the companies offering the service.

Lin Xiao fan wrote the letter to her mother nearly a year earlier to express her love to hermother for next Mother's Day.

“Offering thisservice makes people slow down and lets them understand the meaning of ‘time'in another way,” said Zheng Zhimin, manager at a “future mail” company. Zheng thinks “future mail” letters help remind us of care, friendship and love.

      While “futuremail” is becoming more and more popular, some people are wondering what will happen if the postal address changes or if the company goes broken before theletters arrive.

     Zheng said customers are glad to sign a contract(签订合同) to make sure that they canbe compensated if their letters are lost or damaged.

    Most of the customers are college students and young white-collar(白领) workers. Psychologists (心理学家) said that young Chinese might have a new way to express their feelings through this service. Most peopleput their hopes and wishes in the letter so that they can experience the connection(联系) between the past and the present when they receive theletter.

    Hundreds of years ago, life was harder than it is today. People didn't have modern machines. There was no modern medicine, either.

    Life today has brought new problems. One of the biggest is pollution. Water pollution has made our rivers and lakes dirty. It kills our fish and pollutes our drinking water. Noise pollution makes us talk louder and become angry more easily. Air pollution is the most serious kind of pollution to all living things in the world.

    Cars, planes and factories all pollute our air every day. Sometimes the polluted air is so thick that it is like a quilt (被状物) over a city. This kind of quilt is called smog.

    Many countries are making rules to fight pollution. Factories must now clean their water before it is thrown away, and they mustn't let dirty smoke go into the air.

    We need to do many other things. We can put waste things in the dustbin and do not throw them on the ground. We can go to work by bus with our friends in the same car. If there are fewer people driving, there will be less pollution.

    Rules are not enough. Every person must help to fight pollution.

    Smog(雾霾) is a big problem in many Chinese cities. But it seems that besides wearing a mask, few of us know what has caused the smog and what to do to beat it. Chai Jing, a former news hostess with China Central Television, discussed the questions in her documentary Under the Dome.

    The 103 - minute film was published on major Chinese video - sharing websites on Feb 28. In the film, Chai visits polluted places and talks to officials and scientists. She comes to the conclusion that burning too much coal and oil are the main causes of PM2.5 and smog.

    To make things worse, according to Chai, the coal and oil we are burning is of poor quality and don't meet the standards for environmental protection. Therefore they have produced more harmful gas to pollute the air.

    To solve the problem, Chai suggests that we should clean our coal and oil or replace them with cleaner energy such as natural gas. In her film, Chai also pointed out that ordinary people can do something to help control smog too. For example, we live a greener life by using more public traffic. Or if we see things that could harm the environment, we can try to stop it. In one scene from the film, Chai sees a dirt mound in a building site exposed in the air, and asks the person in charge to cover it. When she sees a restaurant cooking without any suitable filter facilities, she calls the hotline 12369. The restaurant installed the filter a week later.

    Chen Jining, the new minister of environmental protection, praised Chai. "This film encourages ordinary people to care about the environment. This is what we need in the future. "

    A small robot may help children who are ill in hospital or at home. These children may feel lonely without their friends or classmates. The robot takes their places at school. Through the robot, the children can hear their teachers and friends.

    The robot is called AV1. A Norwegian company called No Isolation created the robot. Dolva explains how the robot AV1 works. She says from home, children use a tablet or phone to start the robot. Then they use the same device to control the robot's movements. At school, the robot becomes their eyes, ears and voice.

     "So, it sits at the child's desk in the classroom and the child uses a tablet or a phone to start it and control its movements and talks through it. So it's the eyes, the ears and the voice at school." The robot is equipped with speakers, microphones and cameras that make communication easy.

    AV1 is large and looks like a human for a reason. Dolva says this is important because the robot is supposed to be a friend of the children. "It can't be just a tiny camera because the other kids can't pick it up and take it with them. This is supposed to be their friend." And robots are, quite simply, cool. Hopefully AV1 will help some children feel less lonely while they are not in class.

    Everybody hates rats. But rats may soon be man's new good friends. What happens after an earthquake? We send in rescue dogs. Why? Because they can smell people. Dogs save lives. They help rescuers to find living people. But dogs are big and they can't get into small spaces. So now a new research project is using a smaller animal to save lives: the rat.

    How does it work? First, the rat is trained to smell people. When this happens, the rat's brain gives a signal. This is sent to a small radio on its back, and then the rescuers follow the radio signals. When the rat's brain activity jumps, the rescuers know that someone is alive. The rat has smelled that person.

    Although there are already robots which can do this job, rats are better. Robots' noses don't work well when there are other smells around. Rats are good at that. Rats can also see in the dark, they are cheaper and quicker to train than dogs, and unlike robots, they don't need electricity!

    The "rat project" is not finished. But a scientist says, "It would be great. A rat could get into any place we couldn't get to, and a rat would get out if it wasn't safe." Perhaps for the first time in history, people will be happy to see a rat in a building (but only after an earthquake, of course).