Since 1989, Dave Thomas, who died at the age of 69, was one of the most recognizable faces on TV. He appeared in more than 800 commercials for the hamburger chain named for his daughter. “As long as it works”, he said in 1991, “I'll continue to do those commercials.”

    Even though he was successful, Thomas remained troubled by his childhood. “He still won't let anyone see his feet, which are out of shape because he never had proper fitting shoes,” Wendy said in 1993. Born to a single mother, he was adopted as a baby by Rex and Auleva Thomas of Kalamazoo in Michigan. After Auleva died when he was 5, Thomas spent years on the road as Rex traveled around seeking construction work. “He fed me,” Thomas said, “and if I got out of line, he'd beat me.”

    Moving out on his own at 15, Thomas worked, first as a waiter, in many restaurants. But he had something much better in mind. “I thought if I owned a restaurant,” he said, “I could eat for free.” A 1956 meeting with Harland Sanders led Thomas to a career as the manager of a Kentucky Chicken restaurant that made him a millionaire in 1968.

    In 1969, after breaking with Sanders, Thomas started the first Wendy's Old Fashioned Hamburgers, in Columbus, Ohio, which set itself apart by serving made-to-order burgers. With 6,000 restaurants worldwide, the chain now makes $ 6 billion a year in sales. Although troubled by his own experience with adoption, Thomas, married since 1954 to Lorraine, 66, and with four grown kids besides Wendy, felt it could offer a future for other children. He started the Dave Thomas Foundation for Adoption in 1992.

    In 1993, Thomas, who had left school at 15, graduated from Coconut Creek High School in Florida. He even took Lorraine to the graduation dance party. The kids voted him Most Likely to Succeed.

    “The Dave you saw on TV was the real Dave,” says friend Pat Williams. “He wasn't a great actor or a great speaker .He was just Joe Everybody.”

    Have you felt annoyed when a cell phone rings during the class? Something must be done to stop this. Now in New York City, USA, a rule is carried out in schools. Students can't even bring cell phones to school. Is it a good thing or not?

    Anxious parents say that cell phones are an important tool in holding New York City's families together.

    "I worry about it." said Elizabeth Lorris Ritter, a mother of a middle school kid. "It's necessary in our everyday life. We have a washing machine. We have running water, and we have cell phones."

    Many American parents think cell phones connect them to their children on buses, getting out from subways, walking through unknown places.

    "I have her call me when she gets out of school," said Lindsay Walt, a schoolgirl's mother. "No one in New York is going to let their child go to school without a cell phone."

    What about the cell phone owners, the students? Most of the students said cell phones were essential and the cell phone was like an extra hand or foot for them.

    "I feel so empty," said May Chom, 14. There is also no way to listen to music on the way to school without my phone. It will be a really, really boring trip."

    The Swedish Academy's mid-October announcement regarding literature seldom fails to cause second-guessing.

    Bob Dylan was awarded the big prize this morning, and my social media has been alive with indignation ever since. The Nobel did not go to those excellent novelists but to a songwriter. Some of those same people are still protesting that last year it was warded to Svetlana Alexievich, a “journalist”. They have decided, for whatever reasons, that song lyrics(歌词) are not literature.

    And people are upset because Bob Dylan is the voice of some generation other than theirs, because he works in a popular style, because he does not work in this minute's popular style, because he appeared on a car commercial that aired during the Super Bowl, because his songwriting skills dropped off — he was famous long ago, after all.

    You may not think of Dylan as a poet, but Dylan created a climate in which lyrics were taken seriously. And Dylan accomplished something that few novelists or poets or for that matter songwriters have managed to do in our time: he changed the time he lived. Through words, with music, he affected the opinions and ambitions of hundreds of millions of people all over the world. The Nobel Prize in Literature cannot ever be all things to all people, and while this year's award failed to accomplish various possible objectives, it was not in any way misapplied.

    The Shiants, remote, cliff-edged islands off the coast of Scotland are home to 350,000 seabirds. This is the starting point for National Geographic contributor Adam Nicolson's new book, The Seabirds Cry. Celebrating 10 species in detail, he describes the unbelievable recovery of seabirds and the many adaptations that have enabled them to survive and navigate the oceans, while sounding a loud call for their conservation among severely falling numbers.

    Speaking from his home in Sussex, England, Nicolson explains why guillemot (海雀) colonies are information exchange centers: how new research is showing that those long-distance travelers. The shearwaters, "smell" their way across the globe; and what we can do to support seabird populations.

    National Geographic has just kicked off Year of the Bird with a cover story by Jonathan Franzen titled "Why Birds Matter ". The beginning of Year of the Bird is beneficial to birds. Nicolson said, "I'll ask you the same question-why? For me, these seabirds are symbols of uniqueness. There is so much on the land where the rest of the living world seems to be controlled by us, but when you go to seabird colonies, there is this pumping, loud and raging uniqueness. It's a glance of the untouched world. "

    "The reason why it's untouched is that, until recently, we have not controlled the oceans that the seabirds depend on. More of them have survived in greater numbers than most other creatures in the developed world, where huge amounts of the animal kingdom have been removed by us. And so one reason these birds matter is that they are symbols of what the world might be if we hadn't done so much damage to it. "He added.

    "Seabirds also tend to disappear; they're not reliably of our world, due to their migration and habits of life. Very deep in our consciousness is a sense that they are ambassadors from another world. And witnessing and feeling that is, I think, one of the great enlargers of life." Nicolson explained.

    Living in the wild can be hard. Finding food and staying safe aren't easy. Each day, animals try to survive in their habitats. Not all animals get by on their own. Some animals form a close partnership with other kinds of animals. These pairings are called symbiotic(共生的)relationships.

    In a symbiotic relationship, the animals depend on each other. One animal helps the other meet its needs. Sounds good, right? Not always. Some animals are not very kind to their partners. In some cases, one animal meets its needs but hurts its partner. Take ticks(扁虱), for example. These insects suck blood to live. To get blood, they attach themselves to other kinds of animals. Ticks can pass germs(细菌)that cause disease instead of helping their hosts.

    In other relationships, animals don't treat their partners so poorly. Both animals benefit from living with the other animal.

    Small animals called cleaner shrimps(清洁虾)have found a way of helping fish. As their name suggests, the shrimps clean the fish. They hang out at what scientists call a cleaning station. A fish stops by. Then a shrimp climbs onto the fish and even steps into the fish's mouth. The shrimp uses its tiny claws to pick stuff off the fish's body. That can include dead skin and tiny pieces of food that can hurt the fish. The fish gets a nice cleaning. The shrimp enjoys a tasty meal of fish trash.

    Small birds called plovers(灰斑)are also in the cleaning business. They have big customers-crocodiles. Crocodiles have long noses filled with sharp teeth. Cleaning them is funny. When a crocodile opens its mouth, the plover hops right in. It lets the plover eat small, harmful animals attached to the crocodile's teeth. The plover gets an easy meal while the crocodile gets clean teeth.

    MacDonald's will soon remove cheeseburgers and chocolate milk from its Happy Meal menu to set a good example in offering a healthy diet for kids at its restaurants.

    Customers can still ask for cheeseburgers or chocolate milk with kids' meal, but MacDonald's said that not listing them would make them less likely to be ordered. Since it removed soda from the menu four years ago, orders for it with the Happy Meal have fallen by 14%.

    As MacDonald's is known for getting more business from families with children, it is especially important for it to offer a healthy diet instead of junk food. And the Happy Meal is a key part of that. The Happy Meal has long been a target(目标) of health advocates(拥护) and parents who link it to childhood obesity(肥胖症). To get rid of its bad image, MacDonald's has made many changes on the Happy Meal over the years, including cutting the size of its fries and adding fruit.

    Recently, the company replaced its former apple juice with a new kind of juice that has less sugar. MacDonald's wants all its Happy Meal choices to have 600 calories or fewer. It also wants less than 10% of the meal calories to come from fat and added sugar. The cheeseburger and chocolate milk didn't meet those new standards. However, MacDonald's is trying to cut sugar from chocolate milk and believes it'll be back on the menu eventually.

    There will be other changes. For example, bottled water will be added as a choice to the menu, but it will cost extra. Currently, the Happy Meal menu lists milk, chocolate milk, and apple juice.

    For international restaurants, MacDonald's said that a least half of the Happy Meal choices available must meet the new standards. Some MacDonald's restaurants are adding new menu items to obey. For example, In Italy, a grilled chicken sandwich was added to the Happy Meal menu.