It is probably the strangest sport anyone has ever invented. And at first sight, it looks like the easiest. Competitors have to do two things. The first is to stand still. The second is to place their hands anywhere on the body of a car, and keep it there.

    This is where things start getting difficult. Lots of people are doing the same thing. And the winner of the “handstand” contest is the person who can carry on doing it for the longest time. That person gets to own the car.

It still seems to be an easy thing to do. At the beginning it is. Anyone can stand still. But when the contest has been going for four or five days, standing still seems like the most difficult job in the world . And keeping the hand in place over this time becomes an act of serious attention. After a few days, the hand seems to belong to someone else—-someone who wants to go home and get some sleep.

    Competitors are allowed to take a five-minute break every hour to eat, drink or do whatever else is necessary. No one is allowed to lean on the car for support. Winners need to be able to show great powers of attention. They also need to be able to develop special skills.

    Maybe the popularity of the “handathon” is due to the fact that it is not necessary to be a trained athlete to enter. Competitors in the Longview handathon certainly don't seem to do much preparation. Most say they will prepare by “getting lots of sleep”. Others say they will “eat healthy food” or “pray for success”.  The whole event gives ordinary people the chance to do something interesting and win something in the end.

    Handathons are competitions, but there is little rivalry (竞争) between competitors. They help each other out and keep each other's spitits up. People who drop out early return with food, drink and encouragement.

    Are you addicted to computer games? Do you stay up all night playing them? Do you feel happy after you play computer games? There's no doubt that the excitement and appealing of games these days makes them hard to put down. More and more people are attracted by the choice when it comes to gaming: You can role play--creating your own fantasy characters and stories, giving you a chance to step out of everyday life into an imaginary world. And there are shooting games where you can let out your anger and depression in violent situations where you kill people with guns. You can get excited from the games.

    However, can these kinds of games really be fun and can being absorbed in virtual reality be good for us? Should we worry about their effects on our health? Popular games like Grand Theft Auto have been blamed for everything from falling results at school to causing acts of extreme violence. Internet safety advisor, Alan MacKenzie, thinks “many people understandably will just think that a game is just a game and not realizing the exact content that's in there”. He gives an example of the violence, which he says is “wholly inappropriate for anybody, not to mention children.”

    Others will argue that gaming is a harmless form of entertainment. There is evidence that playing video games could actually be good for us. Some games are educational and using games certainly can help children learn good qualities. Studies have also shown that the skills used in playing games can cause growth in certain areas of the brain, the ability to think in 3D and even improve our eyesight.

    Video gamers are also no longer just simple creatures. Just as Edward Smith, the professor in Oxford University, puts it that for some, gaming is having a positive effect on their social lives with games like Halo and World of Warcraft often being played in groups. When your group works together to win the game, your sense of achievement is higher than when winning by yourself.

So every coin has two sides. It seems today, gaming isn't just for game fans and if used in a proper way, we can all take part. If video games have two sides, what side do you stand by?

    Although one might not think so as a result of the disadvantages, thousands and thousands of ads have shown advertising is of great importance to the society in which people live, either in the United Kingdom, or in many other parts of the world .Advertising is necessary as a means of communicating with others, of telling them about the goods and services that are offered, and of which most of them would never get to hear at all if it were not for advertising. And advertising does a great deal to a rising standard of living conditions.

    In talking about advertisement, one should not think only a commercial on television, or an advertisement in the newspaper or magazines and—in the sense of communication—even the spoken or written words of salesmen. After all, the roots of advertising are to be found in the market place in the ancient times.

    For many years it was thought that it was not enough to just produce goods and supply services. It is only more recently that people came to understand the production of goods would be a waste of resources unless those goods can be sold at fair price within a reasonable time period. In the competitive society in which we live, it is very important that we go out and sell what we have to offer, and advertising plays an important part, whether selling at home or in export market. Around 2 percent of the UK national product is spent on advertising. But it must be thought that this advertising tries to sell goods to customers who do not buy them. Of course, advertising does try to catch the eyes of the buyer, but if the product one has bought does not match what the advertisement had described, it is extremely unlikely that the goods will sell well.

    Anaya Elick was born without hands – she has stubs（残端）where most people's wrists begin.

    To hold a pencil, she must balance it between her wrists, then use her arms to push it along the page. But that didn't stop her from winning a national handwriting contest when she was in first grade.

    In the two years since, she has taken on greater challenges. Last week, she won another national handwriting contest, this one for cursive（草书）. And by all accounts from her teachers at Greenbrier Christian Academy, she has become an accomplished artist.

    Anaya isn't one to boast about her successes. She unwillingly says they make her proud but adds that they come from “lots of practice.”

    Her friends at school said, “She inspires everybody by what she does and how she does it” child to fail, and raising one who was born with a disability can heighten that protective instinct.

    Before Anaya was born, doctors knew about her condition, although not its cause. Other than having no hands, she is a regular 9-year-old girl.

    Anaya succeeds because she is not afraid to fail, Middleton said. The two began practicing cursive last year, when Anaya was in second grade. She struggled sometimes, because unlike traditional penmanship, which allows for breaks after each letter, cursive words are written straight through – and added effort for someone who must balance rather than hold the pencil.

    Middleton could see her daughter thinking through the challenge, figuring out how she could do better. She'd get frustrated at times, but she never hesitated to do things as often as it took to get them right.

    “I don't think I've ever heard Anaya say I can't do something,” Middleton said.

    That attitude carries over to her other interests.

    Recently, Anaya and her classmates sat in Cheryl Leader's art room, working on an exercise. The goal was to get them thinking about different concepts, like color combinations and how an image can be formed by fully coloring inside straight and diagonal lines.

    About 5,000 children die each day due to preventable diseases such as cholera and dysentery (痢疾) , which spread when people use unclean water for drinking or cooking. A lack of water for personal health leads to the spread of totally preventable diseases like trachoma, which has blinded some six million people.

    Water troubles also trap many low-income families in a cycle of poverty and poor education and the poorest suffer most from lack of access to water. People who spend much of their time on ill health, caring for sick children, or collecting water at distances averaging 3.75 miles a day don't have educational and economic opportunities to better their lives.

    Agriculture is called the lion's share of freshwater worldwide, using some 70 percent, and industrial uses consume another 22 percent. Water areas have no political borders and nations don't always work together to share common resources, so water can be a frequent source of international conflict as well.

    Day-by-day demand keeps growing, further needing water sources, from great rivers to groundwater. “We're going deeper into debt on our groundwater use,” Postel said, “and that has very significant impacts on global water security. The rate of groundwater consumption has doubled since 1960.”

    Some of Earth's groundwater is fossil water created when Earth's climate was far different. Today such water is as limited as petrol. “But we're pumping much of them out faster than ever,” Postel explained. “Humanity's growing thirst also causes a major problem about water and our ecosystems. And that also creates a cost to us, to our sons and to our grandsons, not just to nature.”

The hottest cities in the world

    The locations below are the hottest and also travel destinations on the planet.

    Bangkok

    According to the data, Bangkok is the hottest city on the planet﹣not because of any particularly impressive high temperatures, but because it is consistently hot all the year round. The city has an average annual temperature of 29℃, coupled with high dampness and an average of 128rainy days per year; while the highest temperature on record is 40℃.

    Timbuktu, Mali

    Located on the southern edge of the Sahara Desert, the African city of Timbuktu is similar to everything remote. It's also one of the hottest cities in the world, with a hot, dry climate offering record highs of 49℃. Throughout April, May and June, average maximum temperatures are beyond 40℃. Modern﹣day Timbuktu is slowly being swallowed by the desert and is certainly a shadow of the trade center that it once was.

    Ahvaz, Iran

    Built on the bank of the Karun River, Ahvaz is an industrial city with average highs of around 46℃ during July, its warmest month. The city's record high is 54℃, making it one of the world's hottest cities during the summer. Frequent sand and dust storms and an absence of rain from July to September mix with its sky﹣high temperatures.

    Kuwait City

    The wealthy capital of Kuwait is another competitor for the title of the world's hottest summertime city with average highs of over 45℃ from June to August. Nightfall brings little respite（缓解）, with after﹣dark low temperatures often over 30℃ during the summer months. Kuwait City's record high is 52℃, while it rains on an average of just 19 days per year.