You Who Came FromThe Star and The Heirs (继承者们) have been subjects of hot online discussions throughout Asia. Besides, the book, The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane, read by the hero You Who Came From The Star was a hard to get item on Amazon for a while.

    The two TV programs have several common elements (因素): a tall, handsome, and rich hero who loves the heroine blindly and always protects her, and an equally handsome man madly in love with the same woman . Both programs describe the purity of love, which is expressed through a kiss or a warm hug. Perhaps that's the secret of their success: perhapspeople still like Cinderella type stories.

    The widening wealth gap is a matter of social concern both in South Korea and China, and the challenges that young people face in their hope for a better life might have caused many ordinary girls to dream of marrying rich, caring men. This is precisely what the popular South Korean TV drams describe. In fact,South Korean TV dramas are tailored to meet the market's demands.

    Many netizens evensaid at an earlier time that South Korean TV dramas had become popular because of their stereotyped (模式化的) themes: traffic accidents, cancer and other incurable diseases. But all that has changed with the success of You Who CameFrom The Star and The Heirs, which Chinese directors can use as examples, aswell as inspiration, to improve their productions.

    Maybe it has been the influence of the current scene: the type among urban biking. Apparently, urban biking requires entirely different bikes than suburban hiking does and therefore a Bike Design Project started where five design studios across five cities had to come up with a perfect urban bike. The winning bike will be manufactured for a limited run of 100 hikes and will be in stores next year. Industry, a Portland-based studio, came up with a very interesting bike: one that uses bluetooth and handlebars (车把手) that tell you when to stop or turn.

    Industry worked together with Ti Cycles to create a bike with a 3D printed titanium frame (钛框架). The hike is called Solid and can be connected to a smartphone APP: My Bike. This APP alarms a user when a light needs replacement and if something gets wrong with one's brakes. There is also software called Discover My City, which has a series of routes through Portland's most trendy neighborhoods, with suggestions about where to eat and shop.

    Nevertheless, the idea with cycling is that you need to focus on the road and not on your smartphone. This bike therefore uses integrated feedback on handlebars. Those handlebars tell a user when to turn, as they will buzz when a turn appears. As you are getting closer, they will buzz more frequently. And then there is the possibility to control your light via built-in sensors and change gears by pressing an electronic button.

    Although the bicycle looks highly interesting and can be seen as a piece of art for the designing world, we don't know if we would like our bike to have an automatic buzz when we are approaching a turn. On the other side, it could add some extra safety to traffic in general. Whether you like the bike or not, you have to admit the Portland-based studio brings the concept of urban biking to a whole new level.

    China will build a comprehensive (综合性的) network to detect (检测) pollution of the land, sea and air by 2020, employing satellites, drones(无人机)and remote sensors to monitor the environment.

    The national leadership agreed to the network plan in July, saying the government will lead the monitoring, share information among departments and regions, and be held accountable (追究责任) if violations (违规行为) are found, the Ministry of Environmental Protection said on Tuesday.

    Satellites, a major tool for monitoring air pollution, will receive a boost (大力发展)  this year. The ministry said it will accelerate research on two atmospheric environmental monitoring satellites.

    The ministry will improve a remote sensor network, guided by the goals of the 13th Five-Year Plan (2016-2020), which is scheduled to be released at the end of this year, according to the ministry's Environmental Supervision Department.

    Remote monitoring has played a bigger role in locating pollution sources. Drones helped authorities locate polluted areas in the Tengger Desert in northern China and identify scattered summer straw burnings.

    Hebei province, which has a serious air pollution problem, has cooperated with the ministry's Satellite Environment Center to conduct monitoring from satellites and monitoring stations since January last year.

    "We used the data from the center's satellites to forecast the movement of smog during the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation meetings in November, "Zhang Feng, an engineer in the Environmental Supervision Department of the provincial environmental watchdog, said on Tuesday.

    Data collected from monitoring stations helped authorities provide accurate forecasts on hazy days during that period, he said.

    The United States Congress is responsible for making and approving federal laws—rules that everyone in the country must follow. But exactly how do those laws get made? The process is not easy, and it takes a long time.

    A law begins when someone puts forward an idea. The idea can come from anyone, but it has to get to a U. S. lawmaker who wants it to become legislation. In time, the idea is further developed into a written proposal, called a bill.

    Then, a member of Congress officially proposes the bill. After the bill is introduced, it is sent to a small group of lawmakers, called a "committee". Sometimes committee members seek more information about the proposal by holding hearings. Sometimes the committee changes the bill. Sometimes it decides not to take any action. In that case, we say lawmakers "table" the bill, or let it "die in committee".

    But now and then, the bill is offered to lawmakers not on the committee. Those lawmakers debate the bill further. They might change the bill again. Finally, the full House or Senate votes on the bill. If it does not earn the majority of votes, the bill does not advance.

    Finally, the agreed-upon bill is sent to the president. If the president signs it, the bill becomes a law. If the president does nothing and Congress is officially meeting, the bill becomes a law. But if the president does nothing and Congress is not in session, the bill does not pass. Or the president can officially reject the bill. If that happens, the bill is not stopped. Instead, it is returned to both the Senate and the House. If two-thirds of the senators and two-thirds of the House members approve the bill once again, even with the president objecting, they turn the bill into a law.

    It can be a real struggle trying to learn a new language. I had always enjoyed learning languages in school, but only recently did I start learning German. I found that I could understand and learn individual words easily, but when it came to literature, I really struggled. That was when my tutor at university suggested reading some children's books printed in the target language.

    At first, I felt a bit silly going on a hunt for a book designed for someone half my age, lout then I realised that everyone has to start somewhere. As children, we are given these basic texts to familiarise our brains with certain vocabulary and writing structures, and from there, we can learn and develop. I started with books which are taught to us as children in the UK. I managed to find Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens and James and the Giant Peach by Roald Dahl.

    The beauty of reading books that were introduced to you as a child is that you are already familiar with the plot. As a result, you can work out some of the definitions of words with your prior knowledge of the story. At first, I used to read with the book in one hand and a dictionary in the other, but this method did not work well for me. The method I would recommend is to read a chapter of your chosen children's book and at the end of that chapter, highlight the words you do not know and then look up the definitions. If you can wait a bit before you use a dictionary, you may be surprised what you can get merely from the context of the sentence in the story. Additionally, a lot of children's books have pictures which may give you a clue as to what or to whom the passage is referring.

    You can tell a lot about a country by what's on its television sets. Britain's TV screens are completely steeped in class, and have long been so.

    From laughing at poor people in reality shows to laughing at posh people in Downton Abbey, this is how Britain likes to unwind in the evening: by laughing at other classes, and laughing at people for laughing about class.

    Like it or loathe it, many see the class system as a quite essential element of British life, together with our obsession for tea and cake and talking about the weather.

    Whether you are a lord, a lady, or just the king of your own middle class kingdom, everyone in the UK fits into the class system. How the class system works is a hard question even for a British person to answer.

    There are four main groups in the British class system: lower, working, middle and upper class. Although recently the BBC has tried to confuse everyone even more by adding three more categories.

    The British are very aware of class; it is often said that we have an in-built 'class radar'; we pick up on subtle social clues which indicate which class a person comes from. Class is not just about your job, where you live and how much you earn. It's about who you are.