A city without cars would be very strange, right? The European city Venice is such one.

    Venice is in the northeast of Italy. It wasn't built on land, but on more than 110 islands. Seawater is everywhere all around the city.

    Even so, travel isn't difficult. The water ways have always been the best way to get around. There are 117 waterways and more than 400 bridges that can lead you where you want to go. People in Venice move from place to place by boat. They like to enjoy the scenery(风光) and cool summer nights while taking boat trips.

    Venice grew out of small islands in saltwater lakes when some Italians escaped from a war 1,500 years ago and built their homes there.

    Water makes the city beautiful and special, but it is also a big problem. Sometimes tourists will have such strange experiences. One moment they walk across the bridge, and there's nothing special. But when they come back to the bridge an hour later, it's underwater and everyone has to wear rain boots to cross.

    People used too much underground water, which made the city get lower little by little. Now the city is down by 23 centimeters. Another problem is the rising seawater. The rising temperature(温度)makes the ice of the Arctic Ocean(北冰洋)melt(融化). Every year, high water hits the city in autumn and winter. When the water comes, more than half of the city is underwater.

    Dubai (迪拜) is a good place to travel to. There, you can find many tall buildings, taste lots of delicious food and experience some interesting things. Have you ever been to this city? If you go to Dubai during the summer holiday, you may see a special kind of "taxi". It is a drone (无人机). It flies in the sky by itself！ It is said that Dubai plans to use Chinese—made droes as a self —flying air taxi in July.

    The drone taxi is named EHang 184. A Chinese company(公司)made it. The city of Dubai will start using it in July. It will be the world's first passenger drone, according to Yahoo News.

    The drone taxi can fly up to 3, 500 meters high. It can fly at a top speed of 160 kilometers an hour. It can only take one person.

    How do you call an EHang1842 You use its app(应用程序) on your phone. When the drone comes, you choose the place you want to go to on a touch screen. There is no pilot in the drone. But some people on the ground will be watching it. They will make sure your trip is safe. You don't have to worry about it.

    EHang 184's battery(电池) can only keep about 30 minutes, So it cannot take you further than 50 kilometers.

    Would you like to take a trip in this flying drone? Don't wait. Let's go!

Do you know about "November 11th Festival"? Nowadays, November 11th Festival is very popular with the young people. It had become a special festival during these years. With four numbers of"1", this date was named as Bachelor's Day(单身节). The single young man hoped he could find his lover on this day before. However, with the development of online shopping, this day becomes more and more like a shopping festival. Many Chinese online companies begin their business promotions(促销) to sell their things. 

Big promotions in the name of celebrating Bachelor's Day usually start at the very beginning of November. 360 buy started its one -month promotion in October 10.

Suning's promotions were called "Zero Buying Within 300 Yuan". After spending 300 yuan on suning. com, the customers could get coupons(优惠券). They could buy another 300- yuan products(产品) for free with the coupons. They could also use the coupons in more than 1, 700 Suning's offline stores. If your home was next to one of them, it would have been easy for you to use a coupons. 

Tmall also offered coupons. Different kinds of promotions started at 10:00, 14:00, 20:00 every day. The promotions continued to Bachelor's Day. Taobao also joined in the promotions during the shopping festival. More than 10, 000 online shops joined in them , which was five times of that compared with last year. 

JD. com started its own promotions long before November11th. The promotions continued from last September to the end of November. There were thousands of promotions and coupons sold. 

Dangdang held its "Fire Promotions" from November 9. It also lasted until November 11.

Have you ever been to Ireland? If not, you should think of spending a vacation there. The Republic of Ireland stands in the south of the island. There are about 3, 470, 000 people in the country and the weather is quite wet but warm. Falls of snow in Ireland are most unusual. 

Ireland is full of interesting things to do. You'll find restaurants and café everywhere. Most of them have a long list（清单） of Irish food and drinks. After your meal, you can take a walk along the shore（岸）. The countryside is good for horse riding. Other sports you may want to do are sailing, boating, swimming, fishing and golfing. Ireland is famous for its theaters and festivals. So, why don't you stay longer for a party or a concert? 

The Irish people are kind and friendly. From mountains to beaches you will find people ready to stop and talk about the weather, the local geography or history and maybe about what you should see next. The Irish people have kept their own culture of music and literature（文学） well. Different areas have different kinds of music. In towns and villages people get together in the evening to sing and play music. They also get together to read their own poems to each other. Meeting such people is really fun, isn't it? 

On December 9th, 3:50 in the afternoon, many students in China watch TV. It is a very interesting science class from the space station(大空站). They all like it very much!

Zhai Zhigang, Wang Yaping, and Ye Guangfu are the three teachers. And Wang Yaping is the only woman teacher. She is great fun!

First, she says hello to all of the students. Then she lets the students have a look at their "rooms" in the space station. She gets an apple from the fridge（冰箱）．She says, "This apple is in the space station for a long time but it is really fresh. In her class, Wang Yaping helps the students to know much about water in space. She puts a ping-pong ball in the water. The ball doesn't go up but stays in the middle of the water. It is really interesting! Things in the space station are not the same as we know. Many students ask questions about space science. They are happy to help them.

Wang Yaping has a flower. It is from her daughter. She is only five now. She watches her mom in the space class, too! After one hour, the space science class finishes. Wang says, "All of you are flowers of China. One day you can come to space yourselves and find new things about space!"

①Some people think that we aren't really able to form memories before our fourth or fifth birthdays. But scientists say this is untrue. They think we form memories at a very young age. However, the memories seem to change as we get older.

②Researchers in Newfoundland, Canada, interviewed 140 children aged between 4 and 13. First, they asked the children to describe their earliest memory and tell their ages. Next, they asked their parents to make sure the event actually happened. All the answers were recorded. The researchers waited for two years before they went back to the children and asked them again," What's your earliest memory?"

③Nearly all the children were aged between 4 and 7 in the first interview. They said something very different in the second interview. However, many of the children who were between 10 and 13 at the first interview described exactly the same memory in the second interview. This seems to suggest that our memories change in the early years, but at around the age of ten, they make the things that we remember fixed.

④The researchers are now looking into why children remember certain events and not others. We sometimes think that most first or early memories are about very stressful things that happened to us as children, because bad things stand out in our minds. But in this study, stressful things were only a small part of what the children said they remembered. More often, children's early memories were happy ones. The researchers are trying to work out the reasons. We can surely look forward to more fascinating discoveries about memories in the near future.