Many would agree that when we think of Christmas， we probably think of gifts， Christmas trees and Santa Claus. But behind all these things lies the true meaning of Christmas: the importance of sharing and giving love and joy to people around us. The story in A Christmas Carol is perhaps the best example of this.

    A Christmas Carol is a famous novel written by Charles Dickens. It is about an old man named Scrooge. He only thinks about himself and doesn't treat others nicely. He just cares about whether he can make more money. And he hates Christmas. One Christmas Eve， Scrooge sees the ghost of Jacob Marley， his dead business partner. Marley used to be just like Scrooge， so he was punished after he died. He warns Scrooge to change his ways if he doesn't want to end up like him. He also tells Scrooge to expect three spirits to visit him.

    That night， three ghosts visit Scrooge. First， the Ghost of Christmas Past takes him back to his childhood and reminds Scrooge of his happier days as a child. Then the second spirit， the Ghost of Christmas Present， takes him to see how others are spending Christmas this year. Everyone is happy， even poor people. The last one， the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come， takes him to the future. He sees that he is dead but nobody cares. Scrooge is so scared that he wakes up in his bed and finds out it is already the next morning on Christmas Day!

    He decides to change his life and promises to be a better person. He happily celebrates Christmas with his relatives. He also gives gifts to people in need. He now treats everyone with kindness and warmth， spreading love and joy everywhere he goes. And that is the true spirit of Christmas!

    O. Henry was a pen name used by an American writer of short stories. His real name was William Sydney Porter. He was born in North Carolina in 1862. As a young boy he lived an exciting life. He did not go to school for very long, but he managed to teach himself everything he needed to know. When he was about 20 years old, O. Henry went to Texas, where he tried different jobs. He first worked on a newspaper, and then had a job in a bank. When some money went missing from the bank, O. Henry was believed to have stolen（偷）it. Because of that, he was sent to prison（监狱）. During the three years in prison, he learned to write short stories. After he got out of prison, he went to New York and continued writing. He wrote mostly about New York and the life of the poor there. People liked his stories, because simple as the tales（故事）were, they would finish with a sudden change at the end, to the reader's surprise.

    Toronto, the capital of Ontario, is an important city in Canada(加拿大). People like to visit it and live there. It's large, but not too large; rich, but not too expensive. Most importantly, Toronto is very open.

    Toronto is one of the most multicultural cities in the world. People in Toronto come from different countries and they speak more than 140 languages. With all the different people in the city, you have different kinds of food to eat. And, there are many different restaurants in Toronto. Many of them are in the Kensington Market area. There you can also enjoy different kinds of music and art.

    Alyssa James says to BBC News, "I love Toronto and I want to live here because I can always see something different. It's a city of secrets." James also talks about the beaches(海滩) near the city. They have very clean sand and water.

    Another good thing is that with a lot of buses and trains, travelling in Toronto is easy. It's also home for many computer geniuses(天才). So, if you want to work in IT, you can surely choose to live in Toronto.

    Now you can see that Toronto is really a good place to travel or look for a home.

According to a study in Nature Climate Change, the population of polar bears will be in serious drop by the year 

2080. The cause is melting(融化) sea ice. Without ice, the bears must walk on the bank which is away from their main food source. That means the animals will be in danger because of lacking food.

" There's not enough food on land to support a polar bear population." Doctor Smith, the study's lead writer said. Lacking of food induces another problem. Mother bears may not be fat enough to produce milk for their babies. Some bear populations could stop having babies, leading to a rapid drop in numbers.

Arctic(北极) sea ice usually melts in the spring and summer, and then grows in the winter. But now, the ice is taking longer to grow back. Weather reports say the Arctic is warming twice as fast as the rest of the planet. Ice here has reduced 13% every 10 years since the 1970s. The Arctic is home to about 25,000 polar bears. Scientists have known that the animals are in danger.

But the study also notes that it is still possible to slow Arctic melting. The world can reduce the burning of fossil fuels(石化燃料) and lower the greenhouse gas." Saving the polar bears is up to us, I believe that there is hope. But humans need to act quickly to turn that hope into a reality." Doctor Smith said.