A mouse looked through a crack inthe wall to see the farmer and his wife opening a package: What food might itcontain? He was astonished to discover that it was a mouse trap!

    Retreating to the farmyard, the mouse declared the warning, “There is a mouse trap in the house, there is a mouse trap in thehouse.”

    The chicken clucked and scratched,raised her head and said, “Mr Mouse, I can tell you this is a grave concern to you, but it is of no consequence to me, I cannot be bothered by it.”

    The mouse turned to the pig and told him, “There is a mouse trap in the house.” “I am so sorry, Mr Mouse,”sympathized the pig, “but there is nothing I can do about it but pray; beassured that you are in my prayers.”

    The mouse turned to the cow, who replied, “A mouse trap, am I in grave danger, huh?”

    So the mouse returned to the house, head down and depressed to face the farmer's mouse trap alone.

    That very night a sound was heard throughout the house, like the sound of a mouse trap catching its prey. The farmer's wife rushed to see what was caught. In the darkness, she did not see that it was an evil snake whose tail the trap had caught. The snake bit the farmer's wife. The farmer rushed her to the hospital. She returned home with a fever. Now everyone knew to treat a fever with fresh chicken soup, so the farmer took his hatchet to the farmyard for the soup's main ingredient. His wife's sickness continued so that friends and neighbors came to sit with her around the clock. To feed them, the farmer but chered the pig. The farmer's wife did not get well, in fact, she died, and so many people came for her funeral. The farmer had the cow slaughtered to provide meat for all of them to eat.

    So the next time you hear that someone is facing a problem and think that it does not concern you, remember that when the least of us is threatened, we are all at risk.

Time:2017-01-24     From:kekenet.com        Editor: clover

    The head of China's largest online seller Alibaba does not think China and the United States will have a trade war despite comments from the Trump administration.

    Jack Ma is the chairman of the Alibaba Group. At the World Economic Forum meeting in Davos, Switzerland, he said, "China and (the) U.S. will never have a trade war. Give Trump some time. He's open-minded, he's listening."

    The Chinese billionaire said he would do all he could to prevent trade relations between the countries from getting worse.

    Last week, Ma met with Trump at the Trump Tower in New York City. The Chinese billionaire is said to have discussed a plan to permit one million small U.S. businesses to sell goods on Alibaba's online shopping platform.

    During the campaign and after winning the presidential election, Trump strongly criticized the Chinese government's support for its businesses. He blamed unfair trade policies for taking away U.S. jobs. And he said that China unfairly controls the exchange value of its currency, the yuan.

    Trump also has threatened to place import taxes on goods from China and other countries in response to their trade policies.

    According to the South China Morning Post, Ma said, "American international companies made millions and millions of dollars from globalization." He added that the U.S. should not blame the loss of jobs and companies on globalization.

    However, a new study by an American business group says many U.S. businesses feel unwelcome in China. The companies say the cost of doing business in China is increasing. They add that rules and regulations are unclear or not enforced in a consistent way.

    The American Chamber of Commerce in China led the study, which looked at responses from 462 companies.

    William Zarit is chairman of the chamber. He says trade policies in China make it difficult for American companies. He says, "we feel that over the last few years that we've been taken advantage of to some extent, with our open market and the lack of open areas in the Chinese market."

    Another major concern for U.S. companies in China is fake products. Fake products are copies of the originals that cost businesses with the legal right to sell them millions of dollars each year.

    Ma defended Alibaba's efforts to fight fake products on its shopping platform. He said his company is doing all it can to fight the problem.

    "Fighting against fake products is a war against human greediness," Ma said.

    I'm Mario Ritter.

    Make A Difference Day is the largest national day of community service in the USA, which takes place on the fourth Saturday of October.

    Who takes part in Make A Difference Day?

    Anyone! Young and old, individuals and groups, anyone can carry out a volunteer project that helps others. It might be as ambitious as collecting truckloads of clothing for the homeless, or as personal as spending an afternoon helping an elderly neighbor or relative. USA WEEKEND covers volunteers and their projects in articles and photos.

    How do I get started?

    Look around your community. Are people hungry, homeless or ill? Are parks or schools dirty or neglected? No matter where you live, there's a need nearby. And on Make A Difference Day, millions of Americans are expected to roll up their sleeves to help others. You can act alone or enlist your friends, family and co-workers. You can also call the Make A Difference Day Hot Line, 1-800-416-3824, for information. Or use the ideas on this website for inspiration.

    What do I do after I've selected a project?

    Tell others what you're doing and enlist help. Several weeks before the day, tell us about your plans in the Make A Difference DAYtaBANK, a national listing of local projects that will be viewed by interested volunteers, other people looking for good project ideas and news media looking for good stories to tell. It will only take a few minutes to post your plans in the DAYtaBANK hosted by HandsOn Network.

    Do it!

    Carry out your plans to help others on Make A Difference Day. Be sure to take lots of pictures and share them on the Make A Difference Day Photo Album.

    Many people all over the world enjoy an alcoholic drink, such as wine or beer, during dinner. Many people raise a glass of alcohol to celebrate a wedding or a birthday. And having drinks after work with friends and co-workers is called "happy hour".

    All these situations are considered "social drinking" because they happen at social events. But when does "social drinking" become problem drinking?

    According to the World Health Organization alcohol abuse kills 3.3 million people each year. That is six percent of all deaths around the world. And in a new report on alcohol use around the world, the WHO says alcohol can create dependency, or addiction, in some people. The report also warns that alcohol use can increase the risk of developing more than 200 diseases, including some kinds of cancers. And, the WHO says alcohol abuse can put people at greater risk of infectious diseases, such as tuberculosis(肺结核), pneumonia (肺炎)and HIV.

    WHO Mental Health and Substance Abuse Director Shekhar Saxena says the organization is concerned about drinking among young people between the ages 15 and 19. And it is most concerned about "binge-drinking", or an extended period of heavy drinking.

    The report concludes that worldwide 16 percent of drinkers over the age of 15 engage in binge-drinking, which is much more harmful than other kind of drinking and causes the most harm in terms of accidents, self-harm and harm to others. High income countries have the highest alcohol consumption and also the highest prevalence(盛行) of binge-drinking.

    The report also found that the highest rates of alcohol-linked deaths are in Europe, followed by the West Pacific and then the Americans. The report also finds Europe is the area with the highest alcohol use. Central and Eastern Europe are especially high.

    The World Health Organization suggests ways countries can protect people from alcohol abuse. These include increasing taxes on alcohol sales, raising the drinking age limit, and controlling the marketing of alcoholic beverages.

Music

    Opera at Music Hall: 1243 Elm Street. The season runs June through August, with additional performances in March and September. The Opera honors enjoy the Arts membership discounts. Phone: 723­1182.

    Chamber Orchestra: The Orchestra plays at Memorial Hall at 106 Elm Street, which offers several concerts from March through June. Call 241­2742 for more information.

    Symphony Orchestra: At Music Hall and Riverbend. For ticket sales, call 381­3300. Regular season runs September through May at Music Hall and in summer at Riverbend.

    College Conservatory of Music (CCM): Performances are on the main campus (校园) of the university, usually at Patricia Cobbett Theater. CCM organizes a variety of events, including performances by the well­known LaSalle Quartet, CCM's Philharmonic Orchestra, and various groups of musicians presenting Baroque through modern music. Students with I.D. cards can attend the events for free. A free schedule of events for each term is available by calling the box office at 556­4183.

    Riverbend Music Theater: 6295 Kellogg Ave. Large outdoor theater with the closest seats under cover (price difference) .Big name shows all summer long! Phone: 232­6220.

    Microsoft PowerPoint is the world's most common presentation tool. It emerged from software company Forethought Inc in the 1980s. Bob Gaskins was the man behind it.

    "I knew in the early 80s that there were as many as a billion, a thousand million presentation slides being made per year just in America," Gaskins says, but they were all made by hand and almost nobody was using computers to do them.

    "It was clear to me that here was a huge application worth billions and billions of dollars a year that could be done on computers as soon as there was a revolution in the kinds of computers that we had."

    Gaskins was onto something, but it was a hard sell at the time. The software wouldn't run on any existing personal computers. Anyone wanting to use it had to buy a new machine. Even so, people bought personal computers for the first time in order to be able to use PowerPoint, says Wired magazine journalist Russell Davies.

    Davies explains that before PowerPoint, people used slides to convey information to groups — but anyone creating a presentation had to send away to get their materials made. It took a long time to do, was difficult to make changes and because it was so expensive, only the most senior people in an organisation got to do it.

    "PowerPoint," Davies says, "made it possible for everyone in an organisation to stand up and say their piece."

    PowerPoint has helped turn us all into presenters — but it' s also been accused of over-simplifying ideas and distracting (干扰)us from clear thinking.

    Sarah Kaplan is a management professor at the University of Toronto's Rotman School of Management. She has noticed that, rather than people asking for new analysis or insights in meetings, they were asking for more PowerPoint slides.

    Kaplan says that some CEOS, such as Amazon's Jeff Bezos, have banned its use. "He felt, and I think many people feel, that PowerPoint became such an object of the process that they lost the ideas inside of it and that is the risk."