When 19-year-old Sophia Giorgi said she was thinking of volunteering to help the Make-A-Wish Foundation (基金会)，nobody understood what she was talking about. But Sophia knew just how important Make – A –Wish could be because this special organization had helped to make a dream come true for one her best friends. We were interested in finding out more, so we went along to meet Sophia listen to what she had to say.

    Sophia told us that Make – A –Wish is a worldwide organization that started in the United States in 1980. ” It's a charity(慈善机构)that helps children who have got very serious illnesses. Make – A –Wish help children feel happy even though they are sick, by making their wishes and dreams come true, ” Sophia explained.

We asked Sophia how Make – A –Wish had first started. She said it had all begun with a very sick young boy called Chris, who had been dreaming for a long time of becoming a policeman. Sophia said lots of people had wanted to find a way to make Chris's dream come true —-so, with everybody's help, Chris, only seven years old at the time, had been a “policeman” for a day. ” when people saw how delighted Chris was when his dream came true, they decided to try and help other sick children too , and that was the beginning of Make – A –Wish, ” explained Sophia.

    Sophia also told us the Foundation tries to give children and their families a special, happy time. A Make-A-Wish volunteer visits the families and asks the children what they would wish for if they could have anything in the world. Sophia said the volunteers were important because they were the ones who helped to make the wishes come true. They do this either by providing things that are necessary, or by raising money or helping out in whatever way they can.

    October might seem to be pumpkin month in the U.S. The holiday of Halloween (万圣节) comes on October 31. Americans around the country are already using social media to show off their pumpkin growing and carving skills.

    Pumpkins are round, orange fruits related to squashes (南瓜小果) and gourds (葫芦). People use their flesh and seeds for food, but they are also popular decorations in the fall.

    Two big pumpkins recently made headlines in the U.S. A farmer in the northeastern state of Rhode Island broke the record for the largest pumpkin ever grown in North America. Richard Wallace's pumpkin weighed 1,026 kilograms. It broke his son's record from 2015. Ron Wallace's pumpkin only weighed 1,011 kilograms last year. A schoolteacher in the northwestern state of Washington brought her large pumpkin to an event in California. Her pumpkin was the champion, weighing 866 kilograms. It turns out that Cindy Tobeck's pumpkin grew from one of the seeds from Ron Wallace's pumpkin from 2015.

    While those pumpkins are large, they are still not the largest in the world. According to the website BigPumpkins.com, Richard Wallace's pumpkin is only the second-heaviest pumpkin of the year. A man in Belgium produced a pumpkin that weighed almost 1,200 kilograms. Smithsonian magazine wrote a story about people who try to grow large pumpkins. In 35 years, the size of record pumpkins has grown from about 225 kilograms to over 1,000 kilograms. Pumpkin farmers trying to grow record fruits are taking the seeds of champion pumpkins from one year and breeding them with other large pumpkins.

    But people are not just growing pumpkins. They are carving them, too. One Twitter user from Britain recently posted a photo of a pumpkin designed to look like U.S. presidential candidate Donald Trump. No word of a Hillary Clinton pumpkin design. But one pumpkin farmer in California allows visitors to shoot small pumpkins out of a cannon（大炮）. The targets? Large paper cut-outs of both Trump and Clinton.

    My husband David was waiting at the door when our daughter Laura and I came back. It wasn't like him to be home so early. The disbelief on his face told me that something was up.

    "Do you still have a job?"

    "No. Redundant," he answered, looking away from me.

    "OK. We'll figure it out," I replied calmly. I actually had no idea how we were going to figure it out. I immediately started to think of how we'd cut costs and who we should start to get in touch with. That night, after David had fallen asleep, I cried myself to sleep, and frequently sobbed（抽泣） in the shower in the days that followed.

    I knew the loss of David's income would have great effect on us. He had worked for the same company for twenty﹣one years and was our main income. I work at home caring for Laura, and my income is uncertain. We have debts, and job hunting takes time.

    Still, I was more concerned about my husband's emotional state than our financial situation. David's sense of identity was tied to his job. He called his parents to tell them about losing his job, but didn't say a word to anyone else for weeks. He told me that he felt like "a failure".

    It was tough for me to watch David struggle with unemployment. One night several weeks after he lost his job, David woke me just before midnight, sweating, pacing the bedroom floor and saying he didn't feel well. We spent the night in the emergency room waiting to see if he had a heart attack. Thankfully, it was just a serious anxiety attack. It was then that I knew I needed to do more to understand what my husband was going through. Here is what I learned from my own experience﹣and from talking to experts﹣on how to support your loved ones through a job loss.

    Adrian Lamo, a Colombian-American threat analyst and former hacker, died in Sedgwick County, Kansas on Friday, at the age of 37. He was best known for passing on information that led to the arrest of Chelsea Manning.

    Lamo first gained media attention in the early 2000s for breaking into several high-profile computer networks, including those of The New York Times, Yahoo, and Microsoft, ending in his 2003 arrest when he eventually turned himself in.

    However, Lamo gained worldwide ill reputation in 2010 for disclosing to the FBI that the U.S. soldier, Chelsea Manning had leaked confidential information to Wikileaks. Manning had reached out to Lamo via a messaging app and told him that he had gained access to hundreds of thousands of classified documents and had leaked to Wikileaks a video of U.S. military forces in a helicopter machine madly gunning down journalists and Iraqi civilians. But, Lamo chose to report him and informed the U.S. military of the leak.

    Held responsible for the biggest leak of classified data in U.S. history, Manning was declared guilty by court martial and was sentenced to 35 years in prison, but was granted mercy by former President Barack Obama, who said his prison term was "disproportionate".

    Looking back on his decision to give up Manning, Lamo told US News and World Report in 2017 that it was "not his most honorable moment".

    However, he added that he had learned a lot from the experience, including that "you can't really know a person or their motives unless you've sat where they sat and seen the situation through their eyes, no matter how much you believe you do".

With the rapid development of science and technology, we don't know how different our life will be in the future. {#blank#}1{#/blank#}.

At first we think about human relationships. In the year2050, we will use computers almost every day. We will be making new friends through the Internet—even our husbands or wives will be met in this way. {#blank#}2{#/blank#} On the other hand, our relationship with people won't be as important as they are today--we will feel a little lonely.

Computers will also help us in many other activities in 

2050. For example, they will be used by the children at school to make their learning easier. In addition, there will be much more other machines which will play a similar role as computers, like robots which will do the housework for us.

{#blank#}3{#/blank#} Traveling to other planets or to the moon will also be available for everyone. Means of transport will, of course, change, too. We will be using solar-powered cars, which will be much more environmentally friendly.

We could expect that the faster technological progress would lead to a more polluted environment. But it isn't true. {#blank#}4{#/blank#} And, scientists will probably find cures for many dangerous diseases, like cancer or AIDS. Therefore, our surroundings as well as health will be in a better condition.

Although we can't predict the exact changes which will be made in the world, we often think about them. We worry about our and our children's future; we have expectations, hopes as well as fears. But I think we should be rather confident about our future. {#blank#}5{#/blank#}.

A. We can only imagine it.

B. It will be much faster and easier for us.

C. Our environment will be more polluted.

D. However, we are convinced of the following.

E. Spending holidays will also be completely different.

F. We should be happy and believe good things will happen.

G. We will pay more attention to protecting the environment.

The 2024 Peace Poetry Awards

The awards con test is to encourage people to explore peace and the human spirit. There are three age categories（类型）： Adult （19 & over）, Youth （13-18）, and Youth （12 & under）. The yearly con test is open to people worldwide. Your poems must be unpublished , and in English.

Deadline

All entries（参赛作品） must be submitted by July 30, 2024.

Entry Fee

Adults — $ 20

Youth （13-18） —— $ 10

Youth （12 & under） — no fee

Notes

● You may submit up to three unpublished poems. At most 30 lines per poem.

● Include name, address, email, telephone number, and age in the upper right-hand corner of each poem. For the Youth （12 & under） category, please also include your school's name and your teacher's name.

● Title each poem.

● Please keep copies of all entries as we will be unable to return.

● Email your entries to: www. peacepoetryawards. com. By the way, we have no other ways to receive your entry. Please click here to pay your entry fee online.

Awards

Adult Winner — $ 800

Youth （13 -18） Winner — $ 500

Youth （12 & under） Winner — $ 200

Winners will be announced by September 30, 2024 on our website. Winners will be informed by mail. Past years' winning poems can be found here.