If you have a chance to go to Finland, you will probably be surprised to find how “foolish” the Finnish people are.

    Take the taxi drivers for example. Taxis in Finland are mostly high-class Benz（奔驰）with a fare of two US dollars a kilometer. You can go anywhere in one, tell the driver to drop you at any place, say that you have some business to attend to, and then walk off without paying your fare. The driver would not show the least sign of anxiety.

    The dining rooms in all big hotels not only serve their guests, but also serve outside diners. Hotel guests have their meals free, so they naturally go to the free dining rooms to have their meals. The most they would do to show their good faith is to wave their registration card to the waiter. With such a loose check, you can easily use any old registration card to take a couple of friends to dine free of charge.

    The Finnish workers are paid by the hour. They are very much on their own as soon as they have agreed with the boss on the rate（价钱）. From then on they just say how many hours they have worked and they will be paid accordingly（相应地）.

    With so many loopholes（漏洞）in everyday life, surely Finland must be a heaven to those who love to take “petty advantages”. But the strange thing is, all the taxi passengers would always come back to pay their fare after they have attended to their business; not a single outsider has ever been found in the free hotel dining rooms. And workers always give an honest account of the exact hours they put in. As the Finns always act on good faith in everything they do, living in such a society has turned everyone into a real “gentleman”.

    In a society of such high moral practice, what need is there for people to be on guard against others? 

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    Some people learn a second language easily. Other people have trouble learning a new language. How can you help yourself learn a new language, such as English? There are several ways to make learning English a little easier and more interesting.

    The first step is to feel positive about learning English. If you believe that you can learn, you will learn. Be patient. You do not have to understand everything all at once. It is natural to make mistakes when you learn something new. We can learn from our mistakes. In other words, do not worry about taking risks.

    The second step is to practice your English. For example, write in a journal, or diary, every day. You will get used to writing in English, and you will feel comfortable expressing your ideas in English. After several weeks, you will see that your writing is improving. In addition, you must speak English every day. You can practice with your classmates outside class. You will all make mistakes, but gradually you will become comfortable communicating in English.

    The third step is to keep a record of your language learning. You can write this in your journal. After each class, think about what you did. Did you answer a question correctly? Did you understand something the teacher explained? Perhaps the lesson was difficult, but you tried to understand it. Write these accomplishments in your journal.

    You must be positive about, learning English and believe that you can do it. It is important to practice every day and make a record of your achievements. You will enjoy learning English, and you will have more confidence in yourself.

    A Canadian woman who lost her diamond ring 13 years ago while cleaning her garden on the family farm is wearing it proudly again after her daughter-in-law pulled it from the ground or a carrot.

    Mary Grams, 84, said she can't believe the lucky carrot actually grew through and around the diamond ring she had long given up hope of finding. She said she never told her husband, Norman, that she lost the ring, but only told her son. Her husband died five years ago.

    “I feel glad and happy, ”Grams said this week . “I grew into the carrot. I feel it amazing”,

    Her daughter-in-law, Calleen Daley, found the ring while getting carrots in for supper with her dog Billy at the farm near Armena, Alberta, where Grams used to live. The farm has been in the family for 105 years. Daley said while she was pulling the carrots and noticed one of them looked strange She almost fed it to her dog bu decided to keep it When she was washing ;the carrots she noticed the ring and spoke to her husband, Grams'son, about what she had found.

    They quickly called Grams. “I told her we found her ring in the garden She couldn't believe it, ”Daley said. “It was so strange that the carrot grew perfectly through that ring. ”

    Grams said she wanted to try the ring on again after so many years with her family looking on, she washed the ring with a little soap to get the dirt off. It moved on her finger as easily as i did when her husband gave it to her.

    “We were laughing, ” she said. “It fits. After so many years it still fits perfectly.”

    The BeiDou Navigation Satellite System（BDS）is a Chinese satellite navigation system. It consists of two separate satellite constellations（星座）. The first BeiDou system, officially called the BeiDou Satellite Navigation Experimental System and also known as BeiDou-1, consists of three satellites, which since 2000 has offered limited coverage and navigation services, mainly for users in China and neighboring regions. Beidou-1 was decommissioned at the end of 2012.

    The second generation of the system, known as COMPASS or BeiDou-2, became operational in China in December 2011 with a partial constellation of 10 satellites in orbit. Since December 2012, it has been offering services to customers in the Asia-Pacific region.

    In 2015, China started the build-up of the third generation BeiDou system（BeiDou-3）in the global coverage constellation. The first BDS-3 satellite was launched on 30 March 2015. Up to January 2018, nine BeiDou-3 satellites have been launched. BeiDou-3 will eventually consist of 35 satellites and is expected to provide global services upon completion in 2020. So far, China has sent 27 BeiDou satellites into space. When fully completed, BeiDou, the world's fourth navigation satellite system, following GPS in the United States, GLONASS in Russia and Galileo in the European Union, will provide an alternative global navigation satellite system to the United States owned Global Positioning System（GPS）, and is expected to be more accurate than the GPS. It was claimed in 2016 that BeiDou-3 will reach millimeter-level accuracy（with post-processing）, which is ten times more accurate than the finest level of GPS.

    According to China Daily, in 2015, fifteen years after the satellite system was launched, it was generating a turnover of $31.5 billion annually for major companies such as China Aerospace Science and Industry Corp, AutoNavi Holdings Ltd, and China North Industries Group Corp.

    “Belittle” was first used by Thomas Jefferson, the third president of the United States.

    Many years ago, Buffon, a French naturalist, wrote some books about natural history. The books were a great success even though some critics did not like them. Some critics said, “Buffon is more of a poet than a scientist.”

    Thomas Jefferson did not like what Buffon had said about the natural wonders of the New World. It seemed to Jefferson that Buffon had spoken of natural wonders in America as if they were unimportant.

    This troubled Thomas Jefferson. He was a naturalist, as well as a farmer, inventor, historian, writer and politician. He had seen the natural wonders of Europe. To him, they were no more important than those of the New World.

    In 1788, Thomas Jefferson wrote about his home state, Virginia. While writing, he thought of its natural beauty and then of the words of Buffon. At that moment, Jefferson created a new word－belittle. He said, “Buffon believes that nature belittles her productions on this side of the Atlantic.”

    Noah Webster, the American word expert, liked this word. He put it in his English language dictionary in 1806, “Belittle－to make somebody or something small, unimportant.”

    Americans had already accepted Jefferson's word and started to use it. In 1797, the Independent Chronicle newspaper used the word to describe a politician the paper supported. “He is an honorable man,” the paper wrote, “so let the opposition try to belittle him as much as they please.

    In 1872, a famous American word expert decided that the time had come to kill this word. He said, “'Belittle' has no chance of becoming English. And as more critical writers of America, like those of Britain, feel no need of it, the sooner it is forgotten, the better.” This expert failed to kill the word. Today, “belittle” is used where the English language is spoken.

    In the depths of the French Guianese rainforest, there still remain unusual groups of indigenous(土著的)people. Surprisingly, these people live largely by their own laws and their own social customs. And yet, people in this area are in fact French citizens because it has been a colony of the French Republic since 1946. In theory, they should live by the French law. However, their remote locations mean that the French law is often ignored or unknown, thus making them into an interesting area of “lawlessness” in the world.

    The lives of these people have finally been recorded thanks to the effects of a Frenchman form Paris called Gin. Gin spent five months in early 2015 exploring the most remote corners of this area, which sits on the edge of the Amazon rainforest, with half its population of only 250,000 living in its capital, Cayenne.

    “I have a special love for the French Guianese people. I have worked there on and off for almost ten years,” says Gin. “I've been able to keep firm friendships with them. Thus I have been allowed to gain access to their living environment. I don't see it as a lawless land. But rather I see it as an area of freedom.”

    “I wanted to show the audience a photographic record touching upon the uncivilized life,” continues Gin. “I prefer to work in black and white, which allows me to show different specific worlds more clearly.”

    His black-and-white pictures present a world almost lost in time. These pictures show people seemingly pushed into a world that they were unprepared for. These local citizens now have to balance their traditional self-supporting hunting lifestyle with the lifestyle offered by the modern French Republic, which brings with it not only necessary state welfare, but also alcoholism, betrayal and even suicide.