After finishing a meal at an American Chinese restaurant you probably expect to receive a handful of fortune cookies after you pay the bill. Fortune cookies are in Chinese restaurants throughout the United States. It's rather satisfying to crack open a cookie at the end of your meal and read your “lucky fortune” on the slip of paper inside.

    The exact origin of the fortune cookie is unknown. It is thought that the tasty snack was the first introduced into San Francisco in 1914, after an immigrant began distributing the cookie with “thank you” notes in them. These “thank you” notes were intended as symbols of appreciation for friends who stood with him through the economic hardship and discrimination of his early life in America.

    There is an alternate origin story. Los Angeles is regarded as the site of the fortune cookie's invention. In this version of the story, David Jung, a Chinese immigrant residing in L. A., is thought to have created the cookie in order to uplift the spirits of the poor and homeless. In 1918, Jung handed out the cookies for free to the poor outside his shop and each cookie contained a strip of paper with an inspirational sentence printed on it.

    Fortune cookies first began to gain popularity in mainstream American culture during WWII. Chinese restaurants would serve them in place of desserts, as desserts were not popular in traditional Chinese cuisine. Today fortune cookies are not tied to Chinese-American culture. In fact, the largest fortune cookie manufacturer is located in the United States and it produces 4.5 million fortune cookies a day —— an evidence to the modern-day popularity of the snack. However, an attempt to introduce the fortune cookie to China in 1992 was a failure, and the cookie was cited for being “too American.”

    So the next time you break open a fortune cookie and read a fortune about the many successes you should expect in your future, remember that the conclusion to your Chinese restaurant meal may not be as Chinese as you think.

    Sitting has been called the new smoking for its supposed Public health risks, especially for people with sitting down office jobs. Over the past 15 years or so sitting has been connected with heart disease and diabetes (糖尿病). But is sitting really that risky?

    In our latest study we examined if not only the total amount of sitting, but different types of sitting, were connected with developing type 2 diabetes. We wanted to see if there was any difference among sitting watching TV, sitting at work, or sitting at home but not watching TV.

    We studied sitting habits of 4. 811 middle-aged people, who didn't have diabetes or heart problems at the start of the study. Over the next 13 years, 402 people developed diabetes. Once we considered obesity (AE RF), Physical activity, and other things that may develop type 2 diabetes, neither total sitting time, sitting at work nor sitting at home but not watching TV were connected with developing diabetes. We found only a weak connection with the time spent sitting watching TV and an increased risk of developing diabetes.

    This is different from the results of five older TV studies that showed a stronger connection. But hardly any of the included studies mentioned obesity, a major cause of diabetes.

    For people who are physically inactive, though, the story's different. Two recent studies show the total time spent sitting a day is connected with developing diabetes, but only in people who are physically inactive or both physically inactive and obese.

    That's not the whole story. At least two things determine if sitting is a risk factor in its own right: the type and situation of sitting.

    For example, sitting down at work isn't strongly connected with long-term health risks, Perhaps that's because higher position jobs needs more sitting, and higher socioeconomic (社会经济) position is connected with a lower risk of disease. It's a different case for sitting watching TV, the type of sitting most possibly connected with long-term health risks. People who watch a lot of TV tend to (a) be of lower socioeconomic positions, unemployed, have poorer mental (精神上的) health, eat unhealthy foods and face more unhealthy food advertising.

Los Angeles Could Be One Of The Few Cities The Olympics Can't Ruin

    In just the past several years, six cities—Boston; Rome; Stockholm; Hamburg, Germany; Krakow, Poland; and Oslo, Norway—have decisively rejected the idea of hosting the Olympics.

    The games' high costs, damaging effects on poor communities in the places that have recently hosted them have turned cities, against them—fostering the belief that "nobody wants to host the Olympic Games anymore."

    But Los Angeles is different. And on Wednesday, the Los Angeles City Council made final decision to try to get the chance to host the 2024 Olympics, taking the step Boston and many others never did. In LA, organizers promise they can hold an Olympics that stays within its $5.3 billion budget Organizers in every possible host city make the same promise. But when it comes to LA, where residents greatly support the plan, even people who doubt the Olympics believe that success in hosting the Olympics without any loss might be possible. "It's basically sound," said Smith College economist Andrew Zimbalist, who wrote the book on the financial risks the Olympics bring to cities and their taxpayers. "I think they'll be able to do it without any financial downside, although there is always some risk attached."

    There's another reason to believe LA could succeed: It's done it before. It last hosted the Olympics in 1984, when the Olympic turned a small profit. No host since has replicated that feat.

    The Los Angeles Coliseum, which was used for the 1932 and 1984 Olympics, will again serve as the place of the games, along with a new NFL stadium set to open in Inglewood in 2019. There's no need for a new Olympic village, thanks to dorms at UCLA. When LA announced its final three stadiums this month, chairman Casey Wasserman said proudly that a Los Angeles Olympics won't require any new construction—instead, it will rely entirely on already planned or temporary (临时的) places.

    A headache is the feeling you get when your head hurts. Headaches can differ from very mild to incredibly powerful. They can last anywhere from 10 minutes to hours. Very bad headaches are called migraines. People who suffer from migraine headaches often need to take the day off from school or work and lie in bed all day.

    Why do people get headaches? There are many possible causes. People who drink too much caffeine (in coffee or soft drinks, for example) or alcohol can end up with headaches. This is because these kinds of drinks take water away from the body. If the brain doesn't have enough water, it gets smaller and pulls away from the head. This can be extremely painful. The best way to get rid of this kind of headache is just to drink lots of water.

    Tension headaches happen when the body's muscles are too tight. When people feel stress, it is common for the muscles near the head to become tense. Tension headaches might also be caused by not getting enough sleep. Some people suffer from tension headaches for only short times but for other people, these kinds of headaches are a chronic problem that happens again and again. A massage (按摩) might help to stop a tension headache. If that doesn't help, you might need to see a doctor.

    Headaches can also be caused by much bigger health problems. For example, a head or neck injury can cause them. Headaches can also be a warming sign of a heart attack.

SPECIAL ENGLISH

The English language programs of the Voice of America（VOA）can be divided into two types according to the speed of broadcasting: Standard English and Special English.

Special English is a simple and standardized English radio program arranged by VOA for listeners who are beginning to learn English in non-English speaking countries around the world. It officially began broadcasting in October 1959.

The famous American lexicologist S. B. Flexmer identified three criteria for Special English, that is, what makes it "special":

●It writes and broadcasts in short and clear sentences;

●It broadcasts at a rate of 90 words per minute, or 2/3 of Standard English;

●It is a form of American English composed mainly of the 1500 basic words.

Special English programs can be divided into two categories: news programs and feature programs.

News program

VOA Special English news broadcasts provide listeners with worldwide information on politics, economics, military affairs, diplomacy, international relations, religion, weather, and all kinds of important events and wonders. They are broadcast to Southeast Asia five times a day, twice in the morning and three times in the evening.

Feature Program

From the perspective of time, Special English feature programs can be divided into two categories: one is every five minutes, and the other is every fifteen minutes. The latter consists of seven different sub-features, which are repeated four times a day on a weekly cycle, but the two features on Sunday and Saturday are broadcast only three times a night, each lasting about 10 minutes, followed by each five-minute feature.