While the U.S. is still debating about getting rid of the penny, Sweden is rapidly moving towards abolishing currency altogether. Though this may sound radical(过激的), it is a natural evolution in this digital society.

    Sweden, which was the first European country to introduce banknotes in 1661, has just been working harder to convince its residents that digital payments are a safer alternative to carrying cash.

Over the years, the idea has gained popularity with residents, especially the younger generation that is much more comfortable with technology. Today many banks don't even have ATMs and some have stopped handling cash altogether!

    Tickets to ride public buses in most Swedish cities can only be purchased via cell phones. Numerous businesses are also moving towards accepting only digital payments. Even the homeless that sell street paper to make ends meet have to start accepting this mode of payment!

But despite its growing popularity, some people don't like this radical idea. They include the homeless, elderly people as well as those living in rural areas who are still uncomfortable with mobile phones and computers. But the officials are confident that in the very near future, they will be able to convince everyone to move this safe and more cost-effective payment system.

    Sweden is not the only country trying to abolish paper currency and coins. The movement is rapidly gaining ground in Denmark and Finland as well. In 2014, Israel announced a three-step plan to go cashless and just last week the vendors(小贩)of a popular street in Sydney declared they would stop accepting currency from customers. Whether this phenomenon spreads remains to be seen. But one thing is for sure—With increasingly advanced payment systems being introduced every day, pulling out cash is rapidly becoming “uncool”.

    Nancy Wake was born in New Zealand, in 1912. The family moved to Australia in 1914 and after being educated in Sydney, she travelled to Europe where she worked as a journalist. In Nazi (纳粹的) Germany she saw the rise of Adolf Hitler and Anti-Semitism. On one occasion in Vienna she witnessed Jews being whipped by members of the Sturm Abteilung (SA). In 1939 Nancy married the wealthy French industrialist, Henri Fiocca, in Marseilles. Nancy was in France when the German Army invaded in May 1940. After the French government surrendered, Nancy joined the French Resistance. She worked with Ian Garrow's group helping British airmen shot down over France to escape back to Britain.

    In December 1940 the network was betrayed and Nancy was forced to go into hiding. She continued to work for the French Resistance and was eventually arrested while in Toulouse. However, the authorities did not realize they had captured the woman known as the “White Mouse” and she was set free after four days.

    It was now too dangerous to remain in occupied France and Nancy crossed the Pyrenees into Spain before travelling to Britain. She now joined the Special Operations Executive (SOE) and agreed to become a British special agent (特工).

On 29th April 1944, Nancy was parachuted into the Auvergne region of France. Her main aim was to locate local soldiers and to provide them with some guns that were being dropped by parachute by the Royal Air Force four times a week.

Nancy had the task of helping the resistance to prepare for the armed uprising that was due to coincide with the D-Day landings. She also led an attack against the Gestapo headquarters in Mountucon and a German gun factory. Henri Tardivat, one of her comrades in the resistance later said that: “She is the most feminine woman I know, until the fighting starts. Then she is like five men.”

    After the war, Nancy worked for the Intelligence Department at the British Air Ministry. In 1960 she married John Forward and returned to Australia to live.

    Far out in the lake was a large wooden platform(平台) on which stood an improbably high diving board- a kind of wooden Eiffel Tower. It was, I'm sure, the county's tallest wooden structure (结构) and no one had ever been known to jump from it. So it was quite a shock when our teacher, Mr. Milton, announced that he would dive off the high board that very afternoon.

    Word of his questionable plan was already spreading through town as Mr. Milton swam out to the platform. He was just a tiny, stick figure when he got there but even from such a distance the high board seemed almost to touch the clouds. Once at the top, he paced the enormously long board , then look some deep breaths and finally stood at the edge. He was going to do it.

    Several hundred people had gathered at the shore to watch. Mr. Milton stood for quite along time ;then he raised his arms, took one bounce(弹跳) and launched himself into ;perfect dive. He fell with perfect style for what seemed minutes. The crowd fell silent. But about three quarters of the way down he seemed to have second thoughts and began suddenly to panic(惊慌)，waving his arms and legs like someone having a bad dream. When he was perhaps thirty feet above the water, he gave up on waving and spread his arms and legs wide, obviously hoping that it would somehow slow his fall. It didn't. He hit the water at over six hundred miles an hour, making birds fly out of their trees three miles away. I don't think he entered the water at all. He just bounced off it, about fifteen feet back into the air. After that, he lay still on the surface , like an autumn leaf.

    He was brought to shore by two passing fishermen in a rowboat and placed on an old blanket where he spent the rest of the afternoon. Occasionally he accepted a little water, but otherwise was too shocked to speak.

    It was the best day of my life.

    In 2011, the old style Malta buses were taken off the road and replaced by modern vehicles. Most of the old buses were deserted, a few were sold, and about 100 of them were put into storage in the hope of showing them in a museum at some stage.

    A pre-2011 visit to Malta wouldn't have been complete without a ride on one of the colorful buses. Until 1973 you could tell the destination of the bus just by looking at its color — Sliema was green and white, Zabbar was red and white with a blue stripe(条纹)etc. . Later, the buses all had numbers. For a while, they were all painted green and white before the ‘final' orange, yellow and white.

    In their prime, walking around the Triton fountain at the Valletta bus station, you would have found it very difficult to see two buses of exactly the same design. Most of them had locally built bodies. On the front of the buses carried names like Dodge, Leyland, Bedford etc. You were equally likely to find football pennants(锦旗)and the like decorating the cabs. Real bus experts would have recognized that these were there mainly for decorative reasons, and were seldom an accurate reflection of the vehicle's origins.

    Nowadays much more modern buses are to be found at the Floriana bus station. They are more environmentally friendly and possibly even more comfortable than the older types. However, I miss the old buses. I remember, when you boarded your bus, you had to prepare the correct change to pay the usually bad-tempered driver as you got on. If you were seated anywhere near the front, you would have noticed that most drivers sat well to the right of their steering wheel. The reason for this, as any Maltese would tell you, was to leave space for their pet to sit alongside them. I wonder where the pet sits these days.

Getting rid of old tyres (轮胎) has long been a problem. Most are thrown into landfills or piled up in storage. Energy recovery is another common method. This involves burning tyres to generate electricity or heat for industries, but that produces planet warming pollution; or we use them to

repair roads, but chemicals from them might pollute the ground.

Some firms, therefore, have begun exploring an alternative. One such firm is Wastefront, which owns a big tyre-recycling plant in north-east England. In a couple of years, it will be able to turn 8 million old tyres into new products, including a black liquid called TDO (轮胎衍生油).

The process works by deconstructing a tyre into steel, rubber, and carbon black. After tearing down the steel, the remaining material is exposed to high temperatures in the absence of air to make the rubber change into a mix of hydrocarbon gases, and then they're removed. What is left behind is pure carbon black. Once the removed gases cool down, a part of them liquefies(液化) into TDO. The remaining gases are to be burned to fuel the process. This creates a closed-cycle system that prevents emissions. 

The carbon black can be reused to make new tyres. That is of interest to tyre-makers because it helps efforts to become carbon neutral—achieving a balance between the amounts of carbon dioxide produced and the carbon dioxide removed from the atmosphere. Producing new carbon black requires burning heavy oil or coal, which lets off plenty of greenhouse gases.

The recovered TDO is well-suited for making diesel ( 柴油). While not completely carbon-neutral, it does produce an 80-90% reduction in emissions of carbon dioxide, compared with the conventional fuel. The future market for such cleaner fuels will remain large, even though electric vehicles are on the rise. Fossil-fueled vehicles will exist for decades, particularly the big burners of diesel—trucks, which are harder to electrify. The fuel is also needed by trains and ships. So, anything that helps clean up overall emissions is useful—especially if it also eases a mountainous waste problem.