Good manners are important, but you can easily make a social blunder when you visit a foreign country, because sometimes good manners in one place are bad manners in other places.

    Suppose you visit some friends in Mongolia and they ask you to eat with them. What kind of manners do they want you to have? They want you to give a loud “burp” after you finish eating. Burping shows that you like your food. But in some other countries, if you give a loud “burp”, you are supposed to say, “Excuse me, please.”

    In many places people like to eat together. But in some parts of Polynesia it is bad manners to be seen eating together. People show their good manners by turning their backs on others while they eat.

    What are manners like in an East African town? The people try not to see you. When you are visiting a friend, he may not see you at all. If you are polite, you will sit down beside him. You will wait until he finishes what he is doing. Then he will talk to you.

    If you visit a friend in Arabia you should walk behind other tents until you come to his tent. If you pass in front of other tents, you will be asked into each one. The people will ask you to eat with them. And it is bad manners if you say no.

    Manners are different all over the world. But it is good to know that all manners help people show that they want to be friends.

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    Mrs. Strickland did not talk much, but she had a pleasant gift for keeping the conversation general; and when there was a pause she threw in just the right remark to set it going once more.

    "Why do nice women marry dull men?"

    "Because intelligent men won't marry nice women. "

    Mrs. Strickland had the gift of sympathy.

    There was another thing I liked in Mrs. Strickland. She managed her surroundings with elegance(优雅). Her flat was always neat and cheerful with flowers. The meals in the little dining room were pleasant; the table looked nice; the food was well cooked. It was impossible not to see that Mrs. Strickland was an excellent housekeeper. And you felt sure that she was an admirable mother. There were photographs in the drawing room of her son and daughter. The son—his name was Robert—was a boy of sixteen at Rugby. He had his mother's fine eyes. He looked clean, healthy, and normal.

    “I don't know that he's very clever,” she said one day, when I was looking at the photograph, “but I know he's good. He has a charming character.”

    The daughter was fourteen. Her hair, thick and dark like her mother's, fell over her shoulders, and she had the same kindly expression and untroubled eyes.

    “They both look like you,” I said.

    “Yes, I think they are more like me than their father.”

    “Why have you never let me meet him?” I asked.

    “Would you like to?” she smiled and her smile was really very sweet.

    “You know, he's not at all literary,” she said. “He has no interest in literature.”

    “He's on the Stock Exchange(证券交易所), and he's a typical broker(经纪人). I think he'd bore you to death.”

    “Does he bore you?” I asked.

    “You see, I happen to be his wife. I'm very fond of him.” She smiled to cover her shyness, and her eyes grew tender.

    “He doesn't pretend to be a talent. He doesn't even make much money on the Stock Exchange. But he's awfully good and kind.”

    “I think I should like him very much.”

    “I'll ask you to dine with us quietly some time, but mind, you come at your own risk; don't blame me if you have a very dull evening.”

    Italy is one country where beauty is prized more than any other virtue(美德). That is, except in the small town of Piobbico, the self-declared World Capital of Ugly People. The road sign at the edge of the town even warns visitors that they are entering the ugly zone. People who consider themselves ugly have been gathering in Piobbico since the 1960s. That's when Ugly Club president Telesforo Lacobelli established a dating agency for women who believed they were too ugly to attract husbands. Lacobelli believes that he is ugly himself because he has a short nose in a country where long or large noses have always been considered beautiful.

    People from around the world travel to Piobbico to tell their sad stories of ugliness. During the annual Festival of the Ugly, which occurs on the first Sunday of every September, hundreds of people gather in Piobbico's town square to elect the president of the Ugly Club. Lacobelli wins the election every year. The Ugly Club has over 20, 000 members. They carry ID cards that grade their ugliness from bearable to extreme. A prize is awarded to Ugly Club members who qualify as extremely ugly.

    The Ugly Club president insists that ugliness is a virtue. Since beautiful people get a lot of attention for their beauty alone, they have to work hard to prove their other virtues. Ugly people, on the other hand, are genuine and do not have to prove anything to anybody, according to Lacobelli.

    Lacobelli is a spokesperson for ugly people everywhere. He believes that the uglier one is, the better life can be. Though the club enjoys making fun of beauty, especially beauty contests, Lacobelli has a serious side as well. He believes that too many people suffer from financial and emotional pressures because they don't meet society's standards of beauty. The fact that beautiful people are more successful in the workforce is a problem that Lacobelli has attempted to bring forward to the Italian public and government.

    China will build a comprehensive (综合性的) network to detect (检测) pollution of the land, sea and air by 2020, employing satellites, drones(无人机)and remote sensors to monitor the environment.

    The national leadership agreed to the network plan in July, saying the government will lead the monitoring, share information among departments and regions, and be held accountable (追究责任) if violations (违规行为) are found, the Ministry of Environmental Protection said on Tuesday.

    Satellites, a major tool for monitoring air pollution, will receive a boost (大力发展)  this year. The ministry said it will accelerate research on two atmospheric environmental monitoring satellites.

    The ministry will improve a remote sensor network, guided by the goals of the 13th Five-Year Plan (2016-2020), which is scheduled to be released at the end of this year, according to the ministry's Environmental Supervision Department.

    Remote monitoring has played a bigger role in locating pollution sources. Drones helped authorities locate polluted areas in the Tengger Desert in northern China and identify scattered summer straw burnings.

    Hebei province, which has a serious air pollution problem, has cooperated with the ministry's Satellite Environment Center to conduct monitoring from satellites and monitoring stations since January last year.

    "We used the data from the center's satellites to forecast the movement of smog during the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation meetings in November, "Zhang Feng, an engineer in the Environmental Supervision Department of the provincial environmental watchdog, said on Tuesday.

    Data collected from monitoring stations helped authorities provide accurate forecasts on hazy days during that period, he said.

    John Winston Ono Lennon (9 October 1940-8 December 1980) was an English rock musician, singer, songwriter, artist and peace activist who gained worldwide fame as one of the founders of The Beatles. As a member of the group, Lennon was one of the leading singers and co-wrote most of the band's songs with bassist(低音歌手) Paul McCartney.

    In his singing career, Lennon wrote and recorded songs such as Give Peace a Chance and Imagine. Lennon showed his rebellious(反叛的) nature and cleverness on television, in films such as A Hard Day's Night, in his books such as In His Own Write, and in press conferences(新闻发布会) and interviews. He was controversial(有争议的) through his work as a peace activist, artist and author.

    Lennon had two sons: Julian Lennon, with his first wife Cynthia Lennon, and Sean Ono Lennon, with his second wife, avant-garde(前卫) artist Yoko Ono. After a retirement from 1976-1980, Lennon reemerged(再度出现) with a comeback album, but was killed one month later in New York City on 8 December 1980. In 2002, respondents to a BBC poll(投票) on the 100 Greatest Britons voted Lennon into the eighth place. In 2004, Rolling Stone magazine ranked Lennon number 38 on its list of "The Immortals(不朽的): The Fifty Greatest Artists of All Time" and ranked The Beatles number one.

    A dog spent the last four years of his life waiting a crossroad in the Thai city of Khon Kaen as if waiting for someone. People originally thought the dog had been abandoned, but then realized that he looked healthy, so people asked around about him. It turned out that the dog had indeed been spending most of his time around that crossroad, but a woman had been coming -.round regularly to bring him food and water.

    One day, while photographing the dog everyone called Leo, a reporter met the woman who had been taking care of him. She had come to drop off some food. After learning the story about the dog and the woman, the reporter decided to share the story on social media. The post soon went viral and the photos of Leo got shared hundreds of times. And the photos reached the eyes of Leo^ former old owner.

    Nang Noi Sittisarn, a 64-year-old woman from Thailand's Roi Et Province, almost had a heart attack when her daughter showed her a photo of the beloved dog named BonBon she had lost during a car trip. When she learned that he had been waiting for her in the same spot for the last four years，her heart melted(融化).

    Auntie Noi told her daughter to drive her to where the dog was waiting. When she got there and called his name. BonBon, the poor dog started wiggling(扭动)his tail and came to her，but when she tried to take him home with her, he was unwilling to follow. She didn't want to force the dog to come with her so she agreed to leave him with his new master. However, she and her daughter will come to visit him regularly.