Superfast double­decker (双层) trains will be taking passengers from London to six big cities in the UK by 2033. The first phase (阶段) linking London to the West Midlands with a connection to HS1 is expected to open in 2026, and the second  phase to Manchester and Leeds in 2032.

    The government set out a plan for the high­speed rail network in 2012. When the project is finished, it will take less time to get to London from major cities like Birmingham, Manchester and Leeds. Traveling at a speed of up to 250 mph, passengers will be able to come and go from Birmingham to London in 49 minutes, reducing the journey time by almost half from one hour and 24 minutes.

    A journey from Birmingham to Leeds will be reduced from two hours to 57 minutes and a journey from Manchester to London will be reduced from two hours and 8 minutes to one hour and 8 minutes.

    “HS2  is an  important  part of transport's  low­carbon future,” Transport  Secretary Justine Greening said. Some people aren't happy about the plan, though. HS2 will cost around ￡33 billion. It will also be built near some towns and villages, disturbing the people that live there.

    But the Chancellor of the Exchequer (财政大臣) George Osborne thinks it will help build the future for Britain. “It's a long­term decision，” he said.

    HS2 is designed for everything around the needs of the passengers. It will provide a new and exciting travel experience. There will be plenty of room, intelligent ticketing, a good service and high quality comfort and access to trains. This is a transport network for the new century and beyond.

    Small islands that bear the brunt of rising sea levels also face the greatest risk of diseases linked to a warmer planet, health leaders said on Saturday, as 13 million medical professionals added to the calls for a global climate pact.

    Hundreds of thousands more people will die every year from heat stroke and tropical illnesses unless negotiators in Paris can agree a strong global deal to decrease global warming the Global Climate and Health Alliance said.

    The Would Health Organization has warned that the effects of extreme weather on the fight against malnutrition, malaria and diarrhea alone will account for an extra 250,000 premature deaths a year by 2030.

    “In the case of small island states like Tuvalu, the health impacts of climate change are palpable,” said the island's health minister.

    “When we are talking about climate change, this is important for the future health of our people, and people everywhere.”

    John Usamate, health minister for Fiji, said the island was suffering from climate-related diseases such as dengue fever and chikungunya, a disease transmitted by mosquitoes and unknown in Fiji.

    “As the climate changes, we are seeing new infectious diseases and many other health impacts,” he said.

    The Global Climate and Health Alliance groups more than 1,700 health organizations and 8,200 hospitals and health facilities.

    It is said it had collected 13 million signatories（签字者） from its members wanting to come to a medical agreement on the need to fight against global warming.

    Even without the wider effects of climate change, air pollution from fossil fuels, especially from coal-fired electricity and vehicle emissions（排放）, is a major cause of early death.

    In the European Union, more than 400,000 early deaths a year are linked to air pollution that cause respiratory disease and some forms of cancer, the European Commission has found.

    Every person has their own way of saying things, their own special expressions. Many everyday American expression are based on colors.

    Red is a hot colour. Americans often use it to express heat. They may say they are red hot about something unfair. When they are red hot they are very angry about something. The small hot tasting peppers found in many Mexican foods are called red hots for their colour and their fiery taste. Fast loud music is popular with many people. They may say the music is popular with many people. They may say the music is red hot, especially the kind called Dixicland jazz.

    Pink is a lighter kind of red. People sometimes say they're in the pink when they're in good health. The expression was first used in America at the beginning of the 20th century. It probably came from many babies who were born with a nice pink colour showing good health.

Blue is a cool colour. The traditional blues music in t he United States is the opposite of red hot music. Blues is slow, sad and soulful. Duke Ellington and his orchestra recorded a famous song—Mood Indigo—about the deep blue colour, indigo. In the words of the song: “You aren't blue till you've had that Mood Indigo.” Someone who is blue is very sad.

    The colour green is natural for trees and grass. But it is an unnatural colour for humans. A person who has a sick feeling in his stomach may say he feels a little green. A passenger on a boat who is feeling very sick from high waves may look very green.

    Sometimes a person may be upset because he does not have something as nice as his friend's, like a fast new car. That person may say he is green with envy. Some people are green with envy because a friend has more dollars of greenbacks. Dollars are called greenbacks because that is the colour of the back side of the paper money.

    The colour black is often used in expressions. People describe a day in which everything goes wrong as a black day. The date of a major tragedy is remembered as a black day. a blacklist is illegal now. But at one time, some businesses refused to employ people who were on a blacklist for belonging to unpopular organizations.

    Most young people enjoy some forms of physical activity. It may be walking, cycling, or swimming, or in winter, skating or skiing. It may be a game of some forms—football, basketball, hockey, golf or tennis. It may be mountaineering.

    Those who have a passion of climbing high and difficult mountains are often looked upon with astonishment. Why are men and women willing to suffer cold and hardship, and to take risks in high mountains? This astonishment is caused, probably, by the difference between mountaineering and other forms of activity to which men give their leisure.

    Mountaineering is a sport and not a game. There are no man-made rules, as there are for such games as golf and football. There are, of course, rules of different kinds which would be dangerous to ignore, but it is this freedom from man-made rules that makes mountaineering attractive to many people. Those who climb mountains are free to use their own methods.

    If we compare mountaineering with other more familiar sports we might think that one big difference is that mountaineering is not a “team game”. We should be mistaken in this. There are, it is true, no “matches” between “teams” of climbers, but when climbers are on a rock face linked by a rope on which their lives may depend, there is obviously teamwork.

    The mountain climber knows that he may have to fight forces that are stronger and more powerful than man. He has to fight the forces of nature. His sport requires high mental and physical qualities.

    A mountain climber continues to improve his skills year by year. A skier is probably past his best by the age of thirty. But it is not unusual for men of fifty or sixty to climb the highest mountains in the Alps. They may take more time than younger men, but they perhaps climb with more skills and less waste of effort, and they certainly experience equal enjoyment.

    The government says spending £4.2 million on planting trees in towns and cities will improve the quality of people's lives. But do trees really make people happy?

    Some British and US surveys suggest a thick green lawn, or well-landscaped yard can increase the government property prices by as much as 15%. But the government's Big Tree Plant campaign, which aims to plant one million trees in English urban areas over the next four years, says trees are not only good for our bank balance, but they do wonders for our happiness. And it says getting people to plant makes communities even happier. So do people really care about trees and do they improve lives? Margaret Lipscombe, director of urban programs at the Tree Council, says, “Not only are trees beautiful but they are practical. Trees also encourage healthier lifestyles and studies have shown people are calmer when trees are in their community,” A US study suggests that patients who have a view of nature through hospital windows recover better after operations.

    Ms. Lipscombe says that the trees have also been known to slow down the traffic because drivers will go more slowly when there is something in their sights. She admits some people have negative feelings about trees because they worry about slipping on berries, bird droppings on cars or blocked light.

    Ms. Lipscombe also says when she first moved into the area, there were no trees on her street. “I t was an area where there were lots of factories with high walls. It looked like an abandoned place that you didn't want, especially as a woman on your own. Now everything is different. With lots of trees around, the street looks more attractive. People are not as frightened and no longer run down the road to get home. The trees also bring people out onto the street and make a stronger community feel.”

    When a driver slams on the brakes to avoid hitting a pedestrian crossing the road illegally, she is making a moral decision that shifts risk from the pedestrian to the people in the car. Self-driving cars might soon have to make such ethical (道德的)judgments on their own — but settling on a universal moral code for the vehicles could be a tough task, suggests a survey.

    The largest ever survey of machine ethics, called the Moral Machine, laid out 13 possible situations in which someone's death was unavoidable. Respondents were asked to choose who to spare in situations that involved a mix of variables: young or old, rich or poor, more people or fewer. Within 18 months, the online quiz had recorded 40 million decisions made by people from 233 countries and territories.

    When the researchers analyzed these answers, they found that the nations could be divided into three groups. One contains North America and several European nations where Christianity has been the dominant (占支配地位的)religion; another includes countries such as Japan, Indonesia and Pakistan, with strong Confucian or Islamic traditions. A third group consists of countries in Central and South America, such as Colombia and Brazil. The first group showed a stronger preference for sacrificing older lives to save younger ones than did the second group, for example.

    The researchers also identified relationships between social and economic factors in a country. They found that people from relatively wealthy countries with strong institutions, such as Finland and Japan, more often chose to hit people who stepped into traffic illegally than did respondents in nations with weaker institutions, such as Nigeria or Pakistan.

    People rarely face such moral dilemmas, and some cities question whether the possible situations posed in the online quiz are relevant to the ethical and practical questions surrounding driverless cars. But the researchers argue that the findings reveal cultural differences that governments and makers of self-driving cars must take into account if they want the vehicles to gain public acceptance.

    At least Barbara Wage, who heads a group working on autonomous-vehicle ethics at Audi in Ingolstadt, Germany, says such studies are valuable. Wage argues that self-driving cars would cause fewer accidents, proportionally, than human drivers do each year—but that people might focus more on events involving robots.

    Surveys such as the Moral Machine can help to begin public discussions about these unavoidable accidents that might develop trust. "We need to come up with a social consensus," she says, "about which risks we are willing to take."