Brian was a funny student. He loved watching comedies（喜剧） best and hoped to become a comedy actor one day.

    When he heard about the talent show to be held at this school, Brian decided to take part in. He had never acted on stage before, and he was very excited. But some students laughed at him. “You are not funny but silly，” Ken, one of his classmates, said to his face. “No one will like what you do，” another boy also said to him, loudly.

    Brian couldn't understand why they were so unkind to him. For a moment, he thought about giving up the show. But he remembered how much his friends liked his jokes, and also his teachers said he was very funny. So he decided to prepare for the show.

    Brian did a great job at the talent show. Everyone loved his performance, and he won the first prize! His teachers and friends were proud of him. Even so, Ken told Brian that he was not funny, and that he would never be successful. Brian didn't understand why Ken said so, but he realized that it had nothing to do with him. He confidently continued to work towards his goal.

    As the years went on, Brian met more people like Ken. “You'll do a terrible job，” they said to him. Luckily, most people encouraged him and some helped him to become even funnier. He got a lot of opportunities to perform in movies. He was even invited to appear on television. His fans thanked him because his comedies made them feel good when they were unhappy.

    Now Brian is a big comedy star! He is doing what he loves best. He never feels stressed like those unkind people, and he laughs all day long!

Come and join us to celebrate his birthday.

    I began cycling in 2004 when I was a poor student. It was dangerous, sure, but cycling is the fastest, cheapest point-to-point form of transport in Melbourne. I own a car now, but that's just for transporting the baby or groceries.

    I hate driving. So it's been quite encouraging watching the growth in cyclist numbers over the past decade. It is said that over 10,000 cyclists enter the CBD (Central Business District) each day, taking pressure off public transport. But as more people take to cycling as a way of transport, the number of cyclists seriously injured or killed keeps increasing. And that is a sign that our infrastructure (基础设施) is still not good enough.

    Melbourne was once a dream for cyclists—flat, long, wide roads, with plenty of paths along rivers. Now, cycling can be deadly, with roads taken up by cars. I have a friend who broke her back and was lucky to escape death and others with broken bones. In my time riding, I've been forced off the road by a truck, cut off by four-wheel drives, and told to get off the road. Drivers are a particularly rude to cyclists. And that's a sign of exactly one thing: inadequate infrastructure.

    We shouldn't need to be taught how to coexist in the same narrow space. Drivers and cyclists should be kept apart. Designing bike paths so riders are channelled between moving cars and parked cars is deadly. All it takes is one daydreaming driver to fling open the door and you are gone. That's what happened to the young university student James.

    This year, there are to be new cycling lanes (车道) built on Glen Road, where James died in 2010. But these lanes are not safe. Cyclists must still pass between two rows of cars.

    What is the number one favorite pet in the UK? If you think the answer is dogs, you are wrong. There are 8.6 million cats and 8.3 million dogs in Britain according to recent figures. But experts predict that there will be more dogs than cats next year as dogs become more and more popular.

    Dogs as decorations

    We like to spend time with our pets. The Queen is famous for her affection for dogs and is often photographed with them. Nowadays some dog owners are more extreme — a few TV celebrities even take their dogs shopping or to restaurants. Chihuahuas are especially popular as "handbag dogs" because they are so tiny.

    Dog holidays

    People are also giving their pets holidays. Many UK hotels and holiday parks now welcome dogs as guests. What about owners who go abroad? They can leave their pets at a dog hotel or dog spa while they are away. Some even provide their dog guests with a TV.

    Dogs are for life

    The British charity, Dogs Trust, finds homes for thousands of lost and abandoned dogs every year. Their famous slogan "A dog is for life and not just for Christmas" was created in the 1970s to teach people about the responsibility of owning a dog. Dogs Trust told British people not to give dogs as gifts or treat them like toys.

    Dogs on TV

    Victoria Sitwell is the host of the popular TV programme called "It's me or the dog". In the show Victoria helps dog owners with their pets' bad behaviour. She tries to find solutions to problems such as a Dalmatian who thinks he owns the house and won't let the family sit on the sofa, dogs that will only eat ice cream and biscuits and even a bulldog who uses the owner's bed as a toilet.

    Fashion for dogs

    You can shop online or on the high street for the latest in dog clothes and accessories. Specialist shops sell items such as dog boots, dog fancy dress costumes, dog coats, dog dresses and dog pants.

In a long-sleeved shirt and jeans, Dieudonne Twahirwa looks nothing like the traditional African farmer. The 30-year-old owner of Gashora Farm knows what a difference that makes.

"You need more role models," he said, standing among knee-high rows of chili (辣椒) plants. "If you have young farmers, they have land and they drive to the farm and others may think, ‘Why can't I do that?"

Twahirwa, a university graduate, bought a friend's tomato farm six years ago for $150. He made $1,500 back in two months. "You have to link farming with entrepreneurship (创业精神) and real numbers," he said.

Many young Africans are quitting countryside areas, choosing not to work hard for a long time in the fields-a job made a lot tougher by climate change. But Twahirwa is one of a growing group of successful farmers working to improve agriculture's image on the continent. Some 1,000 farmers now produce chilies for him. He is starting a fourth farm of his own, and exports fresh and dried chilies and oil to Britain, the United States, India and Kenya.

Africa has the world's youngest population and 65 percent undeveloped farmland. Yet accessing land and loans is difficult, and African productivity is low with crop output just 56 percent of the international average.

"Agriculture is mainly connected with suffering and no young person wants to suffer," said Tamara Kaunda, an expert of FAO. She believes African agriculture needs a change to get rid of its old-fashioned image of extremely difficult and tiring work with a hoe (锄头). "Show young people with tractors, green fields, nice irrigation systems and smartphones," she said.

Getting young people involved in agriculture does not mean they have to work on a farm. For example, in coffee production, the beans go from the farm to the washing station, then to be separated from the outer coverings. There are people in the coffee value chain who just build washing stations and rent them out. You just have to find a place to plug in.

Any schoolchild knows that a whale breathes through its blowhole. Fewer know that a blowhole is a nostril （鼻孔） slightly changed by evolution into a form more useful for a mammal that spends its life at sea. And only a dedicated expert would know that while toothed whales, such as sperm whales, have one hole, baleen （鲸须） whales, such as humpback and Rice whales, have two. 

Even among the baleen whales, the placing of those nostrils differs. In some species they are close together. In others, they are much further apart. In a paper published in Biology Letters Conor Ryan, a marine biologist at the Scottish Association for Marine Science, suggests why that might be. Having two nostrils, he argues, helps whales smell in stereo （立体空间）. 

Many types of baleen whales eat tiny animals known as zooplankton （浮游动物）， which they catch by filtering （过滤） them from seawater using the sheets of fibrous baleen that have replaced teeth in their mouths. But to eat something you first have to find it. Toothed whales do not hunt by scent. In fact, the olfactory bulb-the part of the brain that processes smell-is absent in such creatures. But baleen whales still have olfactory bulbs, which suggests smell remains important. And scent can indeed give zooplankton away. Zooplankton like to eat other tiny creatures called phytoplankton （浮游植物）. When these are under attack, they release a special gas called dimethyl sulphide, which in turn attracts baleen whales. 

Most animals have stereoscopic senses. Having two eyes, for instance, allows an animal to compare the images from each in order to perceive depth. Having two ears lets them locate the direction from which a sound is coming. Dr Ryan theorized that paired blowholes might bring baleen whales the same sorts of benefits. 

The farther apart the sensory organs are, the more information can be extracted by the animal that bears them. The researchers used drones to photograph the nostrils of 143 whales belonging to 14 different species. Sure enough, baleen whales that often eat zooplankton, such as the North Atlantic right whale, have nostrils that are farther apart than do those, such as humpback whales, that eat zooplankton occasionally. Besides allowing them to breathe, it seems that some whales use their blowholes to determine in which direction dinner lies.