Have you ever run out of coffee or tea? Found no eggs in the fridge? No bread for the sandwich and the nearest shop is too far away? Well, all that can change in the future.

    If all goes well, the intelligent future kitchen will soon help solve all your problems. In the future, all kitchen units will be connected to the Internet. The intelligent future kitchen will give wise advice on planning your menu for the day. Worried about your weight? — It will tell you the right diet and what is good for your health. It will even keep in mind your likes and dislikes!

    Designed by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, this smart kitchen promises to pay attention to all your needs. The computer's system will help keep an “eye” on the fridge. If the fridge is empty, the kitchen will automatically call and place an order at the local supermarket. So you don't have to worry about it at all.

    You get home late, and don't know what to make from the collection of ingredients (原料) in your fridge. A while back you might have ordered a take-out but now, instead of worrying about eating a collection of this and that, you're excited. You can pull out each vegetable, and pass each one in front of a web camera next to your fridge. A few moments later, a screen on your fridge would display a tasty recipe.

    After dinner, you take your plates to a box next to the sink. You don't have to clean them, your machine does. It produces new plates every time you need to eat. Later in the evening, you phone your other half, who is on a business trip half-way around the world. As you drink your cup of hot coffee, it makes your other half's cup change color on the other side of the world, another special way to keep in touch.

    Two young giant-panda twins born in the United States have returned home to China, but are straggling to adapt to the language and food.

    The 3-year-old sisters, Mei Lun and Mei Huan, wens the first surviving panda twins to be born in the United States, and were returned to China from Zoo Atlanta on Nov. 5. But the pair still understand English belter than Chinese, and prefer American biscuits to Chinese bread.

    A zoo-keeper said that his main concern is that the pair are so addicted to American biscuits that everything they eat — from bamboos to apples — has to be mixed with biscuits. They even want to snack on (零食) biscuits when drinking water.

    The zoo -keeper is trying to wean them off their biscuit habit, gradually replacing the American food with Chinese bread. Mei Huan is adapting, but Mei Lun doesn't want to touch the unfamiliar bread.

    Mei Lun is the livelier of the two, often jumping onto the roof and hanging upside down from a rail, but her slightly younger sister Mei Huan is calmer, preferring to sit still, observe her new environment and occasionally snack on bamboo.

    A language barrier is also reported. While the pair respond to their own names, and understand some English phrases such as “come here,” they don't understand the Sichuan dialect of Chinese.

    The news caused some laughter on Chinese social media, with some users commenting that the pandas would soon get used to Sichuan's famously spicy cuisine.

    It was dawn of March 21, 2018. Gary Messina was on his morning run along New York City's East River. Suddenly something caught his eye – a large 60-year-old man balancing on the four-foot-high fence that guarded the path from the water. As Messina got closer to the scene, the man took a step forward and slipped into the dark river below.

    When Messina reached nearer, the man was struggling in the water, clearly unable to swim. Other joggers also heard the man's cry. David Blauzvern and John Green dropped their phones and keys on land and jumped in. “People had called the police, but it was unclear when they'd get there.” says Green. “We just reacted.” Messina joined them in the river. Just as the jumper was losing strength, Blauzvern take hold of him. The pair were about 30 yards from the seawall when Messina and Green caught up to them. They seized the man, with Blauzvern supporting his back and Messina and Green holding him up from either side. As the men made their toward the concrete seawall that stretched (延伸) for blocks in each direction, Blauzvern had an awful realization: there was no way out of the river.

    By now, a crowd had gathered on land. “A rescue boat is on its way,” someone yelled to them. Swimming forward was getting tougher by the minute. The jumper, who was six foot two and weighed around 260 pounds, was heavy in his rescuers' arms. After ten minutes, they managed to get to the river's edge. “I've never been so out of breath,” says Blauzvern.

    Fifteen minutes after the men had jumped into the river, the two-man rescue boat appeared. But because it couldn't risk getting too close to the seawall, the men had to swim out to it. “I was completely out of energy at this point,” says Blauzvern. The men in the water pushed the jumper while the men in the boat pulled him up and, finally, to safety. The man they had saved was taken to the hospital for evaluation(评估). Details on his condition have not been known. As for the rescuers, each of them was at work by 10:30 a.m. “I was a bit late,” admits Blauzvern, smiling. “But I had a good excuse.”

Feeling achy and feverish? Your misery has plenty of company. By the end of December, the tally(记录) of flu-like illnesses in the state exceeded the peaks in the two previous seasons, when the biggest number of cases occurred in February and March. This time, the flu virus seems to be hitting even harder.

Flu is unique among human diseases. It circulates constantly in cool and dry areas. Because it spreads from person to person and can be picked up easily, nearly everyone is exposed. While it's unclear whether the annual flu epidemic(流行病) will worsen this year, or just arrived earlier, fears have been increased by the severity of flu in Australia during its most recent season and the fact that the vaccine may protect against the predominant(盛行的) kind of the flu only 30 percent of the time.

Despite the worries, doctors and public health officials say there is no evidence that people are getting sicker than usual. Flu cases in Massachusetts started rising around Thanksgiving and increased steadily, with an especially steep climb in the last week of the year. "This is a bad flu season but not a horrible one," said Dr Andrew G. Villanueva, a lung specialist and chief quality officer at the Lahey Hospital & Medical Centre in Burlington.

"The flu season, while clearly in full swing, doesn't ‘feel different' from previous years," Villanueva said. "We're not seeing a lot of people being hospitalised because of flu," he said. "Most people with the flu recover on their own without medical care." 

A boy who has been climbing the equivalent（等量）of Mount Qomolangma in aid of a children's hospice（救济院）is about to reach his fundraising goal of £29,031. Six-year-old Oscar, from Lancaster, has climbed 10 of the UK's highest mountains to help Chorley's Derian House. He said he needed two more to match Mount Qomolangma's 29,031 feet height.

Oscar started his challenge on October 9, 2022, and Ingleborough in the Yorkshire Dales was the first mountain to be chosen. He said that the hardest climb so far had been Cairn Gorm in the Scottish Highlands because the snow was so deep.

Oscar took on the challenge in the hope of raising enough money to send 29 children with life-limiting illnesses on holiday. "I wanted to be the youngest person to climb Mount Qomolangma and I have climbed 10 out of 12 mountains. When I get older, I want to climb the real Mount Qomolangma," Oscar said.

"It was amazing what a child's dream can achieve. We're speechless and couldn't be prouder. We were grateful to everyone that supported us along Oscar's journey," Oscar's father Matt wrote on the social media.

Oscar and his family hoped to make their final climb on Ben Nevis in Scotland on May 29, 2023. The climb would mark not only the completion of Oscar's challenge, but also the 70th anniversary of the first successful ascent（攀登）of Mount Qomolangma by Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay.

"For every foot he climbed, our children would get a pound to achieve their dreams. The total £29,031 raised by Oscar would help support the work of the hospice, which provides end-of-life care to more than 400 children across the northwest of England," said Karen Edwards, a senior official of Derian House.

"The six-year-old was an unbelievable little boy who had truly gone to great heights. How many six-year-olds could say that they have climbed the height of Mount Qomolangma?" Karen added.

My mother has always been one of those rare people that sees the good in everyone and does good things "just because". Life hasn't always been kind to her; she lost my oldest sister to leukemia (白血病) in 1963 and my father in 2007 after nearly 51 years of marriage.

She's had her ups and downs but has always 1 a positive, sunny outlook on life and been very 2 to people.

One day, my little sister fell and hurt her ankle, desperately needing a 3 to the hospital emergency room. My mother immediately 4 into crisis mode, packed my sister into the car, and drove to our local hospital. In such a 5 , my mother didn't call to tell my father. When she got to the hospital, she realized she needed to 6 with my father immediately.

While waiting for my sister to be examined, my mother 7 her way to the pay phone to place her call. She put her coin in, called my father and told him everything. After she hung up, the phone 8 several additional coins that Mom wasn't owed.

Realizing that the phone was 9 , my mother decided to leave the 10 coins by the phone. She told us that in a crisis, people might not remember to bring 11 with them to make that emergency call.

I've often thought about her 12 from an adult's perspective I realize that someone seeing the money by he phone may have 13 taken it because not everyone was as 14 as my mother. But I like to believe that my mother's faith was 15 and that someone who needed them found the coins waiting there.