Woman Uses Daughter's Key to "Steal" Car

    Charlie Vansant, a college student of Athens, Ohio, who reported that his car was stolen, got a surprise when he learned a woman had mistaken it for her daughter's car and taken it — using her key.

    Kate Anderson became an accidental car thief when picking up her daughter's car near an Ohio University building last week. Anderson spotted the Toyota Camry（丰田凯美瑞）and used her daughter's key to unlock the car, start the engine and drive home — without realizing that the car wasn't her daughter's.

    When Charlie Vansant left class a short time later, he found only an empty parking spot. He first assumed the car had been towed, but when the police couldn't find a record of it, they took a theft(偷窃) report.

    The morning after Anderson took the car, her daughter discovered the Camry in the driveway wasn't hers. Anderson said she was able to find Vansant's name on paperwork in the glove compartment and look up his phone number on the website for the university.

    When Anderson told Charlie the car was in her driveway, "It sounded really suspicious at first, as she wanted to hold the thing for ransom (赎金) , ” said Vansant. He eventually went to the house with a police officer, where he was reunited with his car. According to the police report, the case was closed "because of mistaken car identity", and Anderson wasn't charged.

    Vansant seemed to blame the car company more than the "thief". "Her key fit not only my lock, but my ignition（点火装置）as well — so high-five for Toyota, I guess." he said.

Day 1

    I first heard of “Show Racism (种族歧视) the Red Card” when my friend Jill asked me to support their work. Basically, it's an organization which uses professional (职业的) footballers to help fight racism in sport and society. A few weeks later, he asked me if I wanted to do a bit more for them. I thought he probably meant for me to give money or do some voluntary work. But then he told me that a group of about 20 people were getting sponsored (赞助) to play the highest ever game of rugby (橄榄球) at 5,140 meters on Mount Everest.

Day 4

    We're making our way up to the base camp — that's where most climbers start their final climb to the top — and then, we'll play our game. Today we started out at 8 am. We had to cross three suspension bridges (悬索桥). One of them was so high that you couldn't see the bottom. Then we walked through some beautiful forest areas before we started a two-hour uphill hike to Namche Bazaar.

Day 10

    Base camp is basically just a lot of stones and tents. The walk up was really exhausting. Maybe if I was fitter, I wouldn't find this so hard, but then it was not just me — all of us got very short of breath.

Day 11

    Today we played our game. It was supposed to be a “friendly” game, and last night, we had agreed we'd just walk and not run. However, it was a really heated game and two players were even sent off. We only played for 14 minutes. I think someone would have got hurt if we'd played any longer! My team won and I scored the last try! Of course, none of this matters. What's really important is that we did it and we've raised a load of money.

    It is not easy getting the attention of tourists away from the well-known white sandy beaches of Byron Bay. But in this relying Australian surf town, a solar (太阳能的)-powered train might just do a good job.

    Opening to the public in December 2017 along a 1.9-mile-long stretch (一段) of track that sat abandoned for more than a decade, the Byron Bay Rail Company has breathed new life into a pair of disused railcars dating back to the 1940s. They're now used to transport passengers between Byron Bay's central business district and the North Beach area. After remaining in service as part of a regional passenger rail network until the early 1990s, the aging railcars were out of service and sat uncared for — almost destroyed by time and unpleasant Aussie climate — in a railyard for more than 20 years. You'd never know it by looking at these nearly 70-year-old workhorses today, though: they've been decorated, equipped, topped with custom-made photovoltaic panels (定制的光电池板) and rearranged to accommodate up to 100 seated beach goers.

    It's those train-top PV panels that truly set the Byron Bay Rail Company's flagship train apart from other heritage rail restoration projects.

    Drawing additional power from a 30-kilowatt solar array (阵列) located atop the train's storage building, the tain is said to be the first in the world to be completely powered by the sun. Solar energy caught by the 6.5-kilowatt train-top solar panels is stored directly in an onboard battery system that powers motors, lighting and the like. When stopped at its home platform, the train pushes into chargers for quick battery top-offs with electricity produced by the storage building's rooftop solar array. The 77 kilowatt-hour battery can hold enough juice for 12 to 15 runs on a single charge. During long periods of cloudiness when the solar arrays don't get enough sun, the train uses the main electric network, supply using renewable energy sold by community-based service Enova Energy.

    The Byron Bay Rail Company's first-in-the-world folly solar-powered train is a good example of historic rail preservation with a 21^st century development. Operating as a not-for-profit company, the Byron Bay Rail Company also expected the AU$4 million line to be a way to relieve traffic jam between downtown Byron Bay and the rapidly growing North Beach area. Really, there's no bigger unpleasant thing than sitting in bad traffic for 40 minutes trying to get to the beach.

    Arthur Miller(1915-2005) is universally recognized as one of the greatest dramatists（剧作家） of the 20^th century. Miller's father had moved to the USA from Austria-Hungary, drawn like so many others by the “Great American Dream”. However, he experienced severe financial hardship when his family business was ruined in the Great Depression (大萧条时期) of the early 1930s.

    Miller's most famous play, Death of a Salesman, is a powerful attack on the American system, with its aggressive way of doing business and its insistence on money and social status as indicators (标志) of worth. In Willy Loman, the hero of the play, we see a man who has got into trouble with his system, Willy is “burnt out” and in the cruel world of business there is no room for sentiment (情绪): if he can't do the work, then he is no good to his employer, the Wagner Company, and he must go. Willy is painfully aware of this, and at a loss as to what to do with his lack of success. He refuses to face the fact that he has failed and kills himself in the end.

    When it was first staged in 1949, the play was greeted with enthusiastic reviews, and it won the Tony Award for Best Play, the New York Drama Critics' Circle Award, and the Pulitzer Prize for drama. It was the first play to win all the three of these major awards.

    Miller died of heart failure at his home in Roxbury, Connecticut, on the evening of February 10, 2005, the 56^th anniversary of the first performance of Death of a Salesman on Broadway.

    Your next car might drive itself. After years of trials on city streets, driverless vehicles are now on the way. Last month, a driverless bus began carrying passengers through Lyon, France. Most in the automobile industry think self-driving vehicles will be on the road by 2020 or earlier.

    Driverless cars will first be huddled with human-driven cars. But the first places where they will become dominant（统治的）are highly populated urban areas. Many advanced cities are already reducing the role of human-driven cars. Driverless cars will quicken that process and will bring us enormous benefits.

    Driverless cars will reduce accidents by around 90 percent. That's big—the annual deaths on the world's roads are about 1.2 million a year. Pollution and carbon emissions will drop, because urban driverless cars will be electric.

    On the other hand, driverless cars will cause problems. Over the next 20 years, the mostly low-skilled men who now drive trucks, taxis and buses will see their jobs reduced. Traditional carmakers are especially scared. The cars of the future might be made by tech companies such as Apple, Baidu and Google. Imagine Germany, where automobile making is the largest industry.

    Dramatic changes are coming, and driverless cars could arrive by 2020. But governments have barely begun thinking about it. Only 6 percent of the biggest US cities have taken them into their long-term planning. A decade ago anyone hardly saw the Smartphone coming. Now what about the driverless cars?

October 15th is Global Handwashing Day. Activities are planned in more than twenty countries to get millions of people in the developing world to wash their hands with soap.

Experts say people around the world wash their hands but very few use soap at so-called extremely important moments. These include after using the toilet, after cleaning a baby and before touching food.

Global Handwashing Day is the idea of the Public Private Partnership for handwashing with soap. The goal, they say, is to create a culture of handwashing with soap. The organizers say all soaps are equally effective at removing disease-causing germs. They say the correct way to wash is to wet your hands with a small amount of water and cover them with soap. Rub it into all areas, including under the fingernails.  Then, wash well under running water. Finally, dry your hands with a clean cloth.

The Partnership says soap is important because it increases the time that people spend washing. Soap also helps to break up the dirt that holds most of the germs.  And it usually leaves a pleasant smell, which increases the chances that people will wash again.

It also says that washing hands with soap before eating and after using the toilet could save more lives than any medicine. It could help reduce cases of diarrhea, which is the second leading cause of child deaths, killing more than one and a half million children a year, by almost half.