Light travels at a speed which is about a million times faster than the speed of sound. In one second, light travels about 300,000 km, but sound travels only 344m. You can get some idea of this difference by watching the start of a race. If you stand some distance away from the starter, you can see smoke come from his gun before the sound reaches your ears. This great speed of light produces some strange facts. Sunlight takes about 8 minutes to reach us. If you look at the light of the moon tonight, remember that the light rays（光线）left the moon 1.3 seconds before they reached you. The nearest star is so far away that the light which you can see from it tonight started to travel towards you four years ago at a speed of nearly 2 million km per minute. In some cases the light from one of tonight's stars started on its journey to you before you were born.

    Thus, if we want to be honest, we cannot say “The stars are shinning tonight.” We have to say, “The stars look pretty. They were shining four years ago but their light has only just reached Earth.”

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    In the United States and several other countries , 2.5 million children play baseball in an organization called Little League . They play on teams in their hometowns . Their parents and other adults in the community coach or instruct them and serve as umpires（裁判员）to make sure that everyone follows the rules . Local businesses give money for the ball fields and the uniforms . Local teams compete against each other and the winners get to play teams that are more distant . Eventually , the top teams go to the Little League World Series .

    One hundred years after Abner Doubleday invented baseball in Cooperstown , New York , in 1839 , Little League got started in Pennsylvania . Three men started the game for neighborhood boys with a smaller playing field and fewer innings（局）than adult baseball . Little League became popular after World War II when the game spread across the United States . By 1955 it was played throughout North America and within five years it had spread to Europe. Children's baseball really caught on in Japan and Taiwan of China and teams from those areas won the World Series seven out of eight years . After this , the organization tried banning foreign teams from the World Series , but the ban came to an end after one year .

    At first , Little League was only for boys aged nine to twelve . However , in 1974 , the parents of girl baseball players brought a law suit . The courts ruled that Little League had to include both boys and girls . Later Little League added on softball and other games for teenagers up to age eighteen . Occasionally , a Little Leaguer becomes a professional player . For example , Gary Carter went from Little League to play nineteen seasons in the Major Leagues , ten of them as an All-Star player . By and large , youngsters play baseball for fun , but their parents are pround of them .

                                                Inventor Creates Wheels That Let Cars Roll in Any Direction

    Omnidirectional wheels have been around for a while, but they are mostly used on utility(实用的) vehicles like forklifts. London-based inventor William Liddiard has created a special set of all-around wheels that can be bolted on to any car, allowing it to move in any direction, spin 360 degrees and slide into a parallel park with ease.

    "Unlike other all-around capable wheels, my wheels do not require the vehicle to be built around them. This is a world first bolt-on application for anything with wheels." Liddiard wrote in the description of a You Tube video he uploaded to show how his invention works on an old Toyota Echo. "They are stronger, faster, and more accurately controlled than previous technology. They can take a beating. The tires can have the same build characteristics (siping, grooves, rubber compounds etc.) as regular tires. Now you can drive in all directions, and tum on the spot, when needed."

    While the "Liddiard Wheels" shown in the video are just proof of concept prototypes(原型机), they seem to work as described by the inventor. His car can be seen spinning in place and sliding from one side to the other as the tires move under the power of 24,000 pounds of torque (扭矩) applied directly to them.

    William is now hoping that the power of social media will help him get his invention out there and eventually team up with a company willing to help him improve the wheels and eventually bring them to the market.

    "Will a set of wheels make sideward parking an easy thing? Yeah, I'm pretty sure these things will be in high demand if they ever end up on the market." the inventor said confidently.

    On the day the tornado(龙卷风) hit, there was no sign fierce weather was on its way— the sky was blue and the sun had been out. The first warning my husband, Jimmy, 67, and I, 65, got came around 9 p.m., from some text on the TV Jimmy was watching. He ran upstairs to find me in our third-floor bedroom, and we changed the channel from the national television to our local Pensacola, Florida, station.

    Soon the tornado was on top of us. It was the loudest thing I have ever heard. The bones of the house shook, and the power went out. And the wind began to roar(咆哮) through the house, most likely through blown-out windows and the door to our garage. Everything was moving. And the back wall of the house came off and flew into the darkness outside. We had three flights of steps to get to the storeroom down there, the relative safety of the first floor.

    I didn't know how or if we would make it down the steps. It felt as if there were no floor underneath me as the wind lifted me off my feet. As we finally reached the last flight of steps, our front door blew out. Suddenly, a three-foot-long tree branch flew over our heads, missing us by inches.

    By the time I reached the storeroom, the tornado had been over us for about a minute. Jimmy pushed me down to the storeroom floor, but he couldn't get inside himself because of the wind. I held Jimmy's arm as the tornado blew the door open. My knees were full of glass, but I felt no pain. If I had let go, Jimmy would have flown right out the back of the house.

    All of a sudden, Jimmy lifted off his feet. I thought he was gone. And then everything stopped. He landed on his feet. In those first quiet moments, I couldn't believe it was over. Our neighbor says the storm lasted four minutes. In that time, four of the twelve town houses in our unit were completely destroyed. Amazingly, none of us were seriously injured.

    A new restaurant in Indonesia is on a mission (使命) to support locals trapped in poverty, many of whom are earning less than $25 a month, by providing them with an alternative way to pay for their food.

    The Methane Gas Canteen, run by husband and wife team Sarimin and Suyatmi, is located in an unexpected place for an eatery — Jatibarang Landfill. The landfill is a mountain of purifying waste, where poor locals spend their days collecting plastic and glass to sell. Meanwhile, the couple, who spent 40 years collecting waste before opening the restaurant, is busy cooking.

    What makes the restaurant unusual, aside from its location, is that no cash is required to pay for meals. Poor people have the option to pay for their food with recyclable waste instead of cash. Sarimin weighs the plastic customers bring in, calculates its worth, and then deduct that value from the cost of the meal, giving any extra value back to the customer. The scheme is part of the community's solution to reduce waste in the landfill and recycle non-degradable plastics.

    “I think we recycle 1 tonne of plastic waste a day, which is a lot. This way, the plastic waste doesn't pile up, drift down the river and cause flooding,” said Saimin. “It benefits everyone.”

    The restaurant seats about 30 people and serves meals that cost between $0.40 and $0.80 each. Since opening the canteen Sarimin and Suyatmi have seen their daily income more than double to $15 a day.

    “I'm happy to see our customers enjoying their meals,” Sarimin told NHK World. “The poor must also have the right to enjoy healthy eating. I want to give them that chance as much as possible.”

    I came to the United States ten years ago. I would always say that I was trying to study, but there were always things like work and my kids that would not allow me to start.

    Now I realized that those were only excuses. What stopped me was that I was afraid to start studying again. I always believed I would learn by myself.

    One day, however, my son told me that he was sad because his friends would come over and I didn't understand them because I didn't speak English. He was also sad because I could never help him with his homework. That same day, I told myself, "Rocio, you have to start believing in yourself and you will see you can make it."

    The next day, I went downtown to look for a big banner (横幅) in front of the school which said that they offered classes for adults. I came in to see if I could join, but the classes were closed already. That night I took the kids to the movies, and on the way back, I told them we would take a new route. I ended up getting lost. That's the way I found Chaffey College. The following Monday, I went to ask for information. They told me that summer school was starting that week.

    That's how I started studying English last summer. It is difficult, but I have had great rewards. My daughter had written a story for school. It was about the female they most admired and why. She wrote that I was the person she most admired because I had started going to college. I will never forget this.