The poaching（偷猎）, or illegal killing, of rhinos(犀牛) in South Africa is growing worse each year．The government recently reported that a record number of rhinos were poached in 2015，a year which had more rhino killings in South Africa than ever before.

    The World Wildlife Fund，or WWF，says about 20, 000 rhinos live in South Africa．That is more than 80 percent of the rhinos in the world．Edna Molewa，South Africa's Environment Minister，says, “During 2015，we are sad to say this，1,215 rhinos were killed．This is a rise in the number of poached rhinos from 1,004 in 2014 and indeed very worrying.”

    The animals are hunted for their horns(角)．Many people in Asia believe the horn has curing power，which drives poachers， at all costs，mad for more horns． But there is no scientific evidence for this belief．The horn is made of keratin(角蛋白)．That is the same thing as human hair，fingernails and toenails.

    Ms．Molewa said 386 suspected poachers were arrested last year，an increase from the year before．But rhino protection workers say poachers often go unpunished after arrest． South Africa's legal system is ineffective． Ms． Mo1ewa said more needs to be done and South Africa is taking strong measures to protect rhinos．The efforts include moving some of the animals to secret places in neighboring countries. “Now approximately 100 rhinos have been moved to neighboring states in the SADC region during 2015 and 200 more rhinos will be moved this year,” Molewa said.

    Jo Shaw，the rhino program manager at the WWF，said， “We're talking about a loss of a hundred rhinos a month，or more than three a day．We really need to see effective action not just at a national level but internationally．” She says officials should find the criminal groups responsible for the poaching and punish them. Government officials are to meet in Botswana in March at the Inter-governmental Conference on Illegal Wildlife Trade.

    I wasn't surprised when I read that actress Helen Hunt recently stated that she would never allow her young daughter to become a child star. Ms. Hunt is the daughter of a Hollywood technical director, and grew up in Hollywood. Now in her late 40s, she started acting and modeling when she was eight and has probably seen a lot over those years in show business.

    She has had a successful career. She earned four Golden Globes and four Emmys. She also attained the top honor of her profession when she won the Best Actress Academy Award for her role in the 1992 movie, As Good As It Gets. Given those accolades, Ms. Hunt is successful. There is no doubt that her early experiences as a child star prepared her for what has been an outstanding adult career. Given those achievements, why would this star declare she'll never allow her daughter, now at the age of six, to follow in her footsteps?

    Everyone familiar with the entertainment scene is aware of the reasons for her attitude. Recent tabloid (小报) news headlines featuring the troubles of former child stars, among them Lindsay Lohan, Britney Spears and the late Gary Coleman, may answer the question. Although Ms. Hunt managed to become a successful grown-up star, she apparently believes she's an exception.

    What Ms. Hunt may be suggesting is that many very young stars go through unnatural childhoods on movie and TV sets. While they're earning big incomes, they're so pampered (纵容) by directors and praised by fans; they may get false impressions that their lives will always be that way. Then, within a few years, when faced with reality, they're hurt and confused. After all the overwhelming affection, they find they can't deal with the problems. That's often when drugs and alcohol take over their lives.

    Helen Hunt has some other reasons why she doesn't want her daughter to be in the entertainment business. Many child stars can never make a successful transition to meaningful adulthood. However, as with many Hollywood movies, I believe there are both good and bad scenes about how it can be played out in real life.

    When she first started learning about the climate change from one of her elders, Fawn Sharp was invited on a helicopter flight over the Olympic Mountains to survey the Mount Anderson glacier(冰川). But the glacier was gone, melted by the warming climate. Sharp had a deep sense of loss when she discovered the glacier wasn't there anymore.

    Loss is a growing issue for people working and living on the front lines of climate change. And that gave Jennifer Wren Atkinson, a full-time lecturer at the University of Washington Bothell, US, an idea for a class.

    This term, she taught students on the Bothell campus about the emotional burdens of environmental study. She used the experiences of Nalive American tribes (部落) , scientists and activists, and asked her 24 students to face the reality that there is no easy fix -- that "this is such an intractable problem that they're going to be dealing with it for the rest of their lives.”

    Student Cody Dillon used to be a climate science skeptic (怀疑论者) . Then he did his own reading and research, and changed his mind.

    Dillon wasn't going into environmental work--he was a computer-science major. Yet, the potential for a worldwide environmental catastrophe seemed so real to him five years ago that he quit his job and became a full-time volunteer for an environmental group that worked on restoration (恢复) projects.

Six months into the work, he decided that Alkinson's class was just what he was looking for 一 a place where he could discuss his concerns about a changing climate.

Atkinson said she hopes the class helped her students prepare themselves for the amount of environmental loss that will happen over their lifetimes.

    “We are already changing the planet - . so many species are going to be lost, displaced or massively impacted (巨大影响的) ,”she said. “The future isn't going to be what they imagined.”

    BKLYN House Hotel

    This hotel features works by Brooklyn artists. The 116 rooms are of good value—Manhattan is only 20 minutes away by taxi or subway. The immediate surroundings feel urban—the hotel is by a high-rise public housing project while the nearest commercial street is under elevated subway tracks—but Bushwick's best bars and cafes/restaurants are nearby.

    Doubles from $99, room only. Tel：718 388 4433

    Archer Hotel

    Visitors eager to stay in the heart of Manhattan should try one of the bargain-priced rooms at this hotel. Rates vary from great value to expensive; some start from as low as $179 a night (if prepaying in full). Rooms are small but tasteful, with nice touches such as exposed brick. Some have close-up views of the Empire State Building.

    Doubles from $199, room only. Tel: 212 719 4100

    Pod 39 Hotel

    In an elegant brick building in Manhattan's Murray Hill, this excellent budget option opened following the success of its sister hotel, The Pod. The rooms are called pods given their small size and may not suit everyone. But with prices among the most competitive in Manhattan, budgeters will be happy.

    Doubles from $95, room only. Tel：212 865 5700

    CitizenM New York Times Square

    This is the first US location for a Netherlands-based concept hotel chain—CitizenM. The hotel features self check-in at its 230 little but comfortable rooms via touch screen “MoodPads”. There's a rooftop bar, a 24-hour grab-and-go cafeteria and an area with public iMac workspaces. Although New Yorkers avoid nearby Times Square, all the lights, cameras and action can make it a fun tourist experience.

    Doubles from $170, room only. Tel：212 319 7000

    We talk continuously about how to make children more "resilient(有恢复力的)", but whatever were doing, it's not working. Rates of anxiety disorders and depression are rising rapidly among teenagers. What are we doing wrong?

    Nassim Taleb invented the word "antifragile" and used it to describe a small but very important class of systems that gain from shocks, challenges, and disorder. The immune system is one of them: it requires exposure to certain kinds of bacteria and potential allergens(过敏源)in childhood in order to develop to its full ability.

    Children's social and emotional abilities are as antifragile as their immune systems. If we overprotect kids and keep them "safe" from unpleasant social situations and negative emotions we deprive(剥夺)them of the challenges and opportunities for skill-building they need to grow strong. Such children are likely to suffer more when exposed later to other unpleasant but ordinary life events, such as teasing and social rejection.

    It's not the kids fault. In the UK, as in the US, parents became much more fearful in the 1980s and 1990s as cable TV and later the Internet exposed everyone, more and more, to those rare occurrences of crimes and accidents that now occur less and less, Outdoor play and independent mobility went down; screen time and adult-monitored activities went up.

    Yet free play in which kids work out their own rules of engagement, take small risks, and learn to master small dangers turns out to be vital for the development of adult social and even physical competence, Depriving them of free play prevents their social-emotional growth. Norwegian play researchers Ellen Sandseter and Leif Kennair warned: "We may observe an increased anxiety or mental disorders in society if children are forbidden from participating in age adequate risky play."

    They wrote those words in 2011. Over the following few years, their prediction came true. Kids born after 1994 are suffering from much higher rates of anxiety disorders and depression than the previous generation did. Besides, there is also a rise in the rate at which teenage girls are admitted to hospital for deliberately harming themselves.

    What can we do to change these trends? How can we raise kids strong enough to handle the ordinary and extraordinary challenges of life? We can't guarantee that giving primary school children more independence today will bring down the rate of teenage suicide tomorrow. The links between childhood overprotection and teenage mental illness are suggestive but not clear-cut. Yet there are good reasons to suspect that by depriving our naturally antifragile kids of the wide range of experiences they need to become strong, we are systematically preventing their growth. We should let go-and let them grow.

On October 13, a small plane flying to Chile accidentally crashed into a mountain in the Andes. How some of the passengers 1 to live is one of the greatest survival stories ever told. 

The survivors stayed inside the remains of the plane, using seat covers for blankets, and waited for a 2 that never came. Days turned into weeks. It was urgent to find a way to 3 . Three of the passengers—Canessa, Parrado, and Vizintin volunteered to 4 through the mountains to search for help. When they left, each man wore5 clothes: three pairs of socks, a plastic bag around each foot to keep the water out, boots, four pairs of trousers and four sweaters. Many of the clothes came from those who died in the crash. The three men 6 that they would survive and bring back help. 

For part of the first day, they were glad to make some 7 . But as the land and weather changed, climbing became 8 . After several days, they reached what they thought was the top. They had imagined this moment for days. On the other side of the top, they hoped, would be a valley leading down and out of the mountains. However, they saw the same snow-covered tops. All hope wasn't 9 . Although they were still in the middle of the mountains, Parrado 10 two low tops far away that didn't have snow. If they got there, they would be out of the Andes. 

Within the following days, they walked towards the two low tops. Little by little, the landscape began to change. Snow 11 completely, and flowers were everywhere. "This is the valley," Canessa said. "This is the way out." Then things of humanity started to appear—a few cans on the ground, some farm animals in a field. By December 21, the extremely

12 men made it to the town of Los Maitenes, and a rescue team was sent immediately to search for the survivors who were still high in the Andes. 

Finally all of the remaining survivors were 13 . The memories of the crash in the Andes would be with them forever, but for now, their terrible 14 was over. They had made it out—15 .