When she looked ahead，Florence Chadwick saw nothing but a solid wall of fog.Her body was numb (麻木的)．She had been swimming for nearly sixteen hours.

    Already she was the first woman to swim the English Channel in both directions.Now，at age 34，her goal was to become the first woman to swim from Catalina Island to the California coast.

    On the morning of July 4th，1952，the sea was like an ice bath and the fog was so thick that she could hardly see her support boats.The wind was strong and it was raining heavily.Against the cold water of the sea，she struggled on—hour after hour.Millions of people at home were watching her in front of the television.

    In one of the boats，her mother and her trainer tried their best to encourage her.They told her it wasn't much farther.But all she could see was fog.They urged her not to give up.She never had...until then.With only a half mile to go，she asked to be pulled out.

    After thawing her cold body several hours later，she told a reporter，“Look，I'm not excusing myself，but if I could have seen land I might have made it.” It was not tiredness or even the cold water that defeated her.It was the fog.She was unable to see her goal.

    Two months later，she tried again.This time，despite the same thick fog，she swam with all her strength and her goal clearly pictured in her mind.She knew that somewhere behind that fog was land and this time she made it! Florence Chadwick became the first woman to swim the Catalina Channel!  

    Eighteen years ago, Terry Grahl, was pregnant with her fourth child. “Money was very tight,” Terry recalls. So when her mom called to ask if she'd like to go shopping at the local fabric(布料) store for the coming Christmas, she couldn't say no because she knew she badly needed some fabrics to make new clothes for her children. “I remember walking around, gazing at all this beautiful fabric, wondering whether there is anything cheap that I could afford. And I could still get some money left to buy Christmas gifts for my family.

    Well, Terry's mom must have known what Terry was thinking. Smiling kindly, she whispered to Terry, “You pick any fabrics you like. It's your Christmas gift from me.” Terry's eyes were filed with tears as the cart began to overflow with many fabrics, but not because Terry was planning on making herself a pretty dress or a pair of curtains for the kitchen. Rather, Terry's mom's kindness had inspired some holiday gift ideas in Terry, and it didn't take long for Terry to figure out what she was going to do with all that fabric.

    “I was going to make my first quilt,” she explains. “Every night I would work on this queen-size quilt. With every stitch(一针), I thought about all that my mom had done for me over the course of my childhood, during which we were always battling homelessness, but Mom somehow managed to fill our lives with love and make everything okay.”

    On Christmas Day, five days after her baby girl was born, Terry handed her mom a gift box. Inside was the quilt she had sewn, from the fabric her mother had given her as a gift.

    Whatever happened to the familiar scene from the past of children playing "tag(捉人游戏)" in the streets while their parents chatted with the neighbors over the garden fence? This picture is fading fast today, as children are now leaving the streets in favor of a screen.

    Several organizations are attempting to change this situation. One of these organizations is Play England, which aims to improve opportunities for children to play outside. A leading figure in the campaign is 50-year-old Adrian Voce, who has childhood memories of days spent in the "Big Woods" near his house with his older brothers. "We were given a packed lunch and told not to talk to strangers. I can still remember wandering in and out of each others' houses." he says.

    However, it is not only the children that Mr. Voce and his organization have to convince. In many cases the parents themselves block his efforts. A survey in 2014 found that 85 percent of adults agreed that it was important for children to be able to play safely in the road or street where they live. However, many of them were not prepared to park their cars an extra 50 meters away from their homes.

    Mr. Voce's attempts to encourage children to play outside include the organization of campaigns like National Playday. Hundreds of communities all over the country take part in this effort, yet it can take a lot of people to give children a taste of what it is like to play in the streets. On one street in Aldershot last year there were five policemen, three community support officers, a traffic management crew, a closed-circuit television van, and a team of "play workers."

    Society today has changed to such an extent that children do not feel safe on the streets and their parents no longer feel comfortable about letting them play there. It is not only the appeal of computers and video games that has driven children inside, but also the presence of traffic, crime, and violent young people. However, thanks to the efforts of people like Adrian Voce, it may not be too late to turn back the clock.

     Aspirin has long been praised as a wonder drug. An aspirin a day keeps the doctor away. Many Americans have been taking one aspirin a day, believing it would protect them from a heart attack a stroke(中风), and even a cancer. But several recent studies have thrown this into question. Daily use of aspirin can have serious side effects(副作用).

    One study followed more than 19,000 healthy people aged 65 and older. They were required to take either 100 mg of aspirin (a little more than the 81 mg dose that most people take) or a placebo(无效对照剂) every day for about years, Not only did people in the aspirin group not lower their risk of heart disease, or disability but they were also more likely to suffer from bleeding into the brain or stomach. And they were more likely to die because of an increased risk of giving in to cancer, Similarly, an experiment of more than 12. 500 people aged 55 and older who have a cardiovascular (心血管的)risk found no benefit to taking aspirin daily. In study of more than 15,000 people with diabetes(糖尿病), a daily aspirin did prevent heart attacks and strokes, but it also caused serious bleeding.

    Although some earlier research has proved that aspirin can help people who have already had or are at high risk for heart attacks or strokes, the drug's value is not so clear for people, especially older people,

    The bottom line is this: Be smart and be safe. You should not take daily low-dose aspirin without talking to a doctor if you.

    ● Are over the age of 70

    ● Drink wine regularly

    ●Are on any simple medical operations

    At first, Michael Surrell didn't see the black smoke or flames shooting from the windows of his neighbors' home. He and his wife had just parked around the corner from their own house, when they got a call from one of his daughters: "The house next door is on fire!" He went to investigate. That's when he saw two women and a girl panic-stricken on their doorway.

    "The baby's in there!" one of the women cried. Though the fire department had been called, Surrell, then 64, instinctively ran inside. "The baby" was 8-year-old Tiara, the woman's granddaughter.

    Entering the burning house was like "running into a bucket of black paint," Surrell says. The thick smoke caused him to struggle blindly around, burned his eyes, and made it impossible to breathe. The conditions would have been risky for anyone, but for Surrell, who has lung disease, they were life-threatening. After a few minutes in the smoke-filled house, he withdrew outside to catch his breath.

    "Where is Tiara?" he asked desperately. "The second floor," The woman shouted back. Taking a deep breath, he went in a second time. The darkness was overwhelming. Yet because the house had a similar design to his, Surrell found the stairs and made it to the second floor. He was already out of breath. Then a soft but distinct moan appeared. He crawled toward the sound, feeling around for any sign of the girl. Finally, he touched something. A shoe, then an ankle. He pulled Tiara into his arms. Turning, he fought through the smoke and ran blindly into the blackness. The next thing he knew, he was at the front door, then outside.

    Surrell woke up in the hospital a couple of days later, having suffered severe burns. Tiara was released from the hospital after a few days. "It's a small price to pay," Surrell says. "I'd do it again in a heartbeat. Wouldn't give it a second thought."

Josefa Marin went to New York from Mexico in 1987, supporting her daughter back home with the $140 a week she earned at a sweater factory. With that small income, she had to collect recyclables, trading in cans for five cents each.

When the clothing factory closed down in the late 2000s, she became a full-time recycler, picking up cans and bottles to make ends meet.

Marin's story is not unique. Millions around the world make a living from picking through waste and reselling it – a vital role that keeps waste manageable. In New York City, the administrative department collects only about 28 percent of the cans that could be recycled. Rubbish collectors keep millions of additional recyclables out of landfills every year.

Yet collectors are ruled out by government policies. The United States Supreme Court in 1988 stated that household garbage is public property once it's on the street. That enables police to search rubbish for evidence, but that protection hasn't always been extended to recyclers. And in places like New York City, which is testing city-owned locked containers to hide garbage from rats, containers are made clearly inaccessible for collectors.

"There's value in the waste, and we feel that value should belong to the people, not the city or the corporations", says Ryan Castalia, director of a nonprofit recycling and community center in Brooklyn.

Recognized or not, waste pickers have long been treated with disrespect. Marin recalls an occasion when someone living next to a building where she was collecting cans threw water at her. "Because I recycle it doesn't mean I am less of a person than anyone else," she says.

Some governments are starting to realize that protecting the environment and humanity go hand in hand. The United Nation's 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, for example, calls for an end to poverty and all the risks it brings.