In June 2014, two leading media in America reported that three-year-old Victoria Wilcher, who suffered facial scarring, was kicked out of a KFC because she was a frightening customer. Later, KFC announced that no evidence had been found to support the story. This phenomenon is largely a product of the increasing pressure in newsrooms that care more about traffic figures.

    Brooke Binkowski, an editor, says that she has seen a shift towards less responsibility in newsrooms. “Clickbait is king, so newsrooms will uncritically print something unreal. Not all newsrooms are like this, but a lot of them are.”

    Asked what the driving factor was, a journalist said, “You've a strict editor and you've to meet your targets. And some young journalists are inexperienced and will not do those checks. So much news reported online happens online. There is no need to get out and knock on someone's door. You just sit at your desk and do it.”

    Another journalist says, “More clicks equal more money. At my former employer in particular, the pressure was due to the limited resources. That made the environment quite horrible to work in.”

    In a Feb. 2015 report for Digital Journalism, Craig Silverman wrote, “Today the bar for what is worth giving attention to seems to be much lower. Within minutes or hours, a badly sourced report can be changed into a story that is repeated by dozens of news websites, resulting in tens of thousands of shares. The rumor becomes true for readers simply by virtue of its ubiquity.”

    And, despite the direction that some newsrooms seem to be heading in, a critical eye is becoming more, not less important, according to the New York Times' public editor, Margaret Sullivan. “Reporters and editors have to be more careful than ever before. It's extremely important to question and to prove before publication.” Yet those working in newsrooms talk of doubtful stories being tolerated. In the words of some senior editors, “a click is a click, regardless of the advantage of a story”. And, “if the story does turn out to be false, it's simply a chance for another bite at the cherry.”

Yellowstone Weather

    Yellowstone National Park is at high altitude. Most of the park is above 7,500 feet (2,275 meters).

    Yellowstone's weather is unpredictable. In summer, it may be warm and sunny with temperatures in the high 70s. At night in any given month, the temperature may drop close to freezing. So it is best to come prepared for cold evenings and mornings, especially if you are camping or hiking. When you leave your campsite, please leave it prepared for possible thundershowers and wind.

    A sunny warm day may become fiercely stormy with wind, rain, sleet and sometimes snow. Without enough clothing, and easy day hike or boat trip can turn into a battle for survival.

    SILVER SPRING, MARYLAND — Student engagement (参与) is a goal in schools everywhere. A teacher in the Washington suburbs has found a way to engage and motivate students — by ringing rhythm and fun to mathematics. The approach works well especially for students who speak English as a second language.

Making math fun

The voice heard in the video belongs to mathematics teacher Jake Scott. Most of the performers are his students. "I use rap because it is something that appeals to the students, and also because music aids memory," Scott explains.

    Scott started using rap videos three years ago. So far he has produced nine, including

Scott started using rap videos three years ago. So far he has produced nine, including YouTube favorites Triangle Experts and Quadratic Formulatic, which have been viewed tens of thousands of times. "It is fun and the whole process is something that students appreciate," Scott says.

    Empowering students

    Blair High School principal Renay Johnson is a big supporter. She even appears in Scott's latest video, Undefined Expressions.

"Mr. Scott is very motivating and engaging for students," Johnson notes. "He enjoys what he does. As you know he engages students and mathematics through music. But he is also our wrestling coach. He also sponsors National Honor Society. And he is also a director of after school sports academy. I am lucky to have him here as a teacher."

    Scott was recognized as an outstanding educator last year by the Montgomery County Council. He was also honored as 2011 teacher of the year by an African-American civil rights organization.

    Jake Scott says he wants mathematics to be something that students look forward to learning. And he says the results will help them on a path to college and a career.

    According to official government figures, there are more than twice as many kangaroos as people in Australia, and many Australians consider them pests(有害动物). Landholding farmers say that the country's estimated 50 million kangaroos damage their crops and compete with livestock for scarce resources. Australia's insurance industry says that kangaroos are involved in more than 80 percent of the 20,000-plus vehicle-animal collisions reported each year. In the country's underpopulated region, the common belief is that kangaroo numbers have swollen to “plague proportions."

    In the absence of traditional hunters, the thinking goes, killing kangaroos is critical to balancing the ecology and boosting the rural economy. A government-sanctioned(政府认可的) industry, based on the commercial harvest of kangaroo meat and hides, exported $29 million in products in 2017 and supports about 4,000 jobs. Today meat, hides, and leather from kangaroos have been exported to 56 countries. Global brands such as Nike, Puma, and Adidas buy strong, supple “k-leather" to make athletic gear. And kangaroo meat is finding its way into more and more grocery stores.

    Advocates point out that low-fat, high-protein kangaroo meat comes from an animal more environmentally friendly than greenhouse gas-emitting sheep and cattle. John Kelly, former executive director of the Kangaroo Industry Association of Australia, says, “Harvesting our food and fibers from animals adapted to Australia's fragile rangelands is extremely wise and sustainable. Many ecologists will tell you that there is no more humane way of producing red meat."

    Opponents(反对者) of the industry call the killing inhumane, unsustainable, and unnecessary. Population estimates are highly debatable, they say, but “plague proportions" are biologically implausible. Little kangaroos grow slowly, and many die, so kangaroo populations can expand by only 10 to 15 percent a year, and then only under the best of circumstances. Dwayne Bannon-Harrison, a member of the Yuin people of New South Wales, says the idea that kangaroos are destroying the country is laughable. “They've been walking this land a lot longer than people have," he says. “How could something that's been here for thousands of years be 'destroying' the country? I don't understand the logic in that."

    Can Australians' conflicting attitudes toward kangaroos be reconciled(和解)? George Wilson says that if kangaroos were privately owned, then graziers(放牧人)—working independently or through wildlife conservancies—would protect the animals, treating them as possessions. They could feed them, lease them, breed them and charge hunter a fee for access. “If you want to conserve something," Wilson says, “you have to give it a value. Animals that are considered pests don't have value."

    Privatization could also help reduce grazing pressures. If kangaroos were more valuable than cattle or sheep, farmers would keep less live-stock, which could be good for the environment. Under this scheme, landholders would work with the kangaroo industry on branding, marketing and quality control. The government's role would be oversight and regulation.

    After finishing a meal at an American Chinese restaurant you probably expect to receive a handful of fortune cookies after you pay the bill. Fortune cookies are in Chinese restaurants throughout the United States. It's rather satisfying to crack open a cookie at the end of your meal and read your “lucky fortune” on the slip of paper inside.

    The exact origin of the fortune cookie is unknown. It is thought that the tasty snack was the first introduced into San Francisco in 1914, after an immigrant began distributing the cookie with “thank you” notes in them. These “thank you” notes were intended as symbols of appreciation for friends who stood with him through the economic hardship and discrimination of his early life in America.

    There is an alternate origin story. Los Angeles is regarded as the site of the fortune cookie's invention. In this version of the story, David Jung, a Chinese immigrant residing in L. A., is thought to have created the cookie in order to uplift the spirits of the poor and homeless. In 1918, Jung handed out the cookies for free to the poor outside his shop and each cookie contained a strip of paper with an inspirational sentence printed on it.

    Fortune cookies first began to gain popularity in mainstream American culture during WWII. Chinese restaurants would serve them in place of desserts, as desserts were not popular in traditional Chinese cuisine. Today fortune cookies are not tied to Chinese-American culture. In fact, the largest fortune cookie manufacturer is located in the United States and it produces 4.5 million fortune cookies a day —— an evidence to the modern-day popularity of the snack. However, an attempt to introduce the fortune cookie to China in 1992 was a failure, and the cookie was cited for being “too American.”

    So the next time you break open a fortune cookie and read a fortune about the many successes you should expect in your future, remember that the conclusion to your Chinese restaurant meal may not be as Chinese as you think.

    Over the past 40 years, China has helped more than 700 million rural residents out of being poor, and the poverty rate(贫困率) — the proportion of people living below the Chinese poverty line — had fallen among the rural population from 97.5 percent in 1978 to 3.1 percent at the end of 2017, official figures shows. China's achievements in poverty alleviation(扶贫) made the world look at China with admiration.

    "For me, it is unbelievable that over 40 years, that is, over the course of one working lifetime, China has gone from one of the poorest countries in the world to one that is about to eliminate(消除) absolute poverty," said Craig Allen, president of the US-China Business Council.

    Varaprasad Sekhar Dolla, a professor of Chinese studies at India's Jawaharlal Nehru University, also spoke highly of China's achievements in poverty reduction. "If global poverty came down greatly in the last three or four decades, it's partly because of the Chinese contribution to reducing poverty within its own national boundaries," said the Indian scholar.

    In the eyes of Khairy Tourk, a professor of economics with the Stuart School of Business at the Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago, "many countries look up to China to learn from its experience." "The Chinese experience is based on building a modern infrastructure(基础设施) and then on setting up special economic zones that would help underdeveloped countries to become more industrial," he added.

    In the government work report delivered at the opening of the annual NPC session (全国人大会议) on March 5, China promises to reduce its population of rural poor by over 10 million this year.