Americans have always been interested in their Presidents' wives. Many First Ladies have been remembered because of the ways they have influenced their husbands. Other First Ladies have made the history books on their own.

     At least two First Ladies, Bess Truman and Lady Bird Johnson, made it their business to send signals during their husbands speeches. When Lady Bird Johnson thought her husband was talking too long, she wrote a note and sent it up to the platform. It read, "It's time to stop ! " And he did.  Once Bess Truman didn't like what  her husband was saying on television, so she phoned him and said, "If you can't talk more politely than that in public, you come right home. "

      It was First Lady Helen Taft's idea to plant the famous cherry trees in Washington, D. C. Each spring these blossoming trees attract thousands of visitors to the nation's capital Mrs. Taft also influenced the male members of her family and the White House staff in a strange way: she persuaded them to shave off their beards(胡须) !

     Shortly after President Woodrow Wilson suffered a stroke (中风),  Edith Wilson unofficially took over most of the duties of the Presidency until the end of her husband's term  Earlier, during World War I, Mrs.  Wilson had sheep brought onto the White House lawn to eat t e grass. The sheep not only kept the lawn cut. but provided wool for an auction(拍卖) held by the First Lady. Almost$ 100,000 was raised for the Red Cross.

     One of the most famous First Ladies was Eleanor Roosevelt, the wife of President Franklin D. Roosevelt. She was active in political and. social causes throughout her husband's term in office After his death, she became famous for her humanitarian(人道主义的) work in the United Nations. She made life better for thousands of needy people around the world.

China’s online retailers(零售商)are busy preparing for what has become the country’s annual online shopping festival on November 11.

November 11 is a date made up of four ones, and“double eleven”has always been considered a special day for single men and women in China. Five years ago the Internet retailer Alibaba began promoting it as a shopping festival, and it has now turned to be the country’s busiest day for online retailers and millions of shopping lovers.

JD. com is trying to attract more retailers by offering them free delivery service for a month. Alibaba itself has invited some 30, 000 offline stores to participate in the online shopping party. More than 20, 000 vendors on Alibaba’s sites——Tmall and Taobao are promising 50 percent discounts on the day. Shanghai- based Yhd. com, also called Yihaodian, a Chinese e-commerce company that is majority-owned by Wal-Mart Stores, is setting up a special sale of imported foods.

Last year Alibaba earned 19. 1 billionyuan in sales during the double eleven promotions. And a 100 billion yuanlogistics(物流)network was set up by Alibaba this May that aims to make 24-hour deliveries possible.

The major logistics player Shentong shipped more than 8 million items during“double eleven. ”Shentong has more than 150, 000 staff, and expects things to be even busier this year. Yang Jinghai, director of Human Resources of Shentong Express, says, “We have hired 30 percent more staff for double eleven, and we have couriers’(快递员)bonuses ready. ”

On double eleven China’s e-commerce sites receive more visits than the entire population of Brazil. It is believed that China will replace the US as the world’s top e-commerce market this year.

Prices determine hot resources which are to be used. They are also the means by which products and services that are in limited supply are rationed（定量分配）among buyers. The price system of the United States is very complex network made up of the prices of all the products bought and sold in the economy as well as those of a variety of services, including labor, professional transportation, and public facilities. The interrelationships of all these prices make up the system of prices. The price of any particular product or service is linked to a broad, complicated system of prices in which everything seems to depend more or less upon everything else.

    If one wants to ask a group of randomly selected individuals to define “price”, many would reply that price is an amount of money paid by buyer to the seller of a product or service, in other words, that price is the money value of a product or service as agreed upon in a market transaction. This definition is, of course, reasonable as far as it goes. For a complete understanding of a price in any particular transaction, much more than the amount of money involved must be known. Both the buyer and the seller should be familiar with not only the money amount, but with the amount and quality of the product or service to be exchanged, the time and place at which the exchange will take place and payment will be made, the form of money to be used, the credit terms and discounts that supply to the transaction, guarantees on the product or service, delivery terms, return privileges, and other factors. In other words, both buyer and seller should be fully aware of all the factors that make up the total “package” being exchanged for the asked-for amount of money in order that they may evaluate a given price.

Why doesn’t the unemployment rate ever reach zero? Economists, who generally believe that supply tends to meet demand, have long thought about this question. Even in good times, i.e. not now, there are people who can’t find work. And even in bad times, i.e. now, there are job openings. With over 14 million people out of work and looking for a job, you would think every available job would be filled. But that’s not the case. Not now and not ever.

      On Monday, the Nobel Prize committee awarded the prize for economics to the three scholars who have done the most to explain this phenomenon. Two of the winners are Americans, Peter Diamond of MIT and Dale Mortensen of Northwestern. The third winner is Christopher Pissarides, who teaches at the London School of Economics and was born on Cyprus.

      Like most economists, what they have found about why the jobless and ready-employers don’t find each other seems obvious. You have to find out there is job opening you are interested in. Employers need to get resumes. It takes a while for both employers and employees to make the decision that this is what they want. And these guys came up with a framework to study the problem of why people stay unemployed longer than they should and what can be done about it.

      So what would today’s Nobel Prize winners do to solve the current problem of the unemployed? And does the awarding of the prize contribute to the politicians’ lowering joblessness?

      Speaking from his north London home, Pissarides told The Associated Press the announcement came as “a complete surprise” though his work had already helped shape thinking on both sides of the Atlantic.

      For example, the New Deal for Young People, a British government policy aimed at getting 18-24-year-olds back on the job market after long periods of unemployment, “It is very much based on our work,” he said.

      “One of the key things we found is that it is important to make sure that people do not stay unemployed too long so they don’t lose their feel for the labor force,” Pissarides told reporters in London. “The ways of dealing with this need not be expensive training – it could be as simple as providing work experience.”