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Uncivilized behavior by passengers unacceptable

For the first time, airline passengers have been blacklisted for uncivilized behavior. Their names will remain on the blacklist for one or two years, according to an announcement by the China Air Transport Association on Saturday. The blacklisting means they will not be able to travel by air until their names are removed from the list.

Blacklisting passengers who disobey the rules for travelling by air and so place their own interests before everything else, including safety, has long been overdue (迟到的，延迟的).

There have been frequent reports of passengers making a scene when their flight was delayed or when they believed that they were not treated as they should be on a flight.

Yet it is natural for some flights to be delayed because of reasons such as bad weather or mechanical problems that need to be solved. However, some passengers seem to take it for granted that their flight must take off at the time stated on their ticket, and they even assume that the members of the cabin crew are simply there to do their bidding(吩咐).

They forget that they should behave themselves in the first place and that respect is reciprocal (互相给与的).There is no reason for them to be respected when they do not show enough respect for others.

Observing rules can never be over-emphasized when it comes to flight safety. No one has the right to disregard the rules for any reason. Of course, airlines should provide quality services to meet the needs of passengers. Yet, even if passengers are not satisfied with the service provided, there is still no reason for them to flout the rules that are designed for the safety of all.

The blacklisting of these three passengers should serve for others to know they have to toe the line (顺从集体).

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   A beach in Bodrum, a resort city in Turkey, saw the horror of human tragedy on Sept 2. A little boy, dressed in a red shirt and blue shorts, lay face down in the sand. Sadly, 3-year-old Alan Kurdi would never wake up again.

   Alan drowned along with at least 12 Syrians, including his 5-year-old brother and mother. They were on a journey from Turkey to Greece. Trying to make their simple but dangerous dream of a safe home a reality, they paid with their lives.

   The tragic photographs of Alan’s lifeless body shocked the world. “What has drowned in the Mediterranean (地中海) is not only the refugees, but humanity,” said Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

   Refugees, according to the UN, are people escaping war or persecution (迫害). Their situation is often so dangerous that they cross national borders to look for safety in nearby countries. The Kurdis wanted to head for Europe by crossing to the Greek island of Kos from Bodrum by boat.

   Escaping to Europe

   The Kurdis’ tragedy was just one story from over 1,800 people who have died in the first six months of this year while trying to cross the Mediterranean to Europe, according to statistics released by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), on July 1. Together with refugees from Syria, Afghanistan, Eritrea, Somalia and Nigeria, “migrants who are journeying to Europe from Africa and the Middle East have seen a sharp climb this year”, reported ABC News.

   Migrants, however, are not necessarily refugees. A migrant may leave his or her country for many reasons apart from war, terrorism (恐怖主义), and persecution. They may seek employment, life with their family, or study in another country.

   European countries have taken different approaches to the crisis. Germany and France are opening their doors to more asylum (避难) seekers, those who say they are refugees but the status has not been decided by the UNHCR or a government. On Sept 8, reported the Associated Press, German’s vice-chancellor Sigmar Gabriel said his country could take in 500,000 refugees every year for the next several years. According to Fox News, Germany, the largest economy in Europe, is expecting to take in 800,000 refugees in 2015. And on Sept 7, France said it would take 24,000 refugees over two years. Other countries, such as Poland, Hungary, Slovakia and the Czech Republic, have been unwilling to take a large number of refugees for various reasons including economic problems and safety concerns.

   Despite disagreements among EU members, the UN’s Refugee Chief Antonio Guterres said the crisis was “manageable” if member states could agree a joint plan.  

I love charity shops and so do lots of other people in Britain because you find quite a few of them on every high street. The charity shop is a British institution, selling everything from clothes to electric goods, all at very good prices. You can get things you won’t find in the shops anymore. The thing I like best about them is that your money is going to a good cause and not into the pockets of profit-driven companies, and you are not damaging the planet, but finding a new home for unwanted goods.

The first charity shop was opened in 1947 by Oxfam. The famous charity’s appeal to aid postwar Greece had been so successful that it had been flooded with donations. They decided to set up a shop to sell some of these donations to raise money for that appeal. Now there are over 7,000 charity shops in the UK. My favorite charity shop in my hometown is the Red Cross shop, where I always find children’s books, all 10 or 20 pence each.

Most of the people working in the charity shops are volunteers, although there is often a manager who gets paid. Over 90% of the goods in the charity shops are donated by the public. Every morning you see bags of unwanted items outside the front of shops, though they don’t encourage this. They would rather ask people to bring things in when the shop is open.

The shops have very low running costs: all profits go to charity work. Charity shops raise more than ￡110 million a year, funding  medical research, overseas aid, supporting sick and poor children, homeless and disabled people, and much more. What better place to spend your money? You get something special for a very good price and a good moral sense. You provide funds to a good cause and tread lightly on the environment.

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   Spring is coming, and it is time for those about to graduate to look for jobs. Competition is tough, so job seekers must carefully consider their personal choices. Whatever we are wearing，our family and friends may accept us, but the workplace may not.

   A high school newspaper editor said it is unfair for companies to discourage visible tattoos (纹身）nose rings, or certain dress styles. It is true you can’t judge a book by its cover, yet people do “cover” themselves in order to convey (传递)certain messages. What we wear, including tattoos and nose rings, is an expression of who we are. Just as people convey messages about themselves with their appearances, so do companies. Dress standards exist in the business world for a number of reasons, but the main concern is often about what customers accept.

   Others may say how to dress is a matter of personal freedom, but for businesses it is more about whether to make or lose money. Most employers do care about the personal appearances of their employees, because those people represent the companies to their customers.

   As a hiring manager I am paid to choose the people who would make the best impression on our customers. There are plenty of well-qualified candidates, so it is not wrong to reject someone who might disappoint my customers. Even though I am open-minded, I can’t expect all our customers are.

   There is nobody to blame but yourself if your set of choices does not match that of your preferred employer. No company should have to change to satisfy a candidate simply because he or she is unwilling to respect its standards, as long as its standards are legal.

A story from the Bible tells of old Babylon, where the men decided to build a tower that would touch the sky．But God was unhappy, and he made them speak different languages．They couldn’t understand each other, so their dream never came true．

Yet the dream remains alive: if all men speak the same language, they can do anything. L.L.Zamenhof from Poland was among the men who pursue this dream．He developed Esperanto（世界语）between 1877 and 1885．

As the most successful man-made world language, it is spoken by over two million people around the world．Last month, the World Esperanto Congress（大会）, dealing with language rights, ended in Sweden．The 2004 conference will be held in Beijing．Most Esperanto speakers are in Central and Eastern Europe and in East Asia, particularly Chinese mainland．

Esperanto has two advantages．First, it’s easy．Each letter has exactly one sound and there are just 16 basic grammar rules．The second advantage is that it belongs to no one country．But Esperanto has only reached a small number of people compared with natural languages widely used around the world-such as English or Chinese．While these languages are deeply connected with their nations and cultures, Esperanto doesn’t have this background．

Will Esperanto really become a global language? It remains a question．

Did you feel bored and lonely or did you want to make new friends? Do long working hours make it difficult for you to get out and about to meet new people? Maybe you or your friends have moved to a new area and this has left you feeling lonely.

Even if you are already the proverbial (公认的) social butterfly you may still find that your existing friends do not share the same interests and feelings with you. You may have a satisfying social life, but you still find you have no one to travel with. You may have your circle of friends, but find that none of them will go with you for the activities or sports that interest you most. These are just a few of the reasons why millions of people search online to find new friends.

Matchmaking websites are good tools to help you make friends online. Profile matching technologies enable you to search for new friends by age, gender, location, interests and much more. You can make friends near you or anywhere in the world and learn about new countries, cultures and lifestyles.

Making friends online is easy and anonymous (匿名的) as members get to know you by your username only. You can get in touch with members by sending private messages, joining in discussion or sharing online chat.

When you are ready, you can take your new friendships into the real world by arranging meetings to share your common interests. If you prefer to meet in numbers, you can join or create your own Local Groups for members to join to share interests and activities near you.

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     For starters, I was surprised when during our first conversational Hindi (印度语) lesson we learned the word for "thank you" doesn't really exist in Hindi. Okay, so there technically is a word, but it's really only recognized and used in the cities, where there is more of a Western influence.  In the mountains, it is seldom used, and what's more, people often seemed annoyed when we would try to thank them.  They would either turn their heads, or shake their hands at us as if to say, "Don't, it's not necessary."

     When we asked our Indian instructors why this is, they explained that giving and generosity are such complete aspects of their culture. In fact, it is part of the culture to view possession as a very unsteady thing. Giving is more of a matter of "changing hands" than an act of generosity. In their eyes, the cucumbers and other food they would give us were never really "theirs". They see them as having passed along to them and now they are simply passing them along to us.

     I believe there is a great sense of generosity in Western culture, but it seems to be more of a secondary thought. In other words, the viewpoint seems to be, "If I have enough, I will happily donate my surplus (盈余)."Whereas in the Himalayas, the villagers were eager to give away their best cucumbers to a passing stranger, and they would have happily given more even when it means less for them. In contrast, people in the U. S. tend to donate old, used, or unwanted items rather than their prized ones.

     Interestingly, during a coffee chat a couple of months ago, one of my friends, Josh Millburn, was telling me about how he donated his favorite clothes and shoes - just for the experience of giving up the possessions he likes most as well as to practice detaching (分派) for material things. So, this is something we as Westerners can certainly do, but it doesn't come wholly into our culture. It's something we have to make ourselves consciously aware of and push ourselves outside of our comfort zones to achieve.

There are many older people in the world and there will be many more. A lime­known fact is that over 60 percent of the older people live in developing countries. According to the World Health Organization，by 2020 there will be 1 billion，with over 700 million living in developing countries.

It is a surprising fact that the population ageing is particularly rapid in developing countries. For example，it took France 115 years for the proportion of older people to double from 7 percent to 14 percent. It is estimated to take China a mere 27 years to achieve this same increase.

What are the implications of these increased numbers of older folk？One of the biggest worries for governments is that the longer people live，the more likelihood there is for diseases and for disability. Attention is being paid to the need to keep people as healthy as possible，including during old age，to lessen the financial burden on the state.

Another significant problem is the need for the younger generations to understand and value the older people in their society. In some African countries，certainly in Asia，older people are  respected and regarded as the ones with special knowledge. Yet traditions are fading away daily，which does not ensure the continued high regard of older people. As society changes，attitudes will change.

Much needs to be done to get rid of age discrimination (歧视) in employment. Life­long learning programs need to be provided to enable older people to be active members in a country’s development.

Social security policies need to be established to provide adequate income protection for older people. Both public and private schemes are vital in order to build a suitable safety net.

To achieve equality in such matters will take considerable time and effort. One thing is sure：there is no time to be lost.

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The biggest threat to the future of Oxfordshire’s economy (经济) is transport.

That is the key finding of a major new report which interviewed more than 120 county firms. The results show 76 percent of the company owners and directors believe traffic jams and the quality of transport are affecting their business.

More than 30 percent say this is costing them dearly in the form of extra fuel costs, while some say the situation of being stuck in jams on key roads such as the A34 and A40 every day is making it harder to employ workers.

But lack (缺乏) of safer cycling plans is encouraging 72 percent of people to continue to go to work by car.

The report has led the government to try to work out a solution to the situation on the county’s crowded roads.

Nicola Blackwood, an official of Oxfordshire, recently brought transport minister Stephen Hammond to the county and said he became stuck in a traffic jam on the A34.

As a result, he has promised that he will aim to look at entire roads, rather than individual projects such as improving junctions (交叉路口).

Ms Blackwood said: “If we are able to achieve anything like our economic growth, we need to solve the problems that not only affect the new companies but also the growth of existing local businesses. What I want to see most of all is the quick production of a plan to solve the problem of the A34.”

John Cardy, co-founder of Garden Games, said he had considered moving his business from a farm in Garford to Witney but traffic fears had made him reconsider. He added: “Most of our employees were not prepared to use the A40 which is always crowded.”

Ellen and Bill County are both teachers. They met in college and became good friends because of their shared love for children. Two years after the couple got married, Ellen saw a huge change in the life of one of her students, a 9-year-old girl. Three years earlier both of the little girl’s parents had died and there was no one to take care of her. She was taken away to live in a government office. But finally she was taken in and adopted(收养) by a family and became their daughter. Ellen said that she noticed the difference in the child’s life after she was placed in permanent home and thought that maybe she and her husband could help a child in the same way.

They decided to become temporary parents and to take a child into their home on the weekends when the real parents could not take care of her or him. The pair planned to have their own children in a few years, but decided that this would be a way to give to the community in the meantime.

The couple quickly grew to love one of the children they looked after, when he became legally available, Bill became the first child they took in permanently. Six months after adopting Billy, Ellen was told by her doctor that she was unable to have children naturally. Ellen says she knew then that adoption was the way she was meant to have a family.

Since adopting Billy, now 17, Ellen and Bill have adopted five more children—Rose, 16; Albert, 11; Joshua 5 and in June 2003, they added biological brother and sister Tyler and Rylee to the County family.

The County family has been recognized for their work on adoption, and has received many awards for their efforts. Last June, the family was even interviewed on the television show, “Adoption Stories”.

Ellen says she would like to encourage other families to adopt children. She adds that the best part of being a mother of six is “Giving Josh a bath, putting a ban-aid on a cut knee or just the everyday Mom things, that makes motherhood such an honor and a privilege.”