Close your eyes for a minute and imagine what life would be like if you couldn’t see. Imagine having to read this page, not with your eyes but with your fingers. How do you feel, then?

    With medical knowledge and skills today, two-thirds of the world’s 42 million blind people should not have to suffer. Unluckily, rich countries have this knowledge, but developing countries do not.

    ORBIS is an international charitable (慈善的) organization. Its goal is to help fight blindness all over the world. Inside a DC-8 airplane, there is a teaching hospital with television room and classroom. Doctors are taught the latest technology of helping the blind get sight again here. ORBIS is always trying to keep a closer relation among countries.

    ORBIS helps those developing countries by providing sight-saving training. It has taught over 35,000 doctors and nurses. They continue to treat thousands of blind people every year. They have traveled around the earth 3 times, visited 76 countries and treated over 20,000 blind people. They need your help to continue their work and free people from blindness.

    For just $ 38, you can help one person see; for $ 380 10 people can see; $ 1,300 helps train a doctor new skills; and for $ 13,000 you can provide a training program for a group of doctors who can make thousands of blind people see again. Your love can help them open their eyes to the world.

2,000 British schoolchildren (5 to 16) are asked questions about success. Many people feel like it’s all about the money, but these children insist that the one true secret to success is being happy. Many children think the Queen is the most successful person in the world. They think she is more successful than pop star Taylor Swift and footballer David Beckham.

However, some things never change. When asked what they want to be when they grow up, “a footballer” becomes the most popular answer. There are also some interesting answers. Some children want to be forest explorers, YouTubers and computer gamers.

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Green is an important color in nature. It is the color of grass and the leaves on trees. It is the color of most growing plants, too.

Sometimes, the word green means young, fresh and growing. Sometimes, it describes something that is not yet finished or plants that are not ripe.

For example, a greenhorn is someone who has no experience, who is new to a situation. In the fifteenth century, a greenhorn was a young cow or ox whose horns had not yet developed. A century or so later, a greenhorn was a soldier who had not yet had any experience in war (战争). By the eighteenth century, a greenhorn had the meaning it has today--a person who is new in a job.

About one hundred years ago, greenhorn was a popular expression in the American west. Old-timers used it to describea man who had just arrived from one of the big cities in the e ast. The greenhorn didn’t have the skills that he would need to live in the hard,roughcountry.

Someone who has the ability to grow plants well is said to have a green thumb. The expression comes from the early nineteen hundreds.

A person with agreen thumb seems to have a magic touch that makes plants grow quickly and well. You might say that the woman next door has a green thumb if her garden continues to grow long after your plants have died.

The Green Revolution (革命) is the name which was given some years ago to the development of new kinds of rice and other grains. The new plants produced much larger crops. The Green Revolution was the result of hard work by agricultural (农业的) scientistswho hadgreen thumbs.

The United Nations said that the world’s population will increase from 7.2 billion today to 8.1 billion in 2025. By 2050, it will reach 9.6 billion.

According to the report on World Population Prospects（预测）, India’s population will surpass(超过) China’s in around 2028 when each of the two countries will have a population of around 1.45 billion.India’s population is expected to grow to around 1.6 billion and then slowlydeclineto 1.5 billion in 2100, while China’s will start decline after 2030, possibly fall to 1.1 billion in 2100.

According to the report, Nigeria’s population will surpass the US’s population before the middle of this century and Nigeria will start to take China’s place as the second-most populous（人口稠密的）country in the world by the end of this century. By 2050, Nigeria’s population will reach more than 440 million, and it will be nearly 914 million by 2100.

The population of developing countries will increase from 5.9 billion in 2013 to 8.2 billion in 2050. However, the population of developed countries will remain generally unchanged during that period, at around 1.3 billion.

Africa’s population will increase from 1.1 billion today to 2.4 billion in 2050, and may reach 4.2 billion by 2100.

The populations of several countries are expected to decline by more than 15% by 2050, includingBelarus,Bulgaria,Cuba,Latvia, Ukraine, etc.

Many of us love stories of time travel, aliens and the future. But Chinese science fiction has not been paid much attention until now. One work from a Chinese writer named Liu Cixin made it a hit around the world.

Liu Cixin was born in June, 1963 in Beijing. He began to work as a computer engineer in 1985. In 1989, he started creating science fiction. He wrote much science fiction. On August 23, 2015, he won the world’s top science fiction prize. He ‘s the first Asian to win the Hugo Award. Liu received the award for best Novel through his book The Three-Body Problem.

Liu’s winning work takes the readers back to China in the 1970s. In the book, scientists found a planet with three suns. The aliens on the planet created their own civilization(文明) called “three-body”. The aliens planned to invade(入侵) the Earth, but humans on the Earth started to form camps to protect themselves from danger.

Liu uses his professional background in computer engineering to write the book. His work is seen as “hard science fiction”, which aims for scientific accuracy(准确). Some people say this is why Liu’s novels stand out among other similar Chinese books.

Most importantly, Liu’s works bring joy to those who are unsure about the future. “People nowadays are locked in this small box of reality, but science fiction is a way to open our mind,” said Liu.