Few laws are so effective that you can see results just days after they take effect. But in the nine days since the federal cigarette tax more than doubled—to $1. 01 per pack—smokers have jammed telephone “quit lines” across the country seeking to kick the habit. 

This is not a surprise to public health advocates(提倡者）. They’ve studied the effect of state tax increases for years, finding that smokers, especially teens, are price sensitive. Nor is it a shock to the industry, which fiercely fights every tax increase. 

The only wonder is that so many states insist on closing their ears to the message. Tobacco taxes improve public health, health, they raise money and most particularly, theydeterpeople from taking up the habit as teens, which is when nearly all smokers are addicted. Yet the rate of taxation varies widely. 

In Manhattan, for instance, which has the highest tax in the nation, a pack of Marlboro Light Kings cost＄10.06 at one drugstore Wednesday. Charleston, S, C., where the 7-cent-a-pack tax is the lowest in the nation. The price was $4. 78. 

The influence is obvious. 

In New York, high school smoking hit a new low in the latest surveys—13.8%, far below the national average. By comparison, 26% of high school students smoke in Kentucky, Other low-tax states have similarly depressing teen-smoking records. 

Hal Rogers, Representative from Kentucky, like those who are against high tobacco taxes, argues that the burden of the tax falls on low-income Americans “who choose to smoke.”

That’s true, But there is more reason in keeping future generations of low-income workers from getting hooked in the first place, As for today’s adults, if the new tax drives them to quit, they will have more to spend on their families, cut their risk of cancer and heart disease and feel better. 

D

   The principal difference between urban growth in Europe and in the North American colonies was the slow evolution of cities in the former and their rapid growth in the latter. In Europe they grew over a period of centuries from town economies to their present urban structure. In North America, they started as wilderness communities and developed to mature urbanism in little more than a century.

   In the early colonial days in North America, small cities sprang up along the Atlantic Coastline, mostly in what are now New England and Middle Atlantic states in the United States and in the lower Saint Lawrence valley in Canada. This was natural because these areas were nearest to England and France, particularly England, from which most capital goods (资产) (such as equipment) and many consumer goods were imported. Merchandising establishments were, accordingly, advantageously located in port cities from which goods could be readily distributed to interior settlements. Here, too, were the favored locations for processing raw materials before export. Boston, Philadelphia, New York, Montreal, and other cities flourished, and, as the colonies grew, these cities increased in importance.

   This was less true in the colonial South, where life centered around large farms, known as plantations (种值园), rather than around towns, as was the case in the areas further north along the Atlantic coastline. The local isolation and the economic self—sufficiency of the plantations were antagonistic to the development of the towns. The plantations maintained their independence because they were located on navigable (可能航的) streams and each had a wharf (码头) accessible to the small shipping of that day. In fact, one of the strongest factors in the selection of plantation land was the desire to have its front on a water highway.

   When the United States became an independent nation in 1776, it did not have a single city as large as 50,000 inhabitants, but by 1820 it had a city of more than 100,000 people, and by 1880 it had recorded a city of over one million. It was not until after 1823, after the mechanization of the spinning had weaving industries, that cities started drawing young people away from farms. Such migration was particularly rapid following the Civil War (1861—1865).

Haagen-Dazs from Europe started in 1989 and is 5-10 times more expensive than regular ice cream. There is no real advantage. However, it adopted a unique marketing strategy, and quickly occupied the market as a top ice cream brand.

Haagen-Dazs did not set up shops in ordinary supermarkets or grocery stores. Haagen-Dazs leisure fashion shops are located in busy sections of malls. The layout is carefully planned to create an elegant atmosphere, and sometimes, a flagship (旗舰) store will cost several million dollars.

Compared to other ice cream brands, Haagen-Dazs consumers are tightly grouped. It is understood that Haagen-Dazs seldom does television advertising. The majority of advertisements are high impact visually in print advertisements. In particular many advertisements target the wealthy consumers. Moreover, if the consumer spends 500 Yuan they can become a member. These members will be regularly sent advertisements by direct mail. Praise of customers is a powerful weapon.

There is always much creative ingenuity in Haagen-Dazs advertising, so it is remembered by the people:

☆initial advertisements such as: “Delicious Haagen-Dazs, like 24K gold, Kobe beef from Japan, original palm oil, mushroom truffles and Chinese ceramics … what ‘ice cream’ was waiting for.”

☆“love her, let her eat Haagen-Dazs” This classic advertisement attracted numerous Haagen-Dazs lovers who became regulars.

Today, Haagen-Dazs has about 700 stores in 55 countries with annual sales of more than 1 billion US dollars. Haagen-Dazs has become the world’s most popular ice cream brand. In the United States, its market share is 6.1%, 1% in France, 4.6% in Japan, 4% in Singapore, and 5% in Hong Kong.

Determined to win the majority of wealthy customers they combined positioning in the marketplace with dedicated brand goals. This is the real secret of success.

    Foreign Minister Wang Yi took questions from the press during a news conference on the sidelines of the Two Sessions (两会) on Tuesday. Here are some of the highlights from Wang's remarks.

       The Group of Twenty (G20) Hangzhou Summit (峰会) is the most important diplomatic event China has hosted this year. We will try to break new ground from three new angles. First, we want to discover new sources of growth for innovation(创新). Second, we want to inject(注入) new power into the world economy through reform. And third, we want to explore new prospects through development.

       By not accepting the arbitration(仲裁) case filed by the Philippines, the Chinese government is acting entirely according to the law. The Philippines' practice is unlawful, unfaithful and unreasonable. Some people are trying to make waves (in the South China Sea) and some others are showing their forces. History will prove who is merely a guest and who the real host is.

       As far as China-Japan relations are concerned, the problem is that some politicians in Japan have the mistaken beliefs about China. Do they view China as a friend or enemy? As a partner or an adversary? The Japanese side should give serious thought to this question.

       In 2015, people from the Chinese mainland made 120 million traveling-aboard visits, a growth rate of almost 10%. More than 1 million Chinese are currently working overseas and nearly 2 million Chinese are studying overseas. We will do everything on our part to provide protection and bear in mind that diplomacy must serve the people.

       If Donald Trump is the world’s most colorful politician, Angela Merkel is probably the least. She is resolutely dull even by the standards of German politics. The new German verb “merkeln” means “to do nothing, make no decisions or statement”. She never talks about a “German dream”, and you will not see her campaign under the slogan, “Make Germany great again”.

      Even when she suddenly opened Germany’s borders to more than one million people last summer, she phrased this quixotic（唐吉可德式的）act in pragmatic(务实的) language: “Wir schaffen das,” “We can do this.” Germany’s centre has largely held since, despite big advances for the anti-immigrant Alternative für Deutschland in last Sunday’s regional elections. Even during the migrant crisis, most mainstream German politicians have remained boring pragmatists. Their aim: very slowly improve most people’s lives a little, while avoiding disaster.

       That distinguishes Germany from other large countries. In the US, France and Russia, politics is couched in the language of dreams, greatness, heroes and utopia. There are pragmatic political cultures and utopian ones, and, oddly, it’s the pragmatists who get closer to utopia.

       Utopian politicians raise high expectations that they can only disappoint. Every American president campaigns as a great leader who will restore the American dream but then governs in prose. Pretty soon people start complaining that he hasn’t delivered the American dream, but of course he hasn’t: by definition, dreams are not reality.

         Utopians rarely improve people’s lives a little. That’s partly because they are guided by hallowed old documents rather than by modern best practice. A daft old document is particularly damaging but even a wise one such as the American constitution often misleads. For instance, the main reason the US has more than 30,000 gun deaths a year is the second amendment, adopted in 1791.

        Most utopians don’t even strive to improve people’s lives. They aim for something greater. Russia annexed（吞并）the Crimea to regain imperial greatness, and no matter that western sanctions（制裁）then made Russian lives worse.

       In Germany, by contrast, dreams of greatness have been taboo since 1945. The first postwar chancellor Konrad Adenauer campaigned under the slogan: “No Experiments”. A later successor, Helmut Schmidt, famously advised: “Anyone who has visions should go to the doctor.”

     Merkel got an additional anti-utopian inoculation（预防）: she spent her first 35 years in a failed utopia, East Germany. She rarely tells her own story, perhaps for fear of sounding inspirational, but she graduated from Karl Marx University in Leipzig, and later, for her physics PhD, had to write an additional “Marxist-Leninist” thesis and her topic was the farmer-worker relationship in the farmer-worker state. She got a bad grade for overemphasizing the farmers.

      Freedom for Merkel means freedom from ideology（意识形态）, explains her German biographer Stefan Kornelius. She is the politician caring more about facts and analyses. Asked once on TV what the word “Germany” inspired in her, she replied: “Pretty, airtight windows.”

     Most northern European political cultures are similarly boring. I grew up in the Netherlands in the 1980s under another Christian Democratic leader, Ruud Lubbers, of whom it was said that when he read from the Bible at party meetings it sounded like a cookbook.      After 10 years in office he boasted: “I have made the Netherlands duller.”

      Britain has shifted towards this boring pragmatic tradition. Quietly and gradually, the country has dropped “Great” from its name. Even Brexit(英国退欧)campaigners aren’t selling imperial dreams; instead, they picture a brave little England signing trade deals alone.     Luckily, the UK has an escape valve（阀）that American politics lacks: all British fairytale fantasies can be projected on to the royals. That allows the prime minister to be just a functionary.

      Boring pragmatic functionaries often make people’s lives better. Northern European countries lead the world’s happiness rankings. Germany has cut unemployment to a historic low of 6.2 per cent without trashing its welfare state.

       But the pragmatists’ greatest achievement goes unseen: avoiding disaster. In John le Carré’s novel A Small Town in Germany, a British diplomat calls this his lifetime mission. He says, “Every night, as I go to sleep, I say to myself: another day achieved. Another day added to the unnatural life of a world on its deathbed. And if I never relax, if I never lift my eye, we may run on for another hundred years.”

           Germans understand the emotion. They experienced complete collapse in 1945, and then again under Merkel’s eyes in East Germany in 1989. She once said she possessed “competence in the early detection of collapsing systems”. When it looked as if the euro would collapse she told Bulgaria’s prime minister Boyko Borisov that the “Maya and other civilizations” had disappeared. In other words, today’s Europe could too. Her heroic task: keep politics boring.

China has announced it’s abolishing its one-child policy. What difference has it made, statistically speaking?

400 million births prevented

The one-child policy, officially in place since 1979, has prevented 400 million births. Parents have faced fines and other punishments for having more children.

The majority of the decrease in China’s fertility rate happened in the 1970s. It dropped from 5.8 children per woman in 1970 to 2.7 in 1978. Despite the one-child policy the rate had only fallen to by 2013.

21:28-baby deaths rate

Since the one-child policy was introduced, baby girls have become more likely to die than boys.

In the 1970s, according to the United Nations, 60 males per 1, 000 live births died under the age of one. For girls the figure was 53. In the 1980s, after the one-child policy became official, the rate for both was 36. By the 1990s, 26 males per 1,000 live births died before the age of one - and 33 girls. The 2000s saw 21 boys per 1,000 live births dying and 28 girls.

boys born for every girl

Sexually selective abortions have been considered as a major cause of China's unusual imbalance.

Gietel-Basten, associate professor in social policy at Oxford University, says the births of many girls are not registered if parents have broken the rule by having two children, adding officials often turn a blind eye. It's estimated there are now 33 million more men than women in China.

4: 2: 1 families

With the ageing of China's population and the continuation of the one-child policy, a“4: 2 :1” home is the description given to households in which there are four grandparents, cared for by two working age parents, who themselves have one child.

By 2050, it’s predicted that a quarter of China's population will be 65 or older. The predicted decline in the number of people of working age is thought to have persuaded the government to drop the one-child policy.

It was just over five years ago that we were waiting with decreased breath for Apple’s table!computer(平板电脑)．The company delivered．released its new creation，and set about redefining what a “tablet”could be．Remember?Table computers used to be heavy，folding laptops that ran Microsoft Windows and much terrible sofeware．The release of the new creation helped redraw that too1 in consumers’minds．No．this wasn’t the weighty thick of steel powered by UPS(不间断电源)any more；this was the future of the computer．

    I was always doubtful about them．Sure．they seemed wonderful and light and perfect for bed-based computing．But they weren’t the right type for a lot of the ways I used a computer．They were great for a meeting but less so for my desk．When I needed to finish a report carefully or design a page，I needed the accuracy of my otherwise anachronistic(过时的) mouse．And，most important of all，I already owned a laptop．like most people．Buying another computer seemed more of a“nice to have”than a“must have．”

    New figures from IDC，the market research firm，suggest that we’ve reached an upper limit for the modem tablet computer．According to the firm，shipments(发货)of the tool in the second quarter of this year dropped 7％worldwide compared to the same time last year．Apple and Samsung，the market leaders(41％ combined market share),each experienced a drop year over year as competitors like LG and Huawei exploded．

    But the overall market is minishing，just five years after it appeared．For good reason：Laptops continue to decrease—have you seen the latest Macbook?——and smartphones continue to grow,even as both get lighter and longer-lasting in terms of battery life．Tablets．stuck in the middle,still have their place．But the meaning of that place is decreasing.Not very encouraging for a young，new computing type．

    Are tablets dead?I don’t think so．They remain important to specialized uses，from hospitals to delivery trucks to sales meetings．Hundreds of millions continue to be sold every year．And some of their best qualities have been absorbed by the latest generation of laptops．(What is the new Macbook if not a touchscreen-lacking iPad with a keyboard and IOS X，Apple’s desktop operating system?) But from the looks of these numbers．tablets have an identity problem that can’t be ignored．

As the global financial crisis hits the economy, itˈs tough finding a job—especially if youˈre competing with thousands of other hopeful students. Sometimes you get the interview, but donˈt quite seem to land the job because you donˈt have related experience. Donˈt despair! Here are a few tips that might give you an edge.

★Get connected to your network and try to expand it. Talk to friends, family and acquaintances. Let everyone know you are looking for a job.

★Prepare your resume (个人简历) carefully and be sure itˈs perfect. Have someone else read it over for typos (打字错误) and grammatical errors. Get professional help. Itˈs worth the money to present yourself well. If money is tight, read books on resume writing from your public library or search for free help on the Internet.

★When you apply for a job, be sure you match and list any skills listed on the posting with the skills you have. If you get an interview, be sure to describe those skills thoroughly. Just having the skills is not enough. Expressing your abilities well can make all the difference in getting the job.

★Research typical interview questions and practice interviewing. Be well prepared for every interview.

★Donˈt be afraid to accept a position for which you are overqualified—if thereˈs room for advancements. Many great job advancements come from first doing well at an entry­level position. If you have the right skills and attitude, it wonˈt be long before youˈre in the job you want.

★Volunteer for a few weeks in your field of study to gain experience if you feel your resume needs an improvement.

★When deciding what to wear for an interview, think about the position level and the dress code of the organization.

★Use every tool available to you. For example, this site has many job links for your use.

Good luck!

  A new United Nations report shows that fish farming may soon be the world’s most important provider of fish. The Food and Agriculture Organization says fish farming is growing at a rate of 6.6 percent a year.

         Fish farming now produces forty-six percent of the world’s supply of fish. That represents a forty-three percent increase from 2006. The report also said fish farming earned more money in 2008 than traditional fisheries.

         In fish farming, fish are raised in tanks or small bodies of water called ponds. They are also raised in cages or nets in oceans, lakes and rivers. The report says increased fish farming has helped people around the world eat record amounts of fish. The FAO says each person ate an average of almost seventeen kilograms of fish last year.

         However, the FAO says the current(当前的) yearly wild-fish harvest of ninety million tons shows no improvement. Decreasing numbers of fish and stronger catch limits have reduced the possibilities for catching wild fish. The FAO report says about thirty-two percent of world supplies are overfished. It says these supplies of fish need to be rebuilt at once.

         Some scientists have criticized fish farming. They say the nets and cages permit fish diseases and pests to spread. Some fish farming critics doubt whether fish farming can keep growing at the current rate. But Wally Stevens of the trade group Global Aquaculture Alliance says the industry must continue developing to feed growing populations. Mr. Stevens says a one hundred percent increase in fish farming over ten years is necessary to keep providing for people at the current level. He notes that fish farming creates jobs and wealth, especially for people in coastal areas of China.