Item oneJudith Wallerstein studied 93 children over a generation. Her findings haven’t been published in a medical journal, only in her book.She says children of divorce are more likely to abuse drugs, and that 40 percent of them avoid marriage themselves. When they do marry, fail at nearly twice the usual rate.Wallerstein’s families divorced a generation ago. Times have changed and with them the attitude toward divorce and the attention to divorce’s innocent victims.“In our parents’generation people who got divorced didn’t talk about it, they were embarrassed by it.”Programs like Kid’s Turn try to mitigate some of the effects of divorce with family counseling. So the next generation more aware of the trauma may be better equipped to handle it.Item twoMondays are generally seen as the worst day of the week because people feel grumpy and tired at having to go back to work after a weekend with a different sleep pattern.However, it’s not all bad! Many people feel optimistic at this time, that things can only get better. Psychologists offer suggestions of how to combat feeling blue. These include spending 15 minutes doing “gratitude exercises” thinking about and writing down what you are grateful for, such as health, family, friends and so on.Taking up a new hobby, doing some exercise, going to bed earlier, eating a healthy breakfast, and listening to some uplifting music, are all recommended as ways to feel more cheerful.Item threeWe are not born with courage, but neither are we born with fear. Maybe some of your fears are brought on by your own experiences, by what someone has told you, or by what you’ve read in the papers. Fears, even the most basic ones, can totally destroy our ambitions. Fears can destroy fortunes. Fears can destroy relationships. Fears, if left unchecked, can destroy our lives. Do battle with the enemy. Do battle with your fears. Build your courage to fight what’s holding you back, what’s keeping you from your goals and dreams. Be courageous in your life and in your pursuit of the tings you want and the person you want to become.Item fourCollege graduation brings both the satisfaction of academic achievement and the expectation of a well-paying job. But for 6,000 graduates at San Jose State this year, there’s uncertainty as they enter one of the worst job markets in decades. Ryan Stewart has a freshly minted degree in religious studies, but no job prospects.When the class of 2003 entered college the future never looked brighter. But in the four years they’ve been here, the world outside these gates has changed dramatically.Ryan Stewart may just end up going back to school.“I’d like to teach college some day and that requires going to more school, which would be great in a bad economy.”To some students a degree may not be the ticket to instant wealth. For now, they can only hope that its value will increase over time.Item fiveOn February 28th, 2003, the Vietnam-France Hospital in Hanoi asked Carlo Urbani for help. The Italian doctor was an expert on communicable diseases. He was based in Vietnam for the World Health Organization.The hospital asked Doctor Urbani to help identify an unusual infection. He recognized it as a new threat. He made sure other hospitals increased their infection-control measures.On March 11th, Doctor Urbani developed signs of severe acute respiratory syndrome. Four days later, the World HealthOrganization declared it a worldwide health threat.Carlo Urbani was the first doctor to warn the world of the disease that became known as SARS. He died of it on March 29th, 2003. He was 46 years old.Item sixLance Armstrong was born on September 18, 1971. Athletic from the start, Lance became a professional athlete by the age of 16. Lance entered his first Tour de France in 1995. Unfortunately, in October of 1996, everything changed. Lance was diagnosed with testicular cancer. With chances of recovery less than 50%, Lance began a course of treatment that would include two surgeries and chemotherapy. Remarkably, though, just five months after his initial diagnoses, Lance was back on a bike rebuilding the strength he had lost. Lance went on to fully recover and, amazingly, win the Tour de France a record seven times since his bout with cancer. He is a beacon of hope and a source of inspiration.Item sevenThe latest fashion on British TV is Reality TV. Reality TV means that shows follow and film ordinary people in artificial situation. This could be at work, or in some kind of competition.One of the first and most popular Reality TV shows is Big Brother. In this show, 15 complete strangers have to live together in a house for 11 weeks. They are filmed 24hours a day, and shown on television. Each week, the viewers vote to evict one of the housemates. Finally, only one is left, and they win the prize money----50,000 pounds!The show was an instant hit, and runs in several countries. The housemates often become stars as a result of the show, and appear in national newspapers and on other shows.Item eightA number of big chain stores in China are trying to popularize cotton shopping bags to reduce the amount of plastic ones being thrown away.However, the China Youth Daily reports that the cotton shopping bags are not selling well, because people still prefer free plastic ones.The paper says it’s not wise to charge for these cotton bags, and supermarkets should think about how to encourage customers to use them by making it more convenient and cheaper. The paper suggests that supermarkets provide the cotton bags for free and encourage people to reuse them.Meanwhile, the paper also gives advice on how to reduce costs for supermarkets selling these cotton shopping bags. It says they should encourage donations from businesses to print advertisements on the sides.Item nineMore than 160,000 people died or disappeared in northern Sumatra on December 26, 2004, when towering waves battered the coast. Tens of thousands more perished in a dozen countries surrounding the Indian Ocean.With the help of international donors and aid organizations, Indonesia has built more than 100,000 houses to replace those destroyed in the disaster. That puts housing reconstruction three months ahead of schedule. Teams are on target to finish 20,000 more by next April. Other new construction includes 2,000 kilometers of roads and about 800 schools.International donors have spent $4.6 billion to rebuild Aceh. The Multi-Donor Fund was scheduled to finish its activities in 2010, but now plans to extend work until 2012 to help with the transition.Item tenA new report says the number of boys born in the United States and Japan has decreased every year since 1970. The report says the reason for the decrease is unclear. But it says environmental and other influences might be involved.American and Japanese researchers studied thirty years of birth records from the two nations. The researchers say they found fewer boys were born in comparison to girls. They say the decrease in births was equal to 135,000 white males in the United States. In Japan, the decrease was equal to 127,000 fewer males.Item elevenPeople around the world have been invited to take part in an unusual experiment this month. People of all ages are being asked to look at the night sky from October first to the fifteenth. They are looking for one of two groups of stars called constellations. The event is called the Great World Wide Star Count. It is part of an effort to make a map of stars seen around the world. It is also educating those taking part about the stars. The Great World Wide Star Count is free to anyone who wants to be involved. Planetariums and scientific groups around the world are also taking part..。