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Now the lords of the Philistines gathered to offer a JLU great sacrifice to their god Dagon®, and to rejoice; for they said , "Our god has given Samson our enemy into our hand. " 24When the people saw him> they praised their god; for they said, "Our god has given our enemy into our hand, the ravager of our country, who has killed many of us. " 25And when their hearts were merry, they said, "Call Sam-son, and let him entertain us. " So they called Samson out of the prison , and he performed for them. They made him stand between the pillars; 26and Samson said to the attendant who held him by the hand, "Let me feel the pillars on which the house rests, so that I may lean against them. " 2?Now the house was full of men and women; all the lords of the Philistines were there, and on the roof there were about three thousand men and women, who looked on while Samson per-formed.

28Then Samson called to the LORD and said, "Lord God, remember me and strengthen me only this once, O God, so that with this one act of revenge I may pay back the Philistines for my two eyes. " 2 9And Samson grasped the two middle pillars on which the house rested, and he leaned his weight a-gainst them, his right hand on the one and his left hand on the other. Then Samson said, "Let me die with the Philistines. " He strained with all his might; and the house fell on the lords and all the people who were in it. So those he killed at his death were more than those he had killed during his life. SIThen his brothers and all his family came down and took him and brought him up and buried him between Zorah and Eshtaol in the tomb of his father Manoah. He had judged Israel twenty years.

If babies born in 1991 live for 80 years, the human population of the world may be anything from twice to three times the present total by 2070. In other words, they will have to share what is left of the earth's resources with between 10 and 15 billion other people. But hopefully there will be a significant decrease in the growth of population. What if this does not happen? The answer is that by the time before the babies bom in 1991 reach the age of 40, they could be sharing resources with as many as 10 billion other people.

Limiting the pollution of water and the atmosphere, controlling the output of the chemicals that may be causing global warming and climate change, and eating less meat may do something way to help, but can anyone seriously imagine that these are going to solve the problems of the "baby class" of'91?

There is no getting away from the fact that people are responsible for the present state of the world, and only people can solve the problems. The decisions have to be made by people as members of national and local governments as leaders and decision makers in industry, as scientists and technologists, as professional engineers and designers, as religious leaders and as individual

Except for the seals bobbing their black heads in and out of the green Pacific waters, brothers Eric and Nick Larsen seemed to have the ocean to themselves.

Dressed in wet-suits and gloves, they straddled their surf-boards under a brilliant blue sky. There was a southerly flow to the ocean this cool Monday morning, July 1,1991. Metre-high waves were sweeping into a narrow, deserted beach,one of the many coves on the coastline north of California's Monterey Bay.

Some time after 8 a. m. , 50-year-old Nick pointed his board towards the beach about 150 metres away. "I'm going to the truck to warm up," he said,"I'll stay a little longer," Eric called after him.

Until ten weeks earlier,Eric had been a software engineer writing programs for a fibre-optic data network^ for the pro¬posed NASA space station. But he found the pace too slow and wanted to be outdoors.

So when the company began laying off employees,the 32-year-old told management he'd take a leave of absence. "That will mean one less person you have to let go. " Life had been an athletic carnival since.

At six feet one , 175 pounds, Eric had always been in shape. Now he brought himself to peak fitness , running, swimming, bicycling, surf ing, board sailing and canoeing.

Awaiting the break of a good wave,Eric noticed a swirling turbulence in the water close by. There's something really big down there,he thought.

In that instant he felt a powerful clamp on his left leg. Staring in horror, he saw two wide rows of white, triangular teeth, bared to the gums, biting through flesh and muscle. Thigh to shin, his leg was caught in the jaws of a great white shark at least five metres long.

Pry them loose! In lightening-fast reflex, Eric shot his gloved left hand to the top of the monster's snout, his right to the bottom. He pushed mightily against the jaws while the shark tugged. At that moment the jaws opened and Eric jerked his leg free. He kicked away from the clumsy attacker,arms still outstretched. Too late,he tried to pull them in.

But much of the archipelago' s political establishment, which includes the White Americans who dominated until the Second World War and people of Japanese, Chinese and Filipion origin, is opposed to the idea.

The islands were annexed by the US in 1898 and since then Hawaii' s native people have fared worse than any of its other ethnic groups. They make up over 60 percent of the state' s homeless, suffer higher levels of unemployment and their life span is five years less than the average Hawaiians. They are the only major US native group without some degree of autonomy.

But a sovereignty advisory committee set up by Hawaii' s first native governor, John Waihee, has given the natives' cause a major boost by recommending that the Hawaiian natives decide by themselves whether to re-establish a sovereign Hawaiian nation.

However, the Hawaiian natives are not united in their demands. Some just want greater autonomy within the state—as enjoyed by many American Indian natives over matters such as education. This is a position supported by the Office of Hawaiian Affairs (OHA) , a state agency set up in 1978 to represent the natives' interests and which has now become the moderate face of the native sovereignty movement. More ambitious is the Ka Lahui group, which de-clared itself a new nation in 1987 and wants full, official independence from the US.

But if Hawaiian natives are given greater autonomy, it is far from clear how many people this will apply to the state authorities only count as native those people with more than 50 per¬cent Hawaiian blood. •

Native demands are not just based on political grievances, though. They also want their claim on 660,000 hectares of Hawaiian crown land to be accepted. It is on this issue that native groups are facing most opposition from the state authorities. In 1993, the state government paid the OHA US $ 136 million in back rent on the crown land and many officials say that by accepting this payment the agency has given up its claims to legally own the land. The OHA has vigorously disputed this.

War is an ancient institution which has ex-ed for at least six thousand years. It was always icked and usually foolish, but in the past the hu-in race managed to live with it. Modern ingenuity 5 changed this. Either man will abolish war, or will abolish man. For the present, it is nuclearipons that cause the gravest danger, but bacteriocal or chemical weapons may, before long, offer even greater threat. If we succeed in abolishing near weapons, our work will not be done. It will be done until we have succeeded in abolishing

To do this, we need to persuade mankind to upon international questions in a new way, not

contests of force, in which the victory goes to the which is most skillful in massacre, but by arbijn in accordance with agreed principles of law.

It’s not easy to change age old mental habits, but this is what must be attempted.

There are those who say that the adoption of this or that ideology would prevent war. I believe this to be a profound error. All ideologies are based upon dogmatic assertions which are, at best, doubtful, and at worst, totally false. Their adherents be¬lieve in them so fanatically that they are willing to go to war in support of them.

The movement of world opinion during the past two years has been varied largely such as we can welcome. It has become a commonplace that nuclear war must be avoided. Of course, very difficult problems remain in the international sphere, but the spirit in which they are being approached is a better one than it was some years ago. It has begun to be thought, even by the powerful men who decide whether we shall live or die, that negotiations should reach agreements even if both sides do not find these agreements wholly satisfactory. It has begun to be understood that the important conflict nowadays is not between East and West, but between Man and the H-bomb.

Liu Xiang did it in Athens3 , and history's been made.

The 21 -year-old claimed the gold medal of the glamorous4 men's 110m hurldes before a capacity crowd of 70 ,000 at the Olympic Stadium in the 28th Olympic Games in Athens late Friday local time.

He clocked a stunning 12. 91 seconds to equal the world record set by Britain's Collin Jackson5 in 1993.

Chinese fans in big cities like Beijing and Shanghai burst into hysteria6 and many cried out when the national television station CCTV broadcast the event live , when brave Liu Xiang dashed to the line in arms and legs far ahead of his rivals, in the early hours Saturday morning Beijing time.

It is the first gold Chinese men's athlete ever won from the track and field in the Olympics history.

China has won over 1 00 gold medals from the summer Olympic Games since 1984 but their male athletes only got one medal from Olympics' most popular sport. That was high jumper Zhu Jianhua's7 bronze in the 1984 Los Angeles Games.

The Shanghai native, with his father a truck driver and mother an out-of-work housewife, loved sports when he was very little.

"He kept running and jumping everyday and never sat there quietly," his mother Ji Fenhua recalled.

Liu was selected to the Junior Sports School of Putuo District of Shanghai to practice jumping as a fourth grader in the primary school. But after a bone test showing that he will not be able to become a tall man, Liu was asked to give up sports one year later, although he had won the national champion at that level.

His parents also wanted him to study computer engineering or some other profession befitting8 his middle-class Shanghai upbringing9, but Liu decided to goon.

"I told my mother that I would compete in the Olympics in the future," Liu said.

The year of 1998 was a turning point for Liu' s career, when he attracted coach Sun Haiping's attention as a 15-year-old jumper.

Sun was a well-known hurdle coach who had nurtured Asian champion Chen Yanhao and he believed a star was born at the first sight of Liu10. He visited Liu's parents serveral times and finally persuaded them to let Liu transfer to the 110m hurdles.

After only three years, Liu launched his career in style in the IAAF" Grand Prix in Lausanne12 in 2001 by breaking the world youth and Asian record with a time of 13.12.

But the first warning he sent to the world was his bronze-winning feat at the world indoor championships in Birmingham, England, last year13.

He went on to capture the bronze in the world outdoor championships in Paris to record a surprise season in 2003.

In 2004, Liu came back stronger and more confident. He won the silver in the world indoor championships in Budapest14 in March.

The world has put the Olympics a Johsnon-Liu duel but surprisingly Johnson crashed out of the Games after falling at the ninth hurdle at round 2.

Johnson's early exit paved the way for15 Liu's win. He finally took the gold and put a Chinese man's name on the record book.

In different countries around the world, people become 'adults' at diffei ages. Being an adult means having the right to do certain things such as get a part-time job, vote, get married, or get a license to drive. It also means accepting the responsibilities that accompany these rights.

In many countries, sixteen or eighteen is the age at which a person becomes an adult. Young men and women at this age can get a part-tim job, and begin to receive an income of their own. They no longer have t rely on their parents for money all the time. In many parts of North America, sixteen is also the age when one can obtain1 a driver's license; i 10 England, it is seventeen.

There are responsibilities that go along with both of these rights. Getting part-time job means that you have to pay income tax.2 Driving a car demands that you follow certain rules and regulations such as getting an paying for insurance to drive.

15 Voting is another right that marks the passage3 into adulthood for many young people. In the United States, Canada, and the U.K., young people live the right to vote at the age of eighteen. With this right also comes sponsibility. For young people to use their right to vote wisely, they must ive an understanding of the needs of society, and they must also learn >w politics4 work.

group of teenagers in Alberta, Canada, want the Canadian voting laws langed. They think that people should be able to vote at the age of cteen. They argue that if teenagers at sixteen are old enough to get a irt-time job, pay taxes, and drive, they are also old enough to vote in actions.

Every normal person is expert in the skill of pronouncing his own language; but few people are even moderately proficient at pronouncing foreign languages. Now there are many reasons for this , some obvious , some perhaps not so obvious. But I suggest that the fundamental reason why people in general do not speak foreign languages very much better than they do their own is that they fail to grasp the true nature of the problem of learning to pronounce, and consequently never set about tackling it in the right way. Far too many people fail to realize that pronouncing a foreign language is a skill — one that needs careful training of a special kind, and one that cannot be acquired by just leaving it to take care of itself. I think even teachers of a language, while recognizing the importance of a good accent, tend to neglect, in their practical teaching, the branch of study concerned with speaking the language. So the first point I want to make is that English pronunciation must be taught; the teacher should be prepared to devote some of the lesson time to this, and, by his whole attitude to the subject, should get the student to feel that here is a matter worthy of receiving his close attention. So, there should be occasions when other aspects of English, such as grammar or spelling, are allowed for the moment to take second place.

Apart from this question of the time given to pronunciation, there are two other requirements for the teacher; the first, knowledge; the second, technique.

It is important that the teacher should be in possession of the necessary information. This can generally be obtained from books. It is possible to get from books some idea of the mechanics of speech, and of what we call general phonetic theory. It is also possible in this way to get a clear mental picture of the relationship between the sounds of different languages, between the speech habits of English people and those, say, of your students. Unless the teacher has such a picture, any comments he may make on his students' pronunciation are unlikely to be of much use, and lesson time spent on pronunciation may well be time wasted.

The potential prizes certainly glitter. In the far future, it may be possible to prevent genetic diseases from being inherited by cutting them out of the gene pool once and for all, so-called gernline engineering. At the nearer end of the time scale, genetic tests are allowing people to choose suitable therapies and lifestyles to beat disease. And in between, lie further tantalising prospects; thousands of new drugs for previously untreatable diseases; drugs tailored to individuals, so with far fewer side effects, the ability to replace faulty genes, short-circuiting diseases at source.

But the work of turning the base pair data into the gold of new treatments has already begun, according to Dr Francis Collins, head of the US National Human Genome Research Institute. "I keep a tally of the genes that are responsible for human diseases that are identified over the course of a year. In a good year, in times gone by, there might have been two or three. Last year, there have been 29 discovered. "

Private companies have also combed the data to find genes that play roles in diabetes, asthma, psoriasis and migraines. The most extreme suggested use for the human genome data is editing the DNA inheritance passed down from one generation to the next. Such a scenario involves identifying an abnormal gene and then correcting it in the cells which are used to pass genetic information to offspring. No subsequent generation would then be affected by their ancestors' gene defect. However, such irreversible .intervention with the code for life will only be allowed after major ethical reservations and safety concerns over possible unexpected results of the changes are addressed.

There is little doubt that the revelation of the human genome will benefit healthcare in the short and long term. But many of the treatments will be expensive and will do nothing to avoid the damage caused by viral and bacterial diseases. It has been suggested that a brave new world awaits us in which all ailments can be monitored from a daily mouth swab inserted into a DNA reader in our bathroom cabinets. But Dr. Ian Purvis says, "It could be that like, a long time in the future, but that is based on the rather arrogant view humanity has that it will understand everything we find—and we never have in the past. "

This matter of other people' s learning and accomplishments has been worrying me for some time. I never read the life of any imporTant person without discovering that he knew more and could do nore than I could ever hope to know or to do in half a dozen life-:imes.To begin with,unless these people chance to be obvious inva-ids like Stevenson or Tchehov , they are always tremendous ath-etes, with surprising strength, powers of endurance, and so forth. They could all walk and run and climb our heads o// ,even when :hey were seventy. Then they all have the gift of tongues. You never :atch a glimpse of them sitting down to learn a new language, not :ven running an eye over its irregular verbs, yet it is admitted that :hey speak any number with an astonishing fluency and purity of iccent. They never confine themselves to one science, but are inevitaly masters of several. The big book of Nature they know by heart. 3nly the other day I was reading an account of a great novelist, a nost sophisticated and subtle person,and was told that he knew the lame and habits and history of every wild flower and plant and tree ind bird in the country. Nor is that all. There is not one of these big-vigs who is not (I quote the customary phrases) a sensitive and acomplished musician, or an extraordinarily fine amateur water-co-ourist.or the possessor of a magnificent prose style. We are always old that, had circumstance been different, their talents were such hat they need only have given their serious attention to one or other if these arts to have procured for themselves lasting and perhaps vorld-wide reputations. So runs the legend of the eulogists.