1.  PALOS DE LA FRONTERA, Spain—Back home in Gambia, Amadou Jallow was, at 22, a lover of reggae who had just finished college and had landed a job teaching science in a high school. But Europe beckoned.
    In his West African homeland, Mr. Jallow's salary was the equivalent of just 50 euros a month, barely enough for the necessities, he said, And everywhere in his neighborhood in Serekunda, Gambia's largest city, there was talk of easy money to be made in Europe.
    Now he laughs bitterly about all that talk. He lives in a patch of woods here in southern Spain, just outside the village of Palos de la Frontera, with hundreds of other immigrants. They have built their homes out of plastic sheeting and cardboard, unsure if the water they drink from an open pipe is safe. After six years on the continent, Mr. Jallow is rail thin, and his eyes have a yellow tinge.
    "We are not bush people," he said recently as he gathered twigs to start a fire. "You think you are civilized. But this is how we live here. We suffer here."
    The political upheaval in Libya and elsewhere in North Africa has opened the way for thousands of new migrants to make their way to Europe across the Mediterranean. Already some 25,000 have reached the island of Lampedusa, Italy, and hundreds more have arrived at Malta.
    The boats, at first, brought mostly Tunisians. But lately there have been more sub-Saharans.
    Experts say thousands more—many of whom have been moving around North Africa trying to get to Europe for years, including Somalis, Eritreans, Senegalese and Nigerians—are likely to follow, sure that a better life awaits them.
    But for Mr. Jallow and for many others who arrived before them, often after days at sea without food or water, Europe has offered hardships they never imagined. These days Mr. Jallow survives on two meals a day, mostly a leaden paste made from flour and oil, which he stirs with a branch.
    "It keeps the hunger away," he said.
    The authorities estimate that there are perhaps 10,000 immigrants living in the woods in the southern Spanish province of Andalusia, a region known for its crops of strawberries, raspberries and blueberries, and there are thousands more migrants in areas that produce olives, oranges and vegetables. Most of them have stories that echo Mr. Jallow's.
    From the road, their encampments look like igloos tucked among the trees. Up close, the squalor is clear. Piles of garbage and flies are everywhere. Old clothes, stiff from dirt and rain, hang from branches.
    "There is everything in there," said Diego , the leader of the farm workers' union in Andalusia, which tries to advocate for the men. "You have rats and snakes and mice and fleas."
    The men in the woods do not call home with the truth, though. They send pictures of themselves posing next to Mercedes cars parked on the street, the kind of pictures that Mr. Jallow says he fell for so many years ago. Now he shakes his head toward his neighbors, who will not talk to reporters.
    "So many lies," he said. "It is terrible what they are doing. But they are embarrassed."
    Even now, though, Mr. Jallow will not consider going back to Gambia. "I would prefer to die here," he said. "I cannot go home empty-handed. If I went home, they would be saying, 'What have you been doing with yourself, Amadou?' They think in Europe there is money all over."
    The immigrants—virtually all of them are men—cluster by nationality and look for work on the farms. But Mr. says they are offered only the least desirable work, like handling pesticides, and little of it at that. Most have no working papers.
    Occasionally, the police bring bulldozers to tear down the shelters. But the men, who have usually used their family's life savings to get here, are mostly left alone—the conditions they live under are an open secret in the nearby villages.

2.  For more than 30 years, I have been wondering about L.R. Generson. On one of our first Christmases together, my husband gave me a complete set of Dickens. There were 20 volumes, bound in gray cloth with black corners, old but in good condition. Stamped on the flyleaf of each volume, in faded block letters, was the name of the previous owner: "L.R. Generson, M.D., Bronx, NY."
    That Dickens set is one of the best presents anyone has ever given me. A couple of the books are still pristine, but others—"Bleak House," "David Copperfield," and especially "Great Expectations"—have been read and re-read almost to pieces. Over the years, Pip and Estella and Magwitch have kept me company. So have Lady Dedlock, Steerforth and Peggotty, the Cratchits and the Pecksniffs and the Veneerings. And so, in his silent enigmatic way, has L.R. Generson.
    Did he love the books as much as I do? Who was he? On a whim, I Googled him. There wasn't much—a single mention on a veterans' website of a World War Ⅱ captain named Leonard Generson. But I did find a Dr. Richard Generson, an oral surgeon living in New Jersey. Since Generson is not a common name, I decided to write to him.
    Dr. Generson was kind enough to write back. He told me that his father, Leonard Richard Generson, was born in 1909. He lived in New York City but went to medical school in Basel, Switzerland. He spoke 10 languages fluently. As an obstetrician and gynecologist, he opened a practice in the Bronx shortly before World War Ⅱ. His son described him as "an extremely patriotic individual"; right after Pearl Harbor he closed his practice and enlisted. He served throughout the war as a general surgeon with an airborne special forces unit in Europe, where he became one of the war's most highly decorated physicians.
    The list of his decorations reflects his ordeals and his courage: multiple Purple Hearts, the Bronze Star with "V" for valor, the Silver Star, and also the Cross of War, an extremely high honor from the government of France. After the war, he remained in the Army Reserve and attained the rank of full colonel, while also continuing his medical practice in New York. "He was a very dedicated physician who had a large patient following," his son wrote.
    Leonard Generson's son didn't remember the Dickens set, though he told me that there were always a lot of novels in the house. His mother probably "cleaned house" after his father's death in 1977—the same year my husband bought the set in a used book store.
    I found this letter very moving, with its brief portrait of an intelligent, brave man and his life of service. At the same time, it made me question my presumption that somehow L.R. Generson and I were connected because we'd owned the same set of books. The letter both told me a little about him, and told me that I would never really know anything about him—and why should I? His son must have been startled to hear from a stranger on such a fragile pretext. What had I been thinking?
    One possible, and only somewhat facetious, answer is that I've read too much Dickens. In the world of a Dickens novel, everything is connected to everything else. Orphans find families. Lovers are joined (or parted and morally strengthened). Ancient mysteries are solved and old scores are settled. Questions are answered. Stories end.
    Dickens's cluttered network of connected lives brilliantly exaggerates something that is true of all of us. We want to impose order through telling stories, maybe because there is so much we don't know about our own stories and the stories of those around us.
    Leonard Generson's life touched mine only lightly, through the coincidence of a set of books. But there are other lives he touched more deeply. The next time I read a Dickens novel, I will think of him and his military service and his 10 languages. And I will think of the hundreds of babies he must have delivered, who are now in the middle of their own lives and their own stories.

1.  10年来，中国经济发展实现了新的跨越，对世界经济增长的贡献日益增大。10年来，中国平均关税水平从15.3%降至9.8%，达到并超过了世贸组织对发展中国家的要求。10年来，中国总计从海外进口达8.5万亿美元，为各国发展提供了广阔市场。
    今年以来，在世界经济形势依然复杂多变的情况下，中国有针对性地加强和改善宏观调控，着力稳物价、调结构、保民生、促和谐，经济增长由政策刺激向自主增长有序转变，国民经济继续朝着宏观调控的预期方向发展。
    为了巩固经济社会发展良好势头，我们将坚持以科学发展为主题、以加快转变经济发展方式为主线，继续加强和改善宏观调控，继续处理好保持经济平稳较快发展、调整经济结构、管理通胀预期的关系，更加注重以人为本，更加注重全面协调可持续发展，更加注重统筹兼顾，更加注重改革开放，更加注重保障和改善民生。中国经济发展的前景是光明的。中国经济保持平稳较快发展，对世界经济发展无疑将是有利的。

2.  得而达成立于1954年，总部位于美国印第安纳波利斯(美国印第安纳州首府)，是世界500强企业之一的美国上市公司Masco(马兹科)的核心企业，是世界首屈一指的家居及装饰产品生产企业。
    得而达创始人Alex Manoogian于1954年发明了具有划时代意义的单柄水龙头，此后得而达成为质量可靠、精巧耐用、物有所值产品的象征。现于美国、加拿大及中国拥有6间大型工厂，雇用超过4000名员工。
    得而达是全美首家成功获得ISO9001质量管理体系和ISO14001环境管理体系认证的水龙头公司，年销售额超10亿美元。迄今为止，在全球已经安装了超过2亿个得而达水龙头，是美国水龙头市场品牌知名度和购买率最高的品牌。能够从设计、外观等每个角度满足消费者。