There are many theories about the beginning of drama in ancient Greece. One theory【C1】_____the theater’s origin from the human interest in storytelling. According to this view, tales (about the hunt, war, or other feats) are gradually【C2】__, at first through the use of impersonation, action, and dialogue by a【C3】__and then through the【C4】_____of each of the roles by a different person.

However, the one most widely accepted today is based on the assumption that drama【C5】_____from ritual. The argument for this view goes【C6】__. In the beginning, human beings viewed the natural forces of the world as【C7】__, and they sought through various means to control these unknown and feared powers. Those【C8】__which appeared to bring the desired results were then【C9】__and repeated until they hardened into【C10】__rituals. Eventually stories arose which explained or【C11】__the mysteries of the rites. As time passed some rituals were abandoned, but the stories, later called myths, persisted and provided【C12】_____for art and drama.

Those who believe that drama evolved out of ritual also argue that those rites【C13】_____the seed of theater because music, dance, masks, and costumes were almost always used.【C14】__, a suitable site had to be provided for performances and when the entire【C15】__did not participate, a clear【C16】__was usually made between the “acting area” and the “auditorium”. In addition, there were performers, and, since【C17】__importance was attached to avoiding mistakes in the enactment of rites,【C18】__leaders usually assumed that task. Wearing masks and costumes, they often【C19】__other people, animals, or supernatural beings, and mimed the desired effect as an actor might. Eventually such dramatic representations were【C20】_____from religious activities.

In June 1956 a TWA Constellation collided with a United Air Lines DC-7 over the Grand Canyon in Arizona, killing all 128 people on both aircraft. At the time it was the worst ever airline disaster. Struggling with outdated technology and a post-war boom in air travel, overworked air-traffic controllers failed to spot that the planes were on a collision course.

That crash led to the creation of a new body, which became the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), in charge of running and modernizing the world’s biggest air-transport system. With that system again struggling to keep pace with demand, Donald Trump thinks it is time to privatize America’s air-traffic control service. In June the president outlined a plan to turn air-traffic control into a separate non-profit entity financed by user fees, instead of the present patchwork of taxes and grants. Shorn of its air-traffic responsibility, the FAA would become a safety body.

America’s air-traffic system is vast, consisting of 14,000 controllers working in 476 airport-control towers that handle take-offs and landings, as well as in 21 “en route” centers looking after flights along the nation’s airways. It has a good safety record, but elderly technology limits the number of flights that can be handled. This leads to delays and frustrated flyers. With passenger numbers set to grow from 800m a year to almost l bn by 2026, the problem will only get worse.

Mr. Trump believes that, no longer mired in a federal bureaucracy, the air-traffic service will become more efficient and better able to invest in technology. Replacing old radar-based methods with accurate satellite navigation and better digital communications is a particular priority. Aircraft using satellite navigation can be safely spaced more closely together, which permits many more planes to be in the air at the same time. Digital systems also provide data links to control centers and to other planes by regularly broadcasting an aircraft’s identification sign, its position and course. This would allow “free routing”, which means pilots can fly directly to a destination, rather than follow established airways, which often zigzag around.

The president’s proposal might even speed a move towards “virtual” control towers in low-rise buildings, which can replace towers physically located at airports. The virtual versions are fed live video from airfield cameras. Proponents argue that they are both safer and around 30% cheaper to operate. Virtual towers can look after more than one airport.

Mr. Trump, though, may struggle to get the proposal through Congress. A similar plan got stuck last year, despite being backed by most airlines and the air-traffic controllers’ union. At least the president can dodge the queues: Air Force One flights get special clearance.

Transatlantic friction between companies and regulators has grown as Europe’s data guardians have become more assertive. Francesca Bignami, a professor at George Washington University’s law school, says that the explosion of digital technologies has made it impossible for watchdogs to keep a close eye on every web company operating in their backyard. So instead they are relying more on scapegoating prominent wrongdoers in the hope that this will deter others.

But regulators such as Peter Schaar, who heads Germany’s federal data-protection agency, say thegulfis exaggerated. Some European countries, he points out, now have rules that make companies who suffer big losses of customer data to report these to the authorities. The inspiration for these measures comes from America.

Yet even Mr. Schaar admits that the internet’s global scale means that there will need to be changes on both sides of the Atlantic. He hints that Europe might adopt a more flexible regulatory stance if America were to create what amounts to an independent data-protection body along European lines. In Europe, where the flagship Data Protection Directive came into effect in 1995, the European Commission is conducting a review of its privacy policies. In America Congress has begun debating a new privacy bill and the Federal Trade Commission is considering an overhaul of its rules.

Even if America and Europe do narrow their differences, internet firms will still have to struggle with other data watchdogs. In Asia countries that belong to APEC are trying to develop a set of regional guidelines for privacy rules under an initiative known as the Data Privacy Pathfinder. Some countries such as Australia and New Zealand have longstanding privacy laws, but many emerging nations have yet to roll out fully fledged versions of their own. Mr. Polonetsky sees Asia as “a new privacy battleground”, with America and Europe both keen to tempt countries towards their own regulatory model.

Canada already has something of a hybrid privacy regime, which may explain why its data-protection commissioner, Jennifer Stoddart, has been so influential on the international stage. She marshaled the signatories of the Google Buzz letter and took Facebook to task last year for breaching Canada’s data privacy laws, which led the company to change its policies.

Ms Stoddart argues that American companies often trip up on data-privacy issues because of “their brimming optimism that the whole world wants what they have rolled out in America.” Yet the same optimism has helped to create global companies that have brought huge benefits to consumers, while also presenting privacy regulators with tough choices. Shoehorning such firms into old privacy frameworks will not benefit either them or their users.

Oscar Wilde said that work is the refuge of people who have nothing better to do. If so, Americans are now among the world’s saddest refugees. Factory workers in the United States are working longer hours than at any time in the past half-century. America once led the rich world in cutting the average working week—from 70 hours in 1850 to less than 40 hours by the 1950s. It seemed natural that as people grew richer they would trade extra earnings for more leisure. Since the 1970s, however, the hours clocked up by American workers have risen, to an average of 42 this year in manufacturing.

Several studies suggest that something similar is happening outside manufacturing: Americans are spending more time at work than they did 20 years ago. Executive and lawyers boast of 80-hour weeks. On holiday, they seek out fax machines and phones as eagerly as Germans bag the best sun-loungers. Yet working time in Europe and Japan continues to fall. In Germany’s engineering industry the working week is to be trimmed from 36 to 35 hours next year. Most Germans get six weeks’ paid annual holiday; even the Japanese now take three weeks. Americans still make do with just two.

Germany responds to this contrast with its usual concern about whether people’s aversion to work is damaging its competitiveness. Yet German workers, like the Japanese, seem to be acting sensibly: as their incomes rise, they can achieve a better standard of living with fewer hours of work. The puzzle is why America, the world’s richest country, sees things differently. It is a puzzle with sinister social implications. Parents spend less time with their children, who may be left alone at home for longer. Is it just a coincidence that juvenile crime is on the rise?

Some explanations for America’s time at work fail to stand up to scrutiny. One blames weak trade unions that leave workers open to exploitation. A recent study by two American economists, Richard Freeman and Linda Bell, suggests not: when asked, Americans actually want to work longer hours. Most German workers, in contrast, would rather work less.

Then why has the century-long decline in working hours gone into reverse in America but not elsewhere (though Britain shows signs of following America’s lead). Perhaps cultural differences—the last refuge of the defeated economist—are at play. Economists used to believe that once workers earned enough to provide for their basic needs and allow for a few luxuries, their incentive to work would be eroded, like lions relaxing after a kill. But humans are more susceptible to advertising than lions. Perhaps clever marketing has ensured that “basic needs”—for a shower with built-in TV, for a rocket-propelled car— expand continuously. Shopping is already one of America’s most popular pastimes. But it requires money—hence more work and less leisure.

Or try this: the television is not very good, and baseball and hockey keep being wiped out by strikes. Perhaps Wilde was right. Maybe Americans have nothing better to do.

Manufacturers operating self-driving vehicles in the U.K. will be liable for a vehicle’s actions when in autonomous mode, according to the country’s new roadmap to achieve a widespread roll out of self-driving vehicles by 2025.

The roadmap stated that new legislation will build on existing laws and state that manufacturers are responsible for the actions of self-driving vehicles, “meaning a human driver would not be liable for incidents related to driving while the vehicle is in control of driving.”

This distinction could set a precedent globally, where liability in the case of autonomous vehicle accidents can still be somewhat of a gray area. When an autonomous Uber test vehicle killed a pedestrian in 2017, the human safety operator in the vehicle was charged with negligent homicide with a dangerous instrument. Uber faced no charges. And after a deadly crash in 2019 involving a Tesla vehicle operating in autopilot, the driver, not Tesla, was charged with two felony counts of vehicular manslaughter with gross negligence.

As the country prepares to write new laws, Britain has opened a consultation period on a “safety ambition” for self-driving vehicles to be as safe as a human driver. The results from the consultation would help form the standards for operating autonomous vehicles on public roads, as well as potential sanctions if those standards are not met.

“It is still quite a big leap from assisted driving, where the driver is still in control, to self-driving, where the car takes control. It is important that the government does study how these vehicles would interact with other road users on different roads and changing weather conditions,” AAA president, Edmund King, said in a statement. “However the ultimate prize, in terms of saving thousands of lives and improving the mobility of the elderly and the less mobile, is well worth pursuing.”

The government said vehicles that can drive themselves on motorways could be available to buy within the next year for drivers with valid driver’s licenses. While Teslas are some of the best-selling vehicles in the U.K., current legislation does not allow for British drivers to try out Tesla’s full self-driving beta, its advanced driver assistance system (ADAS) that comes with a variety of automated driving functions. New legislation could open the door not only for ride-hail, delivery and public transportation, but also for cars equipped with higher levels of ADAS.

[A] Root of distrust of the news media

[B] Distrust in other industries

[C] Findings of journalism credibility project

[D] Social and cultural disconnect between journalists and readers

[E] Reporting standard templates may being a source of distrust

[F] Reporters as social and cultural elite

[G] Different life styles of reporters and common people

Why do so many Americans distrust what they read in their newspapers? The American Society of Newspaper Editors is trying to answer this painful question. The organization is deepening into a long self-analysis known as the journalism credibility project. The journalism credibility is on the level of trust journalism. Through this investigation, they hope to find out the reason why many Americans distrust what they read in their newspapers.

【G1】__________________

Sad to say, this project has turned out to be mostly low-level findings about factual errors and spelling and grammar mistakes, combined with lots of head-scratching puzzlement about what in the world those readers really want.

【G2】__________________

But the sources of distrust go way deeper. Most journalists learn to see the world through a set of standard templates (patterns) into which they plug each day’s events. In other words, there is a conventional story line in the newsroom culture that provides a backbone and a ready-made narrative structure for otherwise confusing news.

【G3】__________________

There exists a social and cultural disconnect between journalists and their readers, which helps explain why the “standard templates” of the newsroom seem alien to many readers. In a recent survey, questionnaires were sent to reporters in five middle-size cities around the country, plus one large metropolitan area. Then residents in these communities were phoned at random and asked the same questions.

【G4】__________________

Replies show that compared with other Americans, journalists are more likely to live in upscale neighborhoods, have maids, own Mercedeses, and trade stocks, and they’re less likely to go to church, do volunteer work, or put down roots in a community.

【G5】__________________

Reporters tend to be part of a broadly defined social and cultural elite, so their work tends to reflect the conventional values of this elite. The astonishing distrust of the news media isn’t rooted inaccuracy or poor reportorial skills but in the daily clash of world views between reporters and their readers.

This is an explosive situation for any industry, particularly a declining one. Here is a troubled business that keeps hiring employees whose attitudes vastly annoy the customers. Then it sponsors lots of symposiums and a credibility project dedicated to wondering why customers are annoyed and fleeing in large numbers. But it never seems to get around to noticing the cultural and class biases that so many former buyers are complaining about. If it did, it would open up its diversity program, now focused narrowly on race and gender, and look for reporters who differ broadly by outlook, values, education, and class.

Life is priceless to those who possess it. Policymakers, though, must take a more hard-headed approach. That is particularly—if unfairly—true in poorer parts of the world.【T1】It is important for the authorities to understand the cost-effectiveness of a health program, so that its value can be compared with that of other claims on the public purse.

How to go about doing this is illustrated by a paper published in The Public Library of Science by Kartik Venkatesh of Brown University and Jessica Becker of Yale.【T2】Dr. Venkatesh and Dr. Becker asked themselves if it would be a good idea for the government of India to try, at regular intervals, to test the country’s population for HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, in order to treat those who unknowingly harbor it. The short answer is that, if it were feasible, it would be.

【T3】Though HIV in India has not turned into the widespread epidemic some experts feared it would a few years ago, it is reckoned to affect about 2.4m people, many of whom do not realize they are infected. If they were identified, these people could be given antiretroviral drugs to stop the symptoms of AIDS developing. That would also have the bonus of reducing the chance of their passing the virus on.

The calculations made by Dr. Venkatesh and Dr. Becker rely on a model developed by the World Health Organization and already in use in America, France, South Africa and elsewhere. It values lives extended and saved, and further infections and other treatment avoided. It then balances those against the costs of testing people and of giving drugs to those who test positive (plus the inevitable extra non-HIV spending that typically follows testing).

【T4】The price at which an extra year of life saved is deemed cost-effective is anything less than triple the annual GDP per person of the country in question. In India that is $3900. Anything below parity ($1300 per year of life) counts as very cost-effective. According to Dr. Venkatesh and Dr. Becker, testing Indian adults every five years would cost $ 1900 per year of life saved, and would thus pay off handsomely.

Whether it could actually be done is another matter.【T5】But India takes AIDS seriously and the fact that the epidemic has not run out of control in the way that was once feared is at least in part the consequence of the country’s policies. The will to test therefore probably exists. Dr. Venkatesh and Dr. Becker suggest it would be worth finding the means, as well.