It only needed this to convince me that I was usurping the customary domicile of the meditative cow.

The girls had never been called angel children before, and thought it very agreeable, especially Jo, who had been considered a ‘Sancho’^ ever since she was born.

Hannah, who had carried wood, made a fire, and stopped up the broken panes with old hats and her own cloak. Mrs. March gave the mother tea and gruel, and comforted her with promises of help, while she dressed the little baby as tenderly as if it had been her own. The girls, meantime, spread the table, set the children round the fire, and fed them like so many hungry baby birds, laughing, talking, and trying to understand the funny broken English.

In a few minutes, it really did seem as if kind spirits had been at work there.

“Funny angels in hoods and mittens,” said Jo, and set them to laughing.

“Ach, mein Gott! It is good angels come to us!”

How the big eyes stared and the blue lips smiled

A poor, bare, miserable room it was, with broken windows, no fire, ragged bedclothes, a sick mother, wailing baby, and a group of pale, hungry children cuddled under one old quilt, trying to keep warm.

and no one laughed at the queer party.

“I thought you’d do it,” said Mrs. March, smiling as if satisfied.

Nearby, Meg was already covering the buckwheats, and piling the bread into one big plate.

“I shall take the cream and the muffins,”

“May I go and help carry the things to the poor little children?” asked Beth eagerly.

only a minute, for Jo exclaimed impetuously, “I’m so glad you came before we began!”

They were all unusually hungry, having waited nearly an hour, and for a minute no one spoke,

Not far away from here lies a poor German woman with a little newborn baby. Six children are huddled into one bed to keep from freezing, for they have no fire. There is nothing to eat over there, and the oldest boy came to tell me they were suffering hunger and cold.

But I want to say one word before we sit down.

Meg, with a frown for Jo and a smile for Beth.

“There’s Mother. Hide the basket, quick!” cried Jo, as a door slammed and steps sounded in the hall… “Merry Christmas, Marmee!

“Isn’t that right? I thought it was better to do it so, because Meg’s initials are M.M., and I don’t want anyone to use these but Marmee,” said Beth, looking troubled.

Beth, looking proudly at the somewhat uneven letters which had cost her such labour.

so fry your cakes, and have everything ready,” said Meg, looking over the presents which were collected in a basket and kept under the sofa, ready to be produced at the proper time. “Why, where is Amy’s bottle of cologne?”

replied Jo, dancing about the room to take the first stiffness off the new army slippers.

Some poor creeter came a–beggin’, and your ma went straight off to see what was needed. There never was such a woman for givin’ away vittles’* and drink, clothes and firin’**,

One would wonder whether it is still worth the trouble wading through all that only to find that it has all been a hoax.

tune in to professional international news channels; listen to real live recordings accompanied by matching transcripts; and cross-check with reputable newspapers and online fact-checking sites, namely SNOPES, TruthorFiction, FactCheck, Mythbusters, and The Straight Dope.

According to a recent survey conducted by Pew Research Centre, 55 per cent of US adults “often” or “sometimes” get their news from social media. That is an 8 per cent jump within a year! To remain relevant, traditional media outlets now have to compete fiercely for readers and vie for clicks with their internet-based rivals and social media

According to a recent survey conducted by Pew Research Centre, 55 per cent of US adults “often” or “sometimes” get their news from social media. That is an 8 per cent jump within a year!

Additionally, the type of news people are attracted to read is no longer just what is truly happening around the world, but also what catches their eyes and hearts first.

“A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on”.

The term is further popularised when broadcasters these days use ‘fake news’ to mean disinformation, lies, half-truths, and the latest coinage ‘alternative facts’. Clearly, fake news masquerades as real news with the intention to mislead, making it all the more plausible as it gets circulated.  

Its usage gained greater traction ever since Donald Trump was reported in the main US media networks to have used that term in his tweets before and after he became the president

It was Reenie who’d done the bandaging, of scrapes and cuts and minor injuries: Mother might be resting, or doing good deeds elsewhere, but Reenie was always there. She’d scoop us up and sit us on the white enamel kitchen table, alongside the pie dough she was rolling out or the chicken she was cutting up or the fish she was gutting, and give us a lump of brown sugar to get us to close our mouths. Tell me where it hurts, she’d say. Stop howling. Just calm down and show me where.

To visit the morgue, I would need gloves, and a hat with a veil. Something to cover the eyes. There might be reporters. I would have to call a taxi. Also, I ought to warn Richard at his office: he would wish to have a statement of grief prepared. I went into my dressing room: I would need a black dress, and a handkerchief.

Of Alex, of Richard, of bad faith, of our father and his wreckage; of God, perhaps, and her fatal, triangular bargain. Or of the stack of cheap school exercise books that she must have hidden that very morning, in the bureau drawer where I kept my stockings, knowing I would be the one to find them.

What had she been thinking of as the car sailed off the bridge

“Naturally,” I said. “But it was an accident. My sister was never a good driver.”

A hot wind was blowing around my head, the strands of my hair lifting and swirling in it, like ink spilled in water.

. In reality, I could barely get the words out; my mouth was numb, and my entire face was rigid with pain. I felt as if I’d been to the dentist. I was furious with Laura for what she’d done, but also with the policeman for implying that she’d done it.

She had her reasons. Not that they were ever the same as anybody else’s reasons. She was completely ruthless in that way.

with no more fuss than stepping off a curb.

but he also felt bound to inform me that two witnesses—a retired lawyer and a bank teller, dependable people—had claimed to have seen the whole thing.

Ten days after World War II ended, my sister Laura drove a car off a bridge. The bridge was being repaired: she went right through the Danger sign. The car fell a hundred feet into the ravine, smashing through the treetops feathery with new leaves, then burst into flames and rolled down into the shallow creek at the bottom. Chunks of the bridge fell on top of it. Nothing much was left of her but charred smithereens

His tone was respectful: no doubt he recognized Richard’s name.

chalked up an impressive resume which included being part of a team that coordinated a food festival in New York, pitching to clients for a jewellery designer at Paris Fashion Week, assuming the role of a freelance makeup artist, and transforming empty spaces into set designs and art installations. Recently, she was the art director of a music video, and was one of the 50 artists featured in a widely viewed media production.

Nowadays, even before finishing college, young undergraduates from small families with barely any obligations have started to become gig workers. They cite new challenges as the fuel that stimulate their creative juices.

with the Baby Boomers, success meant staying at a particular job, or with a particular company, sometimes for decades, working oneself up the corporate ladder, accumulating seniority and wealth along the way, and finally retiring to a life of ease. With the Generation X that followed, one would be considered inefficient, stagnant, or worse, ‘dead-wood’, if one stayed on a job for more than 3 or 4 years.

For a start, gigs offer the flexibility of time that appeals to mainly working mothers who need precious time off from their routine jobs with fixed working hours to stay home with their young children.

For some of your grandparents or even parents, once they outgrew their dreams of musical stardom, they found “real” jobs that paid a fixed salary every month which afforded them to take paid holidays and formed the basis for planning a stable future.

However, these days, the “labour market is characterized by the prevalence of short-term contracts or freelance work, as opposed to permanent jobs” as stated in a BBC News report.

However, because gigs and contracts are more affordable for employers, it is also harder to find stable and promising full-time jobs that millennials desire despite them loving the dynamism of the internet and being open to non-traditional career opportunities. Millennials are still traditionally minded, with 91 per cent still wanting full-time work.

Subsequently, the Gen Y or Millennials popularised consulting and freelancing work, who sometimes working on 4 to 5 projects simultaneously, in a bid to stay gainfully ‘employed’ especially during a drought in the full-time job market.

When I looked up, there he stood, ten feet from us, facing the street, in a determined, bull-like crouch I had never seen before. It was a fighter’s stance. His muscles bulged at the neck; his jaw was clenched; the fur between his shoulder blades bristled. He was intensely focused on the street and appeared poised to lunge.

When I looked up, there he stood, ten feet from us, facing the street, in a determined, bull-like crouch I had never seen before. It was a fighter’s stance. His muscles bulged at the neck; his jaw was clenched; the fur between his shoulder blades bristled. He was intensely focused on the street and appeared poised to lunge.

We sat alone on the pavement like that for what seemed hours but was in actuality, the police report later showed, about three minutes.

I comforted her in the only way I knew how, as I would comfort my own child, stroking her hair, holding my palm against her cheek, wiping her tears away. As she grew weaker, I kept telling her to hang on, help was on the way.

Come on, ambulance. Where are you?

I put my hand on her arm to calm her, and as I did I saw her knees buckling. She collapsed into my arms, her legs folding fawnlike beneath her. I eased her down to the pavement and sat cradling her.

I put my hand on her arm to calm her, and as I did I saw her knees buckling. She collapsed into my arms, her legs folding fawnlike beneath her. I eased her down to the pavement and sat cradling her

She was a thin, pretty girl with sand-coloured hair that fell over her shoulders. She lived in the house with her divorced mother, a pleasant woman who worked as a night nurse.

Three doors down I found my seventeen year-old neighbour standing alone in her driveway, bent over, sobbing in jagged raspy gasps. She clasped her ribs, and beneath her hands I could see a circle of blood spreading across her blouse.

The scream came again, from the opposite direction. Outside, without the walls and glass to buffer it, the woman’s voice filled the night air with an amazing, piercing velocity, the likes of which I had heard only in horror movies.

“I’ll be careful.”

“Don’t go out there.” Jenny’s voice came from beside me in the dark.

A woman’s scream, loud and unmistakable. My first thought was teenagers clowning around in the street, not an unusual occurrence. But this was not a happy, stop-tickling-me scream.

I was instantly wide awake, and Marley was, too. He stood frozen beside the bed in the dark, ears cocked.

It was October and the weather still had not turned. The night was sweltering, and we had the air-conditioning on and windows shut.

The young generation in Vietnam now doesn’t care about history, or about what their parents and grandparents did in the past. My 39-year-old son is an officer in the military, but he has never asked about my story or shown any interest in it.

Our two countries have had normalized diplomatic relations for years. Many Americans regret what they have done. I don’t have any feelings of revenge. I think national reconciliation is the most important thing.

The pot was too heavy for me to carry, and when I cooked rice, I had to use a big shovel to stir it. But I did a good job, so my boss decided I was ready to become a nurse.

I’ll never forget seeing my comrade, a 22-year-old medic from Yen Bai, die right in front of my eyes when an American bomb exploded in our small bunker. He was just a foot ahead of me when shrapnel from the bomb ripped him apart as the roof collapsed on us.

While many fabricated stories take the form of relatively harmless satire, others have more chilling implications.