初级英语阅读 20210102 Sat

How are you doing, guys? Saturday is my day off. On Saturdays, I usually eat something at a restaurant. Sometimes I go to English Club. In English Club, I speak English with many friends. Some friends are from America. They teach me English and I teach them Mandarin.

中级英语阅读 20210102 Sat

A blonde, wanting to earn some money, decided to hire herself out as a handyman-type and started canvassing a wealthy neighborhood. She went to the front door of the first house and asked the owner if he had any jobs for her to do.

"Well, you can paint my porch. How much will you charge?"

The blonde said "How about 50 dollars?"

The man agreed and told her that the paint and other materials that she might need were in the garage.

The man's wife, inside the house, heard the conversation and said to her husband, "Does she realize that the porch goes all the way around the house?"

The man replied, "She should, she was standing on it."

A short time later, the blonde came to the door to collect her money.

"You're finished already?" he asked.

"Yes," the blonde answered, "and I had paint left over, so I gave it two coats."

Impressed, the man reached in his pocket for the $50.

"And by the way," the blonde added, "it's not a Porch, it's a Ferrari."

高级英语阅读 20210102 Sat

The Dow Jones Industrial Average and S&P 500 rose to all-time highs on Thursday as Wall Street wrapped up one of the most volatile years for the market in recent memory.

The Dow closed 196.92 points higher, or 0.7%, at 30,606.48. The S&P 500 climbed 0.6% to 3,756.07, while the Nasdaq Composite advanced 0.1% to 12,888.28. The major averages hit their session highs with less than one hour left of trading.

Intel rose 2.2% to lead the Dow higher. Financials and utilities advanced more than 1% each to lift the S&P 500.

Thursday’s moves came after the release of a better-than-expected reading on U.S. weekly jobless claims. The number of first-time unemployment-benefits filers totaled 787,000 for the week ending Dec. 26, the Labor Department said Thursday. Economists polled by Dow Jones were expecting a print of 828,000.

Tech was by far the dominant sector in 2020, surging more than 42% for the year, as the pandemic forced more people to work from home. This shift drove up demand for cloud services and computer equipment.