London Mayor Sadiq Khan’s announcement that all primary school pupils in the city will receive free school meals from September is a welcome move amid rising food and energy prices. The £130 million plan rejects means-testing (经济状况调查) in favor of a universal scheme, which many see as a smart political move and a good policy. Universal public services such as this create shared understanding and gain political legitimacy, as they enable individuals to live at a reasonable standard.

The current tax and benefit system in the UK leaves millions of children in poverty and hunger, and means-testing is neither fair nor efficient. Parents claiming universal credit in England must have a household income of less than £7,400 to qualify for free school meals. An estimated 800,000 children living in poverty do not get free school meals due to the eligibility criteria being so restrictive. Another 200,000 are eligible but have not accessed them because enrolment is not automatic.

The initiative has been welcomed by many for its potential to reduce child obesity rates and improve pupil attainment. The Impact on Urban Health thinktank estimates that making free school meals universal will generate £1.71 in economic and social benefits for every £1 invested.

Unfortunately, the government seems more interested in rationing access to welfare than helping people get the support they need. Means-testing is often justified on the grounds that it diverts resources to the most needy, but this argument falls apart when thousands of children are going hungry and struggling to learn at school.

The move towards universal free school meals in London is a step in the right direction and shows an appetite for experimentation necessary to flesh out the future of the post-Covid welfare state. While some parents on higher salaries may benefit, focusing on this would be missing the point: universal services pay for themselves. By investing in our children’s well-being and education, we create a healthier, more prosperous society for everyone. It’s time to reject the divisive politics of means-testing and embrace universal public services that benefit us all.

A burger shop called the No Brand Burger in the South Korean capital is a bit different from typical fast-food restaurants: Its key staff are robots. From order to pick-up, customers don’t need a single face-to-face interaction. All they need to do is to click the menu they want on a kiosk (售货亭) touchscreen, pay and wait for a serving robot to bring their takeout bag to the pick-up spot.

While waiting for their food, customers take photos or stare with curiosity at the capsule-shaped robots, which remind people of the popular characters from the animated film “Despicable Me.” The yellow and black colors of the No Brand Burger restaurant also give the place the look of a toy shop. “This is the first time I’ve actually seen such robots, so they are really amazing and fun,” said Shin Hyun Soo, a 31-year-old office worker trying out the service.

The human staff do have a role to play, the restaurant’s manager Bae explained, adding toppings to the cooked ingredients before wrapping them and passing them over to a robot to serve. “The customer can take the food without any direct contact with the staff,” Bae said.

Before Monday, South Korea had for the last few weeks allowed restaurants to provide only deliveries and takeout meals after 9 p.m. In August, takeout orders accounted for 58% of No Brand Burger’s total sales, up by 16% from July, according to Shinsegae Food, the South Korean food company that operates No Brand Burger.

No Brand Burger isn’t the only local restaurant using robots to serve customers. South Korea’s major IT company KT has partnered with the family restaurant chain Mad for Garlic to provide Al serving robots.

Using 3-D space mapping and other technology, the robot can freely move through the narrow lanes between tables and avoid obstacles to reach its destination, said Lee Youngjin, team leader of AI Platform Business Team at KT. The robot can serve up to four tables per trip. “Children customers often like to see the robot. Also, customers in general feel it is fresher to receive their food through the robot because of the COVID-19,” said Lee Young-ho, the manager of one Mad for Garlic restaurant using the robots.

Chinese writer Can Xue, along with Japanese author Haruki Murakami, was reportedly named as the fourth-ranked candidate(候选人)to have the highest chance of winning the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2019.

Can, whose real name is Deng Xiaohua, was born in Changsha, Hunan in 1953. Not raised as a writer, she spent almost 20 years while being a worker, tailor and medical practitioner (从业者).Yet she never gave up on her passion, and in 1985 published her first novel Yellow Mud Street. Like her other works, it made use of symbolism. The book became known as the autobiography of her inner world. Such a work was not easily accepted or understood by Chinese readers during that period. But Can never stopped pursuing her own style.

Other representative works include Old Floating Cloud and The Barefoot Doctor. Some have been translated in other languages, while others have been selected as textbooks at world-class universities in the US and Japan. Her novel The Last Lover has been honored with the Neustadt International Prize for Literature in US, widely considered a prelude award for the Nobel.

Sharing a stylistic similarity with Franz Kafka, Can has been called the "Chinese Kafka" by permanent Nobel Literature Committee judge and renowned sinologist Goran Malmqvist. Malmqvist even believed Can could achieve more than Kafka, as she has already created more than 7 million words of literary composition.

Can responded she was unworthy of that level of praise, and she is just standing on Kafka's shoulders.

Though not understood by many Chinese, Can still writes in a way that combines Western and Chinese culture. But Can said many Western readers thought her works novel enough, as she praised the virtues of introducing Chinese culture to the West.