Nobody knows how many different languages there are in the world. The most widely used language is English. It's used by business people, airline pilots all over the world. It's also the first language of sports and science. So it's very important for us to learn English.

    English is most widely spoken in the world, while Chinese has the largest number of speakers. There are not only over one billion people living in China, but also many Chinese people living outside China. You can find large or small groups of Chinese people living in almost every country in the world.

    There are some other important languages in the world, too. Chinese is of course very important, especially in Asia. Arabic is widely spoken in many parts of Asia and Africa. Russian is spoken both in Europe and Asia. French is widely understood, not only in Europe, but also in parts of Canada, Africa and Asia. Spanish has a growing number of speakers all over the world, especially in Central and South Africa.

    What language do people speak in the United Nations? There are so many different languages in the world, but they decide to use only six of them. They are Arabic, Chinese, English, French, Russian, and Spanish. Everything spoken or written in one language is translated into the other five.

    Robots are playing an important role in our life. They help us a lot.

    In factories, robots can help people do lots of work. They work faster and do not need a rest. People will feel bored if they do the same job again and again, but robots will not. And they can work in same dangerous places. Usually people cannot.

    In our homes, robots are useful, too. They can help us do some cooking. They can help blind people read newspapers and help the old people move some heavy things. They are our best friends. They are clean and do not need to eat food.

    However, robots are not as clever as people. They cannot think like us. If we do not "'teach" them how to do things first, they can do nothing.

    Humans are going to the Moon for the first time since the last Apollo Mission( 飞行任务) in 1972, 45 years ago.

    SpaceX, a US space technology company, will send two people on a private trip around the moon. And they plan to make it happen in 2018, reported CBS News.

    The company didn't name the two people, how much they were paying or even their gender(性别). But they did say that the mission would use SpaceX's Falcon Heavy rocket and Dragon 2 spacecraft. Both of them are still in development(研发).

    The founder of the company Elon Musk mentioned that the trip would last about a week. "The plan is crazy." Mark Shelhamer, a former scientist from NASA said. "It's impossible to complete the mission. Getting to the moon is a lot more difficult than getting to the International Space Station." However, Musk believes that the trip will be a great success. The spacecraft will run on autopilot(自动驾驶) and the two space tourists will get hard training.

    "There is some risk there," Musk said. "But we'll do everything we can to minimize(将…减到最少) that risk."

New Energy in the Twenty-first Century

Energy from wind

    Wind is a kind of clean energy, and there is lots of it, but, if there's no wind, there is no wind energy.

Energy from the water

    When water from a high place to a lower place, it can make electricity（电） without pollution. However, people have to build dams（水坝） to use this energy, and building dams is very expensive.

Energy from the earth

    There is heat in the rocks under the earth. Scientists use the beat to make geothermal（地热的） energy. This kind of energy is cheap and clean, but it is only possible in a few places in the world.

Energy from the sun

    Solar panels（太阳电池板） on the roofs of house can tum energy from the sun into electricity. Solar power is clean and plentiful（丰富的）. When the weather is bad, it doesn't work.

    Give your dead batteries a new life. Recycle them！

    Batteries(电池) are used to power clocks, computers, tools and more. However,

Your batteries have some serious power when their lives are over.

WHY TO RECYCLE BATTERIES

    Remember, batteries are harmful waste. This mean you could properly throw away. You may not think one little battery can cause that much pollution. But don't think of it as just one battery—there can be millions. In Canada, each person uses about 20 single-use batteries every year. That's about 700 million batteries! If all these batteries end up in landfills(垃圾填埋场), the heavy metals inside them can get into the water, land and air. It can be harmful to humans and wildlife.

    By recycling single-use batteries instead of throwing them away, you can cut down pollution and also help save energy. All batteries are mainly made of plastic and valuable metals. Through recycling programs, dead batteries can be changed into something useful like steel products, or even new batteries!

    HOW TO RECYCLE BATTERIES:

    Make a difference by starting to collect batteries at your home or school today. You can prepare a box for battery collection and invite friends, family and classmates to bring in old batteries to be recycled.

    There are many safe ways to deal with your batteries. You can:

    Find a Call 2 Recycle public collection station near you.

    Ask the store where you bought the batteries if you can return them there.

    Communicate with your local city government to find out if there are special programs for recycling used batteries!

    For more information, visit https://ecokids.ca/batteries.

    A zero-waste life is a lifestyle that hardly creates any rubbish. So, a zero-waste store is about providing a kind of everyday and pleasant-looking zero-waste products to help people start on a zero-waste life journey.

    "Zero waste" or "danshari" was first suggested by a French woman called Bea Johnson. Her idea is: live a life and try not to create any rubbish; use different kinds of ways to save the environment such as stopping the use of one-off objects; giving unwanted things to others or giving them away to organizations like the Red Cross.

    Yu Yuan, 27, is deeply interested in this idea. She and her boyfriend have lived in Beijing for many years. And earlier she used to buy things without thinking about them carefully until she saw a video about "zero waste", in which a family of four placed the rubbish they produced every year in a jar (罐). After watching the video, Yu wanted to experience this zero-waste lifestyle with her boyfriend.

    A zero-waste life follows the 6R rule-Refuse Reduce, Reuse, Repair, Recycle and Rot. Over August-October when Yu followed the rule of zero waste 6R, she and her boyfriend Joe Harvey both produced only two cans of rubbish.

    Now, the couple have opened a small shop in Beijing, where they use wood products to take the place of plastic ones and cloth bags printed with environmentally friendly logos. Most products sold in the store can be reused. The store also has second-hand books and CDs/DVDs with, ideas to make the best of the used things.

    "Those who once experienced the non-waste lifestyle have slowly changed their ideas," says Ya, "The zero-waste lifestyle is not for ascetics (苦行僧). It is just around us at our finger-tips." Yu expects some of her friends to join her on the road to zero waste.