They wear the latest fashions with the most up-to-date accessories(配饰). Yet these are not girls in their teens or twenties but women in their sixties and seventies．A generation which would once only wear old-fashioned clothes is now favouring the same high street looks worn by those half their age．

    Professor Julia Twigg, a social policy expert, said, “Women over 75 are now shopping for clothes more frequently than they did when they were young in the 1960s．In the 1960s buying a coat for a woman was a serious matter．It was an expensive item that they would purchase only every three or four years — now you can pick one up at the supermarket whenever you wish to．Fashion is a lot cheaper and people get tired of things more quickly.”

    Professor Twigg analysed family expenditure(支出) data and found that while the percentage of spending on clothes and shoes by women had stayed around the same — at 5 or 6 percent of spending — the amount of clothes bought had risen sharply．

    The professor said, “Clothes are now 70 percent cheaper than they were in the 1960s because of the huge expansion of production in the Far East．In the 1960s Leeds was the heart of the British fashion industry and that was where most of the clothes came from, but now almost all of our clothes are sourced elsewhere．Everyone is buying more clothes but in general we are not spending more money on them．”

    Fashion designer Angela Barnard, who runs her own fashion business in London, said older women were much more affected by the celebrity(名流) style than in previous years．

    She said, “When people see stars such as Judi Dench and Helen Mirren looking attractive and fashionable in their sixties, they want to follow them．Older women are much more aware of celebrities. There's also the boom in TV programmes showing people how they can change their look, and many of my older customers do yoga to stay in shape well in their fifties．When I started my business a few years ago, my older customers tended to be very rich, but now they are what I would call ordinary women．My own mother is 61 and she wears the latest fashions in a way she would never have done ten years ago．”

    On Nov.18th,1908, three men went up in a balloon. They started early in London. The headman was Augusta Gaudron, and the other two men were Tannar and Maitland. They had a big balloon and they were ready for a long way.

    Soon they heard the sea. They were carrying the usual rope, and it was hanging down from the basket of the balloon. At the end of the rope they had tied a metal box. This could hold water, or it could be empty. So they were able to change its weight. It was for use over the sea. They were also carrying some bags of sand.

    After the sun rose, the balloon went higher. It went up to 3,000 metres, and the air was very cold. The water in the balloon became ice. Snow fell past the men's basket, and they could see more snow on the ground. The men tried to throw out some more sand; but it was hard. They tried to break the icy sand with their knives, but it was not easy. The work was slow and they were still falling, so they had to drop some whole bags of sand. One of them fell on an icy lake and made a black hole in the ice.

    At last they pulled the box into the basket. It was still snowing; so they climbed to get away from the snow. They rose to 5,100 metres! Everything became icy. They were so cold that they decided to land. They came down in Poland heavily but safely. They had travelled 1,797 kilometers from London!

    My high school life has been filled with many ups and downs, whether it was social or academic. Even though my current high school was not my first choice, I never regretted attending Southside High School. “Since you have chosen it, then it is the best for you,” said my parents.

    Up until the junior year I did not realize my capabilities (能力) as a student. Being in the IB Program, I was told that my junior year would be the toughest in all the years of high school. With this “little” piece of information, I walked into my junior year, scared of my grades. As weeks went by, I started to believe that the junior year was not as hard as everyone had said, but I was wrong. My grades were rapidly declining(下降) and by the end of the first term I had five Cs in seven of my classes! I could not believe it — I did not want to believe it. I tried my best to get my grades up myself without any help from anyone, but my pride just made my grades worse. And I had to miss out on one of the most important speech and debate competitions all year: States. I was heartbroken. I realized that I could not survive my junior year on my own, so I had to get help fast.

    Once I got a tutor, my grades went from Cs, Ds, and even some Fs, to nothing but As and Bs. I slowly started to gain my confidence back in all of my classes and even myself. By the time the third and fourth quarter came around, I had been on the honor roll twice, and I was receiving awards from speeches and debates, tennis and school.

    Southside has taught me to always keep my head up and never give up on myself no matter what life throws at me. I am proud to be a Southside Tiger.

    Many foreign students report feeling lonely or unwelcome in Australia. Those feelings are among the reasons why Australia is taking a close look at its international education industry. But wherever international students go, making friends may not always be easy. Elisabeth Gareis of Baruch College in New York surveyed 454 international students. They were attending four-year colleges and graduate schools in the American South and Northeast.

    Students from English-speaking countries and from northern and central Europe were more likely to be happy with their friendships. But 38% of the international students said they had no close friends in the United States. And half of the students from East Asia said they were unhappy with the number of American friends they had. Thirty percent said they wished their friendships could be deeper and more meaningful.

    Professor Gareis says, “Students from East Asia have cultures that are different on many levels from the culture in the United States. There are also language problems, and maybe some social skills, such as small talk, which are possibly not as important in their native countries, where it's not as important to start friendships with small talks. Many East Asian students blamed themselves for their limited friendships with Americans, for not speaking the language well enough and for not knowing the culture well enough.

    VOA's Student Union blogger Jessica Stahl did her own survey to find out how American students and foreign students relate to each other. More than 100 students, about half of them American, answered her online questions.

Half of the international students and 60% of the Americans said they related as well or better to the other group than to their own group.

    Professor Gareis says: "International students who make friends with host nationals are, overall, more satisfied with their stay in the host country. They have better language skills, they have better academic performance and they have better attitudes toward the host country."

    Dearborn Heights, Michigan—2.7 million children under 18 have a parent in prison, and women put in local prisons are the fastest growing population. Shawna Reynolds has seen some of those women up close while working in the corrections system(劳教所) for 17 years, and she was encouraged to try something different.

    After seven years of education and collecting as much money as she could, Shawna created About Face Course Correction—a one-year rehabilitation program(康复项目) that offers a more personal way to help non-violent women prisoners. The program includes classes for women to finish their education, find a job and So on. "You can't expect people who have been in prison to stay in prison," Shawna says. "YOU want them to be helpful people but if you are not going to help them, it's not going to happen."

    The women live free for a year in a house in Dearborn Heights, Michigan. Women like 20-year-old Jennifer Douglas, who dropped out of school, took drugs(吸毒), and has spent years in and out of prison. She says, "I was doing things I would never have thought I would do in my whole life. Because of About Face, Jennifer's life is changing. " "Everyone is starting to trust me again and proud of me and what I'm doing," she says. "It's helped me a lot. It has kept me on the right track."

    There are many other women like Jennifer. Every woman's story is different, but each woman is important. And Shawna is determined to break the cycle and help them turn their lives around. She is using her own money and donations to pay for the house and this program. If you would like to donate, please visit their Go Fund Me account here.

    A first-year undergraduate student in Chengdu, recently complained online that her mother refused to raise her monthly allowance to 4,500 yuan ( $ 633) even when she said her current allowance 2, 000 yuan was not enough to cover her expenses, sparking a debate on how much money a college student needs per month. One expert shares his views on the issue with China Daily: Students should pursue education, not comfort.

    Even for a college student studying in a first-tier city in China, 2,000 yuan is enough to cover all his or her monthly expenses. In fact, for a college student in Chengdu a monthly allowance of 2,000 yuan is more than enough. According to a survey conducted by a bookkeeping platform, the average monthly expense for an undergraduate in cities other than Beijing, Shanghai and Hangzhou was less than 2,000 yuan in 2019； for Chengdu, it was 1,900 yuan.

    Claiming that she can hardly afford new clothing and cosmetics with her 2,000 yuan monthly allowance, the undergraduate student in Chengdu criticized her mother for refusing to raise her pocket money. Her "meager" allowance, she said, prevented her from buying branded goods that her hostel-mates enjoyed.

    By the time a person enters a college, she or he should have developed a healthy consumption habit. And a youth should adjust her or his consumption according to her or his family income. On a deeper level, the money they spend in college should depend on how much they value their parents' hard work. Besides, some college students could take UP part-time jobs to meet their monetary needs if they feel their parents don't or can't send them enough money. In this way they can also learn to meet the requirements of life in the future and develop healthy consumption habits. More importantly, they should always bear in mind that education is their top priority in college