One of the most efficient ways to achieve peace and speed up economies (经济) is to provide girls with better education and more rights. Today, girls' lack of access (进入) to basic education is getting more serious when it comes to the use of digital (数码的) technology, leaving them far behind boys. And because the world is even more digital, those who lack basic internet skills will find it increasingly more difficult to take part in the formal economy, to get a quality education, and to have their voices heard.

    Since 2013 the global gender gap (性别差异) in male and female access to the Internet has actually increased from 11 to 12 percent. Worse yet, women and girls living in the poorest countries are 31 percent less likely than men and boys to have access to the Internet. In developing countries, some 200 million fewer women than men own a mobile phone, the most common means of internet access there. This digital divide is increasing, and should it continue at the present pace, it is projected that over 75 percent of women and girls will lack internet access and digital skills.

    There are many causes of the digital gender gap. They include girls' exclusion (排斥) from basic education, from specific technology education and high costs of mobile phones and internet access.

    Indeed, one of the so-called reasons why girls may be discouraged from learning how to access and use digital technology is also a groundless one: that girls are simply not good at using technology.

    Without the help of the government, most of the benefits of technological change will be enjoyed only by men, exacerbating gender inequality.

    There is much to see Australia that you can't see easily in its natural setting anywhere else. A visit to Australia would not be complete without taking the chance to see some of these animals in their natural environment.

Bandicoot

    There are several species of Bandicoot around Australia, and although occasionally they can be seen during the day, they are generally nocturnal. Bandicoots are small creatures only about the size of a rat and eat small insects and plants. Several of the Bandicoots around Australia include the Eastern Barred Bandicoot, which is now rare around Australia and the Southern Brown Bandicoot found in eastern and western parts of Australia.

Koala

    Koalas are small bears like creatures that live along the east coast of Australia, with their habitat amongst the famous Eucalyptus trees. However, koalas only like to eat a small percentage of the Eucalyptus trees found around Australia. Koalas have hard black noses, with sharp claws and a thick furry coat and can grow to a weight of about 10kg, most of their time is spent asleep in the trees, which is the best place to see a koala.

Dingo

    Dingoes are found in various areas across Australia, and unlike domestic dogs do not bark. Instead, the Dingo makes a howling sound that is very particular. Dingoes generally eat mice, rabbits and rats, although sometimes they can also attack livestock(家畜) when hungry.

Frilled Lizard

    The Frilled Lizard is found in the eastern and northern parts of Australia, living within the bush. The Frilled Lizard frill normally hangs around its neck, and is made out of a flap of skin. When threatened, the Frilled Lizard will raise its frill making it seen more dangerous.

    I love charity(慈善) shops and so do lots of other people in Britain because you find quite a few of them on every high street. The charity shop is a British institution, selling everything from clothes to electric goods, all at very good prices. You can get things you won't find in the shops anymore. The thing I like best about them is that your money is going to a good cause and not into the pockets of profit-driven companies, and you are not damaging the planet, but finding a new home for unwanted goods.

    The first charity shop was opened in 1947 by Oxfam. The famous charity's appeal to aid postwar Greece had been so successful it had been flooded with donations(捐赠物). They decided to set up a shop to sell some of these donations to raise money for that appeal. Now there are over 7,000 charity shops in the UK. My favourite charity shop in my hometown is the Red Cross shop, where I always find children's books, all 10 or 20 pence each.

    Most of the people working in the charity shops are volunteers, although there is often a manager who gets paid. Over 90% of the goods in the charity shops are donated by the public. Every morning you see bags of unwanted items outside the front of shops, although they don't encourage this, rather ask people to bring things in when the shop is open.

    The shops have very low running costs: all profits go to charity work. Charity shops raise more than ￡110 million a year, funding(资助) medical research, overseas aid, supporting sick and poor children, homeless and disabled people, and much more. What better place to spend your money? You get something special for a very good price and a good moral sense. You provide funds to a good cause and tread lightly on the environment.

    Overheated property markets in major cities have started to cool down after authorities took measures against speculative buying and a potential home market bubble. However, a long-term effort is needed to make the market stable and sustainable, analysts said.

    Last month, new home prices dropped in seven cities, compared with six in September, according to the National Bureau of Statistics, which monitors housing prices in 70 cities nationwide. In Shenzhen, where housing prices rocketed by more than 30 percent in the past several months, prices declined by 0.5 percent in October.

    “After first-tier cities and some key second-tier cities launched cooling measures, home prices have obviously become stable,”Liu Juanwei, NBS senior statistician, wrote in a note posted on the NBS website.

    Beijing, Tianjin, Shanghai, Xiamen and Zhengzhou began to see home prices switching from rising to dropping in the second half of October, with average prices down by between 0.1 percent and 0.4 percent compared with the first half of the month, he noted.

    Housing authorities in more than 20 cities have launched various measures against speculative buying to curb rapid home price growth, including setting stricter requirements for qualified buyers and limits on buying second and third homes.

    Yan Yuejin, an analyst with property research agency E-House China R&D Institute, said the residential property market is “digesting these policies and measures gradually, and it is likely for the market to have rational and stable prices in the near future.”

    Ma Junwei, an analyst with Deyi Realty in Shanghai, said it will require a long-term effort by regulators and local authorities to battle speculative buying while keeping supplies stable for buyers with solid demand, including those who plan to buy their first home or upgrade their housing.

    In Shanghai, real estate agents said that they have noticed that homebuyers have become more rational. “Buyers are starting to take their time and study their options. They will compare prices, designs and locations and bargain with sales representatives,”said Luo Dingjun, sales manager at Jinyu Property Marketing.“This was not the case two months ago, when they rushed to buy for fear that if they hesitated, prices would grow too fast and they would no longer be able to afford. ”

    Learning Chinese could be one of the most important decisions you ever make. Chinese is becoming the language to learn in the 21^st century. With the world's largest population and a rapidly growing middle class, China stands to become the engine of the world's economy in the coming years. This will make learning Chinese very important for people in many industries, or for those of us who wish to visit China or learn from its culture and history.

    There is an ongoing effort to modernize the writing system and standardize the language. An increasing number of people learning Chinese are learning the Mandarin, so unless you absolutely need to learn another dialect (such as Cantonese), be sure you are studying Mandarin.

For native English speakers Chinese is one of the most difficult and most different languages to learn. The vocabulary is wholly unfamiliar and unlike anything we know. In addition, in the Chinese tone system, words are spoken in rising or falling tones, which help to distinguish between them. Furthermore, there is the Chinese writing system— a collection of thousands of individual ideograms (表意文字), or symbols, which represent a word or an idea. These ideograms have no phonetic value—that is to say, we can't tell how the word is pronounced by how it is written. There is a method to present written Chinese in a phonetic script called pinyin. If you are learning Chinese, you'll be working with this pinyin system, but the beauty of the traditional writing system shouldn't be passed up. All these factors make learning Chinese difficult for us. Yet, for a determined learner, there's always a way to overcome it.

    Vaping can be just as damaging to your health as smoking. But the minute you kick the habit, you'll feel a difference.

    Vaping is the use of electronic cigarettes-e-cigarettes. Vaping became mainstream in the United States in the late 2000s. When e-cigarettes first hit the market, people believed they were a safer choice to tobacco cigarettes. We now know, however, that vaping, like smoking cigarettes can be quite damaging to your health-and equally addictive.

    Kids and teenagers are especially attracted to vaping, thanks to attractive flavors. Vape use in high school students rose by 900 percent between 2011 and 2015.

    Quitting vaping can be difficult, just like trying to stop smoking. There are some immediate, though often temporary, negative effects. The positive ones soon outpace the negative, however.

    In as little as 20 minutes, your heart rate returns to normal, your blood pressure drops, and your circulation starts to normalize. Your breathing may improve, too.

    Daily e-cigarette doubles a person's risk for a heart attack. If you quit, however, the risk begins to fall very quickly. Also, vaping, like cigarette smoking, can blunt your senses, reducing your ability to smell and taste. After just 48 hours without vaping, you may begin to notice your ability to taste and smell food has improved. Nicotine affects more than your brain: new research suggests nicotine can raise your blood sugar, too.

    Smokers often have a troublesome cough or make a breathless sound when they breathe that many refer to as a smokers cough. Smoking even e-cigarettes can badly harm your lung health and make fighting off infections difficult. Quitting, however, will help your lungs recover. After one month, your lung capacity improves.

    There will come a day when the bad habit of vaping won't have any lasting influence on your body and your health.