First Lady Michelle Obama is on a five-day trip to Asia. She is visiting Japan and Cambodia to help publicize a program called "Let Girls Learn". Administration officials set up the campaign to support the education of millions of girls worldwide.

    Before her trip, Mrs. Obama and her husband noted the inability of an estimated 62-million girls to attend school. They said educating the girls should be a foreign policy goal.

    This week, Mrs. Obama criticized the fact that tens of millions of girls are not receiving a satisfactory education. In her opinion piece, she wrote this failure to educate girls it was more than "a tragic waste of potential." It is both a serious public health issue and a problem for the economic health of nations and the world. She also said it was "a threat to the security of countries around the world".

    The First Lady noted by 2012, every part of the developing world was educating both girls and boys in primary schools. But this is not the case in secondary education. She wrote in some areas girls face "the cultural values and practices that limit the prospects of women in their societies ".

    The Obama administration launched the "Let Girls Learn" campaign earlier this month. At the time, Mrs. Obama noted plans to involve the U.S. Peace Corps, and the Volunteer Development Agency.

    "This effort will draw on the talent and energy of the nearly 7,000 Peace Corps volunteers serving in more than 60 countries. Through this effort, Peace Corps will be supporting hundreds of new community projects to help girls go to school and stay in school. And, I want to emphasize that these programs will be community-generated and community-led. They will be based on solutions devised by local leaders, families and yes, even the girls themselves."

    President Obama also spoke at the same White House event, saying that campaign is important to his administration.

    Terrible disasters in the last 50 or 100 years have become increasingly common. Over the last 30 years, the number of weather-related disasters has increased quickly, and the disasters have also affected more people and caused more economic loss. However, much of this could be avoided through disaster risk reduction(DRR降低灾难风险).

    A meeting, held in Sendai, Japan last month, opened one day after Cyclone Pam（飓风Pam）hit Vanuatu, which struck the islands with winds of up to 340km/h and destroyed the island nation. The speech by the President of Vanuatu was given shortly after that. He begged the international community for support and stronger commitment (承诺)to helping them manage climate and disaster risks. In the face of disasters, it is always the developing countries that suffer most. Damage in these countries is often worse and unluckily, there is limited money and technique to prevent these disasters.

    In fact, we have seen Asian countries-especially those that have suffered a lot in disasters can't pay the price. Great loss Asia has suffered comes to a total of almost $ 53 billon yearly over the past 20 years.

    At the same time, studies have shown once again that proper prevention saves lives and damage. With this in mind, people at the Sendai meeting were able to come up with new agreements that effective ways of disaster risk reduction will be carried out in the coming years for those who easily get damaged in disasters.

    Have you ever considered all the English expressions that include words about clothes? Let's have a look.

    People wear pants to cover the lower part of their bodies. We sometimes say that people who are nervous have ants in their pants. Sometimes, people may get caught with their pants down. They are found doing something they should not be doing. And, in every family, one person takes control. Sometimes a wife tells her husband what to do. Then we say she wears the pants in the family.

    Pants usually have pockets to hold things. Money that is likely to be spent quickly can burn a hole in your pocket. Sometimes you need a belt to hold up your pants. If you have less money than usual, you may have to tighten your belt.

    I always praise People who can save their money and not spend too much. I really take my hat off to them. Yet, when it comes to my own money, I spend it at the drop of a hat, which means I instantly spend it.

    Boots are a heavy or strong kind of shoes. People who are too big for their boots think they are more important than they really are. I dislike such people.

    My father is an important person. He runs a big company. He wears a suit and tie, and a shirt with sleeves that cover his arms. Some people who do not know him well think he is too serious and never shows his feelings openly. But I know that my father wears his heart on his sleeve.

    China is using travel as an important tool to help strengthen its economy. At the recent First World Conference on Tourism a Chinese official spoke about the government's plan for using tourists and the money they spend. The head of China's National Tourism Administration, Li Jinzao, said that China plans to send 150 million travelers along what he called the “One Belt, One Road”. In the next five years, these tourists are expected to spend $200 billion, he said. This spending estimate is likely to raise expectations among countries along the ancient Silk Road, which links China to its neighbors.

    China has reasons to feel it can use tourism to influence the foreign policy. Governments across the world are changing their immigration(移民) rules to welcome the growing numbers of Chinese tourists. Chinese citizens are now going to places where in the past Chinese rarely went. Marketing expert Michel Gutsatz said that among Chinese travelers, South Korea and Thailand are popular destinations. Outside of Asia, he said, Chinese are more likely to visit Europe than North America. These changes, he said, are the results of young Chinese travelers, who spend more and travel independently.

    Spending by Chinese tourists has lifted the economies of several Asian countries, including Thailand, Malaysia and Vietnam. It is expected that the number of Chinese traveling overseas to reach 242 million by 2024. In a single year, that number would be equal to the total number of tourists received by Germany, Iran, Indonesia and Egypt combined.

    China is now the biggest business travel market in the world. The Global Business Travel Association (GBTA) recently announced that China has overtaken the United States in business travel. Chinese spent just over $290 billion. This year, GBTA predicts that the Chinese business travel market will grow over 10 percent, while the US business travel market will grow less than 2 percent.

    One of the great concerns that ornithologists have is that climate change will throw the nesting activities of birds out of sync (同步) with the availability of food for the raising of chicks. For one species, the pied flycatcher, a new study shows that some of its clan are proving to be remarkably adaptable.

    Upon returning to Europe from their African wintering grounds, the flycatchers time their egg-laying to the short period when juicy caterpillars (毛毛虫) are most abundant. During the past three decades this caterpillar peak has advanced by three weeks. Pied flycatchers initially had difficulty adjusting, but over time have started laying their eggs earlier to grab the caterpillars. Some, though, are doing a lot more to improve their reproductive chances of success, according to a study in the Journal of Avian Biology led by Christian Both of the University of Groningen, in the Netherlands.

    Like most bird species, pied flycatchers have long been thought to lay a single clutch of eggs during the breeding (繁殖) season. This was widely considered to be a trait that wouldn't change. Then, in 2007, a Swiss team led by Dr Ravussin began to suspect that clutch numbers were flexible. They discovered a female pied flycatcher that immediately produced a second brood with a new male after raising an early set of chicks. Aware of Dr Ravussin's findings, Dr Both wondered whether this was just a single, odd instance or if second broods might be happening on a larger scale driven by the arrival of earlier springs. So, they cooperate to delve into the data to find out.

    The team studied pied-flycatcher populations in the Netherlands and Switzerland that were known to be among the earliest nesting members of the species. In total, they tracked the egg-laying times and hatchling-rearing success of 8,848 breeding pairs in the Netherlands and1, 372 in Switzerland between1980 and 2018. They found that since 2006, 11 cases of second broods were observed, all of them among the earliest breeders in both populations.

    Further studies ruled out that the birds were making up for a failed first attempt at raising chicks or that the second group of nestlings suffered.

    With no obvious downside to laying a double clutch, Drs Both and Ravussin conclude that the birds are attempting to double their annual reproductive output. While this behavior is still rare, they argue that if the tendency is driven by heritable genes (which it may well be), then a succession of early springs could make the strategy much more common.

Everyone knows that early to bed and early to rise is good for your health.{#blank#}1{#/blank#}It takes a lot of willpower to get out of bed early on a cold winter's day. For this, we specially recommend a "painless early rise" guideline.

{#blank#}2{#/blank#}The secret to becoming a morning person is exposure to natural light. Jennifer Martin, president of the board of directors for the American Academy of Sleep Medicine, agrees with it firstly. That's because natural light holds back melatonin, a chemical that plays an important role in our bodies. "The sun is the driver of our internal clock," she says.

Ease in gradually. For some people like those who need to drive long distances, those first few days of being tired from switching to a new schedule aren't safe.{#blank#}3{#/blank#}"What I'll suggest to people is to shift half an hour, wait a few days, shift another halt an hour, wait a few days, and then shift another half an hour," she says.

Hold on — even on weekends.{#blank#}4{#/blank#}. Decide what time you're going to wake up every day. And stick to it without exception.

Plan something to look forward to. To force you out of bed,{#blank#}5{#/blank#}. You're not worrying if you think of that. "Now is the time to go to buy your favourite coffee or pick up some cakes to have when your alarm goes off at 5 a.m.," she says.

A. Adjust yourself to the schedule at night.

B. Seek out as much natural light as possible.

C. Becoming a morning person is a seven-day-a-week job.

D. But the reality is that getting up late is the norm for many of us.

E. In that case, Martin recommends gradually easing into the early-bird life.

F. Martin suggests treating yourself to something special you can enjoy first.

G. You should cut back on how much exposure to bright light you're getting.