1 . All About Qatar

Location: Qatar is part of Asia and is in the Middle East.

It is in the northern hemisphere.

It is a peninsula (a strip of land sticking out into the ocean) surrounded by the Gulf. It has a land border in the south to Saudi Arabia.

Capital City: Doha

Official Language: Arabic. English is also widely spoken.

Currency: Qatari Riyal

Government: Qatar is an absolute monarchy. which means there is only one leader who is called an Emir. The Emir has the final say in all matters to do with governing the country.

Religion: Most Qataris are Muslim.

Flag: The flag of Qatar is maroon and white with a jagged line in between the two colours.

Climate: Qatar is warm all year round and gets very hot in summer. Temperatures can reach 50 degrees centigrade! Hardly any rain falls at all.

Sandstorms are common in Qatar.

Physical Features: Qatar is approximately 100 miles long from north to south and 50 miles from east to west. The land of Qatar is mostly barren, low plains which are covered in sandy desert.

Wildlife: There is hardly any vegetation in Qatar apart from desert shrubs and grasses. In the north there are some farming areas which produce crops including dates, tomatoes and melons. Animals like goats and camels are raised too.

·The most popular sport in Qatar is football and the country has many beautiful football stadiums.

·Qatar is the host for the 2022 FIFA football World Cup.

·Qatari cuisine uses lots of fresh fish, rice and spices.

·Coffee is a very popular drink in Qatar.

·Qatar is a wealthy country due to the large deposits of oil underneath the land and natural gas (which is mostly mined off-shore).

Xi Jinping, general secretary of the Communis Party of China Central Committee, led the new top leadership of the CPC to Yan’ an,     1     old revolutionary base in Shaanxi Province, on Thursday.

The trip, which took place five days     2     the conclusion of the 20th CPC National Congress,     3     (consider) to be a demonstration(证明)of the CPC top leadership’s strong determination     4     (carry) on the Party’s fine traditions to make new progress on the new journey toward     5     (realize) national rejuvenation(复兴).

Led by Xi, the other six       6     (new) elected members of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee visited the site     7     the seventh CPC National Congress was held in 1945, an exhibition at the Yan’ an Revolutionary Memorial Hall,     8     (feature) the history of the time during which the CPC Central Committee     9    (base) in Yan’ an achieved from 1935 to 1948.

Xi said that the trip was made to recollect the glorious period in which the Party developed in Yan’ an, reminisce(缅怀)about the splendid achievements of the older generation of     10     (revolutionary), carry on the great spirit of the Party, and firm up historical confidence in order to try to achieve the goals and tasks set out at the 20th CPC National Congress.

4 . Population：Is 8 billion people too many?

The world’s population has reached 8 billion people.     1     because of longer life expectancy, fewer child deaths, and increasingly effective health-care systems. The UN secretary general, Antonio Gutters, declared it “an occasion to celebrate”.     2    . When the global population hit 4, 5, 6 and 7 billion, in 1975, 1987, 1999 and 2011 respectively, there was widespread dismay. The doubling of our numbers in 47 years did not bring about the famines and other disasters widely predicted in the 1960s. Our ability to feed ourselves has grown faster than our population has. Therefore, every projection of a limit to Earth’s human population, or assumed “ideal number”, has been wrong.

    3    , with fertility rates dropping below the replacement rate of 2.1 children per woman. Most of the ongoing growth is occurring in developing nations in Africa and Asia. In the developing world, though, things are about to change. The average woman in Tanzania in 2020 was a mother to four children, 9% down on a decade earlier. UN projections predict that it will fall to an average of 2.3 children in 2080.    4    . And over the next 70 years, “societal aging” will become a major problem. When there are far more old people than young, there aren’t enough workers to pay into pension systems, threatening their collapse. This phenomenon is already underway in the U.S., Europe, Japan and China.

For now, we can both acknowledge the downsides of the 8 billionth human and believe this is an occasion worth celebrating.    5    . In that sense, it’s a good thing that millions of new people — with their new ideas and fresh energy — are on the way.

6 . Is Australia an island?

Australia is the smallest continent and one of the largest countries on Earth, lying between the Pacific and Indian oceans in the Southern Hemisphere. At about 3 million square miles (7.7 million square km), it’s closer in size to Greenland than it is to South America. Does that make Australia an island like Greenland?

Although Australia is sometimes called an “island continent,” most geographers consider islands and continents to be separate things.     1     By that definition, Australia can’t be an island because it’s already a continent.

But in that case, what’s the difference between Australia and Greenland? Why isn’t Greenland (at 836,000 square miles [2,165,230 square km]) considered a continent instead of just the world’s largest island? Unfortunately, there isn’t a strict scientific definition of a continent.     2    

First, there is a geological distinction. While Australia and most of Asia are situated on separate tectonic plates, Greenland shares a tectonic plate with North America. There is also a biological difference. While a large percentage of Australia’s plant and animal species can be found nowhere else in the world, fewer of Greenland’s species are unique.     3     Aboriginal people are limited to Australia, while native Greenlanders belong to a group of peoples (the Inuit) found throughout the Arctic, including parts of Canada, the United States, and Russia.

Of course, there’s also the basic matter of size.     4     If they were much closer in area, Greenland might have more of a case for continent status (and Australia for island status). As it is, the vast difference between the two makes for a good dividing line.

While each of those criteria may not be sufficient on its own — for instance, Europe and Asia also share a tectonic plate but are usually considered separate continents for cultural reasons—together they form a general understanding of what qualifies as a continent.

8 . Imagine yourself sitting in a cafe one day in your hometown, when on the next table you hear some people speaking English with a strong North American accent (口音)Being a friendly person, you smile and say, “Hi! Are you American?” “No,” comes the quick answer. “Canadian!” Calling an English-speaking Canadian an American can be as bad as telling a Scotsman that he’s English or a Swiss person that he’s German. Although they have a common language, there are differences in culture and national feeling. “No,” many Canadians will tell you with confidence, “we’re not Americans! We’re Canadians.”

About 80% of Canadians live within 150 kilometers of the US border (国界), and this has had a detrimental influence on the Canadian economy. Like most European countries, Canada has a good national health service, and a good social service, but the good services have to be paid for by high taxes(税). Because of this, hundreds of thousands of Canadians often get in their cars and drive over to the USA to go shopping. This is one cause of economic problems in Canada. Over half of Canada’s products that are brought in from other countries come from the United States.

But the American influence is not just a question of shopping. Lots of Canadians drive American cars, and cars are, almost as important in Canada as they are in the USA. There is television too.

While Quebecers watch their own French-language TV stations, English-speaking Canadians have a choice between local English-speaking television stations, national programmes from CBC, and many American television stations. Unless they want to watch local stations, they’re just as likely to choose one of the big American television stations which include many different types of programmes as they are to a Canadian television station.

The cruelty of war is reason enough to do everything we can to prevent it. This is the motivation behind the United Nation's many peacekeeping missions. Peacekeepers monitor the peace process in areas that have experienced friction and civil wars, making sure that previously warring parties keep to their agreements. They work to disarm combatants and to secure weapons and ammunition, removing them from use. These measures aim to give stability to conflict zones and allow governments to reestablish authority. China is playing an increasingly important role in UN peacekeeping and it has trained 8, 000 troops who are kept on standby for UN missions. Chinese peacekeeping forces are highly-valued in conflict zones and have received praise for their professionalism.