2 . Look into the future of what we eat, and you'll start wondering what could happen to our meals. As the world's population surpasses nine billion, our food needs will grow by 50 percent. How do we meet them without clearing more forests or expanding industrial agriculture, one of the most significant contributors to climate change? How do we keep our soil healthy, so that crops can grow well?

These questions are challenging. "But one thing is clear," says food journalist Lin Yee Yuan. "To feed nine billion people," she warns, "we're going to need all hands to the pump."

Many of those hands likely will be trying to find new ways to produce protein as the environmental stress of animal production becomes increasingly great. Animal production represents about one-seventh of all human-made greenhouse gas emissions. Beef produced in concentrated feeding operations typically requires nearly eight times the water and 160 times the land per calorie as vegetables and grain. No wonder United Nations officials have been urging everyone to eat less beef—and new food companies are taking it seriously.

Among them is the producer of the Beyond Burger, a patty with beefy coloring and protein from plants that is already available throughout the United States in about 10,000 grocery stores and many restaurants.

Other solutions take inspiration from nature. By the early 2000s, staff at the Land Institute were selectively breeding a grain to create a variety with better production, seed size, and disease resistance.

Today the result, called Kernza, is growing on 500 acres in the United States. A variety of food producers are readying it for market—including Bien Cuit, a high-end bakery in New York, which has made bread with it, and Hopworks Urban Brewery in Oregon, which sells a Kernza beer. "Whatever our meals may be like in 50 years, climate change will require us to make better use of what we already have," says global food expert Raj Patel. "The 21st century is teaching us that things once thought to be weeds and pests could turn out to be food."

3 . Japan has a population of 127 million. Tokyo is the largest city and holds one third of the population in the country. There are thousands of people passing by in a minute at the center of the busiest crossing in the city. At weekends, the supermarkets and subway stations are crowded with people.

Japan's government is considering a new way to get people to consider life outside Tokyo: Pay them to leave.

According to a report from NHK on Nov. 22, if someone decides to move from the 23 blocks of Tokyo and find jobs somewhere else, the government will think about giving as much as 3 million yuan to people. The population is increasing all the time in Tokyo and the areas around the city even though the whole population of Japan reduces. That's often been at the cost of other cities. The number of people moving to Tokyo has exceeded the number moving out for 22 years and the number counting. Nearly one out of every three people in Japan lives in the Tokyo area.

In the past several years, Japan's government has taken many measures to encourage people to keep away from the capital. for example, help build smaller population areas. Some local governments have used tax cuts to encourage companies to leave the Tokyo area, while others will pay them to leave.

But Japan's large government institutions, its top schools, as well as companies all lie in Tokyo, leaving the capital seems to be a day dream for most Japanese.

How do you count 1.3 billion people in the middle of a pandemic? China, as the world's most populous country, will launch its seventh     1     ( nation) census (人口普查) on November 1.

According to state-run news agency Xinhua, the huge undertaking will see around 7 million census     2     (worker) spread out across the country,     3     ( collect) names, ID numbers, gender, marital details, as well as education and professional information.

As well as traditional methods, citizens will also     4     ( recommend) using cell phones and other digital tools     5     (declare) personal and family information.

China conducts its census every 10 years. The last survey     6     (find) the population had increased from 1.29 billion to 1.37 billion. Last year, the country's birthrate hit its     7     (low) level since the founding of the People's Republic     8     1949. The statistics also revealed that more than 250 million Chinese were over 60 years old last year,     9     make up more than 18% of the population. The figure is forecast to rise to a third of the population by 2050 — or 480 million people.

This year's census may even show a decrease in     10     total size of the population for the first time in decades, setting the stage for India to overtake China as the world's most populous country.

5 . More than 2 million immigrants from Africa live in the United States. A new study from the Pew Research Center finds that they are, on average, college-educated and employed. In fact, they are more likely than native-born Americans to have gained advanced degree. And they are employed at about the same rates as the general population.

The study is important for several reasons. It shows that most Africans living in the U.S. are not struggling, out-of-work persons with little schooling. It also shows that the African immigrant population is different in the U.S. than in Europe. In addition, African immigrants in the U.S. are more likely than those in Europe to be working.

Monica Anderson is a researcher at Pew and one of the writers of the report. She told VOA that the research team wanted to compare the backgrounds of African immigrants in the U.S. to those in Europe. "What we found is that the African immigrant population really stands out and that they are a very highly educated group," Anderson said.

The Pew study is based on 2015 data from the U. S. Census Bureau and Eurostat's Labor Force Survey. One reason for different backgrounds among African immigrants is how close things are to each other. Europe is much easier to reach than the U. S. for low-income Africans. They can come by boat or other ways. In contrast, African immigrants coming to the U.S. often have the money to travel by plane as well as permission to enter the country.

But previous research found that higher education and employment levels do not always mean a higher quality of life. In 2015, researchers at Pew looked at black immigrants from Africa, the Caribbean, Central America and South America. They found that their average household income was more than $ 8,000 lower than the U.S. average.