CRI听力:Printing Graduate Papers Costs 70,000 Trees a Year in China

Water quality levels falling

Chinese authorities say the water quality at about 60 percent of groundwater monitoring stations nationwide was bad in 2013.

According to the Ministry of Land and Resources, there are nearly 4,800 monitoring stations in 203 prefecture-level administrative regions across the country.

The water quality at 44 percent of the total was "poor", while the quality at 15 percent of the stations was "extremely poor .

Components that exceeded the limits included iron, manganese and sulfates.

Some stations reported excessive levels of heavy metals, such as lead.

In 2011, about 45 percent of monitoring stations reported good groundwater quality, but the proportion fell to 43 percent and 40 percent in 2012 and 2013, respectively.

The proportion of monitoring stations reporting bad groundwater quality rose from 55 percent in 2011 to 57 percent in 2012.

Mirror Evening News

Printing graduate papers costs 70,000 trees a year in China

Excessive printing of each graduate's thesis paper during the matriculation season is putting enormous pressure on the country's forest resources.

The newspaper said a student has to print seven copies of their thesis on average.

Altogether 7.3 million students will graduate this year, which means their final documents will use up 4,000 tons of paper. More than 70,000 20-year-old trees will be chopped to satisfy the demand.

Printing shops near universities are crowded with students, and one shop owner boasted the paper used in his shop is all made from the pulp of good wood.

A professor at the University of International Business and Economics defended the practice, explaining that hard copies are necessary for academic use since reviewers can more easily write their comments, compared with electronic versions.

Yahoo News

Risk of asteroid hitting Earth higher than thought, study shows

The chance of a city-killing asteroid striking Earth is higher than scientists previously believed, according to one non-profit group bthat is uilding an asteroid-hunting telescope.

A global network that listens for nuclear weapons detonations detected 26 asteroids that exploded in Earth's atmosphere from 2000 to 2013.

The explosions include the February 15, 2013, impact over Chelyabinsk, Russia, which left more than 1,000 people injured by flying glass and debris.

"There is a popular misconception that asteroid impacts are extraordinarily rare ... that's incorrect," said one former astronaut, who now heads the California-based B612 Foundation.

City-killer asteroids are forecast to strike about once every 100 years, but the prediction is not based on hard evidence.

CTV News (Canada)

Middle class richer in Canada than U.S.

A report published in the New York Times on Tuesday reveals Canadians – not Americans – now boast the richest middle class.

The report says that after-tax, the middle-class incomes in Canada now appear to be higher than those in the United States.

That's a big turnaround since 2000, when Canadian middle-class incomes were substantially behind their neighbors.

Canadian middle-class earnings have gone up nearly 20 per cent, while American earnings have remained virtually the same since 2000.

The New York Times has been gathering income data for the last 35 years.

Insiders say the economic recession that began in 2000 has essentially paralyzed middle-class earnings in the U.S. And the hit to the U.S. construction and manufacturing industries was particularly damaging to the American middle class.