Before 1982, China has been giving away giant pandas as gifts for diplomatic purposes., but now, China rent pandas to private organizations for exhibitions. The organizations can have the pandas for a period of time, and if the pandas have babies, they belong to the Chinese government. Although organizations need to pay for keeping panda, they benefit much more from exhibiting pandas. China renting pandas is a way of sharing profit. On 2011, the Edinburgh Zoo rented a pair of panda, and they hoped that could increase the number of visitors by 35% because they were losing 15% of visitors in the previous year. They had to spend 285000 Pounds for the place pandas live and 70000 each year to raise the pandas, but it is estimated that they will be making more than 2000000 pounds in 10 years.

Now a days, teenagers are facing unemployment, and the unemployment rate of 16 to 19 years old is 23.7 %, while the unemployment rate is only 7.2 % as a whole. One of the reasons is that, less teenagers today leave education to find jobs comparing to before. Teenagers make up 4% or work forces while 12% of unemployed population are teenagers. The other reason is that the teenagers has lower education, so they are less employed. African American teenagers has a even higher unemployment rate. Its unemployment rate is about 41.6%. From this, we know that education is essential for finding jobs, so it is better to have education for teenagers and find jobs after they graduate.  

There are many factors that can effect the prices of houses. The factors include the location of the building, convenience of the building, and the facilities near the building. The location affects the prices because in certain locations, it is more convenient compare to other places. Buildings located next to the main roads and in big cities tend to have higher value than buildings next to a little path in country sides. The location provides convenience so does the facilities near the buildings. Train stations and other transportation centers can make lives there easier, thus give a higher price. Other facilities such as schools or hospitals also affect the prices of the buildings near them because they bring convenience. There are also other factors that will change the value of a building. One is that businessmen raise the prices intentionally in order to make more money, but I think this one will not last long because the government might interfere them or  the prices will drop because no one is buying them.

My dad invest money in stock markets, and sometimes he talks about it with me. He said that people should split their own wealth into three parts. One third should be saved as cash, so people can use it anytime in need, the other one third should be used to buy lands or houses that cannot be sold easily, and the other one third third can be used to buy stocks or other investments. I think this is a pretty safe plan since it can prevent one from having no cash, but still have money to invest. If one use up all his or her money to invest, he will lose all of it when economy problems occur. And using all the money to buy lands is also a bad idea because it is hard to sell it and make money in a short time. Therefore, I think the plan is a good one, however I think it does not necessary need to be split equally into three parts. People can have enough cash they need with them or places they can access easily.

According to the central back of France, its economy is estimated to grow by one percent in the third quarter this year. The central back get this conclusion from several data, including its index of industrial confidence and index for services. The index of industrial confidence only drop by one last month and the index of services has grown by one. Its trade balance also has a deficit of 4.4 euros. Although France is still losing money, it is the lowest since July 2010. I think this might also help the economy in other part of Europe since it is a part of Euro zone and the size its economy is one of the greatest ones in Europe.

Asian Basketball Championship

Today, I watched our basketball team playing against Philippines' basketball team. It was a close game, and we only won for 5 points. The Asian Basketball Championship is hosted by Philippines this year, so its their home court. Although we scored 30 points in the first quarter and had a big lead, we only scored 12 points in the second quarter and losing by one at half time. We were behind by one at half time, and their team continue to score and enlarged the lead. They had the greatest lead of 14 points. Although we were behind, our team didn't give up. We had a 12-2 run at the start of the final quarter. Our team evened the game when 5 minutes left with 2 three point shots. The last 5 minutes was very close, but our team outscored them during the 5 minutes. Our team won all three games and we will enter the next round.
Earlier this year, our baseball team also did well in Baseball games, and our baseball league CPBL benefited a lot from it. Before the game, CPBL was losing money because there were scandals about players get bribed to lose their game, and that made the games not interesting and no one was watching. CPBL used this chance and made many changes, and people started to go back to watch baseball because people believe the performance will be better. The basketball league is also not doing well, and this time may be the chance for them to make some changes. People will believe in our basketball, so SBL needs to make some changes.

This summer vocation, the summer vocation before my junior year, has been filled with many kinds of preparation classes, such as SAT prep class and TOEFL prep c;ass. I had SAT prep class for the first month of my summer and TOEFL prep class for my second month of summer. The SAT prep class is pretty helpful, and I improved my writing skills. Although my math score dropped, I got a higher score on total score. In the SAT model test I took during sophomore  year, i scored 710 on math, but now i score lower than that.  Writing score and math score is easier to improve comparing to reading, and you gain less improvement on reading score with same amount of effort. I'll try to focus on math and writing because my total grade will improve more.