The US have a long tradition of cricket. At one time, many British people came to America and introduce cricket. So most white inhabitants used to play it. In fact, the match between the US and Canada in 1844 was the first international match. But at the time the Civil War occurred, cricket was unfortunately replaced by Baseball, and since then, it has been played by only the elite who live in the Philadelphia and New York areas. However, there are movements to revive the popularity of cricket. For example, the Indian Premier League will hold its competition in the US.
Opinion
I was under the impression that cricket was played only in English, so it was unexpected that the US have long-lasting culture of playing cricket and it is very famous in India. At first, I was wondering at the relationships between cricket and the US, also between cricket and India, but I could understand them by thinking about the history of the US and India.
And, I think the movement to revive the popularity of cricket in the US is really good, because it has room for becoming famous among worldwide people. Or else, it never have been famous in England. I hope that cricket will become famous and be introduced to Japan!!
According to a private survey, in September, service sector of China made works at the fastest pace in seven months. There are many supporters of the growing consensus that China’s central bank will postpone the further monetary easing until at the end of the year. PMI remained well above 50-mark both manufacturing and services sectors in the Caixin, but the degree of expansion are lower than previous month. Economists request more structural reforms and fiscal support to promote economic growth if the policy looked less effective. However, the governmental survey says that China’s economic are growing in September at a faster pace than in August.
Opinion
When I read the topic, I was surprised to know the China’s real economic situation. That’s because I had no doubt that the economic situation of Chine was declining sharply. And, I am convinced that the decision of government to reduce interest rates was right. Thanks to the policy, the business condition were stopped to the reduction. If the policy was not enforced, employers resigned to hire people and the unemployment rate was reduced. Moreover, business condition in China had been worse and worse, and the aftereffects would began to felt in Japan. So I strongly think that Chinese government should continue the policy not to have a harmful influence on other countries’ economy.
In Pennsylvania, a crash involving a Tesla car occurred and the accident is investigated by the US authorities. Tesla cars, which include a self-driving feature known as Autopilot, has caused now accidents.
Tesla’s opinion is that they have no reason to believe that Autopilot had anything to do with the accident because the system have many functions such as an automated alert and airbags to prevent accidents.
But NHTSA found that the accident happened because the Tesla car failed to detect a large tractor-trailer. And they told Tesla to make their safety manuals stronger.
My opinion
I think a self-driving system have both merits and demerits. The merit is that it will enable elderly and handicapped people to move to anywhere that they want freely by car. And, the demerits is that if the system like that installed into all cars completely, people would lose the ability to drive themselves. They will rely the system too much and they can do nothing when the systems are broken. In my opinion, the self-driving system should be installed only for the people who can’t drive themselves. And, the system must be more safety not to cause accidents like Tesla cars crashes.
I believe that all people are equal. However, especially at a place of work, I strongly feel that there is a discrimination between men and women in Japan. I often hear that the percentage of female managers is lower than that of other developed countries. This shows that women can’t be promoted in the same way of men. Why the situation like this occur? Partly because there are many women who can’t go back to work after childbirth to raise their children, I think. There are two plans we should do to prevent women from retiring with childbirth and child care.
First, nursery attached to places to work should be established more. Recently, nursery school and kindergarten are running short and there are many women who can’t left their children during their work time and have to retire their job to care them. If a nursery attached to working place is secured for mothers who work at there, they will be never in trouble to find a nursery. Moreover, if nursery is close to the work place of mothers, it will not need time and effort to pick their children up. To establish nursery like that would have many merits for mothers, and would need less money to install them if there were available rooms in the building the same as their working place. So we should promote companies to introduce the system, I think.
Second, we should make more flexible working system for mothers. For example, flextime system, temporary part time work and so on. Most of them want to work, but they are not afford to work as full time worker. We should not corner them into resignation but esteem their intension that they want to return to work, although they can’t work in full time. We should introduce some systems to make good working environment for them. If there are many choices, they will be able to work conforming with growth stages of their children. And, they would feel less antipathy when they resume working as full time workers if they worked little by little. With the introduction of systems like that, women who finish maternity leave can come back to work easily.
From the above, we should correspond the difficulties that mothers face as we instruct those two policies. They will expand choices for mothers who want to work. If we made good environment for working mothers, more women would have less reluctance to marry and have their children, and decreasing birthrate would be alleviated. I want to be an official of Ministry of Health, Labour and Wealfare to realize the system which I mentioned above. I am convinced that we will be able to change Japanese society into gender equality society.
Sadiq Khan, London mayor, has now asked Transfer for London (TfL) to stop broadcast a weight-loss advert (depicting a bikini-clad female and says “beach body ready?”, and advertising watchdog received lots of complaints in 2015). He advocates to ban adverts of negative body image because they put pressure on people to become thin to imitate such unrealistic images. However, TfL refuses the request and says that it has a duty to guarantee for sponsors to refrect their original copy. Regarding this matter, the Advertising Standard agency (ASA) watchdog ruled the advert gave neither offensive nor irresponsible impression.
Opinion
I agree with the mayor’s idea to ban adverts of negative body image, because many people watching the image of famous models tend to desire to be like them, and try unreasonable a diet. In fact, models who have too little BMI values can’t appear on mass media in Paris. I think this policy should be introduced to Japan because Japanese women are on diet although they are already too thin. It can be a deterrent for such a situation. But, some people say the policy can be an obstacle to freedom of expression. It is difficult to decide offensive expression, so we should be careful when we carry out the policy.
The Colombia government and Farc rebels agreed with the document to release child soldiers. The Farc rebel is the left-wing in Colombia, which often makes some wars with the government. At those wars, many children and adolescents were treated as victims. In the documents, the government and the Farc reached an agreement that fighters under 15 years old return to their families. This agreement will be extend to all soldiers under 18 years old.
However, both sides have not cleared how many children and adolescents in total still remain in the Farc.
The government and the Farc are negotiating about the permanent ceasefire, and the Farc are transforming from a military group into political party.
My opinion
First of all, I was surprised the fact that there are the child soldier system in Latin America. I thought that only African countries used the system. Recently, Latin America becomes the focus of world attention as an area of Olympic. But we should pay attention to the negative sides, for example, disputes, public disorder and so on.
Next, it was unexpected fact that the numbers of child soldiers are decreasing. I tend to think that the state of affairs are getting worse and worse, and the wars are expanded. But I was relieved to know the fact that some countries have settled problems in an amicable way. I hope that this trend spread all over the world.