No.1　　Building for India's Future

　India now has a population of around 1 billion people. Every two seconds another baby is born. By the middle of the twenty-first century, more people will be living in India than in China. That will give India the world's largest population. India's rapidly growing population has made homelessness a very serious problem there.
　Laurie Baker, an architect from England, is helping to build houses in India for people without homes. He first went to India in 1945and has now spent more than 50 years there. He has designed and built everything from small houses to university campuses.
　Baker is able to build very cheaply because he uses natural marerials. Concrete, for example, is very expensive in India. So Baker uses handmade bricks instead. He also uses bamboo instead of steel because it is strong and easy to get.
　Baker believes it is important to think about the environment. He hates to waste anything, so he often recycles materials, including broken glass bottles and old wooden doors. Instead of using air conditioning, he builds walls with small openings. This allows his buildings to stay cool naturally. Sometiomes he even changes the building plans so that he won't have to cut down a tree.
　Baker, who is now 82 years old, has designed many hundreds of buildings in his career. He hopes the builders he has trained will continue to use his ideas in the future. As he says, "There are 40 to 50 million homeless people in India, so there's a lot to do."

No.2　　　Beavers in Washington, D.C.

　In 1912, Tokyo presented about 3,000 flowering cherry trees to Washingtin, D.C., as a symbol of friendship between Japan and the United States. The trees --- which now number about 3,700 --- were planted near a large pond near the Jefferson Memorial.
　Last March, officers of the U.S. National Park Service found that many of these famous cherry trees had been badly damaged by beavers. The beaver is an animal about the size of a large cat that lives in rivers and ponds. It has a large, flat tail and long, sharp teeth. It uses its sharp teeth to eat through the trucks of trees. The beavers then use the trees to build homes for themselves.
　The damage to the cherry trees was discovered as Park Service officers were preparing for the National Cherry Blossom Parade. This popular parade, which is held every year, includes people and performances from all over the world. The parade was held as planned, but several of the trees were in such bad condition that they had to be cut down.
　The Park Service officers decided to try catch the beavers. After a while, they caught three of the animals. The officers later set these beavers free in a wet, wooded area away from the city. Some people were worried about whether the beavers would be able to get used to the new area. Experts warned that other beavers already living an the area might attack them.
　Park Service officers came back to check on the beavers a few weeks later. They were pleased to find that the animals seemed to be living happily in their new home.