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First up this Friday is in Brazil. It's the largest and most populated country in South America. More than 200 million live there.

And its government has announced plans to allow mining in part of the Amazon rainforest where it used to be illegal. The Amazon is gigantic. It covers more than 200 million square miles.

Brazil's government just abolished a reserve, a protected area that covers about 18,000 square miles. Mining won't be allowed in all of that. The government says it will only be legal in places where there are no conservative rules and areas where no indigenous people live.

But why the change? Brazil has high unemployment. It's around 15 percent, and the country has got out of its largest economic recession ever.

The government says the region has opened up for mining has a lot of minerals, gold and iron. So, it's looking to attract investors and create jobs.

But activists and environmentalists say this will cause more deforestation in the Amazon, that local cultures would be damaged and that water resources and biodiversity could be lost.

Brazil's mining industry accounts for about 4 percent of the nation's economy. The government wants to revitalize it and grow it to about 6 percent of the economy.

Also making news today, the next step in the education of a woman who risked her life to learn. Malala Yousafzai is the youngest person ever to win a Nobel Peace Prize. As she prepares to go to college, she's sharing her excitement with followers from around the world.

In 2012, Malala was shot by the Taliban, an Islamic militant group that strongly opposes education for women. She survived and continued the work she'd been doing to promote education for women.

MALALA YOUSAFZAI, NOBEL PRIZE WINNER: We need to invest in education. This is something that cannot be ignored. This determines the future of many children and especially for a region like Iraq and Syria, which have gone through conflict, education is the only way to which these countries can go forward and achieve progress.

AZUZ: Malala hopes to get a degree in philosophy, politics and economics from Oxford University.

  原文地址:http://www.tingroom.com/lesson/cnn2017/8/414736.html