The Parents’ Lifesaving Touch

On March 25, 2010, Kate and David heard the words every parent feels frightened of: Their newborn wasn’t going to make it. Their twins—a girl and a boy—were born two minutes apart and 14 weeks premature(早产的), ______ just over two pounds each. Doctors had tried to save the boy for 20 minutes but saw no ______. His heartbeat was nearly gone, and he’d stopped breathing. The baby had just minutes to ______.

“I saw him gasp(喘息) weakly, but the doctor said it was no ______,” Kate told the Daily Mail five years later. “I know it sounds stupid, ______ if he was still gasping, that was a sign of life. I wasn’t going to give up ______.”

In an effort to cherish(珍惜) her last moments with the tiny boy, Kate asked to ______ him. The couple knew this was likely a ______.

Kate removed the hospital blanket ______ the boy, whom the couple had already ______ Jamie, and ordered David to take his shirt off and ______ her and the boy in bed. The first-time parents wanted their son to be as warm as possible in their arms and hoped the skin-to-skin contact would improve his ______. They also talked to him.

“We were trying to entice(说服) him to stay,” Kate told the Daily Mail. “We explained his name and ______ he had a twin who he had to look out for and how hard we had tried to ______ him.”

Then something completely ______ happened. Jamie started ______ again. Finally, he reached for his father’s finger.

The couple’s lost boy had made it.

“We’re the ______ people in the world,” David said.

Eight years later, Jamie and his sister, Emily, are happy and ______. The parents only recently told the kids the story of their ______. “Emily burst into tears,” Kate told the Daily Mail. “She was really upset, and she kept hugging Jamie. This whole ______ makes you cherish them more.”

Eating Bugs

Some insects, such as butterflies and ladybugs, are quite beautiful. But, did you know that many bugs are also edible and are filled with protein?

Aletheia Price knows this—and a lot more—about bugs. She also thinks you should try eating some. If you visit the website www.eatbug.com, you will find all kinds of information about edible insects. Most of it was written by Aletheia Price when she was fifteen years old. Aletheia started eating bugs at the age of thirteen. Before long, she found that she really enjoyed some of them. She also became interested in finding out more about which kinds of bugs could be eaten and how to cook them.

According to Aletheia, there are at least 1,462 kinds of edible insects. (Doesn’t that make you wonder who tried all of them and decided they were edible?) Some of her favorite dishes include mealworm chocolate chip cookies, ant tacos(玉米卷), and chocolate-covered crickets(蟋蟀). On her website she has recipes for insect entrees(开胃菜) and some helpful tips. For example, when preparing crickets, it is best to remove their legs before cooking, for the legs tend to get stuck in your teeth. She also offers information for anyone who wants to raise bugs for food.

Aletheia realizes that eating bugs is not for everyone. But, if you think about it, you have to admit that eating bugs might be a good idea. There are billions and billions of bugs in this world. If we could get used to eating them, we would have plenty of food for everyone.

Liana nervously bit her nails while she waited for the exam to arrive. She looked around the room; hundreds of other law students sat in rows staring anxiously at the tables in front of them. Just as she began to take a deep breath to calm her anxiety, an exam booklet(册子) was placed in front of her. This was the moment she had been expecting ever since she began law school three years ago. She picked up her pencil, and opened to the first page of the bar exam, a test for all students wanting to become licensed lawyers.

Liana never thought she would want to become a lawyer. Her parents were both artists. Law was something she had not been exposed to as a child. But art made for a tumultuous career—both of her parents had struggled to find jobs and worked round the clock when they were young. Even though they finally seemed successful and happy, Liana wanted something different.

She was the anchor on her high school debate team, and consistently impressed her competitors with her analytical thinking. “Never argue with Ms. Lakes,” her teachers would say. So she chose to major in law. In her mind, she pictured herself in a New York City courtroom(法庭) dressed in an expensive suit, with papers in her hand, waving at the jury(陪审团) in a speech on human rights.

But now, with the bar exam sitting in front of her, she started to worry. “What if I don’t pass? Did I study enough?” Her thoughts raced through her mind. On the first page were seven paragraphs detailing a law situation followed by a series of questions. Liana read through the paragraphs, and quickly scribbled down an explanation of the first question before moving onto the next question. The next few hours went like this as the clock ticked closer and closer to the lunch hour.

At 12:00 p.m. sharp, a buzzer(蜂鸣器) sounded and everyone was told to put down their pencils and walked out for an hour-long lunch break. At lunch, Liana met her friend, Kevin.

“How did it go?” she asked. “To be honest, I’ve no idea. I just kept writing.” Kevin said. Liana laughed and said she felt the same way.

After lunch, the two exchanged words of encouragement. They strolled back into the exam center a bit more refreshed. Liana finished the second half of the exam that day with a better feeling than what she started with in the morning.

Each year, hundreds of thousands of wild animals around the world are killed in trophy hunting—the organized shooting of animals for pleasure. The hunters then bring parts of the animal home with them as their “trophy” to remember the hunting.

Trophy hunters pay big money to kill animals. Some of the money goes to helping wildlife protection. Trophy hunting also attracts business, which encourages people to preserve land and breed(饲养) animals that would otherwise be endangered. Cathy Dean, head of the Save the Rhino Charity, says that at the start of the 1900s there were only 50–100 southern white rhinos. Now, there are around 18,000. This is partly because some of them were raised specially for trophy hunting.

But things don’t usually go on one way. According to WWF, elephant populations have fallen from 1.3 million to just over 400,000 since the 1980s. Over the same period, hunters from around the world have taken home more than 100,000 African elephant trophies. Trophy hunting is not illegal(非法的) but unfair on the animals. In 2015, Cecil the lion was shot by a US trophy hunter. Cecil was a beloved lion in Zimbabwe, Africa. Cecil was lured with bait(诱饵), shot with an arrow and struggled in blood for more than ten hours before his hunters tracked and finished killing him. His son, Xanda, met a similar fate two years later.

Cecil’s death caused worldwide outrage and protests(反抗) against trophy hunting. Countries including Australia, France and the Netherlands banned(禁止) the import of lion trophies—they stop hunters from being allowed to bring home parts of the animal they kill. They believe that people will stop trophy hunting because the activity might lose its attraction if hunters can’t bring their trophies home.

The UK Government said that it would consider a ban on trophy-hunting imports by 2017, but no action had been taken. In April 2019, a letter by protesters against trophy hunting was sent to the UK government asking to ban trophy-hunting imports. On 7 May, the official in charge of the environment, Michael Gove, said that the UK would not ban the imports for the time being. This left the world in a state of a shock. Hopefully the UK will place a ban on trophy-hunting imports, which would be an important message and inspire others to treat animals better. We’re waiting for the day to come.

When was the last time you sat on a park bench(凳子)? Did you stay for long? A new kind of park benches will limit the amount of time you can sit there. If you don’t get up in time, it could be very painful: there are many sharp spikes (钉子) on the part that you sit on!

Visitors who want a rest on the bench need to put a coin in a machine next to it. Once the money was accepted, the spikes disappear into the bench. Then visitors can sit down comfortably, but only for half an hour. When the time’s up, the spikes slowly start moving up again. It doesn’t hurt at first, but after a minute, they start coming up even more quickly. They aren’t long enough to cause serious hurt, but they do cause pain, as tests have shown. But why have they been installed (安装)?

“Our public park is very popular in summer,” a spokesperson for the park explained. “But with all the thousands of people who visit the park, there aren’t enough benches for everyone. We want to make sure that the benches are shared by more visitors, and to stop people taking a bench and staying there all day. Installing spikes seems to be the fairest way of stopping people doing this.”

No one knows exactly     37     the earth began. However, according to a widely accepted theory, the universe began     38     a “Big Bang”. Then the dust     39    (settle) into a solid globe. As the earth cooled down, water began to appear on its surface. Many     40    (science) believe that it was the presence of water that allowed the earth to dissolve     41    (harm) gases and acids into oceans and seas, which made it possible for life to develop.

Millions of years later, the first small plants appeared on the surface of the water. Their development     42    (follow) by early shellfish, all sorts of fish, green plants and land animals. Reptiles     43    (produce) young generally by laying eggs while mammals gave birth to young baby animals. Dinosaurs existed on the earth for over 140 million years before they suddenly disappeared. The reason     44     they disappeared still remains a mystery.

Finally, humans appeared and spread all over the earth. But they are putting too much carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, which prevents heat from     45    (escape) from the earth into space. As a result of this, people believe the earth may become too hot to live on. So     46     life will continue on the earth will depend on how this problem can be solved.