【推荐1】Encouraging life to bloom(兴旺) in the middle of a desert is no easy task. But one company in the United Arab Emirates has come up with a plan to provide drinking water for the state’s citizens. The company intends to drag icebergs from Antarctica to the gulf coast in order to harvest its freshwater.

The company plans to source the massive blocks of ice from Heard Island, around 600 miles off the coast of mainland Antarctica. It will then transport them around 5,500 miles to Fujarirah, one part of the UAE. One iceberg could provide enough water for one million people over five years, according to the company.

The company’s director says they have already travelled the transportation route and checked the possibility of the scheme, according to reports in Gulf News. Speaking to the site about what he is calling the UAE Iceberg Project, Abdullah Mohammad Sulaiman Al Shehi said, “We have made the technical and financial plan. We will start the project at the beginning of 2018. We want it mainly for the water. It could also be good for tourism and the weather.”

The UAE is one of the driest countries in the world, due to its extremely arid climate, which receives less than four inches of rainfall per year. Despite that, it consumes more water than double the global national average, putting the country at severe risk of droughts over the next 25 years.

An average iceberg contains more than 20 billion gallons of water, according to the company. The iceberg takes a long time to melt as 80 percent of it is underwater, while the white ice above reflects sunlight and deflects(使转向) its heat. Blocks of ice will be placed in giant tanks, before being processed. “This is the purest water in the world.” Mr. Al Shehi added.

【推荐3】BEIJING, China ---Pollution in China remains very serious as the country's rapid economic growth brings new environmental problems, a minister said Saturday.

Vice Environment Minister Zhang Lijun said China has made progress on environmental protection, but admitted that its rapid economic growth over the past decade has had a negative effect on the environment.

"Our rapid economic development has continuously brought our country new environmental problems, particularly dangerous chemicals, electronic waste and so on. These environmental pollutants (污染物) bring new problems and affect human health," Zhang told a news conference.

He said that emissions(排放)of traditional pollutants remain high and some areas have failed to meet government standards.

China has pledged to continue reducing emissions this year of three key air pollutants--- ammonia nitrogen, sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxide. The government has also promised to bring down demand for chemical oxygen---a measure of water pollution by l.5 percent from the 2010 levels.

In the last five years, there were 912 "environmental emergencies" involving heavy metal pollution, including several well-publicized instances of mass contamination, Zhang said. Thousands of children were affected by lead poisoning in several provinces in 2009 and 2010 because they lived near metal smelters or battery factories.

The minister noted that rapid development in the next five years would increase the need for China to improve environmental protection and shift to a more sustainable(可持续的) model of economic development from its dependence on industries which consume huge quantities of energy.

China is focusing on clean energy, including solar, wind and nuclear power, as one way to reduce its dependence on coal, which generates three-quarters of its electricity and is also used for winter heating in northern cities. China also hopes the strategy will reduce its demand for oil and gas and increase economic growth and jobs.

Zhang told reporters there was no plan to adjust China's overall strategy for nuclear development but he said Beijing will learn lessons from Japan after a violent earthquake resulted in a radioactive leak(放射能泄露).

"Some lessons we learn from Japan will be considered in the making of China's nuclear power plans," he said. "But China will not change its determination and plan for developing nuclear power."

【推荐1】As 17-year-old Torri’ell Norwood drove through Florida, last February, the laughter and chatter from the four teenage girls inside her car quickly gave way to screams. As they approached an intersection, another car T-boned them, sending their car sailing into the yard of a nearby home, coming to a stop only when it crashed into a tree.

As smoke rose from the car, a bystander shouted, “It’s about to blow up! Get out!” Shaken, but otherwise OK, Norwood crawled out through the window as the driver’s side door couldn’t be opened. Along with two of her friends, who’d also managed to free themselves, she ran for her life. But halfway down the street, she realized that her best friend, Simmons, wasn’t with them. Norwood ran back and found Simmons unconscious in the back seat. She threw open the back door and pulled her friend out. She dragged Simmons a few feet to safety and laid her on the ground. After checking her pulse and found there was no sign of life, she started CPR.

Had the accident happened a few weeks earlier, she might not have known what to do. But just the day before, Norwood, who wanted to pursue a career in medicine, had earned her CPR certificate by learning on her own. Kneeling on the lawn and looking down at her dying friend, Norwood knew she had precious little time to practice what she’d learned.

She started pumping Simmons’s chest with her interlocked fingers and breathing into her friend's mouth in hopes of filling her lungs with the kiss of life. After quite a while, Simmons began coughing and taking quick deep breaths for air. The CPR had worked! Soon, the ambulance arrived and rushed Simmons to the hospital. And then she heard how her best friend had saved her life. “I wasn't shocked,” Simmons told others. “She will always help any way she can.”

【推荐2】On the day the tornado hit, there was no indication severe weather was on its way—the sky was blue and the sun had been out. The first alert my husband, Jimmy, 67, and I, 65, got came around 9 p.m., from some scrolling text on the TV Jimmy was watching. He ran upstairs to find me in our third-floor bedroom, and we changed the channel from the presidential primary debate I had been watching to our local Pensacola, Florida, station.

No sooner had we found coverage of the tornado than it was on top of us. It was the loudest thing I have ever heard. The bones of the house shook, and the power went out. Pink insulation flew into the room from a trapdoor to the attic, and the wind began to roar through the house, most likely through blown-out windows and the door to our garage. We had three flights of steps to navigate to get to the relative safety of the first floor. Because the closet down there is wedged underneath a brick staircase, it seemed like the sturdiest place in our town house to wait things out.

I didn’t know how or if we would make it down the steps. It felt as if there were no floor underneath me as the wind lifted me off my feet. I gripped the banister and tried to move forward, but this intense pressure held me in place. In those seconds of practical stillness, I could hear everything around me rattling. Everything was moving.

As we reached the last flight of steps, our front door blew out. Shards of glass that looked like crushed ice flew everywhere. Suddenly, a three-foot-long tree branch whipped through the doorframe. It flew over our heads, missing us by inches. Had we been one step up, it would have impaled us.

We got close to the staircase landing only to hear the loud ripping sound of our garage door coming off. The back wall of the house followed suit and tore off into the darkness outside.

By the time I reached the closet, the tornado had been over us for about a minute. Jimmy pushed me down to the closet floor, but he couldn’t get inside himself because of the wind. I gripped Jimmy’s arm as the tornado sucked the door open—we never did get it fully shut—and tried to bring Jimmy with it. My knees and scalp were full of glass, but in that moment, I felt no pain. If I had let go, Jimmy would have flown right out the back of the house and into the bay.

“Hold on! Hold on!” he yelled. But there was nothing in this closet to hold on to. We use it to store Christmas decorations.

All of a sudden, Jimmy lifted off his feet like people in tornadoes do in the movies. I thought he was gone. And then everything stopped. He landed on his feet. In those first quiet moments, I couldn’t believe it was over. Jimmy said he’d go outside to check. “No,” I said. “Don’t leave me. Don’t leave me.”

Our neighbor says the storm lasted four minutes. In that time, four of the twelve town houses in our unit were completely destroyed. Of the houses left standing, ours suffered the most damage. Amazingly, none of us were severely injured.