Formed in 2002, the China International Search and Rescue Team (CISAR) brings help and hope to those     1     lives are changed by natural disasters.

The team carried out     2     (it) first international rescue mission in 2003. It was the first time that a Chinese team had worked outside China, and the team won high praise for their     3     (brave) and skill. The list of people     4     whom help has been given ever since is long. The team     5     (treat) more than 3,000 people who were injured in the 2006 earthquake in Indonesia, and spent several months     6     (give) aid to over 25,000 victims of the 2010 floods in Pakistan.

Rescue workers are trained to find people, treat injuries, and hand out food, water, and other supplies. There is     7     (usual) no electricity or water after a disaster and diseases and accidents may appear.     8     (save) lives, rescue workers have to work day and night, and sadly they must also bury     9     dead, which means they have to be strong in both body and mind. And they’ll have to take     10     (effect) measures in action. The members of the CISAR are always ready to go wherever help is needed.

6 . Since 2008, the leaders of Brazil, Russia, India and China, the BRIC countries have met every year to discuss topics of global importance. At their third summit (峰会) in China in 2011, the leaders invited South Africa to join, thus becoming the BRICS. The four foreign ministers met on the fringes of the United Nations General Assembly in the fall of 2016. Their leaders, first meeting was held in Sapporo on the eve of the G8 Toyako-Hokkaido Summit in 2008, and their first standalone (单独的) summit was the following year in Yekaterinburg, Russia. Since then, the BRJCS ministers responsible for foreign affairs, finance and the economy, trade, agriculture and health have met. At the official's level, there have been meetings held to discuss science and technology, national security, competition and statistics.

While the concept "BRICS" was first created by Jim O'Neill of Goldman Sachs to refer to the investment opportunities of the rising economics, the leaders' meetings transcend the financial topics to involve many different summit-level topics relating to global governance, such as development, peace and security, energy and climate change and social topics.

The mission of the BRICS Information Center is to serve as a leading independent source of information and analysis on the BRICS interaction and institutions. Documentation from the BRICS and research and reports will be published on this website as they become usable.

Special attention will be paid to the interaction and each other's influence of the BRICS with the world,   and including the BRICS relationship with the Group of Eight (G8), Group of Twenty(G20).and other different summit institutions and broadly many-sided organizations.

7 . Four Interesting Science Museums

Polytechnic Museum, Russia

For many guests of the capital, some of the most vivid childhood memories are associated with this museum. A variety of technical fields are presented in 65 halls-Mining, Space, Energy, and Transportation, etc. And the exposition（博览会）is the only museum project in Russia about the history of the bike. The interactive division "Technoplay" is open, where you not only can but also need touch most of the exhibits with your hands. In addition to self-experimentation, for personal requests the museum's experts will show many entertaining experiments.

Eureka, England

The Eureka educational center is a huge complex where modern science and technology are becoming clear, even to kids. The main exhibition is devoted to the human body, the laws of physics and natural things. Visitors can obtain energy or create paper with their own hands. On the area of the Eureka educational park there is a botanical garden and a collection of minerals from the rock types of Finland is presented there.

Deutsches Museum, Germany

In this museum you can see more than 100 thousand different items from windmills（风车）to medical equipment. All aspects of industrial production appear before the eyes. Several museum rooms are arranged especially for children-there are exhibits that entertain kids starting from three.

NEMO, the Netherlands

The largest Dutch research centre stands ready to share its secrets with everyone. This immersion（沉浸）in the world of science and technology will not be dull. All significant information is presented in the form of exciting games. All exhibits are interactive; visitors are allowed to touch, pull and press on anything. The museum is for children from 6 to 16, as well as for their parents-it will be interesting to all.

8 . Have you heard of Creative Growth? The Oakland institution offers a professional studio space where adult artists with developmental, mental and physical disabilities can create work. It also provides gallery exhibitions, representation, guidance, a community of likeminded artists and a safe space in which to grow. The late Judith Scott, whose artwork lit up the Brooklyn Museum in a retrospective(回顾展)last year, was a Creative Growth artist who suffered from down syndrome(唐氏综合征)and hearing loss.

“It’s the best facility for local adult artists living with disabilities,” Jonah Olson, an artist and former teacher in Creative Growth’s printmaking studio said. “ The amount of work they produce and the quality of it are remarkable.”

Olson, who now lives in Los Angeles, is a member of the band L.A. Takedown. Along with his bandmates, Olson decided to use the opportunity to expose Southern California to lesser known contemporary outsider artists, living and working just a few hours up north.

“I’ve had an interest in outsider art for a long time,” Olson explained. “You make art as a child and the reasons for doing it now, in my case, are no different now from what they were then. It’ s very basic. Intrinsic (本质的). I think that’s what drew me to art made by people with developmental disabilities.”

The show, a survey of the space’s better-known and lesser-known names, loosely revolves(围绕) around themes of art and music. “Not a lot of the recent artwork specifically is about music, but we are grouping the work around the idea of being in the cities of L.A. and Oakland.” Olson said.

The artists of Creative Growth will be on view throughout the month of August, coupled with musical performances and film screenings organized by L.A. Takedown. All proceeds from the month will benefit the artists and space. The money will be used to improve the condition of the studio and for the development of the artists. “L.A. doesn’t really have a place like Creative Growth,” Olson said, discussing his hopes for the show.

9 . One of the key tasks for leaders at GE (General Electric) is to look after the company’s resources. We watch how money is spent and protect the company’s assets(资产) .We make efficiencies(效率) and fight to find funding for new ideas. We care about the health and welfare of our employees,and work to keep them safe all over the world.

Where we sometimes fall short-I am sure this is true of most organizations-is with time.I don’t think we manage time as well as we could. We have meetings that include too many participants,some of whom don’t need (or want) to be there. Too much time is spent at the start of meetings passing around information that could be shared in advance. Some meetings go on longer than they need to, and don’t always result in real actions, or decisions.

Leaders make personal decisions about how to distribute their own time,and this affects how others and particularly their teams have to spend their time. I’ve asked people in my organization to think ahead-what can be done individually or beforehand. We need to think about the impact every time we occupy time, or create work, for others.

Wasting time contributes to a competitive disadvantage. It keeps us from doing things that matter and meeting deadlines. One solution we’re working on at GE is adopting a “FastWorks” mindset. This is a lean start-up concept we developed to better understand pain points, quickly test product or service hypotheses(假设) and to understand if a proposed solution is right. We used this approach to develop our GuardEon circuit breaker in less than half the time it would previously have taken and went to market 3 years sooner.

If you are like me, you have your best days when you accomplish things. The worst days are when we spend time doing things without results, and you come away feeling you have wasted time. We don’t mind working hard, but we want to get things done. The old saying went something like “time is money,”In today’s world, it’s more like “time is speed and focus, and speed and focus is money.”We are more successful if we are focused and spend our time doing the things that matter.

10 . Gregory Talley used to sleep in a park or under a bridge. The 50-year-old has been homeless for more than 10 years.

“It is hard. It’s hard to live homeless. You filled every day trying to find cut where you are going to get something to eat. If I hadn’t found wonderful Fairfax County Kennedy Shelter, I wouldn’t know where I would be by now. I might be dead,” Talley said.

The Kennedy Shelter is one of the facilities New Hope Housing provides for homeless people.

Pam Micheli has devoted her life to making the lives of this vulnerable（易受伤的）population better as executive director of the non-profit organization.

“I went to Africa in 1985. And I saw a huge amount of poverty, but I saw so much hope. And I decided that I should try to do something that would bring hope to people,” Michell said.

When Michell began working with New Hope Housing 25 years ago, its three shelters had about 80 beds. Now, it has 350 beds and serves about 1,500 homeless people every year. She has expanded the program beyond just providing beds for the night.

“We do outreach（拓展）, we do prevention, we do permanent housing. We do transitional housing. We have an education program with all sorts of different things to move people to end their homelessness,” she said, “Our Out of Poverty program is not just about money. It’s about you could be spiritually poor, you could be relationship poor ... you could be educationally poor. So it is focusing on how you get out of this poverty that has brought you to being homeless. The program tries to teach the shelter residents self-reliance（自立）and work values, and includes courses on planning and personal responsibility.

“I learned I still have opportunities to change it and I can change it,” said shelter resident Lewis Webster. “It is just about going forth in doing necessary work to do it. I mean if you really want better, you would do better and that’s the frame of mind of me now.”