Bridges made out of living roots of trees have been put forward for UNESCO’s World Heritage List.

The root bridges are in the Meghalaya region of northeast India. The region gets    1    lot of rainfall and is one of the    2     (wet) areas on Earth, which creates lots of lakes rivers and waterfalls,    3    (make) it difficult to build roads. However, for hundreds of years the local Khasi people have been trying    4     (they) best to grow root bridges across rivers and streams to make it easier for them to move around the area.

The bridges    5     (build) by stretching the roots of living trees over the river and winding them around bamboo structures to guide them in the right    6     (direct). The roots can take up to 20 years    7     (grow) into a complete bridge.

The India government has suggested Meghalaya’s root bridges should be added     8    the UNESCO World Heritage List. This means they will get special recognition-just like Egypt’s pyramids or the Great Barrier Reef in Australia-    9    should attract more tourist and money to the area.

Morningstar Khongthaw from Meghalaya said, “We want to spread this knowledge so that future    10     (generation) will benefit.”

In the heart of modern Beijing is the Forbidden City. It served as the political center of ancient China between 1420 and 1912 and now it is     1     world famous museum.

The Forbidden City     2     (build) by Emperor Yongle, the third Ming ruler,     3     moved the capital from Nanjing to Beijng in 1403. Sources say it took a million     4     (worker) to build it between 1406 and 1420. Legend has it that the Forbidden City was redesigned to have 9, 9991/2 rooms. Half a room is missing to avoid     5     (upset) the God of Heaven. The maincolors of the Forbidden City are yellow and red. The walls, doors, and windows were     6     (most) painted in red, a symbol of     7     (happy) in Chinese culture.

The English name “Forbidden City” is a translation of the Chinese name Zijincheng. In the past, it was forbidden to ordinary people and that is     8     the Forbidden City is so named. After the Qing Dynasty, it was made a     9     (nation) museum-the Palace Museum and was open to the public. As one of the world’s largest cultural museums, the Palace Museum holds more than a million rare and valuable works of art. So do find a chance     10     (visit) it some day!

3 . The San Diego County Water Authority has an unusual plan to use the city’s scenic San Vicente Reservoir (水库) to store solar power so it’s available after sunset. The project could help unlock America’s clean energy future.

Perhaps ten years from now, if all goes smoothly, large underground pipes will connect this lake to a new reservoir, a much smaller one, built in a nearby valley about 1100 feet higher. When the sun is high in the sky, California’s abundant solar power will pump water into that upper reservoir. It’s a way to store the electricity. When the sun goes down and solar power disappears, operators would open a valve (阀门) and the force of 8 million tons of water, falling back downhill through those same pipes, would drive machines capable of producing 500 megawatts of electricity for up to eight hours. That’s enough to power 130, 000 typical homes.

“It’s a water battery!” says Neena Kuzmich, Deputy Director of Engineering for the water authority. She says energy storage facilities like these will be increasingly important as California starts to rely more on energy from wind and solar, which produce electricity on their own schedules, without considering the demands of consumers.

Californians learned this during a heat wave this past summer. “Everybody in the state of California got a text message at 5:30 in the evening to turn off their appliances,” Kuzmich says. The sun was going down, solar generation was disappearing, and the remaining power plants, many of them burning gas, couldn’t keep up with demand. The reminder worked:People stopped using so much power, and the grid (电网) survived.

Yet earlier on that same day, there was so much solar power available that the grid couldn’t take it all. Grid operators turned away more than 2000 megawatt hours of electricity that solar generators could have delivered, enough to power a small city. That electricity was wasted. There was no way to store it for later, when operators desperately needed it.

6 . Kite Festivals around the World

Hamamatsu Giant Kite Festival, Japan

The large kites of Japan are rectangular (矩形的)，and sometimes as large as 3.5 meters by 3.5 meters! The Hamamatsu Giant Kite Festival started in the 16th century when large kites were flown in celebration of the birth of a baby son to the Lord of Hamamatsu Castle. The audience watches excitedly as the kite fliers use friction (摩擦力) to cut the lines of their matches.

Portsmouth International Kite Festival, UK

This celebration is organized by Portsmouth Oily and the Kite Society of Great Britain. The International Kite Festival is regarded as one of the best, biggest and most popular kite festivals in the world. It has thousands of amazing and colorful kites in the sky and on the ground for visitors to enjoy and appreciate, showing the art of kite flying, kite making tradition around the world and exciting kite flying competitions.

Bali Kite Festival, Indonesia

Hundreds of competing kite teams gather from all over the island to fly their traditional kites. Traditional Balinese kites are as large as up to 4 meters by 10 meters. The kite festival in Bali started off as a seasonal agricultural (农业的) festival to thank God for harvests.

The Zilker Kite Festival, US

The Zilker Kite Festival is the oldest of its kind in the United States. Created in 1929, the Zilker Kite Festival was intended to inspire the creativity of children. The festival is a beloved, family-friendly tradition: activities for all ages, a traditional kite flying competition and show, a fun run and a children’s music concert. There are many competitions held such as Most Unusual Kite, Largest Kite, Smallest Kite, and Strongest Pulling Kite.

One popular trend on TikTok (抖音) is what is known as a TikTok Challenge. TikTok Challenges are     1     (invite) for users to perform specific tasks, record them, and put the videos on TikTok with hashtags (标签) indicating what the challenges are. Many of these challenges are fun and     2     (harm), inviting users to display a talent, or perform a dance. Companies such as Guess have also used social media challenges to promote their brand by     3     (encourage) users to show their fashion sense     4     (wear) their denim jeans. However, some social media challenges are particularly dangerous. At least two different TikTok Challenges have ended in kids’ death. Other TikTok challenges are not as     5     (dead) but are equally as problematic. The FCC has recently campaigned for the removal of TiKTok from app stores. The reason for this is that TikTok poses a     6     (secure) risk because of the data it collects and who has access to it. In addition     7     users’ search history, TikTok is basically saving data     8     (relate) to people’s faces and voices. So what should parents do about their teenagers’ use of TikTok? Banning them from using it is probably not an answer. If a kid really wants access, they can find a way to get it without your knowledge. A better option might be to make use of the parental controls available in the app through a feature called Family Pairing,     9     gives parents and guardians the ability     10     (link) to their children’s accounts.

10 . People will tell you the only way to really learn a language is to completely immerse(浸入)yourself in a country where that language is spoken. Not all language learners, of course, will have the opportunity to spend some time in an immersion environment. But if you can't actually fly across the world to learn a new language, you can always create an immersion environment where you can talk to native speakers.

That's where Babbel comes in. Babbel is one of the most popular language learning apps on the market for studying new languages at your own pace. The app emphasises real-life conversational skills, so you won't be stopped by grammatical structures and verb patterns.

And right now, you can get 15%off a lifetime subscription (订阅)to Babbel Language Learning（$150; stacksocial. com）.A lifetime subscription is huge when it comes to getting the most out of the app, since you'll be able to return to lessons time and time again and brush up on whichever section or topic you might need.

So how does it all work? First, you'll choose one of the 14 languages. While Babbel offers familiar languages like Spanish and Italian, it also offers less commonly studied ones like Polish, Indonesian and more. Once you pick your language, you'll choose a wide range of real-life topics. Each course takes about 10 to 15 minutes, so you can pick one up on the way to work, during your lunch break, or really at any point you have some time to kill.

Beyond this, Babbel includes a ton of additional features tailored to making sure you learn the language in a real, practical and accurate way. The app uses speech recognition technology to make sure your pronunciation is accurate compared with how native speakers would say certain words.