1 . World Water Day

Everyone needs water, and every drop is precious. On 22 March, World Water Day draws attention to the essential role of water in our lives.     1       

We all need water to stay alive, but about two billion people around the world live without clean water in their homes     2     Many of them live in rural communities or in places where there are wars and conflicts. Meanwhile, climate change is making the little water they have access to less and less.

    3     Thousands of children worldwide die every day from diarrhea caused by dirty water. In some countries, people walk many kilometers every day to get water, and sometimes the water isn’t clean. If children spend most of their day walking for water, they can’t go to school.

In 1992, the United Nations made a special day for water, and World Water Day has been celebrated on 22 March every year since 1993. On this day, many countries hold events to educate people about the problems of dirty water.     4    

Some charities organize fundraising events for World Water Day. People do things like sponsored walks, cycles and swims.     5     , where people walk four, eight or 12 kilometers each day in March to see how it feels when they have to walk a long way to get their drinking water. People give them money to do these things, and all this money helps provide clean water to as many people as possible around the world. So, this World Water Day, what will you do?

A new report suggests Canada’s Western Hudson Bay polar bear population     1    (drop) 27 percent during the past five years.

Every autumn, bears     2     (live) along the western edge of the Hudson Bay pass through the sub-Arctic town of Churchill, Manitoba. The yearly movement has helped make the area’s bears one of the most studied     3     (group) in the world. Bear watching adds about $5.3 million to the local economy each year.

But a report     4     (recent) issued by the government in Canada’s northern territory(地区) of Nunavut found that just 618 polar bears remained in     5     area. This represented a 50percent drop in the population from the 1980s.

Polar bears depend on frozen salt water called sea ice     6     (help) them hunt seals for food   But the Arctic is now warming about four times     7     (fast) than the rest of the world. Around Hudson Bay, seasonal sea ice is melting earlier in the spring and forming later in the fall. This is forcing bears to go longer periods     8     food.

John Whiteman,     9     is chief research scientist at the nonprofit conservation group. Polar Bears International, called the population drop “totally shocking”. He said, “Scientists fear that if continued sea ice loss cannot     10     (stop), it will one day lead to a total loss of the area’s polar bear population.”

3 . 2005 was a big year for me. After my family moved to New Orleans in June, Hurricane Katrin a hit the _____ in August. I sat in my family’s car on a highway full of other confused children as we all _____ the city before the storm. A few months later, we returned to New Orleans. But the city was still ____. There were still thousands of people left homeless because of the ____.

Then some ____ people like the coach of New Orleans Saints were taking action. He gave money to schools and charities, helping _____ the city and feeding those who had ____ everything. He helped bring back the ____ that New Orleans once had. The people made it ____ and came back to the stadium to watch the game.

I remember when Louisiana Superdome reopened, the energy of the city ____. I remember when the coach ____ the field, there were loud cheers.   I remember how ____ I was when the Saints appeared.

I was too young to understand what the _____ had brought to New Orleans. _____, I’m old enough now to understand that the coach did so much for New Orleans. I’ll always be ____ for that. Even though he had retired, he would always be my idol.

4 . Jace Tunnell, the founder of Nurdle I troll and Reserve Director at the University of Texas Marine Science Institute, is listening to the same question often.

“I hear every day, somebody says, ‘What is a nurdle?’” he said.

Tunnell explained nurdles are tiny balls of plastic that are typically used to make almost every plastic item we use, so they’re everywhere! He said nurdles are usually spilled (溢出) during transport from cargo ships or railroad cars. “These things would be out here for hundreds of years if we’re not picking them up,” Tunnell said while on a recent Nurdle Patrol cleanup along Galveston Bay.

Since 2018, Nurdle Patrol has grown to thousands of volunteers worldwide. Many people -volunteer with Nurdle Patrol and work for the Galveston Bay Foundation. Nurdle Patrol groups upload their findings to the nonprofit’s website map. It’s marked in colors to show where the highest concentration of nurdles is found.

“They look natural, and birds think that they’re food,” Tunnell said, “Birds, fish, sea turtles and other sea animals can eat nurdles and finally die from hunger because of a false sensation of fullness and lack of nutrition.”

I ended up finding 123 nurdles in 10 minutes. That’s high concentration,” Tunnell said about a recent cleanup. “I plan to take those to an elected official and say, ‘Look, these are what I found on our beaches here. We need to do something about this.’ So, it kind of puts in motion change that can happen.”

Nurdle Patrol has sent out hundreds of kits (工具包) globally, many to schools and volunteer organizations, with information about gathering nurdles and reporting the findings safely. Anyone can request a kit through their website.

6 . Objects in the night sky are disappearing from view because of light pollution, according to a new study. Outdoor lighting from street lamps, office buildings and vehicle headlights leads to sky less bright, which is when the night sky gets brighter. The brighter it is at night, the harder it is to see stars and planets from Earth.

Christopher Kyba, an astronomer with the GFZ German Research Center for Geosciences, led his team studying over 50, 000 star observations between 2011 and 2022. “If the brightening of the night sky continues at the current rate,” Kyba said, “a child born in a place where 250 stars are visible will only be able to see 100 stars by the time he or she turned 18.”

The issue is global but particularly common in North America, where 80% of people cannot see the Milky Way galaxy (银河系). This huge group of billions of stars should look like a wide strip of light in the dark night sky. However, only very remote places, such as the Sahara Desert and the Amazon Rain Forest, have a truly dark night sky.

Light pollution makes it harder for astronomers to study stars and planets. It also causes problems for animals. Animals active at night like bats become confused and crash into objects. Turtles that hatch (孵化)at night need moonlight to find the sea, but artificial lights can confuse them and make them head inland instead. Birds in cities often wake up and start singing earlier than they should. Human lights also cause themselves to produce less of a chemical called melatonin(褪黑激素). This can lead to sleep problems, headaches, tiredness, and mood issues.

To help, scientists want to raise awareness of light pollution. They suggest that people use outdoor lighting that causes less light pollution, such as motion-sensitive lights that switch on only when they’re needed.

9 . Not too long ago, 41-year-old Garrett Fisher flew in a small airplane close to the surface of Europe’s largest glacier(冰川), which is in Norway. In that environment, the plane carrying a man who photographed glaciers seemed almost like a toy.

Fisher often combines two activities he loves, flying and photography, trying to photo- graph every glacier on Earth. He wants his photos to show the beauty of glaciers before some of them disappear. Scientists say many glaciers are melting or getting smaller because the Earth's average temperature is increasing. By 2100, the size of European glaciers can decrease by between 22 percent and 84 percent. Nearly all small glaciers in Norway will likely disappear. For Fisher, this means that time is running out. The melting pushes him to try to photograph them before it is too late.

As a child, Fisher lived next door to a small airport in the state of New York. His grand- father was a pilot and took Fisher on plane rides when he was a young child. His grandfather would tell him, “Whatever you set your mind to, you can do. ”

In the late 1990s, a friend told Fisher that the world’s glaciers were disappearing. This pushed him to combine his love of flying and photography to photograph the Earth's remaining glaciers. He believed he was in a race against time and that his photographs could be of great value to future generations. So, he launched Global Glacier Initiative, a non-profit group to support and show his work, and he planned to open his photos to the public for research.

Some people will ask him why he always risks flying over glaciers when satellites have already given pictures of them. Fisher says, “Satellite images can't really show the loveliness of glaciers the way my photos can. My photos show the colors and shapes as the light from the sun hits them. Science has all of the data we need. The problem is that it’s not beautiful. ”

10 . Fiji has become the first country in the Pacific to recognize“waste pickers”,who collect, repurpose and sell rubbish, as environmental champions.

Who are “waste pickers”? These workers are usually women, children and migrants(移民)living in bad conditions. The job comes with many health risks, as workers are exposed to pollutants and poisonous materials,and those who work at open dumps(垃圾场)face risks caused by trucks, fires and surface falls.

They remove millions of tons of CO each year from landfills, yet they are often looked down on and treated poorly. Talking to ABC News, Tikitoro from Fiji said that her children are made fun of at school. “The students laugh and point at them” she shared.

How is Fiji responding? On July 20, 2022, in Lautoka, Fiji recognized the environmental benefits that these workers are providing. Thirty women who took part in informal waste picking were officially registered, given bank accounts and provided with protective gear to make their jobs safer.

A new name was also created for these workers: Collection Pillars of Recycling, The name came from a workshop organized with International Union for the Conservation of Nature, the Fiji Women’s Crisis Centre and the Pacific Recycling Foundation.

Amitesh Deo, founder of the Pacific Recycling Foundation, told the Fiji. Their workshop was about human rights，education,legal literacy and financial literacy. One of the key findings in that workshop was the stigma(污名)attached to waste picking, and one of the contributors to the stigma was the name ‘‘informal waste pickers’’.

With around 20 million people picking waste for a living around the world, it is important that they are treated with respect and recognized for the highly valuable work that they do.