1 . For 60-year-old Gao Ruyi, the proudest achievement in his life is not measured in honors or riches but in the wings of over 1, 000 swans he has rescued. Gao, former director of the wildlife rescue station in Sanmenxia, Henan province, has guarded swans and the ecosystems they live in for almost four decades. His efforts have earned him the name “Swan Dad”.

Gao Ruyi grew up near the Yellow River, China’s second-longest river. He had little connection to swans until the winter of 1988 when one day the peacefulness of the riverside was broken by gunshots. Rushing to the scene, he found that someone had opened fire on the swans. The heart-wrenching cries of four wounded swans left a deep-rooted mark on him. Since then, Gao has become a guardian of swans and a witness to the swan protection efforts along the Yellow River.

The endeavor (努力) is not without its challenges.

Gao started working at a wildlife rescue station in the Yellow River wetland in Sanmenxia in 1994. Despite their efforts, illegal activities continued. One such tragedy happened in 1998. Several wild ducks and swans were poisoned. Gao immediately called the police and provided treatment for the feathery victims. “Swans have memories,” he said, “Since the incident, nobody saw swans in the area for many years.”

Still, Gao’s passion for swan protection has never waned. He and many other “swan dads” and “swan moms” often visited nearby villages to educate residents about wildlife conservation, and encouraged them to bring sick or injured wild animals to the rescue station.

Another challenge for the birds came from the environment. Swan populations in Sanmenxia were limited in the 1990s due to severe pollution caused by mining and industrial development, said Gao. In the past decades, however, China started extensive efforts to battle pollution in the Yellow River basin, and gradually, swan populations in the Sanmenxia section began to increase. Tens of thousands of swans are flying back home, marking the start of “swan season”, as the locals affectionately call it.

2 . When Abdus Salam looks across the garbage-filled river near his home in one of the major clothing producing districts in Dhaka, the capital of Bangladesh, he remembers a time before the factories moved in. “When I was young there were no clothing factories here. We used to catch fish in the river,” he said. The river beside him is now black like ink. Waste from nearby clothing factories has polluted the water.

Fashion is responsible for up to one-fifth of industrial water pollution, thanks in part to weak management and enforcement in producer countries like Bangladesh, the world’s second biggest clothing producing country, where wastewater is commonly discharged directly into rivers and streams. The wastewater not only hurts the environment, but pollutes drinking water sources.

Once in waterways, poisonous chemicals from dyes (染料) build up to the point where light is prevented from coming through the surface, reducing plants’ ability to photosynthesize (进行光合作用). This lowers oxygen levels in the water, killing plants and animals. These chemicals and heavy metals can also build up in the body, increasing the risk of serious illnesses and skin problems. What’s worse, chemical-rich water is also used to water crops, with one recent study finding that dyes were present in vegetables and fruit grown aiound Savaz, just north of Dhaka.

Luckily, change is coming. In Bangladesh, there are signs clothing producers are taking environmental responsibility more seriously, with brands committing to initiatives, such as the Partnership for Cleaner Textile, that tackle water, energy and chemical use in the industry. Shahab Uddin of Bangladesh’s Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change said a range of measures were being taken to address pollution, including updating conservation and environmental laws, giving fines to polluters, setting up centralized treatment plants, and working with international development partners to improve wastewater treatment. And under a new environmental policy called Zero Liquid Discharge, dyeing, finishing and washing industries must submit a time-bound plan to reduce, recycle and reuse wastewater.

“There is definitely room for further improvement. These challenges cannot be solved overnight,” Uddin added.

July 2023 was the world’s warmest month on record, with heat waves spreading across North America, Asia and Europe. How to cool the planet     1    (trouble) scientists in the last decades. They are now turning     2     sun-blocking technology, which refers to reflecting sunlight back into space to keep down the temperature of the     3    (planet) climate.

According to Euro news, a European television news network, one idea     4    (involve) pumping sun-blocking particles (粒子) into the upper atmosphere. The particles will then stay in the air and redirect sunshine back upwards. It is like     5    (apply) sunscreen on the outside of Earth. Another very     6    (promise) technique is called “cloud brightening”. This method includes sending sea salt particles into clouds above the sea, making     7    (they) whiter and thus reflect more sunlight back into space.

However, following the report,     8     open letter by more than 60 scientists called for caution and more research first. Kristen Rasmussen, a climate scientist at Colorado State University, US, has been studying     9     these sun-blocking methods will affect rainfall patterns. She said that apart from rainfall, ecosystems and even human     10    (community) will also be affected. “We need to be very cautious on this,” Rasmussen told Scientific American.

5 . A powerful earthquake hit Morocco, killing thousands of people and causing huge damage over a large area.

The earthquake struck around 11 pm on Friday night. It was not only one of the most powerful earthquakes ever recorded in Morocco, but also the country’s deadliest earthquake in over 60 years. So far, the earthquake is reported to have killed over 2,900 people. The earthquake was especially precarious as it happened at night, when most people were asleep at home.

The center of the earthquake was in the Atlas Mountains, about 72 kilometers southwest of Marrakesh, a large city popular with tourists in the center of Morocco. Fortunately, many of its modern buildings survived the earthquake. However, the old part of the city, called the Medina, whose buildings are over 1,000 years old, was hit hard, leaving many of those buildings in ruins.

Outside of Marrakesh, the earthquake caused even more damage. In the Atlas Mountains, the earthquake’s center, there were many small villages. Many people in the area lived in simple houses made of mud, a traditional way of building in Morocco. But they’ re not strong enough to survive earthquakes and many of these houses simply fell apart, turning into sand. The Moroccan government has laws requiring buildings to be built more safely, yet these rules were often overlooked.

In larger cities, rescue efforts seemed to be going well. But it took a lot longer for help to reach remote (偏远的) areas in the mountains. That meant the local people in those areas had to deal with the situation on their own. They had to dig through the ruins with their hands, searching for survivors who were trapped. Moreover, many people were sleeping outside, unsure if their houses were safe enough.

More help was on the way. Many outside countries offered teams of experts and emergency supplies. But the government said too many different rescue teams could make the situation more confusing.

6 . As newer, more advanced technologies come out, huge amounts of electronics (电子产品) are thrown away, instead of being reused. These goods often end up in landfills, where the chemicals inside them may be a danger to the environment. Electronics can contain harmful materials. If these materials get into the ground or water, the pollution can cause serious problems. Most electronics require metals. These metals must be mined from the Earth. Often the mining process creates serious pollution.

A group known as Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE) Forum is trying to make people more aware of the problems of e-waste. Recently, the WEEE Forum asked researchers from the United Nations (UN) to study a kind of e-waste that’s often not noticed because people don’t consider the goods to be electronics. The WEEE Forum calls this kind “unable-to-be-seen” e-waste.

The UN study shows that about 1/6 of all e-waste is “unable-to-be-seen”. Though it’s “unable-to-be-seen”, it’s certainly not a small amount. The “unable-to-be-seen” e-waste weighs about 9 billion kilograms. The WEEE Forum says that if this e-waste were put into 40-ton trucks and the trucks were then lined up, the line of trucks would be about 5,630 kilometers long.

The surprising kind leading the “unable-to-be-seen” e-waste group was toys. Worldwide, roughly 7.3 billion electronic toys are thrown away each year. These include goods like car racing sets, electric trains, and musical toys. They also include toys with electronic parts, like dolls that speak or games with electronic timers. In all, toys make up about 35% of “unable-to-be-seen” e-waste. But the problem is far larger than just toys. The report also shows that other everyday goods like home alarms, smoke alarms, power tools, and computer cables (电缆) are also big sources of “unable-to-be-seen” e-waste.

The WEEE Forum is hoping that as more people and governments become aware of e-waste, they will make a much greater effort to make sure electronics get reused.

8 . Carol-Anne O’Callaghan, a former teacher from Great Missenden, Buckinghamshire, has fought hard to protect ancient oaks near her home, which she says are home to rare bats.

In February 2021, O’Callaghan was walking her dogs when she spotted yellow dots stuck on some of the 99 oak trees in a narrow country lane close to her home. The dots indicated trees marked for destruction. After she learned the trees would be felled as part of the HS2 high-speed railway works, she called the HS2 helpline and was told there was nothing that could be done as an over-road would be built. She gets choked up remembering the moment she realized many of them were to be cut down.

O’Callaghan loves that ancient line of oaks. They were planted in the 19th century. “My family and I would picnic under them,” she says, “climb them, have rope swings on them. The trees are amazing and beautiful and meant so much.” One of the last photos of her mother, taken shortly before she died, was of her sitting in a swing in their branches.

She noticed that on the other side of the lane, to the north, there were no ancient oaks. So she began campaigning to save the trees. With the help of her daughter, Blaize, she started a petition(请愿书), which went on to get nearly 43,000 signatures. “I saw someone passionate about giving a voice to those who don’t have one, someone not afraid of asking questions and calling out large, daunting businesses for doing the wrong thing,” says her neighbour Victoria.

Buckinghamshire Council has got involved, and the felling is paused. A final decision has yet to be made about the proposed over-road. “We’re optimistic that they’ll hear our argument and take the ecology of the lane into account,” says O’Callaghan. “We want them to put in a green crossing in the gaps between trees, for the bats, and we’d like the place to become a conservation area. For the trees and the bats—this is what we are fighting for!”