1 . Lightning (闪电) is a beautiful and inspiring phenomenon, but it can be deadly. Over the past 30 years, lightning has killed an average of 67 people per year in the United States alone.     1     . Follow these steps to safety the next time there’s fire in the sky.

Find shelter immediately

If you find yourself caught in a lightning storm, never stand under a tree, and avoid being close to power lines as they’re both excellent conductors (导体) of electricity and could potentially cause death, if not serious injury.     2     . It’s the key to minimizing danger.

Watch out for dangers

Windows provide a direct path for the lightning to travel. Keep windows closed, stay away from them and try to stay within inner rooms of the structure.     3     Using a landline phone is the main cause of lightning-related injuries. Lightning can travel into the home from through any material that conducts electricity. This includes landlines, electrical wiring, and plumbing.

    4    

Being near water is extremely dangerous during a lightning storm, so move away from the body of water. If you are fishing, swimming or on a boat, get out of the water immediately and hurry back to the bank.

Stay inside

Stay inside at least 30 minutes after the last strike. Don’t go out just because the rain is starting to let up. There is still a significant risk of lightning strikes from a departing storm.     5     .

Lightning is dangerous but you can minimize your risk. The advice is simple: increase the awareness of avoiding danger and master proper knowledge to protect yourself from a thunderstorm.

The 6.2-magnitude earthquake    1    hit an ethnic county lying    2     Northwest China’s Gansu province midnight Monday has killed 111 people in Gansu and neighboring Qinghai province, according to local earthquake relief headquarters.

According to China Earthquake Networks Center, the quake    3     (strike) at 11:59 pm Monday and has a focal depth of 10 km. The epicenter, Liugou township, is about 8 km from the county seat of Jishishan Bao’an, Dongxiang, Sala autonomous county in Linxia Hui autonomous prefecture, Gansu.

Witnesses told Xinhua the earthquake caused damages on houses, roads and other infrastructures. Several villages have suffered power failures and shortage of water.

According to local meteorological authorities, the    4     (day) low temperature in Jishishan is reported    5     (reach) minus 10 degrees Celsius on Wednesday.

The provincial fire and rescue department has sent 580 rescuers    6     (aid) with 88 fire engines, 12 search and rescue dogs, more than 10,000 sets of equipment to the disaster area.

The railway authority has suspended passenger and cargo trains     7     (pass) through the quake zone and ordered a safety check of railway tracks.

Hu Changsheng, Party chief of Gansu, and Ren Zhenhe, governor of Gansu, rushed to the disaster area to command rescue and    8     (relieve) effort.

It was reported that every effort    9     (make) to provide assistance to    10    were affected and to restore normality to the region as quickly as possible.

Bhutan’s snow leopard (雪豹) population     1     (increase) by 39.5% since 2016, according to a new survey. Findings from over 10,000 camera trap images confirmed the presence of 134 snow leopards in the country, an     2     (impress) jump from the baseline of 96 snow leopards in 2016.

    3     survey showed promising evidence that Bhutan’s conservation efforts impact snow leopard populations     4     (positive). It involved 310 camera traps across 2.2 million acres of the big cat’s habitat.

“With less than 3% of the habitat surveyed, there are serious knowledge gaps in the population status of snow leopards,” said Dechen Dorji, Senior Director for Asia, Wildlife Conservation. “A 39.5% increase in Bhutan’s snow leopard population is remarkable and calls for the urgent need to     5     (strength) the population assessment efforts. These amazing     6     (creature) deserve our continued care and protection from illegal hunting, habitat destruction, and conflicts with people. Finding effective co-existence measures between local communities     7     snow leopards must continue to be at the top of the list.”

Although the news is uplifting, the species is still listed as endangered by the International Union for Conservation of Nature. It     8     (threaten) globally by habitat losses, food shortage, conflicts with humans, and the climate crisis,     9     (request) continued protection to address these threats,     10     also affect the other wildlife in their habitat.

8 . Rescuers in the Turkish city of Izmir have pulled a young girl out alive from the ruins of a collapsed housing complex four days after a strong earthquake hit Türkiye and Greece. The girl was taken to a hospital in an emergency vehicle. Sounds of cheering could be heard from rescue workers and people watching nearby.

Health Minister Fahrettin Koca identified the girl on Twitter as 3-year-old Ayda Gezgin. The child had been trapped inside the rubble (瓦砾) for 91 hours. She was the 107th person to have been rescued from collapsed buildings since Friday, the day the quake struck.

After her rescue, Ayda could be heard calling out for her mother in a video that played on television. But Ayda’s mother did not survive. Her body was found in the rubble hours later. Ayda’s brother and father were not inside the building at the time of the quake.

Rescuer Nusret Aksoy told reporters that he was searching through the wreckage of the building when he heard a child’s scream. He then called for silence. He later found the girl in a small space next to a dishwasher. The girl waved at him, told him her name and said that she was okay, Aksoy said. “I got goose bumps and my colleague Ahmet cried,” he told Haber Turk television.

Ibrahim Topal, of the Humanitarian Relief Foundation said, “My colleague and I looked at each other in surprise. We listened again. There was a very weak voice saying something . And then we shut everything down and started listening again. And there really was a voice.”

Health ministry officials said the girl was in good condition but would be kept under observation. She asked for a special meal of meatballs and a yogurt drink on her way to the hospital, the state-operated Anadolu Agency reported.

In the past 10 years, China has added more than 22 million hectares of forest. Thanks to     1     (generation) of tree planters, our surroundings are becoming much greener.

In 2022, China completed the afforestation (植树造林) of 3.83 million hectares and treated 1, 847, 300 hectares of rock-deserted land. After continuous effort, China has achieved     2     (remark)progress.

China’s forest coverage rate has reached 24 percent, and forest accumulation has reached 19 billion cubic meters,     3     has laid a solid foundation for maintaining national ecological security and     4    (improve)people’s well-being.

In terms of vegetation (植被) restoration, in 2020 China published a guideline to perform a forest chief scheme nationwide. Principal leaders of governments should     5     (appoint)as “forest chiefs” at various levels ranging from the provincial level     6     the village level.

Bazhou District in China’s Sichuan Province is     7     unique biodiversity ecological zone. In the past, the surface of the mountain there was exposed due to mining;     8    , after the government’s management, the area has returned to its former green self.

In terms of ecological civilization education, in Shanghai, for example, an elementary school has     9     (creative)combined traditional Chinese medicine resources with AR technology to help children to learn plants. Meanwhile, Suzhou in Jiangsu Province has digitized tree planting activities through a mini-game on how     10    (identify)different types of trees.