Last Saturday, tornadoes    1     (strike) some parts of Texas, causing great damage and eight     2    (death).

    3    (fortunate), no one could predict the exact time of the disaster. Severe thunderstorms,     4    (include）unusual winter tornadoes, left damages stretching over a 64-km-long area across the city of Dallas in the    5    (north) part of Texas. Vehicles     6    (destroy) or turned upside down,    7    churches damaged, trees pulled up and debris (残骸) across neighborhoods. The tornadoes resulted in power    8    (fail) across northern Texas. It’s not known    9    power   supply can be restored by this weekend or not. In the meanwhile, the American National Weather Service has issued    10    warning that a snowstorm accompanied by uncertain temperatures will leave up to 40 cm of snow in west Texas on Sunday evening.

4 . Alpha, Beta, Delta... these Greek letters used to only appear in our math classes but are now in use in news headlines.

Now, it’s Lambda. As the Delta variant (变 体) spreads throughout communities in Asia, Europe and the United States, another variant, Lambda, is spreading rapidly throughout South America, Forbes reported on Aug 10.

On May 31, the World Health Organization (WHO) announced a naming system for variants of COVID-19 that uses letters of the Greek alphabet (字母表). Before that, the public had to call a variant its scientific name or refer to it based on where it was identified.

For example, a variant of COVID-19 identified in South Africa in late 2020 was called variant 501Y.V2 or B.1.351. Media also called the same virus “the South African variant”. Now, everyone calls it “Beta”.

Compared to complicated scientific names, the Greek letters are much easier to remember. “It is a lot easier for a radio newsreader to say ‘Delta’ than bee-one-six-one-seven-two,” Jeffrey Barrett, a UK statistical geneticist told Nature.

WHO hopes this change will help stop the stigma (污名) associated with geography-based names. “I can understand why people just call it ‘the South African variant’ — they don’t mean anything by it,” Salim Abdool Karim, an epidemiologist in South Africa, told Nature. “The problem is, if we allow it to continue, some ill-intentioned people may take advantage of it.” “No country should be stigmatized for detecting and reporting variants,” Maria Van Kerkhove, WHO’s COVID-19 technical lead, wrote on Twitter.

As the virus is still evolving, 11 variants have been named so far. What if the 24 Greek letters are not enough? “We will possibly run out of the Greek alphabet, but we’re already looking at the next series of names,” Van Kerkhove told The Telegraph. “We’re actually considering star constellations(星座).”

Currently, the Virus Evolution Working Group and WHO’s legal team are double checking proposals to “make sure we don’t upset anyone with these names”, Van Kerkhove told The Telegraph.

5 . On a cold and clear day in February, Wes, his brother Jeff, his assistant Jordan, and I were following the GPS from the bear’s collar( 项 圈 ) up a steep and into a red earth canyon. The temperature dropped to zero as we cleaned the snow, trying to locate the black bear’s entrance.

The radio signal was so weak that as the sun set, we considered turning back. Then a curtain of snow collapsed, revealing a sandstone cave. It narrowed to a dark tunnel, and the musky(麝香味)smell of wild animal steamed from within. Wes didn’t hesitate. Armed with an expandable six-foot stick with a tranquilizer syringe(镇定剂喷射器) on its tip, he dived in headfirst. His brother crawled after him.

Thirty seconds later, they came flying backward out of the tunnel. The bear they’d collared a year and a half ago now weighed about 350 pounds— and he was awake! Wes had managed to jab him with the syringe, so we waited for the drug to take effect. But when we rounded the tunnel bend, wide eyes flashed at us. He was STILL awake!! Wes told me not to move while he backed out and jabbed another dose of tranquilizer.

The bear started crawling toward us. We desperately blocked the exit with backpacks and sticks as Wes jabbed him again— but he powered through our barriers with groggy(头晕眼花的) steps and began to crawl down the snowy slope. Jeff and Jordan held his back paws, managing     to hold on to him; Wes jumped on his back and grabbed his collar. The bear pulled them down   the hillside together. The tranquilizer had taken effect— he was asleep. Wes and his brother changed the batteries of the collar and checked his health, but we had one more difficult task: getting a 350-pound bear up the snowy path and safely back to his cave before he awoke. We pushed and pulled with every muscle. Before the drug wore off, our effort paid off.

When spring came, signals from the bear’s new radio collar showed he’d continued his everyday life—avoiding any more contact, we hope, with humans.

Hemingway is one of the greatest American writers. He was born in 1899 in Oak Park, Illinois, son of a     1     (success) doctor. Hemingway made good     2     (grade) in school; he wrote for the school paper and literary magazines; he took part in sports. And Hemingway often went hunting and     3     (fish) with his father or his friends on the lake near Charlevoix, Michigan. It provided him with materials     4     he drew on for some of his best writings. After high school, he left home for Kansas City and worked     5     a reporter.

During World War I, he served as an honorable junior officer in the American Red Cross Ambulance Crops and in 1918 was     6     (bad) wounded in both legs. After the war, he went to Paris as a foreign reporter,     7     (work) for The Toronto Star. After that, he became a writer and began to attract attention. He even took     8     active part in the Spanish Civil War and World war II. In 1954, he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. The Sun Also Rises, Hemingway’s first true novel, greatly     9     (influence) a whole generation after the First World War.

In 1961, in illness, anxiety and deep sadness, Hemingway shot     10     (he) with a hunting gun.

10 . In UK, Closed Circuit Television (CCTV) cameras are everywhere. They help the police solve crimes (犯罪) and keep the streets safe. But that’s not all they do. They also catch people doing very stupid or smart things.

One of the videos is of a British woman Mary Bale. She clearly doesn’t like cats. In 2020 she was caught on CCTV throwing one into a dustbin. The video shows Mary walking down a quiet street. All of a sudden, she notices Lola the cat jump onto a fence (篱笆). Mary stops to pick up Lola and drops her into a large dustbin. Lola was saved fifteen hours later.   And Mary was caught by police for causing unnecessary suffering to an animal. She was fined ￡250 and was not allowed to own pets for five years.

Another video shows “Britain’s drunkest man”. And he’d obviously had a few too many glasses of beer. At about 2 a.m., he was kicked out for being too drunk. So, he decided to walk home. On the way, CCTV cameras filmed him falling down stairs and crossing the roads madly… A hotel waiter said, “It’s amazing he didn’t hurt himself badly.”

Sometimes they also record smart events. Once a British band The Get Out Clause didn’t have any money to make a music video. So, they came up with an unbelievable idea. They set up their instruments and played a song in front of eight CCTV cameras. And then, according to the English Freedom of Information Act, they asked for a copy of all the footages (镜头) , which they edited. The result is that a totally new music video was made, and it didn’t cost them a penny.