Japan is experiencing record heat. Last week, the temperature in eastern Japan     1     (reach) 40℃ for the first time in June. Isesaki City in Gunma, north of Tokyo, recorded a temperature of 40.2 degrees Celsius on Saturday. The     2     (unusual) hot weather means people are using their air conditioners more. This is making     3     difficult for power companies to keep up with demand.     4     (help) these companies, Japan’s government has asked people to use less electricity. Spokesman Yoshihiko Isozaki said: “We ask the public to reduce energy consumption during the early evening     5     (hour).” He wants people to turn off unnecessary lights from 3 pm     6     6 pm and use air conditioners less.

Japan’s heat wave is set to continue. The weather agency said that the country’s     7     (rain) season finished at its earliest since records began in 1851. This means a     8     (long) and hotter summer. The Tokyo Electric Power Company warned there would be power shortages (短缺) if people did not use less energy. There is also     9     risk of people getting heatstroke (中暑). So far, at least 250 people in Tokyo     10     (take)to hospital after suffering from heatstroke. The government is advising people to drink more water and not to exercise outside in the heat.

National Handwriting Day     1     (fall) on January 23rd. Its aim is to stress the significance of the skill of handwriting. Handwriting is of practical     2     (important) in today’s world where people use a computer keyboard more than a pen or pencil. Some people are worried that in the future, handwriting might become a     3     (lose) art.

The Writing Instrument Manufacturers Association (WIMA)     4     (start) National Handwriting Day in 1977. The day January 23rd was chosen because this is the birthday of John Hancock,     5     was the first person to sign the American Declaration of Independence — one of the most important documents in America’s history. WIMA says: “National Handwriting Day is     6     chance for all of us to re-explore the purity and power of handwriting.”

Handwriting is more like an art rather than     7     (simple) writing. We can use it to express     8     (we) and be creative. A higher art form is calligraphy (书法). People can study how to write a single letter for many years. Everyone’s handwriting is unique. We only need to see the front of a letter     9     (recognize) the handwriting of someone we know. Experts can even analyze our handwriting and explain     10     kind of personality we have. What does your handwriting say about you?

A businessman stops to cut a rose at a garden for his daughter, Bella. But a     1     (horror) Beast (野兽) stops him and asks his daughter     2     (come) and live with him in his castle (城堡).

Bella has to go to his castle     3     she is treated like a queen (王后). She becomes friends     4     the Beast. After some time, Bella wants to go home. She makes     5     promise to return to him in seven days and then goes home, but once home, she     6     (forget) the promise. One night she dreams the Beast is dying. She rushes to the castle. The Beast is lying in the garden. Fearing his     7     (die), she cries out and says she loves him. The Beast     8     (immediate) turns into a good-looking prince (王子). The prince says a witch (女巫) turns     9     (he) into a Beast and that only true love can get him back. Then Bella and the prince get married. They     10     (live) together happily ever since.

Ruthie Tompson liked telling people that she and Mickey Mouse “grew up together.” And that wasn’t an exaggeration: The legendary animator spent nearly 40 years with the Walt Disney Company, working on virtually every film from Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs     1     The Rescuers until her   retirement in 1975．

Tompson’s     2     (connect) with the company dated back to her childhood in the 1920s,     3     she appeared as a live-action reference model for Disney’s early Alice Comedies, She     4     (begin) her career in the “ink and paint” department as a teenager and eventually worked her way up to animation and scene checking,     5     (become) one of the first three women to be admitted into the Hollywood camera union in the process．

“The best way     6     (describe) Ruthie is simply ‘remarkable,’” said author and Disney historian Mindy Johnson．“Ruthie was our computer before computers     7     (invent). Whatever the technical problem, Ruthie could usually solve it．She was also     8     living witness and vital contributor to the progress and growth of the animation industry as we know it today.”

    9     (remember) as a legend among animators, Tompson died Sunday at the age of 111．She passed away     10     (peaceful) in her sleep in her home．

A wise and wealthy man bought a beautiful house with a huge garden. However, not all people     1     (feel) happy for him. A man who disliked him lived in one of     2     old houses next to him. He constantly tried     3     (make) his fellow neighbour’s stay in the beautiful house as terrible as possible. And he     4     (regular) threw garbage under his gate and did other bad     5     (thing).

One fine day, the wise man woke up in a good mood (情绪). He opened the gate and a big bag full of garbage     6     (see) right in the doorway. He emptied the bag of garbage and cleaned the bag. Then he filled the bag     7     many freshly-picked apples and went to his neighbour’s door.

    8     (hear) a knock on his door, the neighbor excitedly thought, “I finally got him! ” He answered the door, ready to quarrel with     9     (he) wealthy neighbour. However, the wise man gave him the bag of apples, saying, “The person     10     is rich in something shares it with others.” The neighbour felt ashamed and said sorry to the wise man.

Britain has jumped up in maths in the Programme for International Student Assessment(PISA) tests, thanks     1     government efforts to import Chinese-style teaching into the classroom. Seventy-nine countries     2     (take) the tests last year, with the UK ranking 18th, up from 27th in 2015. Within the UK, the average score for maths among English pupils was     3     (significant) higher than scores for Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. Experts believe that the     4     (introduce) of Chinese teaching methods is likely to have driven up the UK’s test results. Countries in the Far East,     5     (include) China and Singapore, have long come at the top of the PISA tests for maths. In 2014, the British Department for Education set up     6     exchange programme between English and Shanghai schools so that maths teachers could learn about Chinese teaching methods. The programme was followed two years     7     (late) by a 41-million-pound project to train thousands of primary schools to adopt the Shanghai-style teaching method.

“It’s encouraging     8     (see) the students’ great improvement in maths,” said Professor Valsa Koshy, an expert in maths education at Brunel University, “Importing maths teaching from Far Eastern countries     9     (mean) there is a need for children to master the basic facts and traditional skills,     10     used to be laughed at as too old fashioned.”

Beijing is the capital city of China. It     1     (cover) an area of around 17, 000 square kilometers, in which there are different kinds of bird habitats (栖息地),     2     (include) grassland, scrubland (灌木丛林地), wetland, and also agricultural land. Researchers call these areas “service stations,” where migrating (迁徙) birds stop     3     (rest) and feed. But the birds ‘“service stations” re     4     (rapid) closing in Beijing, as the city considers scrubland, grassland and old agricultural land to be “dirty” and “ugly”.

The loss of grassland and scrubland is already having a major influence     5     Beijing’s bird life. In the north of Beijing, the land around Miyun used to be visited by thousands of cranes (鹤). Now, much of that land is covered with man-made forest and     6     number of cranes there has greatly fallen.

“Cranes are rare and valuable animals in China. At Miyun, a festival     7     (hold) to celebrate the migration of cranes every year,” one researcher, Townshend, says. “Because it is Beijing, we can attract many people—both local people     8     visitors.”

“More cooperation (合作) between     9     (country) is needed,” Townshend adds. “Migratory birds are a shared natural heritage (遗产), and with this comes a common     10     (responsible) to protect them and the places they need,” he says.

A recent research shows that 86% of the world’s rivers have been damaged by human activities. The research     1     (conduct) by experts from a university in Toulouse, France,     2     examined data on over 2,500 rivers around the world.     3     (look) into changes in biodiversity (多样性) over the past 200 years, the scientists discovered that biodiversity in over half of the rivers has been seriously damaged by humans. The researchers said there were many reasons     4     this damage. A big reason is the     5     (introduce) of new species of fish into rivers. Other reasons include pollution, dams, overfishing, farming     6     climate change.

Unsurprisingly, the worst-hit rivers are in western Europe and North America. This is because these regions have large and rich     7     (city) crowded with people. The lead researcher Brosse said: “Rivers which have the most economic development around them, like the Mississippi River, are the most     8     (strong) affected.” The River Thames in London was one of the worst-affected rivers in the study. The least-affected rivers are in Africa and Australia. This is probably due to a     9     (slow) rate of industrialization in Africa and smaller population around rivers in Australia. Brosse added that rivers in many rich nations are unrecognizable compared with how they     10     (be) 200 years ago.

Everyone knows that bees are busy. There is even     1     saying in English that one can be “as busy as a bee”. However, little     2     (know) about how bees play. Now scientists from Queen Mary University of London have made an amazing     3     (discover). In their study, the researchers found that bees could relax after a busy day making honey — they play with balls. The insects particularly enjoyed     4     (play) with small, wooden balls. According to the researchers, the way bees play is similar     5     that we humans do. Younger bees rolled more balls than older bees, while adult males spent     6     (long) playing with balls than adult females. The ball-rolling bees are the first known insects to “play”.

The researchers     7     (experiment) on 45 bumblebees in a specially designed test area. The bees were given two choices. The first was to fly     8     (direct) to get a sugary treat. The second was to get to the treat by going around different coloured wooden balls. Most of the bees decided to play with the balls and then get their treat,     9     showed that bees are more thoughtful than people believed. “Bees are a million     10     (mile) from the mindless, unfeeling creatures they are traditionally believed to be,” said one of the researchers.

The world is in a climate crisis. We need to change how we get our power, which     1     (mean) we need to end the use of fossil fuels, like oil and gas. The European Space Agency (ESA) has started on work that could provide     2     (million) of homes with clean and reliable energy. It has approved     3     three-year project to test huge solar farms in space. These solar farms are expected     4     (send) energy wirelessly from space into peopled homes. An ESA spokesperson said one solar-farm satellite could create the same amount of electricity     5     a power station on Earth. She added that the satellites will be around 1.7 km in     6     (long) and their aim is to have many of these giant satellites     7     (place) in low-Earth orbits. They could cut our use of fossil fuels and reduce energy shortages.

The ESA project     8     (call) Solaris. Josef Aschbacher,     9     is currently the director-general of the ESA, said that Solaris could be of great significance. “We humans are consuming large quantities of fossil fuels. We need to change the way we produce energy. We especially need to reduce the fossil fuel part of our energy production,” said Josef. “It would be     10     (absolute) fantastic if we could do it from space. It would be a solution to lots of problems.”