2 . Cassie Thomas thought she was just meeting with the media at her lunch break. Instead, the nurse at Janet Weis Children’s Hospital near Danville got a surprise party from her workmates. It was her first day back to work after a family vacation in Clearwater, Florida, and what a vacation it was!

“Just as I looked up, there was this big pinks lightning that just came down and hit the beach, ” Cassie said. Cassie, her husband, and their two daughters were on their hotel balcony last week when they heard and saw the storm.

After Cassie saw the lightning, she saw two boys lying on the beach. So, she shouted to them. “Then one boy sat up and he just started shouting back, and I said, ‘Jay, call 911; I’m going. ” Cassie said. So the 31-year-old nurse sprang into action. She ran down 16 flights of stairs onto the beach where she found the two boys, Jansen and Cameron, who are from North Carolina. Cameron had no heartbeat.

“I rolled Cameron over and I just started compressing(按压),”Cassie said. She didn’t realize it at the time, but she-was risking her own life to save the teenage boys.

“My daughters were on the balcony and it was a very dangerous situation to put myself in. I just wished to keep me safe because I was going, ” Cassie said. “It just goes to her character to help others. And you know what? When it’s your kid, you’d want someone to be coming in and saving his life, ” one of her workmates said.

Cassie was there when Cameron got out of the hospital. “He just said, ‘Thank you; thank you; thank you.’ He gave me so many hugs, ” Cassie said. “A nurse never truly goes on vacation. I just keep telling everybody the same thing. It’s just what you do. ”

Cassie and two other people got Good Samaritan awards from the Clearwater Police Department for saving Cameron’s life. Cassie’s workmates said they couldn’t be any prouder of this-life-saving nurse.

3 . Firefighter Warfield, a mother of two kids, is wired to help others. So when the pregnant 30-year-old was a passenger involved in a multi-car collision, she brushed aside her unborn baby to save a person _______ in their vehicle.

Warfield explained that she initially got out of her car to help to direct _______. But then she saw a car was overturned. “I started to climb in there, but then I was like, ‘What am I doing? I’m nine months pregnant.’”, Warfield _______. “I ended up holding onto the _______ to keep her in place because I wasn’t sure of her _______.”

Shortly after ambulance arrived to _______, Warfield decided to go to hospital to get herself checked out. The _______, unbeknownst to Warfield, had knocked the baby into a sideways position. “I don’t know how I can stay _______ because the pain was so bad.” Warfield said, when asked how she was able to get down on the ground and help.

Warfield _______ a healthy little girl named Charlotte, less than 24 hours after the crash.

Charlotte ________ siblings Ellie and Jameson

“We take pride in our ________ fire personnel and congratulate Warfield and her family and appreciate her service,” Fire Chief Rund wrote. The Fire and Rescue Department praised the “selfless” mother on its Facebook page. “________ any chance she could be injured, Megan immediately exited her vehicle and began providing care to a person in the overturned car,” the ________ reads in part. “After all patients were evaluated, Megan agreed to an evaluation herself.”

The department ________ Warfield as a “true public servant.” Warfield said she had been doing administrative work during her pregnancy and missed her old duties. “I’ve been desiring to get back out,” she admitted. “It’s what I was ________ to do.”

Four Chinese nationals have been confirmed killed in a stampede     1    occurred Saturday night at Itaewon, a district in Seoul. At least 154 people were killed and 149 others injured in the stampede. It was the country’s     2     (deadly) disaster since a ferry sinking incident left 304 people dead     3     April 2014. The Chinese embassy said shortly after the stampede that it immediately activated an emergency response mechanism,     4    (contact) the South Korean side overnight,     5    paid close attention to the Internet and social media platforms     6    (see) if any Chinese nationals were seeking help. The Chinese embassy has offered condolences and will provide     7    (assist) to the families of the deceased.

An estimated 100,000 people     8    (gather) at Itaewon for the country’s biggest no-mask outdoor Halloween event since     9    outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. Most of the victims were those in     10     late teens and 20s.

6 . The rescue of an Austrian skier who was found alive after being buried by an avalanche is being called a “miracle”. Police in Upper Styria — the mountainous and forested region in southern Austria — said they were alerted on Christmas Day that a 26-year-old skier had not returned from the slopes. The man who alerted police said he had managed to get through to the skier’s mobile phone but heard only “cracking noises” on the line, the BBC reported.

A rescue team was able to trace the skier beneath more than 3 feet of snow using an electric avalanche victim’s transceiver (无线电收发两用机), which skiers are required to wear in avalanche-prone areas. They found the man was on a slope of Mount Pleschnitzzinken, in the northwestern area of Upper Styria. “You can’t move under a blanket of snow like this,” Stefan Schrock of the Styria mountain rescue service told Austrian public broadcaster ORF. “The man was extremely lucky that he had a big enough air pocket under the blanket of snow, so he had oxygen too and was able to breathe.”

The man was found about two hours after authorities were first alerted. However, the avalanche hit the region three hours before that when the man was buried in the snow. A rescue team and local police dogs dug the man out of the snow and he was taken down the valley suffering from hypothermia (体温过低). He was otherwise unharmed.

An avalanche also swept across a marked ski trail near the Swiss town of Andermatt on Thursday, injuring two people. Four others were either rescued themselves from the snow unhurt. Police and rescuers searched the snowslide after witnesses said more people might be buried, but the operation ended with police saying there were no more victims. The avalanche occurred mid-morning while many holiday skiers enjoyed mountain sunshine the day after Christmas.

8 . A self-driving Uber vehicle struck and killed a pedestrian in a late-night accident in Tempe, Arizona, police said on Monday. The accident is believed to be the first pedestrian death involving the technology of autonomous vehicles.

The gray SUV had an operator in the driver’s seat and was traveling at about 40 miles per hour in autonomous mode when it struck a woman who was walking across the street late Sunday night, Tempe police said. The pedestrian was rushed to a hospital, where she was pronounced dead from her injuries.

“The City of Tempe has been supportive of autonomous vehicle testing because of the innovation and promise that the technology may offer in many areas, including transportation options for disabled residents and seniors,” Tempe Mayor, Mitchell said in the statement. “Testing must occur safely. All indications we have had in the past show that traffic laws are being obeyed by the companies testing here. Our city leadership and Tempe police will pursue any and all answers to what happened in order to ensure safety moving forward.”

Self-driving cars have been praised by technology companies as the wave of the future. Autonomous cars are already being in more than 30 cities around the world, with companies investing more than $80 billion into research and development.

“Everyone recognized that someone was going to die in a crash involving an autonomous vehicle eventually,” Bryant Walker Smith, a law professor at the University of South Carolina who studies risks in automated driving systems, told NBC News. “As good as that technology tries to be, mistakes can happen, or it may be one of the small fraction of crashes. I just think everybody kind of hoped that one wouldn’t come this soon.”

Smith added that because federal and state agencies don’t have the resources to monitor individual vehicles, the responsibility for safety falls on the individual companies running the technology.

The National Transportation Safety Board announced that a four-person team has been sent to Tempe to investigate the crash.

Chinese Rescue Icebreaker May Be Stuck in Antarctic ice

All 52 passengers aboard a Russian research ship stuck in ice for over a week in Antarctica were rescued to     1     (safe)on Thursday, but now the Chinese rescue icebreaker has also gotten     2     (stick).

On Friday, the crew of the Chinese icebreaker Snow Dragon, which provided the rescue helicopter, said they were worried about their ship’s ability to move through the thick sea       3     .

The Australian Maritime Safety Authority reported that the Australian icebreaker Aurora Australis, tasked with taking the       4     (rescue)passengers back to Australia, had been instructed to stay in the area in case the Snow Dragon needed help. The Authority said the crew of the Chinese ship would attempt to break through to open water on early Saturday     5     weather conditions were more favorable.

The Australian Maritime Safety Authority said on Thursday that all the passengers aboard the research ship were rescued after a rescue helicopter was finally able     6     (land)nearby. The passengers     7     (include)scientists, tourists and journalistswere airlifted —12 at     8     time —to the Australian ship.

Terrible weather conditions prevented previous attempts from rescuing the passengers     9     helicopter. Icebreakers from China, Australia and France had also failed     10     (reach)the Russian ship.