A huge flood hit Henan Province several months ago. Thousands of people were influenced. Like many other natural disasters, floods can happen with little or no warning. Flash floods move quickly and have strong currents（水流）. They bring down trees and destroy buildings. Besides, floods can cause power cuts（停电）, traffic jams and other problems. After a flood, the influence can be very serious. It may not be feasible to send basic supplies, such as water and food, to the area.

So, when facing a flash flood, how should we save ourselves?

Day Zero is a topic you might hear in a Hollywood disaster film, but in Australian towns influenced by drought (干旱), Day Zero comes when the government finally shut down the local water supply after years of drought. To some Australian towns under The Big Dry, that day arrived earlier in the last year.

Australia is not the only country that has such water problems. More water is used all over the world and drought happens more often and lasts for longer time. Australia, South Africa and India are all influenced seriously. According to the UN, more than four billion people don't have enough water for at least one month a year because of the world's rising population in cities and a warmer climate. And the problem will be even worse in the coming years.

There are too many dry rivers in Australian towns now. In New South Wales, the 32 months from January 2017 to August 2019 were the driest on record. The situation is so serious that in August 2019, the government prepared to spend ten million dollars saving fish. The year before that they had relaxed rules for shooting kangaroos because increasing numbers of kangaroos came to farmland to look for water and food.

It happened on Monday 13 January 2020. The water ran out in Stanthorpe. To satisfy the water needs in town, trucks carried water from another dam (水坝) near Warwick every day, which cost $800,000 a month. But this couldn't solve the problem.

"This is the worst drought on record," said Tracy Dobie, who has been Mayor of the Southern Downs Region since 2016. "When you see a blue sky without clouds, dry land, and dead plants, it is hard to be positive."

Scientists are trying to find ways to solve the problem, developing new technologies that could get drinking water from even the world's driest water taps.

Now back to the news.

Chinese weather forecasters have warned that the freezing conditions affecting the North of the country, including the capital Beijing, are likely to spread further south in the coming days. Many provinces have been hit by snow blizzards.

At least 118 people have been killed and another 220 injured following an earthquake on Monday night in north-west China, state media report. Emergency workers are braving freezing conditions to try and help people in the high-altitude area.

Police are looking for a man and a woman in their early twenties who broke into a bank in the early hours this morning. The man is said to be very well-built, with very long dark hair. The woman with him is said to be small with short hair cut very close to her head. Anyone who has any information please give further details to the police.

The year of 2023 marks the 20th anniversary of China’s first manned space mission, with Yang Liwei becoming the first Chinese astronaut to go to space. Since then, another 17 astronauts have reached for the stars. But each astronaut has to receive the mind and body training for at least three and a half years before having the chance to go to space.

After waking up, you may feel frustrated (沮丧) that you cannot recall the dreams you had last night. But recently researchers from Japan have trained an AI system to re-create images based on people’s brain scans. In the future, they hope that AI can be used to record imagined thoughts and dreams.