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State Department spokesman Richard Boucher was forced to tell journalists "I think pretty
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Cancun means "snakepit" in the local Mayan language, and it lived up to its name as the host of an important World Trade Organization meeting that began last week. Rather than tackling the problem of their high agricultural tariffs and lavish farm subsidies, which victimize farmers in poorer nations, a number of rich nations derailed the talks.
The failure by 146 trade delegates to reach an agreement in Mexico is a serious blow to the global economy. And contrary to the mindless cheering with which the breakdown was greeted by antiglobalization protesters at Cancun, the world's poorest and most vulnerable nations will suffer most. It is a bitter irony that the chief architects of this failure were nations like Japan, Korea and European Union members, themselves ads for the prosperity afforded by increased global trade.
The Cancun meeting came at the midpoint of the W.T.O.' s "development round", of trade liberalization talks, one that began two years ago with an eye toward extending the benefits of freer trade and markets to poorer countries. The principal demand of these developing nations, led at Cancun by Brazil, has been an end to high tariffs and agricultural subsidies in the developed world, and rightly so. Poor nations find it hard to compete against rich nations' farmers, who get more than $300 billion in government handouts each year.
The talks appeared to break down suddenly on the issue of whether the W.T.O. should extend its rule- making jurisdiction into such new areas as foreign investment. But in truth, there was nothing abrupt about the Cancan meltdown. The Japanese and Europeans had devised this demand for an unwieldy and unnecessary expansion of the W.T.O.' s mandate as a poison pill--to deflect any attempts to get them to turn their backs on their powerful farm lobbies. Their plan worked.
The American role at Cancun was disappointingly muted. The Bush administration had little interest in the proposal to expand the W.T.O.' s authority, but the American farm lobby is split between those who want to profit from greater access to foreign markets and less efficient sectors that demand continued coddling from Washington. That is one reason the United States made the unfortunate decision to side with the more protectionist Europeans in Cancun, a position that left American trade representatives playing defense on subsidies rather than taking a creative stance, alongside Brazil, on lowering trade barriers. This was an unfortunate subject on which to show some rare trans-Afiantic solidarity. The resulting "coalition of the unwilling" lent the talks an unfortunate north-versus-south cast.
Any hope that the United States would take the moral high ground at Cancun, and reclaim its historic leadership in pressing for freer trade, was further dashed by the disgraceful manner in which the American negotiators rebuffed the rightful demands of West African nations that the United States commit itself to a clear phasing out of its harmful cotton subsidies. American business and labor groups, not to mention taxpayers, should be enraged that the administration seems more solicitous of protecting the most indefensible segment of United States protectionism rather than of protecting the national interest by promoting economic growth through trade.
For struggling cotton farmers in sub-Saharan Africa, and for millions of others in the developing world whose lives would benefit from the further lowering of trade barriers, the failure of Cancun amounts to a crushing message from the developed world --one of callous indifference.
The author mentions that Cancun means "snakepit" in the local Mayan language. Snakepit possibly means ______.
SECTION C NEWS BROADCAST
Directions: In this section you will hear everything ONCE ONLY. Listen carefully and then answer the questions that follow. At the end of each news item, you will be given 10 seconds to answer the questions.
听力原文： Fresh terrorist horror was brought home to the UK yesterday as one Briton was killed and five seriously injured when a suspected woman suicide bomber detonated her explosives on a minibus packed with young holidaymakers in a popular Turkish seaside resort.
An unnamed British woman was one of five fatalities, including an Irish woman in her twenties, who died when the blast ripped through their vehicle as it took them to a popular beach in the Aegean resort town of Kusadasi, 45 miles south-east of the port of Izmir.
The bomb, which blew off the roof and sides of the vehicle carrying 14 holidaymakers travelling with UK tour company Thomas Cook, dramatically reinforced the sense of a concerted terrorist campaign against British targets worldwide, with increasing evidence pointing to al-Qaeda.
Foreign Secretary Jack Straw condemned this "repugnant act, saying it had ruined the lives of innocent people." He added: "Our thoughts and prayers are with all the victims and their families."
"As always we stand shoulder to shoulder with the people of Turkey, in sympathy and in our refusal to allow terrorists to destroy our values and our liberty."
Coming 10 days after the suicide bombings in London, which have so far claimed 55 lives, the latest bombing in Turkey strongly suggests a carefully coordinated series of attacks against British interests, raising fears that further attacks may be in the pipeline.
The attack happened at about 10:45am local time (8:45am BST) as the bus made its way from the town bus station towards an area known as Kadinlar Denizi, or Ladies Beach. Some victims were rushed to nearby hospitals while others were taken to Izmir.
Where did this bomb attack happen？
People are rushing to buy savings bonds because ______.
This astounding industrial accident would not have happened in a world in which robot behavior. was governed by the Three Laws of Robotics drawn up by Isaac Asimov, a science fiction writer. The laws appeared in 1, Robot, a book of short stories published in 1950 that inspired a Hollywood film. But decades later the laws, designed to prevent robots from harming people either through action or inaction, remain in the realm of fiction.
With robots now poised to emerge from their industrial cages and to move into homes and workplaces, roboticists are concerned about the safety implications beyond the factory floor. To address these concerns, leading robot experts have come together to try to find ways to prevent robots from harming people. "Security, safety and sex are the big concerns," says Henrik Christensen, chairman of the European Robotics Network at the Swedish Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, and one of the organisers of the new roboethics group. Should robots that are strong enough or heavy enough to crush people be allowed into homes？ Should robotic sex dolls resembling children be legally allowed？
These questions may seem esoteric but in the next few years they will become increasingly relevant, says Dr. Christensen. According to the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe's World Robotics Survey, in 2002 the number of domestic and service robots more than tripled, nearly outstripping their industrial counterparts. Japanese industrial firms are racing to build humanoid robots to act as domestic helpers for the elderly, and South Korea has set a goal that 100% of households should have domestic robots by 2020. In light of all this, it is crucial that we start to think about safety and ethical guidelines now, says Dr. Christensen.
So what exactly is being done to protect us from these mechanical menaces？ "Not enough," says Blay Whitby, an artificial-intelligence expert at the University of Sussex in England. This is hardly surprising given that the field of "safety-critical computing" is barely a decade old, he says. But things are changing, and researchers are increasingly taking an interest in trying to make robots safer. One approach, which sounds simple enough, is to try to program them to avoid contact with people altogether. But this is much harder than it sounds. Getting a robot to navigate across a cluttered room is difficult enough without having to take into account what its various limbs or appendages might bump into along the way.
Regulating the behavior. of robots is going to become more difficult in the future, since they will increasingly have self-learning mechanisms built into them, says Gianmarco Veruggio, a roboticist at the Institute of Intelligent Systems for Automation in Genoa, Italy. As a result, their behavior. will become impossible to predict fully, he says, since they will not be behaving in predefined ways but will learn new behavior. as they go.
The word "astounding" in the second paragraph is closest in meaning to ______.
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