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听力原文：M: I can't seem to find Turing Street on the map.
W: Why don't you ask someone where it is？
Q: What does the woman mean？
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听力原文： The very success of satellite communications systems has raised widespread concern about their future. Some countries are already using satellites for domestic communications in place of conventional telephone lines on land. Although this technique is extremely useful for linking widely scattered villages in remote or mountainous regions, in heavily built-up areas where extensive telephone and telegraph systems already exist, domestic satellites are seen by the land-line networks as unfair competition. Despite such opposition, domestic satellites are gaining support from many businesses and public interest groups in the United States and seem likely to be more widely utilized in the future.
(30)
The Amazon rainforest would be safe if strong laws were passed to protect it.
Tough Laws on Paper
Alarming new figures show that the destruction of the Amazon(亚马逊河) rainforest the world's biggest tropical forest has greatly increased. Booming agriculture, especially soya (大豆) growing, is one of the main causes.
If it were simply a matter of passing strong laws to protect it, the Amazon rainforest-the world's largest tropical forest, around the size of western Europe-would be safe. Brazil, whose territory(领土) includes about two-thirds of the forest, has impressively tough laws that, on paper, set most of it aside as a nature reserve and impose stiff penalties for illegal logging (采伐). But the latest annual figures for deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon, published by the government on Wednesday May 18th, have confirmed a disturbing recent trend., the destruction is accelerating despite all efforts to prevent it. In the year to August 2004, more than 26,000 square kilometers (10,000 square miles) of forest were chopped down, an area larger than the American state of New Jersey.
The trees vanish
The area deforested (采伐森林) in the past year was up 6% in 2003, far worse than the Brazilian government's predictions that it would rise by no more than about 2%. It was the second worst year for the destruction of the rainforest since satellite surveys began. It is estimated that almost a fifth of the Brazilian part of the forest has now been wiped out; if it were to continue at this rate, it would all be flattened within the next two centuries. Things are hardly any better in those portions of Amazonia that lie in neighboring countries: Ecuador (厄瓜多尔) has lost about half of its forest, mainly due to illegal logging, in the past 30 years. What's worse, tropical forests have been disappearing at an even faster rate elsewhere in the world, such as in Africa. The world's greatest stores of biodiversity (生物多样性)-and some of its main suppliers of the oxygen we breathe--are still being chewed up at an alarming rate, despite decades of talk among world leaders and environmentalists about the need to preserve them.
The economy booms
As has been seen before in Brazil, the surge (汹涌) in the rate of deforestation is a sign that the country's economy is booming recently it has been growing at an annual rate of around 5%. Most of the trees felled illegally in Amazonia are sold to domestic buyers, in particular to the construction industry in Brazil's richer southern states. But the forest is also threatened by the rapid expansion of farming and ranching (经营牧场). In the past year, almost half of the total deforestation was in the state of Mato Grosso on the forest's southern fringe (边缘), where huge areas have been flattened to grow soybeans. Last year Brazil earned about $10 billion from exporting soy products, exceeding its income from coffee and sugar, the country's traditional export crops. Mato Grosso's governor, Blairo Maggi, is also its soybean king-his family's farms are the world's largest single producer of the crop.
The rate at which the forest is being flattened could easily rise further. To increase the region's economic development and make inroads i0to poverty, the government plans to asphalt (用沥青铺) and widen the potholed (崎岖不平的) BR-163 highway that cuts the forest roughly in half, running from north to south. Though the government has been working with environmental groups and others to try to limit the scheme's impact, past experience has shown that improved road access invariably means more encroachment (蚕食) on the forest by loggers, ranchers (农场主), farmers, mineral prospectors and others.
Use it or lose it
For much of Brazil's recent history, in particular during the country's 1964-85 military dictatorship (专政), successive governments were obsessed with populating and "developing" Amazonia, convinced that otherwise a foreign power might seize it. Large sums were spent building highways to open up the fo
A．To see a doctor.B．To do more exercise.C．To have a sleeping pill.D．All of the above.
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