Three--quarters of a million tourists flock to the white beaches every year,but this booming industry has come at a price.Poisonous smoke rising from open fires,rubbish made up of plastic bottles,packets...it'S a _ from the white sands,clear waters and palm trees that we associate with the Maldives ,the paradise island holiday destination set in the Indian Ocean. of its 200 inhabited islands,which are spread across an area of"35,000 square miles,99 are good resorts .So many tourists come every year,more than double the local population.Of these,over l 00,000 travel from the U K.The capital,Mal6,is four times more densely populated than London.Given these facts,it'S hardly surprising that the Maldives has a waste disposal problem. Y ears a90,when the tourists left,the government had to deal with a stream of rubbish.Their solution was to turn one of the islands into a dumping ground.Four miles west of Mal6 is the country's dumping ground,Thilafushi.What you are seeing here is a view of the Maldives on which no honeymooners will ever clap eyes.Each visitor produces 3.5 kg of waste per day.The country dumps more than 330 tons of rubbish on the island every day. Now,since many waste boats,fed up with waiting seven hours or more,directly offload their goods into the sea,the government of the Maldives has banned the dumping of waste on the island.S0,the waste boats ship the rubbish to India instead. What'S the author'S purpose in writing the text? A) To attract more tourists to the Maldives. B) To state the waste disposal problem in the Maldives. C) To call on us to protect the environment. D) To explain the causes of pollution in the Maldives.
B
(Question)
There are numerous similarities between Muhammad Ali and his 23-year-old daughter Laila. She is the only one of his nine sons and daughters to have those genes that led to the ring . Her father's great status had nothing to do with Laila's decision to pursue a boxing career. She has always been proud of his achievements, but he was never a great man to her ---- just dad. What attracted her to take up boxing was the unusual sight of two women in the ring on the television screen when she was about to watch a Mike Tyson fight five years ago. She was very excited and said to herself, "I can do that." Laila's father would prefer her not to take up the dangerous sport. Johnny McClain, her husband and manager (former boxer himself) feels the same way. Even though both the men in her life worry about her, they're 100 percent supportive. "They don't want me to get hurt," she says. Long before entering the ring, Laila was a fighter. Being the daughter of an outstanding boxer made her an easy target for high school kids to see how tough she was. They, not she, failed in the test. For the public, her biggest test took place last summer in the New York State when she took on Jacqui Frazier Lyde, the daughter of Joe Frazier, her father's most famous opponent during the 1970s. _ . News reporters poured in. Some called it "Ali/Frazier - Generation II". No match involving women had ever attracted so much attention. Laila had a narrow victory in the fight. Like it or not, she accepts the fact that she is the face of female boxing. And she hopes that her name and fame will help get the public to take it more seriously. The name Ali has and always will bring her attention. But she is determined to make her own mark on opponents' faces as well as in boxing history books. She says, "I want women's boxing to get its due respect." Laila took up boxing because of _ . A) her father's great status B) a Mike Tyson fight C) her admiration for her father D) her interest in boxing
(Answer)
D
Ques: The world's premier spelling bee ended Thursday in the U.S.for a second year in a row after an in-tense lo-round showdown between two young competitors to deal with some of the English language's most obscure words. Vanya }hlvaShankar,13,and Gokul Venkatachalam,14,together raised the gold trophy in the 88th Scripps National Spelling Bee. Shivashankar,the sister of 2009 champion Kavya Shivashankar,initially gathered confidence as she went easily through such words as cytopoiesis,bouquetiere and thamakau.Venkatachalam,a basketball fan,also managed such tongue-twisters as poblacion,caudillismo and nixtamal. But as their eight fellow finalists failed one by one,the tension grew until they stood alone on stage* When Shivashankar,in the fourteenth round,correctly spelled scherenschnitte,the Germanderived word for artistic paper cutting, official bee pronouncer Jacques Bailly, broke the news to. Venkatachalam . contest,Bailly said,was about to run out of words,and if Venkatachalam spelled his next word correctly,he and his rival would be declared joint winnersa repeat of last year's surprise. The winning word came so easily to the eighth-grader from the branch St.Louis,Missouri suburb of Chesterfield that he skipped the bee contestant's routine of asking for the word's origin,meaning and usage in a sentence*"Nunatak,"the devoted LeBron James fan said,spelling the Inuit-derived word for an icy island as easily as if he was spelling d. -g or c-a-t. Asked afterwards what went through his mind upon hearing the word,Venkatachalam frankly replied:"Me and Vanya are going to be champions." How many contestants took part in the final? A) Only two. B) Four. C) Eight. D) Ten.
Ans: D
Read the following time table and then answer the following question. Train Time Table lv. (Leave) Boston Ar. (Arrive) Midway Ar. New York 5:10 AM EX.(Except)Sun. 7:00 AM 10:45 AM 7:10 AM Daily 9:00 AM 12:45 PM 9:10 AM Ex. Sat. & Sun. 11:00 AM 2:45 PM 10:00 AM Ex. Hol.(Holiday) 11:45 AM 2:55 PM 1:15 PM Daily 3:15 PM 5:45 PM 3:40 PM Ex. Hol. 5:40 PM 8:15 PM 5:20 PM Daily 7:20 PM 9:55 PM On Christmas Day, how many trains can you certainly take from Boston to New York? A) 2 B) 4 C) 5 D) 3
D