BPart ADirections: Write a composition/letter of no less than 100 words on the following information./B

In the following text, some sentences have been removed. For Questions 1-5, choose the most suitable one from the list A-G to fit into each of the numbered blanks. There are two extra choices, which do not fit in any of the blanks. On the north bank of the Ohio river sits Evansville, Ind., home of David Williams, 52, and of a riverboat casino (a place where gambling games are played). During several years of gambling in that casino, Williams, a state auditor earning $35, 000 a year, lost approximately $175, 000. He had never gambled before the casino sent him a coupon for $20 worth of gambling. He visited the casino, lost the $20 and left. On his second visit he lost $800. The casino issued to him, as a good customer, a "Fun Card", which when used in the casino earns points for meals and drinks, and enables the casino to track the user"s gambling activities. For Williams, those activities become what he calls "electronic heroin". 【C1】______. In 1997 he lost $21, 000 to one slot machine in two days. In March 1997 he lost $72, 186. He sometimes played two slot machines at a time, all night, until the boat docked at 5 a.m., then went back aboard when the casino opened at 9 a.m.. Now he is suing the casino, charging that it should have refused his patronage because it knew he was addicted. It did know he had a problem. In March 1998 a friend of Williams"s got him involuntarily confined to a treatment center for addictions, and wrote to inform the casino of Williams"s gambling problem. The casino included a photo of Williams among those of banned gamblers, and wrote to him a "cease admissions" letter. Noting the "medical / psychological" nature of problem gambling behavior, the letter said that before being readmitted to the casino he would have to present medical / psychological information demonstrating that patronizing the casino would pose no threat to his safety or well-being. 【C2】______ The Wall Street Journal reports that the casino has 24 signs warning: "Enjoy the fun ... and always bet with your head, not over it." Every entrance ticket lists a toll-free number for counseling from the Indiana Department of Mental Health. Nevertheless, Williams"s suit charges that the casino, knowing he was "helplessly addicted to gambling," intentionally worked to "lure" him to "engage in conduct against his will." Well. 【C3】______ The fourth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders says "pathological gambling" involves persistent, recurring and uncontrollable pursuit less of money than of the thrill of taking risks in quest of a windfall. 【C4】______. Pushed by science, or what claims to be science, society is reclassifying what once were considered character flaws or moral failings as personality disorders akin to physical disabilities. 【C5】______ Forty-four states have lotteries, 29 have casinos, and most of these states are to varying degrees dependent on—you might say addicted to—revenues from wagering. And since the first Internet gambling site was created in 1995, competition for gamblers" dollars has become intense. The Oct. 28 issue of Newsweek reported that 2 million gamblers patronize 1, 800 virtual casinos every week. With $3.5 billion being lost on Internet wagers this year, gambling has passed pornography as the Web" s most profitable business.[A] Although no such evidence was presented, the casino"s marketing department continued to pepper him with mailings. And he entered the casino and used his Fun Card without being detected.[B] It is unclear what luring was required, given his compulsive behavior. And in what sense was his will operative?[C] By the time he had lost $5, 000 he said to himself that if he could get back to even, he would quit. One night he won $5, 500, but he did not quit.[D] Gambling has been a common feature of American life forever, but for a long time it was broadly considered a sin, or a social disease. Now it is a social policy: the most important and aggressive promoter of gambling in America is the government.[E] David Williams" s suit should trouble this gambling nation. But don" t bet on it.[F] It is worrisome that society is medicalizing more and more behavioral problems, often defining as addictions what earlier, sterner generations explained as weakness of will.[G] The anonymous, lonely, undistracted nature of online gambling is especially conducive to compulsive behavior. But even if the government knew how to move against Internet gambling, what would be its grounds for doing so?

BSection I Use of EnglishDirections: Read the following text. Choose the best word(s) for each numbered blank and mark A, B, C or D./B

Come on, my fellow white folks, we have something to confess. Out with it, friends, the biggest secret known to whites since the invention of powdered rouge: welfare is a white program. The numbers go like this: 61% of the population receiving welfare, listed as "means-tested cash assistance" by the Census Bureau, is identified as whit e, while only 33% is identified as black. These numbers notwithstanding, the Republican version of "political correctness" has given us "welfare cheat" as a new term for African American since the early days of Ronald Reagan. Our confession surely stands: white folks have been gobbling up the welfare budget while blaming someone else. But it"s worse than that. If we look at Social Security, which is another form of welfare, although it is often mistaken for an individual insurance program, then whites are the ones who are crowding the trough. We receive almost twice as much per capita, for an aggregate advantage to our race of $10 billion a year—much more than the $3.9 billion advantage African American gain from their disproportionate share of welfare. One sad reason: whites live an average of six years longer than African Americans, meaning that young black workers help subsidize a huge and growing "over-class" of white retirees. I do not see our confession bringing much relief. There"s a reason for resentment, though it has more to do with class than with race. White people are poor too, and in numbers far exceeding any of our more generously pigmented social groups. And poverty as defined by the government is a vast underestimation of the economic terror that persists at incomes—such as $20,000 or even $40,000 and above—that we like to think of as middle class. The problem is not that welfare is too generous to blacks but that social welfare in general is too stingy to all concerned. Naturally, whites in the swelling "near poor" category resent the notion of whole races supposedly frolicking at their expense. Whites, near poor and middle class, need help too—as do the many African Americans. So we white folks have a choice. We can keep pretending that welfare is black program and a scheme for transferring our earnings to the pockets of shiftless, dark-skinned people. Or we can clear our throats, blush prettily and admit that we are hurting too—for cash assistance when we"re down and out, for health insurance, for college aid and all the rest. Racial scapegoating has its charms, I will admit: the surge of righteous anger, even the fun—for those inclined—of wearing sheets and burning crosses. But there are better, nobler sources of white pride, it seems to me. Remember this: only we can truly, deeply blush.

Writeanessayof160200wordsbasedonthefollowingdrawing.Inyouressay,youshould1)describethedrawingbriefly,2)explainitsintendedmeaning,andthen3)advanceyouradvice(s).

BSection II Reading Comprehension/B

long thin leg

Historically, humans get serious about avoiding disasters only after one has just struck them. 【C1】______ that logic, 2006 should have been a breakthrough year for rational behavior. With the memory of 9/11 still【C2】______ in their minds, Americans watched hurricane Katrina, the most expensive disaster in U.S. history, on 【C3】______TV. Anyone who didn "t know it before should have learned that bad things can happen. And they are made【C4】______ worse by our willful blindness to risk as much as our 【C5】______to work together before everything goes to hell. Granted, some amount of delusion is probably part of the 【C6】______ condition. In A.D. 63, Pompeii was seriously damaged by an earthquake, and the locals immediately went to work 【C7】______, in the same spot—until they were buried altogether by a volcano eruption 16 years later. But a 【C8】______of the past year in disaster history suggests that modern Americans are particularly bad at 【C9】______ themselves from guaranteed threats. We know more than we【C10】______ did about the dangers we face. But it turns【C11】______that in times of crisis, our greatest enemy is 【C12】______ the storm, the quake or the【C13】______itself. More often, it is ourselves. So what has happened in the year that【C14】______ the disaster on the Gulf Coast. In New Orleans, the Army Corps of Engineers has worked day and night to rebuild the floodwalls. They have got the walls to【C15】______ they were before Katrina, more or less. That"s not 【C16】______, we can now say with confidence. But it may be all【C17】______can be expected from one year of hustle. Meanwhile, New Orleans officials have crafted a plan to use buses and trains to【C18】______ the sick and the disabled. The city estimates that 15,000 people will need a【C19】______ out. However, state officials have not yet determined where these people will be taken. The【C20】______with neighboring communities are ongoing and difficult.

What is it about walking, in particular, that makes it so amenable to thinking and writing? The answer begins with changes to our chemistry. When we go for a walk, the heart pumps faster, circulating more blood and oxygen not just to the muscles but to all the organs—including the brain. Many experiments have shown that after or during exercise, even very mild exertion, people perform better on tests of memory and attention.【B6】_______________ The way we move our bodies further changes the nature of our thoughts, and vice versa.【B7】_____________Likewise, when drivers hear loud, fast music, they unconsciously step a bit harder on the gas pedal. Walking at our own pace creates an unadulterated feedback loop between the rhythm of our bodies and our mental state that we cannot experience as easily when we're jogging at the gym, steering a car, biking, or during any other kind of locomotion. Where we walk matters as well. In a study led by Marc Berman of the University of South Carolina, students who ambled through an arboretum improved their performance on a memory test more than students who walked along city streets. A small but growing collection of studies suggests that spending time in green spaces—gardens, parks, forests—can rejuvenate the mental resources that man-made environments deplete.【B8】_____________In contrast, walking past a pond in a park allows our mind to drift casually from one sensory experience to another, from wrinkling water to rustling reeds. Still, urban and pastoral walks respectively offer unique advantages for the mind.【B9】______________Virginia Woolf. an English writer and one of the foremost modernists of the twentieth century, relished the creative energy of London's streets, describing it in her diary as "being on the highest crest of the biggest wave, right in the centre and swim of things." But she also depended on her walks through England's South Downs to have space to spread her mind out in. And, in her youth, she often travelled to Cornwall for the summer, where she loved to spend her afternoons in solitary trampling through the countryside. There, it becomes apparent that writing and walking are extremely similar feats, equal parts physical and mental.【B10】________________Likewise, writing forces the brain to review its own landscape, plot a course through that mental terrain, and transcribe the resulting trail of thoughts by guiding the hands. Walking organizes the world around us; writing organizes our thoughts. [A] Psychologists have learned that attention is a limited resource that continually drains throughout the day, for example, crowded intersection—rife with pedestrians, cars, and billboards—bats our attention around. [B] Psychologists who specialize in exercise music have quantified what many of us already know: listening to songs with high tempos motivates us to run faster, and the swifter we move, the quicker we prefer our music. [C] A walk through a city provides more immediate stimulation—a greater variety of sensations for the mind to play with. But, if we are already at the brink of overstimulation, we can turn to nature in-stead. [D] When we stroll, the pace of our feet naturally vacillates with our moods and the cadence of our inner speech; at the same time, we can actively change the pace of our thoughts by deliberately walking more briskly or by slowing down. [E] When we choose a path through a city or forest, our brain must survey the surrounding environment, construct a mental map of the world, settle on a way forward, and translate that plan into a series of footsteps. [F] Walking on a regular basis also promotes new connections between brain cells, staves off the usual withering of brain tissue that comes with age, increases the volume of the hippocampus (a brain region crucial for memory), and elevates levels of molecules that both stimulate the growth of new neurons and transmit messages between them. [G] Because we don't have to devote much conscious effort to the act of walking, our attention is free to wander—to overlay the world before us with a parade of images from the mind's theatre.

In the following text, some sentences have been removed. For Questions 41-45, choose the most suitable one from the list (A、B、C、D、E、F、G……) to fit into each of the numbered blank. There are several extra choices, which do not fit in any of the gaps. (10 points) Most of the people who appear most often and most gloriously in the history books are great conquerors and generals and soldiers, whereas the people who really helped civilization forward are often never mentioned at all. People think a great deal of them so much, so that on all the highest pillars in the great cities of the world you will find the figure of a conqueror or a general or a soldier. (41)______. Animals fight; so do savages; hence to be good at fighting is to be good in the way in which an animal or a savage is good, but it is not to be civilized. Fighting means killing, and civilized peoples ought to be able to find some way of settling their disputes other than by seeing which side can kill off the greater number of the other side, and then saying that that side which has killed most has won. That is what the story of mankind has on the whole been like. Even our own age has fought the two greatest wars in history, in which millions of people were killed or mutilated. (42)______. But nations and countries have not learnt to do this yet, and still behave like savages. But we must not expect too much. (43)______. Scientists reckon that there has been life of some sort on the earth in the form of jellyfish and that kind of creature for about twelve hundred million years; but there have been men for only one million years, and there have been civilized men for about eight thousand years at the outside. These figures are difficult to grasp; so let us scale them down. Suppose that we reckon the whole past of living creatures on the earth as one hundred years; then the whole past of man works out at about one month, and during that month there have been civilizations for between seven and eight hours. (44)______. Taking man"s civilized past at about seven or eight hours, we may estimate his future, that is to say, the whole period between now and when the sun grows too cold to maintain life any longer on the earth, at about one hundred thousand years. (45)______. The past of man has been on the whole a pretty beastly business, a business of fighting and bullying and gorging and grabbing and butting. We must not expect even civilized peoples not to have done these things. All we can ask is that they will sometimes have done something else.A. And while today it is true that people do not fight and kill each other in the streets—while, that is to say, we have got to the stage of keeping the rules and behaving properly to each other in daily life.B. In my opinion, the greatest countries should behave properly to other countries and obey the rules they constituted together.C. Now we"ve got little time to learn how to get along well with others or other countries.D. So you see there has been little time to learn in, but there will be oceans of time in which to learn better.E. After all, the race of men has only just started.F. Thus mankind is only at the beginning of its civilized life, and as I say, we must not expect too much.G. And I think most people believe that the greatest countries are those that have beaten in battle the greatest number of other countries and ruled over them as conquerors.

Much has been written about poverty but none of the accounts seem to get at the root of the problem. It must be noted that the debilitating effects of poverty are not only the result of lack of money but are also the result of powerlessness.【F1】 The poor are subject to their social situation instead of being able to affect it through action, that is, through behavior that flows from an individual"s decisions and plans. In other words, when social scientists have reported on the psychological consequences of poverty, it seems reasonable to believe that they have described the psychological consequences of powerlessness. The solution to poverty most frequently suggested is to help the poor secure more money without otherwise changing the present power relationships. This appears to implement the idea of equality while avoiding any unnecessary threat to the established centers of power. But since the consequences of poverty are related to powerlessness, not to the absolute supply of money available to the poor, and since the amount of power purchasable with a given supply of money decreases as a society acquires a large supply of goods and services, the solution of raising the incomes of the poor is likely, unless accompanied by other measures, to be ineffective in a wealthy society. In order to reduce poverty—related psychological and social problems in the United States, the major community will have to change its relationship to neighborhoods of poverty in such fashion that families in the neighborhoods have a greater interest in the broader society and can more successfully participate in the decision-making process of the surrounding community. Social action to help the poor should have the following characteristics: First, the poor should see themselves as the source of the action.【F2】 Second, the action should effect in major ways the preconceptions of institutions and persons who define the poor; the action should demand much in effect or skill. 【F3】 Third, the action should be successful and the successful self-originated important action should increase the feeling of potential worth and individual power of individuals who are poor. 【F4】 The only initial resource which a community should provide to neighborhoods of poverty should be on a temporary basis and should consist of organizers who will enable the neighborhoods quickly to create powerful, independent, democratic organizations of the poor. 【F5】 Through such organizations, the poor will then negotiate with the outsiders for resources and opportunities without having to submit to concurrent control from outside.

Do animals have rights? This is how the question is usually put. It sounds like a useful, ground clearing way to start. (46) Actually, it isn"t, because it assumes that there is an agreed account of human rights, which is something the world does not have. On one view of rights, to be sure, it necessarily follows that animals have none. (47) Some philosophers argue that rights exist only within a social contract, as part of an exchange of duties and entitlements. Therefore, animals cannot have rights. The idea of punishing a tiger that kills somebody is absurd, for exactly the same reason, so is the idea that tigers have rights. However, this is only one account, and by no means an uncontested one. It denies rights not only to animals but also to some people—for instance—to infants, the mentally incapable and future generations. In addition, it is unclear what force a contract can have for people who never consented to it, how do you reply to somebody who says "I don"t like this contract"? The point is this: without agreement on the rights of people, arguing about the rights of animals is fruitless. (48) It leads the discussion to extremes at the outset: it invites you to think that animals should be treated either with the consideration humans extend to other humans, or with no consideration at all. This is a false choice. Better to start with another, more fundamental, question: is the way we treat animals a moral issue at all? Many deny it. (49) Arguing from the view that humans are different from animals in every relevant respect, extremists of this kind think that animals lie outside the area of moral choice. Any regard for the suffering of animals is seen as a mistake—a sentimental displacement of feeling that should properly be directed to other humans. This view which holds that torturing a monkey is morally equivalent to chopping wood, may seem bravely "logical". In fact it is simply shallow: the confused center is right to reject it. The most elementary form of moral reasoning—the ethical equivalent of learning to crawl—is to weigh others" interests against one"s own. This in turn requires sympathy and imagination: without there is no capacity for moral thought. To see an animal in pain is enough, for most, to engage sympathy. (50) When that happens, it is not a mistake: it is mankind"s instinct for moral reasoning in action, an instinct that should be encouraged rather than laughed at.

BPart BDirections: Write an essay of 160-200 words based on the following information./B

BSection III Writing/B

Can this be the right time to invest in luxury goods? Miuccia Prada was obviously biting her nails. The granddaughter of the founder of the Italian fashion group has just opened spectacular new stores in quick succession in New York and London. With its magic mirrors, silver displays and computer-controlled changing rooms, Prada"s two-month-old shop in Manhattan cost a staggering $40m, sits just a mile from Ground Zero, and sells practically nothing. The luxury-goods business has been in despair in hasty succession against a background of a weakening global economy, an enduring slump in Japanese spending, and the September 11th terrorist attacks. The Japanese, who used to buy a third of the world"s luxury goods, cut their foreign travel in half after the attacks and tightened their Louis Vuitton purse-strings. At the same time, wealthy Americans stopped flying, which has a dramatic effect on the luxury-goods purveyors of London, Paris and Rome. At home too, Americans" attitudes to luxury changed, at least temporarily. "Conspicuous abstention" replaced greedy consumerism among the fast-growing, younger breed of newly rich. The decline in job security, the lower bonuses in financial services, and the stock market bust that wiped out much of the paper wealth generated in the late 1990s, bred a new frugality. Sales of expensive jewelry, watches and handbags—the products that make the juiciest profits for the big luxury-goods groups—dropped sharply. The impact has been most striking among the handful of large, quoted luxury-goods companies. France"s Louis Vuitton Moet Hennessy (LVMH), the industry leader, issued four profits warnings after September 11th and ended up reporting a 20% decline in operating profit for 2001, after having repeatedly promised its investors double-digit growth; and Italy"s Gucci Group, the third largest, announced this week that second-half profits dropped by 33%. Meanwhile, privately held Prada had to postpone its stock market flotation and was forced to sell a recently acquired stake in Fendi, a prestigious Italian bag maker, in order to reduce its debts. Luxury is an unusual business. A luxury brand cannot be extended indefinitely: if it becomes too common, it is devalued, as Pierre Cardin and Ralph Lauren proved by sticking their labels on everything from T-shirts to paint. Equally, a brand name can be undermined if it is not advertised consistently, or if it is displayed and sold poorly. Sagra Maceira de Rosen, a luxury-goods analyst at J.P. Morgan, argues that, "Luxury companies are primarily retailers. In retailing, the most important thing is execution, and execution is all about management. You may have the best designed product, but if you don"t get it into the right kind of shop at the right time, you will fail."

How does your reading proceed? Clearly you try to comprehend, in the sense of identifying meanings for individual words and working out relationships between them, drawing on your implicit knowledge of English grammar. 【C1】______You begin to infer a context for the text, for instance, by making decisions about what kind of speech event is involved: Who is making the utterance, to whom, when and where. The ways of reading indicated here are without doubt kinds of comprehension. But they show comprehension to consist not just of passive assimilation but of active engagement in inference and problem-solving. You infer information you feel the writer has invited you to grasp by presenting you with specific evidence and clues. 【C2】______ Conceived in this way, comprehension will not follow exactly the same track for each reader. What is in question is not the retrieval of an absolute, fixed or "true" meaning that can be read off and checked for accuracy, or some timeless relation of the text to the world. 【C3】______ Such background material inevitably reflects who we are. 【C4】______This doesn"t, however, make interpretation merely relative or even pointless. Precisely because readers from different historical periods, places and social experiences produce different but overlapping readings of the same words on the page—including for texts that engage with fundamental human concerns—debates about texts can play an important role in social discussion of beliefs and values. How we read a given text also depends to some extent on our particular interest in reading it. 【C5】______Such dimensions of reading suggest—as others introduced later in the book will also do—that we bring an implicit(often unacknowledged)agenda to any act of reading. It doesn"t then necessarily follow that one kind of reading is fuller, more advanced or more worthwhile than another. Ideally, different kinds of reading inform each other, and act as useful reference points for and counterbalances to one another. Together, they make up the reading component of your overall literacy, or relationship to your surrounding textual environment.[A]Are we studying that text and trying to respond in a way that fulfils the requirement of a given course? Reading it simply for pleasure? Skimming it for information? Ways of reading on a train or in bed are likely to differ considerably from reading in a seminar room.[B]Factors such as the place and period in which we are reading, our gender, ethnicity, age and social class will encourage us towards certain interpretations but at the same time obscure or even close off others.[C]If you are unfamiliar with words or idioms, you guess at their meaning, using clues presented in the context. On the assumption that they will become relevant later, you make a mental note of discourse entities as well as possible links between them. [D]In effect, you try to reconstruct the likely meanings or effects that any given sentence, image or reference might have had: These might be the ones the author intended.[E]You make further inferences, for instance, about how the text may be significant to you, or about its validity—inferences that form the basis of a personal response for which the author will inevitably be far less responsible.[F]In plays, novels and narrative poems, characters speak as constructs created by the author, not necessarily as mouthpieces for the author"s own thoughts.[G]Rather, we ascribe meanings to texts on the basis of interaction between what we might call textual and contextual material; between kinds of organization or patterning we perceive in a text"s formal structures(so especially its language structures)and various kinds of background, social knowledge, belief and attitude that we bring to the text.

Many people like to travel. The problem is getting your pet to the【C1】______. In recent years, transporting pets on flights has grown more【C2】______—and more expensive. All major carriers have【C3】______raised the fees that they【C4】______for bringing pets onboard, matching, or in some cases,【C5】______. the fee for children flying alone. Fees【C6】______depending on whether the pet flies under your seat, or as checked baggage, which【C7】______extra handling. Pet safety has also become a more【C8】______issue. Incidents of animals being lost, injured or dying have recently【C9】______. Thirty-nine animals died while flying aboard【C10】______jets last year, compared with 22 two years ago. 【C11】______those numbers are a small percentage of the hundreds of thousands of animals flown by the airlines each year, they expose the dangers that pets may face while traveling. Not that airlines don"t【C12】______risks, but that some pets are liable to breathing problems or【C13】______illness. Delta, which reported several dog【C14】______last year, has changed its policy and now【C15】______some breeds from its planes. Despite the inconveniences, airlines say they are going out of their way to be pet【C16】______. Last year Frontier Airlines, in【C17】______to demand, began accepting pets in the passenger cabin for the first time【C18】______it had transported pets only as baggage. If you are considering putting your pet on a plane, here are a few tips to【C19】______the process. Don"t wait until the last minute to book, for airlines limit the number of pets in the cabin. Placing your pet on the floor of the car beforehand so it can feel the【C20】______as it will on a plane.

With her tiny waist, stick thin legs and petite frame, the Barbie doll has been accused of promoting an unhealthy body image for over five decades. But now, in her biggest update since 1959, it's out with the skeletal frame and thigh gap, and in with the curvy hips and thighs as the company has revealed three new body types for the dolls to reflect a "broader view of beauty". Mattel, the creator of the toys, said the new range—which also boasts seven different skin tones—was designed to promote a healthy and realistic body image and would better reflect the diversity of those who play with the dolls. Richard Dickson, president and chief operating officer of Mattel, said: "For more than 55 years, Barbie has been a global, cultural icon and a source of inspiration and imagination to millions of girls around the world. Barbie reflects the world girls see around them. Her ability to evolve and grow with the times, while staying true to her spirit, is central to why Barbie is the number one fashion doll in the world." The embracing of different body types was welcomed by several charities who champion healthy body image and assist those who struggle with eating disorders, which research shows are exacerbated by exposure to unrealistic body types. In July 2015, research found that children in the UK as young as eight were reporting body dissatisfaction and that almost 40% of 14-year-old girls were admitting to regular dieting. Andrew Radford, the chief executive of eating disorder charity Beat, said he was delighted Mattel had introduced more diversity to the Barbie range. "For a long time Beat has campaigned against the constant portrayal of a very slender look as the only aspirational ideal for young people," he said. " If a generation is to grow up with a robust sense of their self worth we must challenge this. To more truly reflect the diversity of shapes, sizes and culture of mankind is a welcome initiative, especially in a range that generations of young girls have identified with since its birth." Liam Preston, spokesman for the YMCA's Be Real campaign, which works with schools and corporations, said it was about time that companies accepted responsibility for the images that they projected onto young girls and teenagers. Speaking to the Telegraph, Tania Missad, Mattel' s director of global brand insight, also said they were expecting some criticism that the new dolls " haven't gone far enough, or people who ask what's next, question our commitment to this". She added:" Barbie is a lightning rod for conversation, and of course there will be a backlash. "

A controversial decision on whether choice cuts of steak and cartons of milk produced from cloned animals are suitable for the dinner table is now long overdue. Hundreds of pigs, cows and other animals created with the help of cloning are living (1)_____ farms across the United States and (2)_____ the forthcoming ruling will directly (3)_____ American consumers, British holidaymakers may also (4)_____ themselves at the forefront of a food revolution that many commentators expect will (5)_____ arrive here. (6)_____ the birth of Dolly the sheep—the first mammal cloned from an adult cell—there were extreme predictions of herds of genetically (7)_____ bulls and pastures (8)_____ with cloned dairy cows. That double (9)_____ of the past decade has not yet been realized (10)_____ clones have become a familiar sight at agricultural fairs in America, where producers of (11)_____ pigs and cattle have been among the first to (12)_____ cloning, which offers a way to keep (13)_____ traits without inbreeding problems caused by traditional methods. Clones of rare and elite animals, including sheep, goats, and rabbits, (14)_____ a way to improve animal healthy, (15)_____ the nutritional value of meat and milk, and breed animals immune (16)_____ diseases or better suited for developing countries. The safety of cloned (17)_____ has been under examination by various bodies. Three years ago the US National Academy of Science concluded that (18)_____ available data indicated that cloning met animal welfare and food safety considerations, more information was needed. (19)_____ scientific evidence suggests that there is little (20)_____ for alarm, at least on food-safety grounds.

You can't be too careful when you drive a car.