The prospect has infuriated ordinary Mexicans

Where were the two men filmed?

Doctors are often caught in a ______ because they have to decide whether they should tell their patients the truth or not.

Within hours of appearing on television to announce the end of conscription, President Jacques Chirac moved quickly to prevent any dissent from within the military establishment. Addressing more than 500 military staff officers at the military academy in Paris yesterday, Mr. Chirac said clearly that he "expected" their loyalty in the work of rebuilding France's national defense. He understood their "legitimate concerns, questions and emotions" at the reforms, but added. "You must understand that there is not and never has been any rigid model for French defense. Military service has been compulsory for less than a century. Realism required that our armed forces should now be professional." The president's decision to abolish conscription over a period of six years removes a rite of passage for young Frenchmen that has existed since the Revolution, even though obligatory national service only became law in 1905. As recently as 1993, an opinion poll showed that more than 60% of French people said they feared the abolition of conscription could endanger national security. A poll conducted this month, however, showed that 70% of those asked favored ending of practice, and on the streets and in offices yesterday, the response to Mr. Chirac's announcement was generally positive. Among people who completed their 10-month period of national service in the last few years or were contemplating the prospect, there was almost universal approval, tempered by a sense that something hard to define—mixing with people from other backgrounds, a formative experience, a process that encouraged national or social cohesion—might be lost. Patrick, who spent his year in the French city of Valance assigning and collecting uniforms, and is now a computer manager, said he was in tears for his first week, and hated most of his time. He thought it was "useless" as a form of military training—"I only fired a rifle twice"—but, in retrospect, useful for learning how to get on with people and instilling patriotism. As many as 25% of those liable for military service in France somehow avoid it—the percentage is probably much greater in the more educated and higher social classes. According to Geoffroy, a 26-year-old reporter, who spent his time in the navy with the information office in central Paris, the injustice is a good reason for abolishing it. People with money or connections, he said, can get well-paid assignments abroad. "It's not fair: some do it, some don't." Several expressed support for the idea of a new socially-oriented voluntary service that would be open to both men and women. But the idea seemed less popular among women. At present, women have the option of voluntary service and a small number choose to take it. President Chirac's decision, announced on TV, on ending conscription seemed to ______.

The torch was ______ by a famous athlete at the opening of the sports meeting.

Mrs. Thompson gave us a______account of what had happened; that's why we no longer believe in the sincerity of her utterance.

em>Directions: Read the following passage carefully and then write a summary of it in English i

Computer programmers often remark that computing machines, with a perfect lack of discrimination, will do any foolish thing they are told to do. The reason for this lie, of course, in the narrow fixation of the computing machine's "intelligence" on the details of its own perceptions—its inability to be guided by any large context. In a psychological description of the computer intelligence, three related adjectives come to mind: single-minded, literal-minded, and simple-minded. Recognizing this, we should at the same time recognize that this single-mindedness, literal-mindedness, and simple-mindedness also characterizes theoretical mathematics, though to a lesser extent. Since science tries to deal with reality, even the most precise sciences normally work with more or less imperfectly understood approximations toward which scientists must maintain an appropriate skepticism. Thus, for instance, it may come as a shock to mathematicians to learn that the Schrodinger equation for the hydrogen atom is not a literally correct description of this atom, but only an approximation to a somewhat more correct equation taking account of spin, magnetic dipole, and relativistic effects; and that this corrected equation is itself only an imperfect approximation to an infinite set of quantum field-theoretical equations. Physicists, looking at the original Schrodinger equation, learn to sense in it the presence of many invisible terms in addition to the differential terms visible, and this sense inspires an entirely appropriate disregard for the purely technical features of the equation. This very healthy skepticism is foreign to the mathematical approach. Mathematics must deal with well-defined situations. Thus, mathematicians depend on an intellectual effort outside of mathematics for the crucial specification of the approximation that mathematics is to take literally. Give mathematicians a situation that is the least bit ill-defined, and they will make it well-defined, perhaps appropriately, but perhaps inappropriately. In some cases, the mathematicians literal-mindedness may have unfortunate consequences. The mathematicians turn the scientists' theoretical assumptions that is, their convenient points of analytical emphasis, into axioms, and then take these axioms literally. This brings the danger that they may also persuade the scientists to take these axioms literally. The question, central to the scientific investigation but intensely disturbing in the mathematical context—what happens if the axioms are relaxed—is thereby ignored. The physicist rightly dreads precise argument, since an argument that is convincing only if it is precise loses all its force if the assumptions on which it is based are slightly changed, whereas an argument that is convincing though imprecise may well be stable under small perturbations of its underlying assumptions. The author discusses computing machines in the first paragraph primarily in order to do which of the following?

His strange behavior confirmed his neighbors in their______that he was guilty.

Fierce as they are

______ that should be given priority to.

From the health point of view we are living in a marvelous age. We are immunized from birth against many of the most dangerous diseases. A large number of once fatal illnesses can now be cured by modern drugs and surgery. It is almost certain that one day remedies will be found for the most stubborn remaining diseases. The expectation of life has increased enormously. But though the possibility of living a long and happy life is greater than ever before, every day we witness the incredible slaughter of them, women and children on the roads. Man versus the motor-car! It is a never-ending battle which man is losing. Thousand of people the world over are killed or horribly killed each year and we are quietly sitting back and letting it happen. It has been rightly said that when a man is sitting behind a steering wheel, his car becomes the extension of his personality. There is no doubt that the motor-car often brings out a man's very worst qualities. People who are normally quiet and pleasant may become unrecognizable when they are behind steering wheels. They swear, they are ill-mannered and aggressive, willful as two/year-olds and utterly selfish. All their hidden frustrations, disappointments and jealousies seem to be brought to the surface by the act of driving. The surprising thing is that the society smiles so gently on the motorist and seems to forgive his behavior. Everything is done for his convenience. Cities are allowed to become almost uninhabitable because of heavy traffic; towns are made ugly by huge car parks; the countryside is desecrated by road networks; and the mass annual slaughter becomes nothing more than a statistic, to be conveniently forgotten. It is high time a world code were created to reduce this senseless waste of human life. With regard to driving, the laws of some countries are notoriously lax and even the strictest are not strict enough. A code which was universally accepted could only have a dramatically beneficial effect on the accident rate. Here are a few examples of some of the things that might be done. The driving test should be standardized and made far more difficult than it is; all the drivers should be made to take a test every three years or so; the age at which young people are allowed to drive any vehicle should be raised to at least 21; all vehicles should be put through strict annual tests for safety. Even the smallest amount of alcohol in the blood can impair a person's driving ability. Present drinking and driving laws (where they exist) should be made much stricter. Maximum and minimum speed limits should be imposed on all roads. Governments should lay down safety specifications for manufacturers, as has been done in the USA. All advertising stressing power and performance should be banned. These measures may sound inordinately harsh. But surely nothing should be considered as too severe if it results in reducing the annual toll of human life. After all, the world is for human beings, not for motor-cars. The main idea of this passage is ______.

The problem is that the loss of confidence among the soldiers can be highly contagious.

As the semester is drawing to an end

Though science is often imagined as a disinterested subject, scientists are no different from anyone else: they are ______ human beings enmeshed in a web of personal and social circumstances.

I didn't say anything like that at all

According to the weather forecast

The English language contains a(n)______of words which are comparative seldom used in ordinary conversation.

The flashing red light served as a ______ of danger ahead.

Our culture has caused most Americans to assume not only that our language is universal but that the gestures we use are understood by everyone. We do not realize that waving good-bye is the way to summon a person from the Philippines to one's side or that in Italy and some Latin-American countries curling the finger to oneself is a sign of farewell. Those private citizens who sent packages to our troops occupying Germany after World War Ⅱ and marked them GIFT to escape duty payments did not bother to find out that "Gift" means poison in German. Moreover, we like to think of ourselves as friendly, yet we prefer to be at least, 3 feet or an arm's length away from others. Latins and Middle Easterners like to come closer and touch' which makes Americans uncomfortable. Our linguistic and cultural blindness and the casualness with which we take notice of the developed tastes, gestures, customs and languages of other countries are losing us friends, business and respect in the world. Even here in the United States, we make few concessions to the needs of foreign visitors. There are no information signs in four languages on our public buildings or monuments; we do not have multilingual (多语言的) guided tours. Very few restaurant menus have translations, and multilingual waiters, bank clerks and policemen are rare. Our transportation systems have maps in English only and often we ourselves have difficulty understanding them. When we go abroad, we tend to cluster in hotels and restaurants where English is spoken. The attitudes and information we pick up are conditioned by those natives—usually the richer—who speak English. Our business dealings, as well as the nation's diplomacy are conducted through interpreters. For many years, America and Americans could get by with cultural blindness and linguistic ignorance. After all, America was the most powerful country of the free world, the distributor of needed funds and goods. But all that is past. American dollars no longer buy all good things, and we are slowly beginning to realize that our proper role in the world is changing. A 1979 Harris poll reported that 55 percent of Americans want this country to play a more significant role in world affairs; we want to have a hand in the important decisions of the next century, even though it may not always be the upper hand. It can be inferred that Americans being approached too closely by Middle Easterners would most probably ______.