The World Heritage List was established under terms of the Convention Concerning the Protection of the World Cultural and Natural Heritage adopted in 1972 by UNESCO.

Ironically, in the United States, a country of immigrants, prejudice and discrimination continue to be serious problems. There was often tension between each established group of immigrants and each succeeding group. As each group became more financially successful, and more powerful, they excluded newcomers from full participation in the society. Prejudice and discrimination are part of our history, however, this prejudicial treatment of different groups is nowhere more unjust than with black Americans.

Blacks had distinct disadvantages. For the most part, they came to the "land of opportunity" as slaves and they were not free to keep their heritage and cultural traditions. Unlike most European immigrants, blacks did not have the protection of a support group; sometimes slave-owners separated members of the same family. They could not mix easily with the established society either because of their skin color. It was difficult for them to adapt to the American culture. Even after they became free people, they still experienced discrimination in employment, housing, education, and even in public facilities, such as restroom.

Prejudice and discrimination ______.

A．were gone

B．have been existing in the American society

C．don't exclude new immigrants from participation in the society

D．are mainly caused by the slavery

The Aleuts, residing on several islands of the Aleutian Chain, the Pribilof islands, and the Alaskan Peninsula, have possessed a written language since 1825, when the Russian missionary Ivan Veniaminov selected appropriate characters of the Cyrillic alphabet to represent Aleut speech sounds, recorded the main body of Aleut vocabulary, and formulated grammatical rules. The Czarist Russian conquest of the proud, independent sea hunters was so devastatingly thorough that tribal traditions, even tribal memories, were almost obliterated. The slaughter of the majority of an adult generation was sufficient to destroy the continuity of tribal knowledge, which was dependent upon oral transmission. As a consequence, the Aleuts developed a fanatical devotion to their language as their only cultural heritage.

The Russian occupation placed a heavy linguistic burden on the Aleuts. Not only were they compelled to learn Russian to converse with their overseers and governors, but they had to learn Old Slavonic to take an active part in church services as well as to master the skill of reading and writing their own tongue. In 1867, when the United States purchased Alaska, the Aleuts were unable to break sharply with their immediate past and substitute English for any one of their three languages.

To communicants of the Russian Orthodox Church a knowledge of Slavonic remained vital, as did Russian, the language in which one conversed with the clergy. The Aleuts came to regard English education as a device to wean them from their religious faith. The introduction of compulsory English schooling caused a minor renascence of Russian culture as the Aleut parents sought to counteract the influence of the schoolroom. The harsh life of the Russian colonial rule began to appear more happy and beautiful in retrospect.

Regulations forbidding instruction in any language other than English increased its unpopularity, The superficial alphabetical resemblance of Russian and Aleut linked the two tongues so closely that every restriction against teaching Russian was interpreted as an attempt to eradicate the Aleut tongue. From the wording of many regulations, it appears that American administrators often had not the slightest idea that the Aleuts were clandestinely reading and writhing their own tongue or even had a written language of their own. To too many officials, anything in Cyrillic letters was Russian and something to be stamped out. Bitterness bred by abuses and the exploitations the Aleuts suffered from predatory American traders and adventurers kept alive the Aleut resentment against the language spoken by Americans.

Gradually, despite the failure to emancipate the Aleuts from a sterile past by relating the Aleut and English languages more closely, the passage of years has assuaged the bitter misunderstandings and caused an orientation away from Russian toward English as their second language, but Aleut continues to be the language that molds their thought and expression.

The author is primarily concerned with describing ______.

A．the Aleuts' loyalty to their language and American failure to understand it

B．Russian and United States treatment of Alaskan inhabitants both before and after 1867

C．how the Czarist Russian occupation of Alaska created a written language for the Aleuts

D．United States government attempts to persuade the Aleuts to use English as a second language

The Aleuts, residing on several islands of the Aleutian Chain, the Pribilof Islands, and the Alaskan Peninsula, have possessed a written language since 1825, when the Russian missionary Ivan Veniaminov selected appropriate characters of the Cyrillic alphabet to represent Aleut speech sounds, recorded the main body of Aleut vocabulary, and formulated grammatical rules. The Czarist Russian conquest of the proud, independent sea hunters was so devastatingly thorough that tribal traditions, even tribal memories, were almost obliterated. The slaughter of the majority of an adult generation was sufficient to destroy the continuity of tribal knowledge, which was dependent upon oral transmission. As a consequence, the Aleuts developed a fanatical devotion to their language as their only cultural heritage.

The Russian occupation placed a heavy linguistic burden on the Aleuts. Not only were they compelled to learn Russian to converse with their overseers and governors, but they had to learn Old Slavonic to take an active part in church services as well as to master the skill of reading and writing their own tongue. In 1867, when the United States purchased Alaska, the Aleuts were unable to break sharply with their immediate past and substitute English for any one of their three languages.

To communicants of the Russian Orthodox Church a knowledge of Slavonic remained vital, as did Russian, the language in which one conversed with the clergy. The Aleuts came to regard English education as a device to wean them from their religious faith. The introduction of compulsory English schooling caused a minor renascence of Russian culture as the Aleut parents sought to counteract the influence of the schoolroom. The harsh life of the Russian colonial rule began to appear more happy and beautiful in retrospect.

Regulations forbidding instruction in any language other than English increased its unpopularity. The superficial alphabetical resemblance of Russian and Aleut linked the two tongues so closely that every restriction against teaching Russian was interpreted as an attempt to eradicate the Aleut tongue. From the wording of many regulations, it appears the American administrators often had not the slightest idea that the Aleuts were clandestinely reading and writing their own tongue or even had a written language of their own. To too many officials, anything in Cyrillic letters was Russian and something to be stamped out. Bitterness bred by abuses and the exploitations the Aleuts suffered from predatory American traders and adventurers kept alive the Aleut resentment against the language spoken by Americans.

Gradually, despite the failure to emancipate the Aleuts from a sterile past by relating the Aleut and English languages more closely, the passage of years has assuaged the bitter misunderstandings and caused an orientation away from Russian toward English as their second language, but Aleut continues to be the language that molds their thought and expression.

The author is primarily concerned with describing ______.

A．the Aleuts' loyalty to their language and American failure to understand it

B．Russian and United States' treatment of Alaskan inhabitants both before and after 1867

C．how the Czarist Russian occupation of Alaska created a written language for the Aleuts

D．United States government attempts to persuade the Aleuts to use English as a second language

The Aleuts, residing on several islands of the Aleutian Chain, the Pribilof Islands, and the Alaskan peninsula have possessed a written language since 1825, when the Russian missionary Ivan Venation selected appropriate characters of the Cyrillic alphabet to represent Aleut speech sounds, recorded the main body of Aleut vocabulary and formulated grammatical rules. The Czarist Russian conquest of the proud, independent sea hunters was so devastatingly thorough that tribal traditions, even tribal memories, were almost obliterated. The slaughter of the majority of an adult generation was sufficient to destroy the continuity of tribal knowledge, which was dependent upon oral transmission. As a consequence, the Aleuts developed a fanatical devotion to their language as their only cultural heritage.

The Russian occupation placed a heavy linguistic burden on the Aleuts. Not only were they compelled to learn Russian to converse with their overseers and governors, but they had to learn Old Slavonic to take an active part in church services as well as to master the skill of reading and writing their own tongue. In 1867, when the United States purchased Alaska, the Aleuts were unable to break sharply with their immediate past and substitute English for any one of their three languages.

To communicants of the Russian Orthodox Church a knowledge of Slavonic remained vital as did Russian, the language in which one conversed with the clergy. The Aleuts came to regard English education as a device to wean them from their religious faith. The introduction of compulsory English schooling caused a minor renascence of Russian culture as the Aleut patents sought to counteract the influence of the schoolroom. The harsh life of the Russian colonial rule began to appear more happy and beautiful in retrospect.

Regulations forbidding instruction in any language other than English increased its unpopularity. The superficial alphabetical resemblance of Russian and Aleut linked the two tongues so closely that every restriction against teaching Russian was interpreted as an attempt to eradicate the Aleut tongue. From the wording of ninny regulations, it appears that American administrators often had not the slightest idea that the Aleuts were clandestinely reading and writing their own tongue or even had a written language of their own. To too many officials, anything in Cyrillic letters was Russian and something to be stamped out. Bitterness bred by abuses and the exploitations the Aleuts suffered from predatory American traders and adventurers kept alive the Aleut resentment against the language spoken by Americans.

Gradually despite the failure to emancipate the Aleuts from a sterile past by relating the Aleut and English languages more closely, the passage of years has assuaged the bitter misunderstandings and caused an orientation, away from Russian toward English as their second language, but Aleut continues to be the language that molds their thought and expression.

The author is primarily concerned with describing ______.

A．United States government attempts to persuade the Aleuts to use English as a second language

B．Russian and United States treatment of Alaskan inhabitants both before and after 1867

C．how the Czarist Russian occupation of Alaska created a written language for the Aleuts

D．the Aleuts' loyalty to their language and American failure to understand it

The digital age may only just have dawned, but last night a group of eminent institutions issued a warning that large swaths of digital heritage risk being lost forever without urgent action to preserve them.

While the average website or e-mail would hardly qualify to be described as vital cultural artifacts, electronic information and communications are now so vital to every aspect of daily life that future generations could find an enormous "black hole in people's collective memory" if important digital material is allowed to disappear, according to the Digital Preservation Coalition:

At risk. is everything from government records, which would previously have been published on paper but which now exist only in electronic form, to scientific data, computer games and personal websites, representatives of the coalition--made up of 17 British libraries, museums, archiving organisations and academic bodies--hold a meeting at the House of Commons.

Take computer games as examples, Britain is a world leader in developing computer games, with titles such as Tomb Raider and Grand Theft Auto bringing in bigger revenues than the domestic film and music industries combined. But some of the original 1980s games, often developed by teenagers using home computers, have all but disappeared.

The warning comes amid a growing realization internationally that society's increasing reliance on information and communications technology raises serious problem with guaranteeing long term access to material which is available only in formats that are likely to become technologically obsolete.

The task of archiving even a small slice of important digital material is massive. While books hundreds of years old can still be read, electronic material from just a few years ago may already have been lost because it was only available briefly online or was preserved in an obsolete form.

The ephemeral, do-it-yourself nature of the Internet also poses a huge challenge. Internet users may feel deluged by the vast amounts of information available online, with thousands of new pages appearing every day, the vast majority of it of little general interest.

But with the average web page enjoying an online lifespan of barely four weeks, institutions like the British Library are now working on ways to select material worthy of preservation from the millions of web pages before it disappears, and store it in a way which allows access for future generations.

"A lot of people think the web is just porn and music downloads," Helen Shenton, head of collections care at the British Library told the Guardian.

"Much of it certainly is, but there is also a lot of important stuff, ephemeral publications, for example, which would have been published on paper before but now only exist as a web page."

As the legal repository for every book published by a UK imprint, the British Library receives about 150,000 paper publications a year to archive. But it believes that thousands of digital publications are being lost.

Since January 200i, when it launched a voluntary repository for electronic material, it has received only about 3,000 items, a fraction of the amount which should be preserved.

Lloyd Grossman, broadcaster and chairman of the Campaign for Museums, contrasted the experience of e-mail with that of the telegram. While the first telegram was preserved and has now been digitalized, the first e-mail, sent 31 years ago, has been lost. Grossman said: "E-mail took many years to become today's pervasive form. of communication and we are now beginning to realise how digital materials are more ephemeral than traditional materials.

"Sometimes the significance of key developments in new technologies may take several years to be recognized. The implications for our intellectual and cultural record and their preservation are profound."

SXB##28#

A．the out-of-date preservation method

B．the problem concerning intellectual property rights

C．the nature of short-time online existence 9f the digital information

D．the difficulty in storing vast amount of information available online

听力原文： A war-wrecked bridge whose reconstruction raised hopes that Bosnia could rebuild a multiethnic society and biblical remains in Israel were among 17 cultural wonders added to the U.N. list of protected World Heritage Sites, officials said Saturday.

The additions were made at the 29th session of the U. N. Environ mental, Scientific and Cultural Organization's World Heritage Committee taking place Ibis week in Durban.

The ancient stone bridge known as Stari Most—or Old Bridge—survived centuries of conflict, including two world wars, before shells shattered it in 1993.

"The reconstructed site is a symbol of reconciliation, international cooperation and of the coexistence of diverse cultural, ethnic and religlous communities," the 2l-member heritage committee said in a state ment Saturday.

UNESCO's World Heritage Committee is responsible for implementing the 1972 U.N. Convention on the protection of cultural and natural sites around the world.

Forty-two new sites were proposed for inclusion on the World Heritage List at this week's meeting.

Seven natural wonders were added Thursday. Friday's additions bring the total numder of protected sites to 812. They include 628 cultural, 160 natural and 24 mixed sites in 137 countries.

The reconstruction of the war-wrecked, bridge was considered to be symbol of all of the following EXCEPT

A．coexistence

B．environmental protection

C．international cooperation

D．reconciliation