英语专业八级满分听力 Chapter Four

[20:21.53]UNIT 5
[20:45.63]In this section, you will hear everything ONCE ONLY.
[20:49.66]Listen carefully and then answer the questions that follow.
[20:53.49]Questions 1 to 2 are based on the following news.
[20:57.53]At the end of the news item,
[21:00.71]you will be given 10 seconds to answer each of the two questions.
[21:05.52]Now listen to the news.
[21:07.59]The United States has released for the first time
[21:11.28]the names and nationalities of hundreds of prisoners
[21:14.14]it’s holding at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba.
[21:16.53]The information was divulged after the authorities lost a court case
[21:22.01]under the US Freedom of Information Act.
[21:23.87]The names are contained in transcripts of
[21:26.47]more than 300 military tribunals held at the base.
[21:29.65]It’s thought that about 500 people are still detained at Guantanamo,
[21:33.91]Washington has classified them as enemy combatants.
[21:36.53]Most of them were captured in Afghanistan and Pakistan
[21:40.00]after American-led forces overthrew the Taliban,
[21:43.24]and many had been held for up to 4 years without trial.
[21:46.94]Human Rights groups say the release of this new information
[21:50.79]is a significant blow to US government’s secrecy.

[22:13.62]Question 3 is based on the following news.
[22:15.87]At the end of the news item, you will be given 10 seconds to answer the question.
[22:21.88]Now listen to the news.
[22:23.86]A dead cat found on the German island of Ruegen in the Baltic Sea
[22:29.96]has been confirmed as having the H5N1 strain of the bird flu virus.
[22:35.98]More than a hundred infected birds have been found dead on the island,
[22:41.02]but it’s the first apparently natural occurrence of the virus in a mammal in Europe.
[22:46.37]The Chief Veterinary Officer of the UN said that
[22:50.37]the infection of cats was a very rare event.
[22:53.41]There had been previously documented cases of H5N1 infection killing tigers
[23:00.20]fed on chicken carcasses at a zoo in Thailand.
　　
[23:12.75]Questions 4 and 5 are based on the following news.
[23:17.66]At the end of the news item,
[23:20.74]you will be given 10 seconds to answer each of the two questions.
[23:25.22]Now listen to the news.
[23:27.64]For years, companies have used stock options as a form of pay.
[23:32.77]At first, only top officers in companies got them.
[23:36.16]The value of a stock option rises or falls with the price of a company stock.
[23:40.86]So this gave the people at the top a strong reason to do their jobs well.
[23:44.79]During the nineteen nineties,
[23:46.79]technology companies started to offer stock options to skilled workers.
[23:50.77]Many of these businesses were newly formed Internet companies.
[23:54.31]Soon stock options became a common form of pay in American businesses.
[23:59.00]Since options are linked to stock market prices, estimating their value can be difficult.
[24:04.48]Most companies did not report them as an expense,
[24:07.63]a cost of doing business.As a result,
[24:10.36]shareholders were not getting a true picture of a company's financial condition.
[24:13.77]New rules from the Financial Accounting Standards Board are meant to change that.
[24:19.13]The board is a private organization
[24:20.94]that establishes how financial reports should be prepared.
[24:24.54]Its work is officially recognized by the United States Securities and Exchange Commission.