9-1)
The first symptoms of Samuel Bemergy's mysterious sickness were diarrhea and lip ulcers. Next came a clouding of his vision and uncontrollable tremors in his arms and legs."I could barely hold on to anything, and I could hardly walk," Bemergy recalls. "I thought I had had it. Bernergy, who owns a grocery store in the Amazon goldmining town of ltaituba, sought help from local doctors, but they were mystified. Finally, he flew to Sao Paulo to consult two specialists. Their diagnosis: acute mercury poisoning, apparently caused by eating contaminated fish from the Tapjos River.
9-2)
That was seven years ago, at the height of a frenzied gold rush in the Amazon when no one, least of all the Brazilian government, paid attention to possible environmental consequences. Only lately has it become clear that the prospectors, who use mercury to separate out the gold particles dredged from riverbeds, have not only disfigured the rain forest and muddied the rivers, but poisoned the wasters as well.
9-3)
While scientists are divided about the ultimate impact_research so far has been fragmentary, and not enough is known about the process by which mercury gets into the food chain _ there is agreement that hundreds of thousand of people living in a region the size of Europe may be at risk. "What we are facing is a silent environmental tragedy," says Dr. Geraldo Guimaraes, a biolchemist at the Center for Tropical is fish. These people are slowly being poisoned. We have to sound the alert. At stake is the future of generations."
9-4)
Recent studies indicate that hundreds of kilometers of major rivers in the Amazon basin are polluted by mercury. Wherever the nomadic garimpeiros, or prospectors, have dredged for gold, they have left behind potentially deadly deposits of quicksilver, which gradually takes an organic form called methyl mercury and works its way up the food chain ultimately, in humans. Experts estimate that 2,000 tons of mercury has been dumped into Amazon waters over the past 1의2분의1 decades, and that every years 200 tons more is either thrown into the rivers or burned off in the process of separating the gold, creating a toxic vapor that percolates back into watershed vi tropocal rain.
9-5)
In its most advanced form, mercury poisoning turns into Minamata disease, an affliction that causes brain damage, birth defects and death. The illness got its name from a pollution scandal that began in the 1950s, when the dumping of industrial mercury compounds in Japan's Minamata Bay caused widespread illness among local villagers. Thousands suffered irreversible neurological damage; 1,382 have died. Most frightening was the effect on pregnant women, dozens of whom gave birth to grossly deformed babies.
10-1)
In the Amazon, hundreds of case of poisoning among the garimpeiros have been attributed to inhalation of mercury fumes in the mining camps. So far, there have been no confirmed cases of full_fledged Minamata disease, which develops gradually, but in ltaituba, the hub of the central Amazon gold rush, doctors have noted an abnormally high incidence of miscarriages. Says Dr. Bernardo Cardoso of the Center for Tropical Medicine: "Without some energetic action by the government and research groups, we will have a Minamata in the Amazon within 10 to 15 years."
10-2)
Some scientists question that assessment. They point out that while Minamata Bay is small, calm and contained, the Amazon is huge and turbulent and suggest that its torrential rains and rushing waters will dissipate the mercury and minimize the chances for a repetition of the tragedy in Japan. "There is no immediate dead-body problem." says Dr. Bruce Research Institute in Manaus. "We may not get a concentrated mercury problem like that in Minamata, but we will have a longterm, chronic mercury problem."
10-3)
Shouldering into the clouds, skyscrapers are the modern world's cathedrals of aspiration: the greater the dreams of commercial glory, the higher the towers reach toward heaven. Since the beginning of the 20th century, North America has been the cradle for the tall-taller-tallest buildings, from the Woolworth building to the Empire State Building, both in New York City, to the Sears Tower in Chicago. As the 20th century fades, North America is ceding skyscraper supremacy to Asia.
10-4)
In Malaysia construction is under way on twin towers that will be the tallest edifices on earth. Ground is being broken this year in China for a colossus that will reach an even greater height, if not by much. Japan and Taiwan are racing to start their own giants.
If architecture is frozen music, as Goethe wrote, then the tune being sounded across Asia is a triumphant anthem for the coming millennium. Rising skylines in Guangzhou, Shanghai and Wuhan reflect the world's plunge into investing in China-and the commitment of internationally renowned architects. Rivalry for vertical ascendancy has sent planners and dreamers to computers and drawing boards to design buildings that reflect a distinctly Asian aesthetic.
11-1)
"Skyscrapers are symbolic buildings," says Witold Rybczynski, a noted architecture critic who teaches at the University of Pennsylvania. "They aren't big for functional reasons." Transcendent wonders rising above the cityscape, the great buildings exert irresistible allure. When Yocohama's Landmark Tower opened last July, it became not only the tallest building in Japan but also the newest tourist attraction: 1.7million people have taken the ride on the 750 m/min. elevators-the world's fastest- to the 69th -floor observatory. Takanori Adachi, 35, who runs a computer-software company in Yocohama, went to the top last month and wisheds he had an office there: "I'm sure a view would bring tranquility to your mind and raise your productivity."
11-2)
For 20years, the Sears Tower has stood in Miesian superiority alongside Lake Michigan, unchallenged as the tallest building in the world. Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad aims to change that: he is the mastermind behind the Kuala Lumpur cCity Center, whose two gleaming, symmetrical skyscrapers will surpass the U.S landma가 by seven meters. Mahathir was a member of the jury that chose the architect for the Petronas Towers, which will be occupied principally by the state-owned oil company of that name. The winner was Argentine-born Cesar Pelli, whose glass-sheathed World Financial Center has been a glistening on the tip of lower Manhattan since 1984.
11-3)
Pelli's Kuala Lumpur towers, with their lofty spired and horizontal ribbons of glass and stainless steel, will be a striking and romantic update of 1930s Art Deco skyscrapers. "I tried to capture some of the believes his design embodies the image of a dynamic, rapidly growing country. Halfway up their 88stories, a skybridge will connect the buildings, symbolizing a gateway. Islamic geometric forms of superimposed squares and circles symbolizing unity harmony, stability and rationality are incorporated into the floor plan, and the interior will be decorated with local stone, wood and fabric so that "the buildings will be preceived at all levels as being rooted in Malaysia."
11-4)
By 1997 the Petromas Towers may well be eclipsed. The city of Chongqing, in southwestrern Shina, is planning to construct a 114-story building. This year. just west of the juncture of the Yangtze and Jialing rivers, a site is to be cleared for a skyscraper designed by the New York City firm of Haines Lundberg Waehler. Says Robert Djerejian, the managing partner in charge of the project: "This is a rededication of the Chinese to island development. It's also a question of prestige." H.L.W.'s team of architects honor the ancient geomancy principles of feng shui in their Chonfqing plans. For example, they based their overall concept on the number 8, for good lick; above an eight-story public lobby, offices are located on the eighth through the 80th floors and are punctuated by eight-story atriums.
11-5)
Britain's Sir Norman Foster, who designed the high-teach Hong Kong and Shanfhai bank, has an audacious project in the planning stages that could move Asia into an authoritative lead in the skyscraper race. He and his associates have completed a second-stage development study for Millennium Tower, a conical behemoth in tokyo that would loom twice as high as the Sears Tower. As yet. Forester's scheme is only a tantalizing theoretical proposal, but, along with the skyscrapers already completed or abuilding, it speaks to Asia's soaring dreams as the century comes to a close.
12-1)
A major drive to find a cure for AIDS was announced last week by Donna Shalala, President Clinton's Secretaty of Health and Human Services. Researchers from the private sector, gay activists and government officials were teamed up tp accelerate the search for an effective treatment. Yet even highly optimistic observers do not expect a cure to be found before the end of this century. Still, as the Shalala announcement's exclusive focus on cure highlights, it is not acceprable to explore publicly the measures that could curb the spread of the disease by slowing the transmission of HIV , the virus that causes it. Indeed, before one can say What about prevention? the politically correct choir chimes in: You cannot call it a plague! You are feeding the fires of homophobia! Gay basher!
12-2)
Case in point: a panel of seven experts fielded questions from 4,000 personnel managers at a conference in Las Vegas. "Suppose you work for medical records. You find out that Joe Doe, who is driving the company's trucks, is back on the bottle. Will you violate confidentiality and inform his supervisor?" The panel stated unanimously, "I'll find a way." Next question: "Joe Smith is HIV positive; he is intimate with the top designer of the company but did not tell; will you?" "No way." the panel agreed in unison.
12-3)
We in America need to break the silence. It is not antigay but fully compassionate to argue that a massive prevention drive is a viable way to save numerous lives in the very next years. We must lay a moral claim on those who are likely to ve afflicted with HIV (gays, drug addicts who exchange needles and anyone who receiver a blood transfusion before 1985) and urge them as a social obligation to come forward to be tested. If the test is positive, they should inform their previous sexual contacts and warn all potential new ones. The principle is elementary, albeit openly put: the more responsibly HIV sufferers act, the fewer dead they will leave in their trail.
12-4)
HIV testing and contact tracing amount to "a cruel hoax" claims a gay representative from the West Coast. "There are not enough beds to take care of known AIDS patients. Why identify more?" Actually, testing is cruel only in a world where captain of sinking ships do not warn passengers because the captains cannot get off. We must marshal the moral courage to tell those infected with HIW: It is truly tragic that currently we have no way to save your life, but surely you recognize your duty to try to help save the of others.
13-1)
"Warning others is unnecessary because everybody should act safety all the time anyhow." argues Rob Teir, a gay activist in Washington. But human nature is such, strong data show, that most people cannot bring themselves to act safety all the time. A fair warning that they are about to enter a highly dangerous situation may spur people to take special precautions. The moral duty of those already afflicted, though , must be clearly articulated: being intimate without prior disclosure is loke serving arsenic in a cake. And not informing previous contacts (or not helping public authorities trace them without disclosing one's name) leaves the victims, unwittingly, to transmit the fatal disease to uncounted others.
13-2)
Testing and contact tracing may lead to a person's being deprived of job, health insurance, housing and privacy, many civil libertarians fear. These are vaild and grave concerns. But we can find ways to protect civil right without sacrificing public health. A major AIDS-prevention campaign ought to be accompanied by intensive public education about the ways the illness is not transmitted, by additional safeguards on data banks and by harsh to say, but the fact that an individual may suffer as aresult of doing what is right does not make doing so less of an imperative. Note also that while society suffers a tremendous loss of talent and youth and is stuck with a gargantuan bill, the first victims of nondisclosure are the loved ones of those already afflicted with HIV , even - in the case of infected women- their children.
13-3)
"Not cost effective." intone the bean counters. Let's count. Take, for example, a suggestion by the highly regarded U.S centers for Disease Control and Prevention that hospitals be required to ask patients whose blood is already being tested whether they would consent to having it tested for HIV as well. The test costs $60 or less and routinely identifies many who were to unware they had disease to only one less person on average, the suggested tests would pay for themselves much more readily than a coronary bypass., PSA tests and half the pills Americans pop , And society could continue to enjoy the lifelong earnings and social contributions of those whose lives would be saved.
13-4)
There are other excuses and rationaloizations. But it is time for some plain talk: if AIDS were would have no trouble (and indeed we have had none) introducing the neccessary preventive measures. Moreover, we should make it clear that doing all you can to prevent the spread of AIDS or any other fatal disease is part and parcel of an unambiguous commandment: Thou shalt not kill.
14-1)
Got a new crush on Sally but Linda still inked deeply into your forearm? No problem if you live in Britain, where the overburdened National Health Service will obligingly pay for tattoo removal - cost $54- as often as your shifting affections require. Is the price of that package holiday to Mallorca likely to cause cash-flow problem? In Germany most unionized and salaried workers get extra "vacation money" usually half their regular monthly pay, to help defray the expenses involved in taking time off. Such is the solicitous treatment Europeans have come to expect. But mot for much longer.
14-2)
Everywhere on the Continent, the vaunted public and private welfare system is under assault. Governments are seeking to cut vack womb-to-tomb benefits and profection for workers and the jobless, for monthers and children, for pensioners, the sock and the disabled. Companies pressed by global competition are likewise trimming. The steadily expanding safety net that had been one of Europ's proudest achievements is starting to shrink.
14-3)
As European Community leaders meet in Brussels this week to vegin the march toward a single currency, citizens' real concerns are elsewhere: with the 100,000 German construction workers scheduled to march in Bonn to protest loss of benefits, or the Air France employees who tied up Europe;s skies last week in a strike over job security. In Spain the government would like to alter Franco-era ;abor regulations that make it virtually impossible to fire a worker. Sweden, the Continent's most conprehensive welfare state, has reduced unemployment benefits and sick pay and boosted patients' medical charges. Belguim, one of the few countries that still index wages to inflation, may soon abandon the practice, and for the first time in 49 years is trying to change its social-security program.
18-1)
Will it be able to do so, and where will it find the money? This side of the election, A.NC. leaders, perhaps with more optimism than is warranted, play down the notion of rapidly rising expectations and thus the need for confiscatory policies to redistribute resources from rich to poor. The black population, they say, is not clamoring for beach houses, boarding schools and BMWs. What it wants is the basics: simple housing for the 7 million who live in squatter-camp squalor; electricity for the 23 million who have none despite South Africa's boast that it produces more than 50% of the entire continent's electrical power; clean water; and rudimentary health care. The provision of these facilities, it is hoped, will help kick-start the economy. If they have toilets, they will buy toiletries. A virtuous cycle of demand and investment beckons.
*18-1
Will it be able to do so, and where will it find the money? this side of the elections, A.N.C. leaders, perhaps with more optimism than is warranted, play down
18-2
But it is a measure of apartheid's catastrophic social and economic legacy that satisfying even the most basic aspirations of the under-privileged majority will place an immense burden on an already weak economy. As an International Monetary Fund study has pointed out, poverty in south Africa is so severe and pervasive that corrective measures to help the have-nots are beyond the means of the existing budget, which last year claimed almost 31% of gross domestic product. Raising extra revenues from the haves, however, risks producing what the IMF euphemistically terms "disincentive effects." Translation: if whites are white-owned businesses are taxed much more, they will no longer be motivated to work as hard, with the result that tax revenues might actually shrink.
18-3
At this transitional time, with white South Africans clinging to the old dispensation and fearful of falling standards, there is much talk of killing the golden goose of wealth generation. No matter that many of thess geese have transformed themselves into chickens and flown the coop, the sad truth is the goose has been looking decidely tarnished of late, and the eggs have been getting smaller. A common perception both inside and outside the country cast the apartheid era as a time when a resilient South Africa stood fast against the destructive winds of socialism that swept much of Africa and kept at least one corner or the continent safe for capitalism and open for business. Now that apartheid has been dismantled and international sanctions have been lifted, so the argument goes, the country stands ready to take its rightful place in the global economy. Investors will come back, and all will be well.
18-4)
Dream on. Just as Bonn discovered after unification that the German Democratic Republic, the erstwhile powerhouses of the East bloc, was a Potemkin edifice, so the inheritors of the apartheid's mess are finding out that South Africa is in worse shape than they imagined. Some of this may be the result of slower global economic growth during the 1980s, a mere 2.4% per annum compared with an average of 5.5% in the roaring'60s and '70s. A decade of depressed prices for gold and other metals has not helped. Foreign disinvestment and the exclusion of South Africa from world capital markets after 1985 have further weakened the economy. But most of the blame belongs in South Africa. The National Party, ironically now selling itself to the electronate on the promise of sound economic stewardship, spent much of the past 30 years delivering the opposite.
18-5
Leaving aside the aberration of apartheid, which deprived 90% of the labor force of any incentive of opportunity to better itself, the economic policies pursued by Pretoria have been largely inimical to rational investment and global competitiveness. In the 1960s' long before international sanctions were imposed and the siege mentality took hold, Pretoria, in common with most Third World regimes, was pushing self-sufficiency and erecting tariff walls to protect manufacturers from global competition. Capital that should have been used to broaden the export base and secure efficiency gains from international trade was channeled instead into uneconomic import substitution.
19-1
The predictable result was overdependence on raw materials on the export front and growing domestic inefficiency, trends exacerbated by sanctions in the '80s. These precipitated the imposition of an import surcharge and tight foreign-exchange controls that bottled up liquidity. Unable to range overseas, South Africa's homegrown behemoths-almost 90% of the companies listed on the Johannesburg stock Exchange are controlled by six major groups- devoured the local competition and further cartelized the economy. Small wonder that many prices have tended to outstrip inflation.
19-2
The damage went deeper still. "Declining economic performance compounded by a constellation of heavy-handed government policies and regulations resulted in a dramatic, decade-long decline in capital investment" says Jonathan Leape of the London School of Economics. Last year such investment fell to a mere 16%of GDP-the lowest level for more than 30 years and barely enough to replace the country's capital stock, let alone prepare the ground for a post-apartheid investment-led recovery. To compound the problem, government outlays became an ever increasing component of total expenditure, thanks in part to a bloated bureaucracy that has grown an estimated 70% since 1980. The result has been a mounting tax burden (between the early 1960s and 1990, total tax receipts increased form 15% to 24%of GDP) larger budget deficits and growing pressure on domestic savings.
19-3
Wants and Needs Memo to Nelson Mandela: the national anthem for the new South Africa should be neither Die Stem (the Voice), beloved of Afrikanerdom, nor the A.N.C's black nationalist hymn Nkosi Sikelele Afrika (God Bless Africa). Instead South Africans of all colors should be singing a rock classic that suggests a highly pragmatic
approach th the problems confronting the economy: you can't always get what you want, as the Rolling stones put it, but you just might find you get what you need. What many South Africans want, particularly those in the privileged minority, is a deus ex machina to descend onto their troubled stage and set all to rights without inflicting pain or blame. Clearly that is not going to happen. But can the country now get what it needs at an affordable price?
19-4
The new South Africa urgently requires jobs, housing, welfare and education. The challenge of restoring social justice is daunting, and making improvements in all sectors simultaneously will strain the economy to the limit. Equalizing
19-4 재건을 향한 험난한 길
The new South Africa urgently requires jobs, housing, welfare and education. The challenge of restoring social justice is daunting, and making improvements in all sectors simultaneously will strain the economy to the limit. Equalizing social spending at white levels is a pipe dream that would consume an estimated on-quarter of GDP. Even creating enough jobs appears to be an impossible task. The unemployment rate is currently estimated at 66% for blacks, and although that figure ignores an estimated 2.5 million full- or part-time workers scraping out a living in the so-called informal sector -- street vendors, unlicensed taxicab operators and the like -- the problem is almost certain to get worse before it gets better.
20-1 필요한 성장률
With the black population growing at a rate of more than 2.5% per annum, the IMF argues that the minimum growth rate needed to absorb new work-force entrants and make a dent in the existing joblessness total is about 3.5%, a figure South Africa will not achieve until it can dramatically improve its investment performance. That in turn presupposes that the government does not crowd out the private sector through large-scale borrowing.
20-2 비참하게 살아가는 대부분의 흑인들
And then there are the 18 million blacks living in households that earn less than $220 a month and the 9 million or so characterized as "completely destitute" by the Development Bank of Southern Africa. Even families lucky enough to have a roof over their heads often lack basic amenities. Ten million people have no drinking water at home, and 15 million lack sanitation. The country needs 50,000 new classrooms for the 2 million or so black children who are without school. It also needs 1,000 or so primary health clinics to improve the lot of the rural black population, whose life expectancy and infant mortality rates are little better than those in the more destitute countries of the continent.
20-3 문제의 열쇠는 무엇인가
The key question is whether the next government can address these problems -- in effect deliver a "liberation dividend" -- without breaking the bank. Even if, as the A.N.C. insists, the expectations of the black population, at least in the short term, are fairly modest and can be contained, paying for so-called upliftment policies will strain a budget that already claims too much of the nation's wealth. The IMF point out that South Africa's overall level of social spending is relatively high by international standards, both as a percentage of GDP and as a proportion of total budget outlays. Raising the level will require either deficit financing -- with dire implications for the economy in the long run -- or higher taxes, which would introduce strong disincentives save, thereby lowering economic-growth potential.
20-4 재건개발계획
The good news for the economy is that the A.N.C.'s proposed reconstruction and development program (RDP) appears to accept the need to maintain fiscal discipline by restricting government borrowing to its current level (roughly 6% of GDP) and keeping the overall budget steady. Within those constraints, however, the A.N.C. intend to redirect and restructure spending so as to divert more resources to the disadvantaged sectors of society.
20-5 인종격리정책의 이익 배당
It is counting -- probably more than it should -- on help from a predicted "apartheid" -- the money freed by abolishing the wasteful duplication of public services for separate black, white and colored communities. But with a decision already made to establish nine new provinces, each with its own bureaucracy, the betting is that there will in practice be a net increase in spending. Nor is it likely that the end of the era of confrontation between South Africa and its neighbors of a allow for a reduction in defense outlays and the payment of a "peace dividend." With internal violence on the increase, any savings on the defense front, including the secret amounts once spent on destabilizing rival countries is the region, will have to be diverted to policing.
19-4 재건을 향한 험난한 길
The new South Africa urgently requires jobs, housing, welfare and education. The challenge of restoring social justice is daunting, and making improvements in all sectors simultaneously will strain the economy to the limit. Equalizing social spending at white levels is a pipe dream that would consume an estimated on-quarter of GDP. Even creating enough jobs appears to be an impossible task. The unemployment rate is currently estimated at 66% for blacks, and although that figure ignores an estimated 2.5 million full- or part-time workers scraping out a living in the so-called informal sector -- street vendors, unlicensed taxicab operators and the like -- the problem is almost certain to get worse before it gets better.
20-1 필요한 성장률
With the black population growing at a rate of more than 2.5% per annum, the IMF argues that the minimum growth rate needed to absorb new work-force entrants and make a dent in the existing joblessness total is about 3.5%, a figure South Africa will not achieve until it can dramatically improve its investment performance. That in turn presupposes that the government does not crowd out the private sector through large-scale borrowing.
20-2 비참하게 살아가는 대부분의 흑인들
And then there are the 18 million blacks living in households that earn less than $220 a month and the 9 million or so characterized as "completely destitute" by the Development Bank of Southern Africa. Even families lucky enough to have a roof over their heads often lack basic amenities. Ten million people have no drinking water at home, and 15 million lack sanitation. The country needs 50,000 new classrooms for the 2 million or so black children who are without school. It also needs 1,000 or so primary health clinics to improve the lot of the rural black population, whose life expectancy and infant mortality rates are little better than those in the more destitute countries of the continent.
20-3 문제의 열쇠는 무엇인가
The key question is whether the next government can address these problems -- in effect deliver a "liberation dividend" -- without breaking the bank. Even if, as the A.N.C. insists, the expectations of the black population, at least in the short term, are fairly modest and can be contained, paying for so-called upliftment policies will strain a budget that already claims too much of the nation's wealth. The IMF point out that South Africa's overall level of social spending is relatively high by international standards, both as a percentage of GDP and as a proportion of total budget outlays. Raising the level will require either deficit financing -- with dire implications for the economy in the long run -- or higher taxes, which would introduce strong disincentives save, thereby lowering economic-growth potential.
20-4 재건개발계획
The good news for the economy is that the A.N.C.'s proposed reconstruction and development program (RDP) appears to accept the need to maintain fiscal discipline by restricting government borrowing to its current level (roughly 6% of GDP) and keeping the overall budget steady. Within those constraints, however, the A.N.C. intend to redirect and restructure spending so as to divert more resources to the disadvantaged sectors of society.
20-5 인종격리정책의 이익 배당
It is counting -- probably more than it should -- on help from a predicted "apartheid" -- the money freed by abolishing the wasteful duplication of public services for separate black, white and colored communities. But with a decision already made to establish nine new provinces, each with its own bureaucracy, the betting is that there will in practice be a net increase in spending. Nor is it likely that the end of the era of confrontation between South Africa and its neighbors of a allow for a reduction in defense outlays and the payment of a "peace dividend." With internal violence on the increase, any savings on the defense front, including the secret amounts once spent on destabilizing rival countries is the region, will have to be diverted to policing.