SECTION C NEWS BROADCAST
News Item 1 (for questions 6 and 7)
A man stole a small aircraft at gunpoint Sunday and flew it over downtown Frankfurt, circling skyscrapets and threatening tp crash into the European Central Bank. He landed safely after about two hours and was arrested.
The man told a television station he wanted to call attention to Judith Resnik, a U. S. astronaut killed in the 1986 post-launch explosion of the space shuttle Challenger. ( Q6) Military jets chased the stolen , two-seat motorized glider as the man began circling slowly above Frankfurt's banking dis¬trict. Thousands of people were evacuated from the main railway station, two opera houses and sever¬al skyscrapers. Police identified the man as a 31-year-old German student from Darmstadt, a city about 25 miles south of Frankfurt. In radio contact with air traffic controllers , the man threatened to crash into the. European Central Bank headquarters unless he was allowed the TV interview as well as a call to Baltimore. ( Q7 ) He later said he wanted to commit suicide by plunging the plane into the Maine River. It was unclear if the man was forced to land or talked down. Air traffic controllers and a police psychologist had been in contact with him.
News Item 2 (for question 8)
Shanghai plans to build a vast underground network of malls , restaurants and parking lots to make up for a lack of space above ground according to a recent government report. ( Q8 )
The development will cover 600,000 square meters , the equivalent of 120 soccer fields, spread across four underground floors, the city government reported on its website. The city is accepting bids from builders. Shanghai has about 20 million people , plus factories , office towers and high-rise apartments , crowded into a small triangular territory near the mouth of the Yangtze River. The plans called for the project due to be finished by 2006 to expand existing facilities scattered along Shanghai subway system. The project will need advanced technology to supply fresh air and ensure safety.
But the biggest concern is the stability off` the soil under the city. Shanghai is sinking by 1. 5 centimeters a year. Lands subsidence has been aggravated by over-pumping of underground water and the construction of thousands of high-rise buildings. Shanghai's foundations are built on soft soil. So building multi-storey spaces underground would be like digging holes in the piece of bean curd, the government report says.
The difficulties are easy to see.
News Item 3 (for questions 9 and 10)
A credit card that only works when it hears its owner's voice has been developed by US scien¬tists. Researchers hope that the device, which comes with a built-in voice recognition chip and mi¬crophone will be a weapon in the battle against credit card fraud. ( Q9) Even if thieves know a card's password and personal identification number, they will still have to copy the owner's voice accurate¬ly. The trial card was created by scientists at B Card in California, US. The first version is 3 times as thick as a normal credit card, but researchers believe smaller chips will allow the card to slim down to a more conventional size. The card is apparently the first to put a voice recognition chip, 'a micro¬phone speaker and battery into a credit card. ( Q10) To use the card, the owner first presses a but¬ton and hears the prompt: say your password. If the password is correct and spoken by the right per¬son, the card emits an identification signal which is processed by a computer connected to the Inter¬net. Researchers hope to get the card to handle ten transactions per day for two years before its non- replaceable battery runs out.