20180423: 美国之音(voa)慢速英语 30分钟
美国之音(voa)慢速英语 30分钟
内容：
1_Native American Tribe Battles to Keep Land
2_Developing Nations to Study Ways to Block Sunshine, Slow Warming
3_ Japanese Engineer Builds Huge Robot of His Dreams
4_The Making of a Nation
<1>Native American Tribe Battles to Keep Land
FILE - Taunton Mayor Thomas Hoye, far left, Tribal Chairman Cedric Cromwell, third from left, and others wield shovels during an official casino groundbreaking, April 5, 2016, in Taunton, Mass. (AP Photo/Elise Amendola)
Money from casinos has lifted many Native American tribal economies and made some tribes rich.
Take the Shakopee Mdewakanton in the state of Minnesota, for example. Its gaming operations earn tribe members $1 million a year. But the road to casino riches can be rocky, as the Mashpee Wampanoag tribe of Massachusetts has discovered.
Land in trust
The Bureau of Indian Affairs is an agency of the United States government. In 2007, the bureau recognized that the Mashpee had operated as a community since colonial times. It found that 97 percent of Mashpee members are related to the historic tribe.
In 2015, the agency placed about 130 hectares of land “in trust” as the Mashpee’sreservation. (The term in trust means someone or something, in this case the federal government, guarantees and protects the property for the tribe). Sixty hectares of the land were in the Massachusetts town of Mashpee. The other 70 hectares were about 56 kilometers away from Mashpee, in the town of Taunton.
“This was one tenth of one third of our total tribal base,” said Cedric Cromwell, the tribe’s chairman. Cromwell told VOA his people were among the first to welcome English settlers to what became Plymouth, Massachusetts. He said the tribe controlled 36,000 square kilometers of land in the 17th century.
For years, the Mashpee had wanted to build a $1 billion casino in Taunton and agreed to pay the state 17 percent of all its earnings. The tribe made its offer on the condition that no other casinos be built in the area. The town approved their plan and the Mashpee borrowed money to start building the casino.
‘Not real Indians’
But the tribe had competition. In early 2013, a Chicago developer made an offer to Massachusetts state officials. The developer wanted to build a $1 billion casino resortjust 24 kilometers away from the Mashpee casino.
Weeks before the Mashpee were ready to start work on the casino, townspeople from Taunton brought legal action against the federal government. They said the Mashpee were not really “Indian” and they should not be given land. That case was partly financed by the Chicago developer.
Even after the state rejected the developer’s proposal, a U.S. District judge ruled against the Mashpee. The ruling required the Bureau of Indian Affairs to reconsider the issue.
Since then, the tribe has been in limbo. It has halted work on the casino project and is now hundreds of millions in debt, and no earnings.
Cedric Cromwell believes the case was driven by race. "The claimants said ‘we’re all for a casino in Taunton, but we don’t want an Indian casino,’" he said.
Adam Bond, the lawyer who represented the lead plaintiff, denied that race was a consideration. “Does Mr. Cromwell believe that Judge Young is racist because he read the law and gave a correct reading of that law?” Bond wrote in an email to VOA. He called the case, “a clean and fair fight.”
Shifting federal policy?
The Bureau of Indian Affairs reports to the U.S. Department of the Interior. The Interior Department said it would make a decision about the future of the Mashpee’s reservation by June 2017, yet no decision has been made.
It may be a long time in coming, suggests Bryan Newland, a Michigan lawyer who specializes in Indian gaming law. He is an Ojibwe citizen of the Bay Mills Indian Community.
Newland said the Trump administration approved a rule governing any requests to put land into trust outside existing reservations. It says those requests should be decided by the Bureau of Indian Affairs in Washington, D.C.
“This creates a bottleneck,” he said, adding that there are not enough people working at the bureau’s headquarters to study the requests and make decisions.
In addition, 15 months into the Trump administration, the Interior Department has yet to appoint an assistant secretary for Indian affairs.
Newland said the department is developing policies about Native Americans without appointing Indian affairs policy makers. He wonders who is actually responsible for decisions.
Cromwell says the Trump administration is working to “detribalize” and take Mashpee’s land out of trust.
A Bureau of Indian Affairs spokesperson told VOA she is unable to comment on the case while it is being considered in court.
Enter Congress
In March, Bill Keating of Massachusetts, a member of the U.S. Congress, proposed the Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe Reservation Reaffirmation Act. If approved, the measure would prevent any effort by the Interior Department to withdraw the tribe’s reservation.
“That would be unprecedented,” Keating said. “That the government would take away land in trust from the Wampanoag Tribe.”
In the U.S. Senate, both Ed Markey and Elizabeth Warren have proposed another bill.
Mashpee chairman Cromwell says he remains hopeful, but says if the Mashpee lose the case there will be big problems.
“Housing, education, health care, elder services, and all this is at risk if our lands get taken out of trust,” he said.
I'm Kelly Jean Kelly.
Cecily Hilleary reported this story for VOA. Susan Shand adapted the story for Learning English. George Grow was the editor.
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Words in This Story
casino - n. a building or room that has games of chance, such as roulette or blackjack
in trust – n. a relationship in which one person or group holds or protects property for someone else
resort – n. a place where people go for fun
plaintiff – n. a person who brings a case against another person or accuses another person of a crime in a court of law
bottleneck – n. something that slows down a process
detribalize – v. making someone lose his or her tribal identity
unprecedented - adj. not done or experienced before
elder – n. someone who is older; an older adult
<2> Developing Nations to Study Ways to Block Sunshine, Slow Warming
The sun is pictured behind trees during sunrise in Karak, outside Kuala Lumpur in nearby Pahang state early on April 6, 2018. (AFP PHOTO / Mohd RASFAN)
Scientists in developing nations are considering ways to limit the effects of climate change on Earth. These scientists plan to explore one possibility: controlling or restricting sunshine levels. They want to see if use of a man-made chemical to block sunlight would be less risky than a rise in surface temperatures.
This area of study is called “solar geo-engineering.” Researchers believe that using the right chemical or chemicals might produce the same effect in Earth’s atmosphere as a big volcanic explosion. They think it could cool surface temperatures by hiding the sun with a cloud of ash.
Currently, solar geo-engineering is being studied mainly in industrial nations and by universities such as Harvard and Oxford.
Twelve scientists from developing countries say poor people are most likely to be affected by climate change. And they think the poor should be more involved.
“Developing countries must lead on solar geo-engineering research,” they said.
Nature magazine published a commentary written by the scientists. They are from countries such as Bangladesh, Brazil, China, Ethiopia, India, Jamaica and Thailand.
Atiq Rahman is head of the Bangladesh Centre for Advanced Studies. He said the idea of solar geo-engineering is unusual, but slowly growing in popularity in the world of research. He spoke by telephone with the Reuters news agency.
A new $400,000 research project may prove helpful to solar geo-engineering studies. It has urged scientists to request financing for their studies.
The project is called the Solar Radiation Management Governance Initiative (SRMGI). It receives help from the Open Philanthropy Project, a group supported by Dustin Moskovitz, a co-founder of Facebook, and his wife, Cari Tuna, the scientists wrote.
The project could help scientists in developing nations study the effects of solar geo-engineering on floods and dry weather, said Andy Parker, a project director of the SRMGI.
Rahman said he and the other scientists were not saying that geo-engineering would work. Among the ideas: airplanes might release shiny sulfur particles high in the Earth’s atmosphere.
“It is too early to know what its effects would be: it could be very helpful or very harmful,” the 12 specialists wrote, adding that many are against the idea.
A group of United Nations climate experts also have questions about solar geo-engineering and its effectiveness in fighting climate change. Their comments appear in a leaked copy of a report about climate change set for release in October.
Rahman noted that most developed nations have not kept their promises to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Studies have linked those gases, such as carbon dioxide, to rising temperatures.
For that reason, Rahman said, the other possible ways to limit warming must be explored. The world is set for a warming of three degrees Celsius, he said, far above a goal of keeping a rise in temperatures “well below” two degrees Celsius. That target was set under the 2015 Paris Agreement.
I'm Susan Shand.
This story was adapted by Susan Shand from an original Reuters report. It was edited by George Grow.
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Words in This Story
solar – adj. involving or about the sun
geo-engineer – v. to change the earth with natural materials
philanthropy – n. the practice of giving money and time to help make life better for other people
emission – n. the act of producing or releasing something, such as a gas
<3> Japanese Engineer Builds Huge Robot of His Dreams
Sakakibara Kikai's engineer Go Sakakibara poses with the bipedal robot Mononofu during its demonstration at its factory in Shinto Village, Gunma Prefecture, Japan, April 12, 2018. (REUTERS/Kim Kyung-Hoon)
Japanese engineer Masaaki Nagumo had always dreamed of operating a robot from “Mobile Suit Gundam.”
That is the name of a popular Japanese animation television series. It was Nagumo’s favorite show when he was a child. The series features huge, human-controlled machines in battle.
Now Nagumo has made the show come to life. He has built a large robot inspired by the machines.
The robot is called LW-Mononofu. The farming machinery company Sakakibara Kikai developed it. The robot is 8.5 meters tall, has two legs and weighs more than seven metric tons. It has a seating area with monitors, and devices for the pilot to be able control the robot’s arms and legs.
The 44-year-old Nagumo spoke to the Reuters news agency about the popularity of the “Mobile Suit Gundam” series. It inspired movies, manga, video games and more. And so, he suggested the robot could be popular as well.
“I think this can be turned into a business opportunity,” Nagumo said.
Sakakibara Kikai develops robots and entertainment machines in addition to its main agriculture equipment business. For a rate of about $930 an hour, people can rent the machines for children’s birthday parties and other events, Nagumo said.
The company has created robots of all sizes. There is the almost 3.5-meter-tall Landwalker, the smaller Kid’s Walker Cyclops, and the MechBoxer boxing machine.
But the Mononofu stands above them all. It also does more complex movements. It can move its fingers and turn its upper body, and walk forward and backward. However, it moves very slowly – at a speed of less than one kilometer per hour.
Although it may be slow, the Mononofu is very powerful. The bazooka-like air gun on its right arm shoots balls of soft material at 140 kilometers per hour.
“As an anime-inspired robot that one can ride, I think this is the biggest in the world,” Nagumo said.
But Mononofu might be a bit too large. It is unable to leave the factory without being taken apart because it was built taller than the entrance.
I’m Pete Musto.
Megumi Lim reported this story for the Reuters news service. Pete Musto adapted it for VOA Learning English. Ashley Thomspon was the editor. We want to hear from you. How have artists and engineers worked together to use science and technology for entertainment in your country? Write to us in the Comments Section or on our Facebook page.
Words in This Story
animation – n. a way of making a movie or television show by using a series of drawings, computer graphics, or photographs of objects , such as puppets or models, that are slightly different from one another and that when viewed quickly one after another create the appearance of movement
inspired – v. to make someone want to do something
monitor(s) – n. a device that is used for showing, watching, or listening to something
manga – n. a style of Japanese comic books and graphic novels, typically aimed at adults as well as children
video game(s) – n. an electronic game in which players control images on a television or computer screen
opportunity – n. an amount of time or a situation in which something can be done
bazooka – n. a military weapon that rests on a person's shoulder and fires small rockets at tanks
anime – n. a style of animation that was created in Japan and that uses colorful images, strong characters, and stories that have a lot of action
<4> The Making of a Nation
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