The long, lonely voyage of the Japanese ghost ship is over．

A US Coast Guard cutter poured cannon fire into an abandoned Japanese ghost ship that had been drifting since last year’s tsunami, sinking the vessel into waters more than 305 meters deep in the Gulf of Alaska and removing the danger it posed to shipping and the coastline on Thursday．

The cutter’s guns tore holes in the 164-foot Ryou-Un Maru, and then it began to take on water and lean to one side． In about four hours, the ship disappeared into the sea, said Chief Petty Officer Kip Wadlow．

The ship had no lights or communications system, and its tank was able to carry more than 7,570 liters of diesel fuel． Officials, however, didn’t know exactly how much fuel was aboard．

“It’s less risky than it would be running into shore or running into other ships,” coast guard spokesman Paul Webb said．

The US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the Environmental Protection Agency studied the problem and decided it is safer to sink the ship than let the fuel evaporate and pollute the sea environment．

Ryou-Un Maru was probably among the first wave of the 1．5 million tons of garbage of refrigerators, washing machines, televisions, roofs and fishing nets heading toward North America since last March when a magnitude-9．0 earthquake struck Japan．

As the coast guard was ready to fire on the vessel, a Canadian fishing vessel, the 19-meter Bernice C, claimed the rights to save the ghost ship in international waters．

Plans to sink it were paused so the Canadian crew could have a chance to take the stricken ship． A Canadian official with knowledge of the situation told the Associated Press that the Bernice C was unable to drag it．

Then the Canadian boat left, and once it was about 10 kilometers from the Japanese vessel, the Coast Guard began to fire, first with 25 mm shells, then a few hours later with ammunition twice that size．

State officials have been working to test the danger of garbage including materials affected by a damaged nuclear power plant, to see if Alaska residents, seafood or wild animals could be affected．

小题1:Which of the following is NOT the reason for sinking the Japanese ship?

A．It had no lights or communications system.

B．It might be washed up onto the shore．

C．It was a danger to other passing ships．

D．The oil it carried could pollute the sea．小题2:The plan to fire on the Japanese ghost ship was paused because ____________．

A．the ghost ship was beyond the reach of the Coast Guard’s guns

B．the shells were not powerful enough to sink the ghost ship

C．state officials worried the ghost ship might give out radiation

D．a Canadian fishing boat wanted to save the ghost ship小题3:Which of the following could be the best title for the passage?

A．Japanese ghost ship arriving at US

B．Tsunami garbage heading to US

C．Cannon fire sinking Japanese ghost ship

D．Japanese ghost ship polluting the Pacific

In future, as newspaper fade and change, will politicians therefore burgle their opponents’ offices without punishment Journalism schools and think-tanks, especially in America, are worried about the effect of a collapsing journalism.
Nobody should enjoy the disappearance of once-great newspapers. But the decline of newspapers will not be as harmful to society as some fear. 46. Denmocracy, remember, has already survived the huge television-led decline in circulation since the 1950s. It has survived as readers have evaded papers and papers have evaded what was in conservative times thought of as serious news. And it will surely survive the decline to come.
47. A few papers that invest in investigative stories which often benefit society the inost are in a good position to survive, as long as their owners do a comnpetent job of adjusting to changing circumstances. Publications like the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal should be able to put up the price of their journalism to compensate for advertising revenues lost to the internet—especially as they cater to a more global readership. 48. As with many industries, it is those in the middle—neither highbrow, nor entertainingly populist—that are likeliest to fall by the wayside.
49. The usefulness of the press goes much wider than investigating abuses or even spreading general news; it lies in holding governments to account--trying them in the court of public opinion. The internet has expanded this court. Anyone looking for information has never been better equipped. People no longer have to trust a handful of national papers or, worse, their local city paper. News-aggre-gation sites such as Google News draw together sources from around the world. The website of Britain’s Guardian now has nearly half as many readers in America as it does at home.
50. Furthermore, a new force of "citizen" journalists is itc.hing to hold politicians to account. The web has opened the closed world of professional editors and reporters to anyone with a keyboard and an internet connection. Several companies have been chastened by amateur postings—of flames erupting from Dell’s laptops or of cable TV repairmen asleep on the sofa. Each blogger is capable of bias and slander, but, taken as a group, bloggers offer the searcher after truth boundless material to chew over. Of course, the internet panders to closed minds; but so has much of the press.