Т е к с т № для устного перевода с листа

PEACEFUL MOABITES WANT BIG BOMB’S NAME CHANGED

The authorities in the small town of Moab, in southern Utah, have spent a huge amount of money in recent years on a simple tourism strategy: when you think Moab, they want you to think of mountain-biking, horse-riding and energetic outdoor pursuits. They do not want you to think about that awesomely destructive bombs, each the size of a car and weighing 21,000lb, almost 10 tonnes.

But that is what they fear will happen if they cannot dissuade the army from naming its powerful new creation the massive ordnance air burst: Moab for short.

“We realise that it is an acronym, but we are still concerned about the effect it may have on our community,” the county council wrote, begging President George Bush to order a rethink. “Moab relies on tourism, both domestic and foreign, and has worked for many years and spend hundreds of thousands of dollar to create in image that Moab is a destination.”

Some Utahans have responded sardonically. “When I first learned about the acronym I though the bomb was called Moab for its ability to make large verdant areas look like, oh, large part of Moab,” Robert Kirby wrote in the Salt Lake City Tribune.

The problem is the greater because Moab, named after the biblical kingdom^, is known as a stronghold liberalism in southern Utah, and in recent months has held several demonstrations against as war in Iraq.

Councilwoman Joette Langianese told a television interviewer, “I don’t want to see on the news that the Moab was dropped on Iraq and killed thousand of people.”

THE GUARDIAN, March 5, 2003