It is about. Read the article and see if your ideas were correct.

A Tragedy in Asia Affects All Corners of a Closer World

By CRAIG S. SMITH

PARIS, Dec. 28 - The tsunami that struck over the weekend spread a ring of destruction through nearly a dozen countries. Those are the places most directly affected, and on a calamitous scale. But the disaster has rippled far beyond South Asia, making it truly a tragedy felt across the globe.

Among the tens of thousands of people missing or dead, thousands are believed to have come from outside the region, including many who were spending their holidays at Thai, Malaysian and Indonesian beach resorts.

Reported deaths now cover at least 40 nationalities, reaching from South Africa to South Korea, with surprising concentrations of people still unaccounted for from European countries.

Those still missing include 1,500 from Sweden and 700 to 800 from Norway, 300 from New Zealand, more than 200 each from Denmark and the Czech Republic, 100 from Germany, 100 from Italy and 188 Israelis.

The disaster's reach is an unsettling reminder that globalization has brought the world closer together in unexpected ways so that people now share the pain as well as profit from far-flung places. Even for people who have never left home, otherwise abstract calamities in distant lands now frequently have a familiar face.

Only a hundred Europeans have been confirmed dead so far, leaving anxious relatives and friends to await word from distant lands where often-sketchy communications were either overloaded or knocked out altogether after the devastation struck.

There is little way to know for now whether many of those missing have been killed or are merely cut off. Meanwhile, stories of desperate searches and unlikely reunions have begun to trickle in from abroad.

Vacationing children who lost their families in the disaster are slowly being identified.

Winter-fleeing visitors from across Europe and northern Asia book rooms in the region's beachside hotels for the high season in December and January. Many of the best resorts operate at total occupancy during the year-end holidays.

Premiums paid for proximity to the sea meant that some of the region's wealthiest tourists were the most vulnerable.

At the Sofitel Magic Lagoon resort in Khao Lak, one of the worst-hit areas on the Andaman Sea coast, the three-story bungalows closest to the water were entirely gutted.

The resort's French operator, Accor, said Tuesday that 35 bodies had been recovered from the ruins and that more than 200 of the hotel's 415 guests were still missing. A hotel spokesman said that the hotel did not know the nationalities of the dead or missing, but that more than two thirds of the guests were German.

The Thai deputy interior minister, Sutham Sangprathum, said Tuesday that more than 700 foreign tourists had been identified among the dead in southern Thailand.

The French Foreign Ministry confirmed the deaths of 10 citizens and reported 18 missing and presumed dead because they were seen being swept away. Britain listed 18 deaths and the United States 11.

The dead included relatives of the well known and the unknown.

The British actor Richard Attenborough lost two members of his immediate family in Thailand, including a 14-year-old granddaughter, who was found dead, and her mother, Mr. Attenborough's daughter, who is missing. The mother-in-law of Mr. Attenborough's daughter is also missing, according to a statement released by a family friend.

The former German chancellor Helmut Kohl was evacuated Tuesday by helicopter from a hotel in Sri Lanka.

The fashion photographer Simon Atlee was swept away in the Thai resort of Phuket while his companion, Petra Nemcova, a Czech model who appeared on the cover of Sports Illustrated's swimsuit issue last year, survived after clinging to a tree.

(Source: New York Times, 2004)

Ex. 3. Read the article and answer the following questions:

1. Why does the author say that the disaster was "a tragedy felt across the globe"?

2. What country suffered the most victims?

3. Why did the wealthiest tourists become the most vulnerable?

4. What makes the identification and number of victims difficult for stating?

5. Could such kind of calamities be prevented?

6. What are the consequencies of the tsunami for the countries struck by it?

Ex. 4. Read the article and explain the following phrases:

People now share the pain as well as profit from far-flung places, globalization has brought the world closer together, people now share the pain as well as profit from far-flung places, relatives and friends to await word from distant lands, abstract calamities in distant lands now frequently have a familiar face, resorts operate at total occupancy.

Ex. 5. Find words in the article which have the opposite meaning to the words below:

Found (para 3); happy, pleasant, nerveless (para 5); awaited (para 5); probable (para 7); delayed (para 16)

Ex. 6. Find words in the article which correspond to the following defintions:

1. causing great harm or damage (para 1)

2. to move or to make sth move in very small waves (para 1)

3. the state of being near sb/sth in distance or time (para 10)

4. weak and easily hurt physically or emotionally (para 10)

5. to destroy the inside or contents of a building or room (para 11)

6. next to or very close to a particular place or time (para 16)

Ex. 7. Replace the words in italics with a verb from A and a particle from B in the correct way:

A cut knock trickle sweep unaccounted	B away for in off out

a Our team was made to dismiss in the first part of the competition.

b At least 300 civilians are not found after the bombing raids.

c News is starting to spread slowly and gradually.

d He felt relaxed since he got rid of any doubts.

e The army was prevented from communicating with its base.

Ex. 8. Write the summary of the article.

Ex. 9. Read the text below, use the following words to complete it.

Biodiversity, clean, density, emission, pollution, ranking, sustainability