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Business and government leaders consider the inflation rate to be an important general indicator. Inflation is a period of increased spending that causes rapid rises in prices. When your money buys fewer goods so that you get （1）for the same amount of money as before，inflation is the problem. There is a general rise（2） the prices and services. Your money buys less. Sometimes people describe inflation as a time when “a dollar is not worth a dollar anymore”.Inflation is a problem for all consumers. People who live on a fixed income are hurt the best. Retired people，for instance cannot count（3） an increase in income as prices rise. Elderly people who do not work face serious problems in stretching their incomes to （4） their needs in time of inflation. Retirement income or any fixed income usually does not rise as fast as prices. Many retired people must cut their spending to keep up with rising prices. In many cases they must stop（5） some necessary items，such as food and clothing. Even for working people whose incomes are going up，inflation can be a problem. The cost of living goes （6），too. People who work must have even more money to keep up their standard of living. Just buying the things they need costs more. When incomes do not keep pace with（7） prices，the standard of living goes down. People may be earning the same （8） of money，but they are not living as well because they are not able to buy as many goods and services.Government units gather information about prices in our economy and publish it as price indexes from （9） the rate of change can be determined. A price index measures changes in prices using the price for a given year as the base. The base price is set at 100，and the other prices are reported as a percentage of the base price. A price index makes （10） possible to compare current prices of typical consumer goods，for example，with prices of the same goods in previous year.

If there is one thing interpreters working for the European Union dread, it is attempts at humour. It is not just that jokes are hard to translate; because of the time needed for interpretation, they can prompt laughter at the wrong moment. A speaker once began with an anecdote, and then mourned a dead colleague — to be met by a gale of giggles, as listeners got his joke.The time-lags have grown worse with the expansion of the EU, to make a total of 25 countries. Finding interpreters who can translate directly from Estonian to Portuguese is well-nigh impossible. So now speeches are translated in relays, first into English and then into a third language. If only everybody would agree to speak one or two official tongues, it would be easier. Or would it? In fact, misunderstandings can abound even when all parties speak fluent English or French. Cultural differences mean that a literal understanding of what someone says is often a world away from real understanding. For example, how many non-Brits could decode the irony (and literary allusion) which lies behind the expression “up to a point”, which is used to mean “no, not in the slightest”?The problem is now so widely recognized that informal guides to what the French or the English really mean, when they are speaking their mother tongues, have been drawn up by other nationalities.One has written for the Dutch, trying to do business with British. Another was written by British diplomats, as a guide to the language used by their French counterparts. The fact that the Dutch — so eerily fluent in English — should need a guide to Brit-speak is particularly striking. But the problem — to judge by the guide, which was spotted on an office wall in the European Court of Justice —is that Brits make their points in an indirect manner that the plain-speaking Nederlanders find baffling.Hence the guide’s warning that when a Briton says “I hear what you say”, the foreign listener may understand: “He accepts my point of view.” In fact, the British speaker means: “I disagree and I do not want to discuss it any further.” Similarly the phrase “with the greatest respect ” when used by an Englishman is recognizable to a compatriot as an icy put-down, correctly translated by the guide as meaning “I think you are wrong, or a fool.”The British, the French and the Dutch are old sparring partners who know each other’s little ways. So the capacity for misunderstanding is amplified when nationalities that are less familiar with each other come into contact. Often the problems are less to do with the meaning of words than their unexpected impact on an audience. Take the European summit last December, when it fell to Silvio Berlusconi, the Italian prime minister, to try to wrap up sensitive negotiations over a proposed constitution for the European Union.When EU leaders filed into lunch, they were braced for tough negotiation; so they were startled when Mr. Berlusconi suggested that they discuss “football and women” — and that Gerhard Schroder, the German chancellor, should lead the discuss, as he has been married four times. Some European diplomats conclude that Mr. Berlusconi must have been deliberately bating Mr. Schroder. But when the Italian leader was questioned about his chairmanship at a press conference, he grew hot under the collar, pointing out that he would hardly have become a billionaire unless he were fully capable of chairing a meeting. And indeed his defenders say that in Italian business circles it can be perfectly normal to set a jocular and relaxed tone before a difficult meeting, by discussing last night’s football, or even teasing your colleagues about their love lives.These sorts of misunderstandings are unlikely to be erased even if all Europe’s political leaders and bureaucrats were both willing and able to speak English. But ever-inventive Brussels is coming up with a solution of sorts through the emergence of “Euro-speak” — a form of dead, bureaucratic English.1.According to Paragraphs 1 and 2, which statement is TRUE?2.Why do the Dutch need a guide to Brit-speak?3.What does “they were braced for tough negotiation” probably mean in Paragraph 7?4.What can we infer from Paragraph 8?5.Select a title for this article: （）.

On January, 11th, 2009, a remarkable legal case opens in a San Francisco courtroom — on its way, it seems almost certain, to the Supreme Court. Perry v. Schwarzenegger challenges the constitutionality of Proposition 8, the California referendum that, in November, 2008, overturned a State Supreme Court decision allowing same-sex couples to marry. Its lead lawyers are unlikely allies: Theodore B. Olson, the former solicitor general under President George W. Bush, and a prominent conservative; and David Boies, the Democratic trial lawyer who was his opposing counsel in Bush v. Gore. The two are mounting an ambitious case that pointedly circumvents the incremental, narrowly crafted legal gambits and the careful state-by-state strategy that leading gay-rights organizations have championed in the fight for marriage equality. The Olson Boies team hopes for a ruling that will transform the legal and social landscape nationwide, something on the order of Brown v. Board of Education in 1954, or Loving v. Virginia the landmark 1967 Supreme Court ruling that invalidated laws prohibiting interracial marriage.Olson’s interest in this case has puzzled quite a few people. What’s in it for him? Is he sincere? Does he really think he can sway the current Course? But when I spoke with Olson, who is sixty-nine, in early December, he sounded confident and impassioned; the case clearly fascinated him both as an intellectual challenge and as a way to make history. “The loving case was forty-two years ago.” he said, perched on the edge of his chair in the law offices of Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher in Washington DC, where he is a partner, “It’s inconceivable to us there days to say that a couple of a different racial background can’t get married.” Olson wore a brightly striped shirt and a paisley tie, without a jacket; there was something folksy in his speech,which reminded me that he’s a Westerner, who grew up and was educated in Northern California. He said, “Separate is not equal. Civil unions and domestic partnerships are not the same as marriage. We’re not inventing any new right, or creating a new right, or asking the courts to recognize a new right. The Supreme Court has said over and over and over again that marriages is a fundamental right and although our opponents say, ‘Well, that’s always been involving a man and a woman.’ When the Supreme Court has talked about it they’ve said it’s an associational right, it’s a liberty right, it’s a privacy right, and it’s an expression of your identity, which is all wrapped up in the Constitution.” The Justices of the Supreme Court, Olson said, “are individuals who will consider this seriously, and give it good attention,” and he was optimistic that he could persuade them. (The losing side in San Francisco will likely appeal to the Ninth Circuit, and from there the case could proceed to the Supreme Court.) Olson’s self-assurance has a sound basis: he has argued fifty-six cases before the high court — he was one of the busiest lawyers before the Supreme Court bench last year — and prevailed in forty-four of them. Justices Sandra Day O’Connor and Anthony Kennedy attended his wedding three years ago, in Napa. Olson said that he wanted the gay-marriage case to be a “teaching opportunity, so people will listen to us talk about the importance of treating people with dignity and respect and equality and affection and love and to stop discriminating against people on the basis of sexual orientation”.If the Perry case succeeds before the Supreme Court, it could mean that gay marriage would be permitted not only in California but in every state. And, if the Court recognized homosexuals as indistinguishable from heterosexuals for the purposes of marriage law, it would be hard,if not impossible, to uphold any other laws that discriminated against people on the basis of sexual orientation.However, a loss for Olson and Boies could be a major setback to the movement for marriage equality. Soon after Olson and Boies filed the case,last May,some leading gay-rights organizations —among them the A. C. L. U., Human Rights Campaign, Lambda Legal, and the National Center for lesbian Rights — issued a statement condemning such efforts. The odds of success for a suit weren’t good, the groups said, because the “Supreme Court typically does not get too far ahead of either public opinion or the law in the majority of states.” The legal precedent that these groups were focused on wasn’t Loving v. Virginia but,rather,Bowers v. Hardwick, the 1936 Supreme Court decision that stunned gay-rights advocates by upholding Georgia’s antiquated law against sodomy. It was seventeen years before the Court was willing to revisit the issue, in Lawrence v. Texas, though by then only thirteen states still had anti-sodomy statutes; this time, the Court overturned the laws, with a 6-3 vote and an acerbic dissent from Justice Antonin Scalia, who declared that the Court had aligned itself with the “homosexual agenda,” adding, “Many Americans do not want persons who openly engage in homosexual conduct as partners in their business, as scoutmasters for their children, as teachers in their children’s schools, or as boarders in their home. They view this as protecting themselves and their families from a lifestyle that they believe to be immoral and destructive.”Seventeen years was a long time to wait. “A loss now may make it harder to go to court later,” the activists’ statement read. “It will take us a lot longer to get a good Supreme Court decision if the Court has to overrule itself.” Besides, the groups argued, “We lost the right to marry in California at the ballot box. That’s where we need to win it back.” Plenty of gay-marriage supporters agreed that it was smarter to wait until the movement had been successful in more states — and, possibly,the composition of the Supreme Court had shifted. (During the last year of a second Obama term, Scalia would be eighty-one.)1.The first sentence of Paragraph 1 means（）.2.The word “unlikely” in the sentence “Its lead lawyers are unlikely alliesof Paragraph 1 means（）.3.According to the passage, which of the following is NOT true?4.Some leading gay-rights organizations did not support the case because（）.5.The most suitable title of the passage would be （）

In the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks, many Americans feel we may begin to see the erosion of some of our civil liberties. There is concern we may be subject to personal searches and increased monitoring of our activities, all in the name of safety and security. On the computing front, I would argue that we already have had to surrender many of our liberties to protect ourselves from computer viruses and other security breaches.As much as vendors and network administrators try to make scanning for viruses an unobtrusive process for the end user, we still are inconvenienced by the routines mandated by the guardians of our corporate computing security. However, inconvenience takes a back seat to the outright need for security. Viruses are more than inconvenient; they cause real damage. Computer Economics estimates the cost of virus attacks on information systems around the world, including cleanup costs and lost productivity, has already reached $10.7 billion so far this year. Compare that figure with $17.1 billion for all of 2000 and $12.1 billion for 1999.I know you’re thinking: “I’m only one person. How can I spend the necessary time to safeguard my company against viruses and security holes and still do my regular job?”Realistically, you can’t. But there are resources to help you.Microsoft has just announced a new initiative called the Strategic Technology Protection Program. Among the services being offered are tree technical support related to viruses and a security tool kit that includes patches and service packs that address security vulnerabilities in Windows NT and 2000.The FBI and SANS Institute have just released their top 20 list of the most critical Internet security vulnerabilities. The majority of successful attacks on computer systems via the Internet can be traced to exploitation of security flaws on this list. Study the list at www.sans.org.The Center for Internet Security provides methods and tools to improve monitor and compare the security status of your Internet-connected systems. Find out how to benchmark your organization’s status at wvw.cisecurity.org.Software vendors such as Network Associates, Symantec and Computer Associates have very informative virus resource centers. The Symantec Anti Virus Research Center (www.Symantec.com/ avcenter) has an online newsletter and in-depth information about viruses. Likewise, the CA Virus Information Center offers tips on managing virus incidents and protecting messaging systems.Just like our national defense, the best protection against a debilitating virus attack is knowledge of the vulnerabilities and the means to plug the security holes. Be proactive and vigilant, and make use of the numerous resources at your disposal.1.The writer seems to feel that（）.2.The two figures " $ 17.1 billion” and “ $ 12.1 billion” are mentioned for the readers to（）.3.To obtain detailed information about viruses，we can resort to（）.4.By simply checking the top 20 list， we may（）.5.A proper title for this passage might be（）.

A few minutes ago, walking back from lunch, I started to cross the street when I heard the sound of a coin dropping. It wasn’t much but as I turned,my eyes caught the heads of several other people turning too. A woman had dropped what appeared to be a dime.The tinkling sound of a coin dropping on pavement is an attention-getter. It can be nothing more than a penny. Whatever the coin is, no one ignores the sound of it. It got me thinking about sounds again.We are besieged by so many sounds that attract the most attention. People in New York City, seldom turn to look when a fire engine, a police car or an ambulance comes screaming along the street. When I am in New York, I’m a New Yorker. I don’t turn either. Like the natives, I hardly hear a siren there. At home in my little town in Connecticut. It’s different. The distant wail of a police car, and emergency vehicle or a fire siren brings me to my feet if I’m seated and brings me to the window if I’m in bed. It’s the quietest sounds that have most effect on us, not the loudest. In the middle of the night, I can hear a dripping tap a hundred yards away through three closed doors. I’ve been hearing little creaking noise and sounds which imagination turns into footsteps in the middle of the night for twenty-five years in our house. How come I never hear those sounds in the daytime? I’m quite clear in my mind what the good sounds are and what the bad sounds are.I’ve turned against whistling, for instance. I used to think of it as the mark of a happy worker but lately I’ve been associating the whistler with a nervous person making compulsive noises.The tapping, tapping, tapping of my typewriter as the keys hit the paper is a lovely sound to me. I often like the sound or what I write better than the looks of it.1.The sound of a coin dropping makes people（），2.People in New York（）. 3.How does the author relate to sounds at night? 4.He dislikes whistling because（）. 5.How does the writer feel about sounds in general?

It is wrong to（）any one of the candidates at the moment，for one of them might turn out to be a dark horse in the general election.

In the movie he plays a loving and（）father trying to bring up two teenage children on his own.

Jane has（）won the respect of everyone in the field of dance both for the society and herself.

We are surprised to find that he has a(n) （）streak, with the tendency of remembering the wrongs done to him.

The top executives were accused of telling half-truths and even （） lies about the company’s financial conditions.

Pioneer men and women endured terrible hardships, and（）.

A（）surgeon can be as dangerous as a recruit with a gun he does not know how to handle.

Mrs. Brown is supposed（）for Italy last week.

Legislation has been developed throughout the 20th century attempting to protect employees from（）dismissal by their employers.

I would have come to see you had it been possible, but I（）so busy then.

The contract between the companies will（）at the end of the year.

Her knowledge and experience would make her a( n) （）asset to the team.

Centuries of wind and rain had worn away the（）on the gravestones.

Britain’s Channel Four television sent him to New York to do a(n) （）interview for its “The Word” programme.

After the recent scandal the priest is expected to do the（）thing and resign from his position.

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