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Tesco is preparing a legal battle to clear its name of involvement in the dairy price-fixing scandal that has cost consumers £270 million. Failure to prove that it had no part in collusion with other supermarkets and dairy processors may land it with a fine of at least £80 million. The Office of Fair Trading (OFT) said yesterday that Asda, Sainsbury’s and the former Safeway, plus the dairy companies Wiseman, Dairy Crest and Cheese Company, had admitted being in a cartel to fix prices for milk, butter and cheese. They were fined a total of just over £116 million as part of a leniency deal offered by the watchdog to companies that owned up quickly to anti-competitive behavior.Officials at the OFT admitted privately that they did not think they would ever discover which company or individual had initiated the pricing formulA.But the watchdog recognizes that at the time supermarkets were under pressure from politicians and farmers to raise the cost of milk to save dairy farming, though it is not certain that money found its way to farmers. The OFT claimed in September that it had found evidence that the retail chains had passed future milk prices to dairy companies, which then reached a fixed price among themselves.The average cost to each household is thought to be £11.25 over 2002 and 2003. Prices went up an extra 3p on a pint of milk, 15p on a quarter of a pound of butter and 15p on a half-pound of cheese. There is no direct recompense for consumers, however, and the money will go to the Treasury. The National Consumer Council gave warning that the admissions would dent consumer confidence in leading high street names and that people would become skeptical of their claims. Farmers for Action, the group of farmers that has led protests over low milk prices since 2000, is seeking legal advice on whether it can now bring a claim for compensation.The OFT investigation is continuing, however, in relation to Tesco, Morrison and the dairy group Lactalis McLelland, and any legal action is expected to be delayed until that is completed.Tesco was defiant and said that it was preparing a robust defense of its actions. Lucy Neville-Rolfe, its executive director, said: “As we have always said, we acted independently and we did not collude with anyone. Our position is different from our competitors and we are defending our own case vigorously. Our philosophy is to give a good deal to customers.”Morrison has supported the OFT in inquiries into the former Safeway business that it took over, but in a statement said that it was still making “strong representations” in its defense. A spokeswoman for Lactalis McLelland said that the company was “co-operating” with the OFT. Industry insiders suggested that the three companies were deliberately stalling the OFT investigation,Sainsbury’s admitted yesterday that it had agreed to pay £26 million in fines, but denied that it had sought to profiteer. Justin King, the chief executive, said he was disappointed that the company had been penalized for actions meant to help farmers but recognized the benefit of a speedy settlement. Asda declined to say how much it would pay in fines and also said that its intention had been to help farmers under severe financial pressure.1. From the first paragraph, we may infer that______ .2. Who is most probably the initiator of the pricing formula?3. The word “defiant” in Para.5 most probably means______.4. We may infer from Morrison’s statement that______ .5. The writer’s attitude to Tesco can be said to be______ .

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In a sense, the new protectionism is not protectionism at all, at least not in the traditional sense of the term. The old protectionism referred only to trade restricting and trade expanding devices, such as the tariff or export subsidy. The new protectionism is much broader than this: it includes interventions into foreign trade but is not limited to them. The new protectionism, in fact, refers to how the whole of government intervention into the private economy affects international trade. The emphasis on trade is still there, thus came the term “protection.” But what is new is the realization that virtually all government activities can affect international economic relations.The emergence of the new protectionism in the Western world reflects the victory of the interventionist, or welfare economy over the market economy. Jab Tumiler writes, “The old protectionism...coexisted, without any apparent intellectual difficulty with the acceptance of the market as a national as well as an international economic distribution mechanism-indeed, protectionists as well as (if not more than) free traders stood for laissez faire. Now, as in the 1930s, protectionism is an expression of a profound skepticism as to the ability of the market to distribute resources and incomes to societies’ satisfaction.” It is precisely this profound skepticism of the market economy that is responsible for the protectionism. In a market economy, economic change of various colors implies redistribution of resources and incomes. The same opinion in many communities apparently is that such redistributions often are not proper. Therefore, the government intervenes to bring about a more desired result.The victory of the welfare state is almost complete in northern Europe. In Sweden, Norway, Finland, Denmark, and the Netherlands, government intervention in almost all aspects of economic and social life is considered normal. In Great Britain this is only somewhat less true. Government traditionally has played a very active role in economic life in France and continued to do so. Only West Germany dares to go against the tide towards excessive interventionism in Western Europe. It also happens to be the most successful Western European economy.The welfare state has made significant progress in the United States as well as in Western Europe. Social security, unemployment insurance, minimum wage laws, and rent control are by now traditional welfare state elements on the American scene.1. This passage is primarily concerned with discussing ______.2. The word “virtually” (ParA.1) is closest in meaning to ______.3. Which of the following statements is NOT a characteristic of a welfare state mentioned in this passage?4. Which of the following inferences is true, according to this passage?5. The passage supplies information for answering which of the following questions?

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European Union environmental officials have determined that two kinds of genetically modified corn could harm butterflies, affect food chains and disturb life in rivers and streams, and they have proposed a ban on the sale of the seeds, which are made by DuPont Pioneer, Dow Agrosciences and SyngentA.The preliminary decisions are circulating within the European Commission, which has the final say. Some officials there are skeptical of a ban that would upset the powerful biotechnology industry and could exacerbate tensions with important trading partners like the United States. The seeds are not available on the European market for cultivation.In the decisions, the environment commissioner, Stavros Dimas, contends that the genetically modified com, or maize could affect certain butterfly species, specifically the monarch, and other beneficial insects. For instance, research this year indicates that larvae of the monarch butterfly exposed to the genetically modified com “behave differently than other larvae.” In the decision concerning the corn seeds produced by Dow and Pioneer, Mr. Dimas calls “potential damage on the environment irreversible.” In the decision on Syngenta’s com, he says that “the level of risk generated by the cultivation of this product for the environment is unacceptable.”A decision by the European Union to bar cultivation of the genetically modified crops would be the first of its kind in the trade bloc, and would intensify the continuing battle over genetically modified corn. Banning the applications for corn crops also would mark a bold new step for European environmental authorities, who are already aggressively pursuing regulations on emissions from cars and aircraft, setting it at odds with the United States and angering industries.“These products have been grown in the U.S. and other countries for years,” said Stephen Norton, a spokesman for the United States trade representative, “We are not aware of any other case when a product has been rejected after having been reviewed and determined safe by European food safety authorities,” he said.Barbara Helfferich, a spokeswoman for Mr. Dimas, declined to comment on the specifics of the procedure because commissioners had not yet made a final decision. But she said that the European Union was within its rights to make decisions based on the “precautionary principle” even when scientists had found no definitive evidence proving products can cause harm. She said that the decisions by Mr. Dimas could go before the commission within a few weeks, but she said that no date had been set. In the decisions, Mr. Dimas cited recent research showing that consumption of genetically modified “com byproducts reduced growth and increased mortality of non-target stream insects” and that these insects “are important prey for aquatic and riparian predators” and that this could have “unexpected ecosystem-scale consequences.”Although still preliminary, his decisions could drastically tilt the policy against future approvals of genetically modified crops, said Nathalie Moll, a spokeswoman for Europabio, an industry group with 80 members including Syngenta, Pioneer and Dow. Europabio says that the crops grown using the genetically modified com are already imported into several European countries, including France and Germany, where they are used to feed animals like cows and chickens.Rob Gianfranceschi, spokesman at the United States mission to the European Union in Brussels, said it was too early to comment on a decision that had not yet been formalizeD.But he made clear that the United States remained frustrated with European policies on genetically modified crops.1. The preliminary decisions are made by ______ .2. To the decisions, the European Commission officials’ attitudes are ______.3. About the decisions, which one of the following statements is TRUE?4. Mr. Dimas cited many researches on the genetically modified corn in his decision in order to ______.5. The word “tilt” in ParA.6 most probably means ______. 

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Learning disabilities are very common. They affect perhaps 10 percent of all children. Four times as many boys as girls have learning disabilities.Since about 1970, new research has helped brain scientists understand these problems better. Scientists now know there are many different kinds of learning disabilities and that they are caused by many different things. There is no longer any question that all learning disabilities result from differences in the way the brain is organized.You cannot look at a child and tell if he or she has a learning disability. There is no outward sign of the disorder. So some researchers began looking at the brain itself to learn what might be wrong.In one study, researchers examined the brain of a learning-disabled person who had died in an accident. They found two unusual things. One involved cells in the left side of the brain, which control language. These cells normally are white. In the learning-disabled person, however, these cells were gray. The researchers also found that many of the nerve cells were not in a line the way they should have been. The nerve cells were mixed together.The study was carried out under the guidance of Norman Geschwind, an early expert on learning disabilities. Doctor Geschwind proposed that learning disabilities resulted mainly from problems in the left side of the brain. He believed this side of the brain failed to develop normally. Probably, he said, nerve cells there did not connect as they shoulD.So the brain was like an electrical device in which the wires were crossed.Other studies did not examine brain tissue. Instead, they measured the brain’s electrical activity and made a man of the electrical signals.Frank Duffy experimented with his techniques at Children’s Hospital Medical Center in Boston. Doctor Duffy said his research is evidence that reading disabilities involve damage to a wide area of the brain, not just the left side.1. Scientist found that the brain cells of a learning-disabled person differ from those of a normal person in ______. 2. Which of the following is NOT mentioned in the passage?3. All of the following statements are true EXCEPT that ______.4. Doctor Duffy believed that ______.5. According to the passage we can conclude that further research should be made ______.

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