填空题After running around the Olympic stadium track once, ______ lights the cauldron, and the Olympic Games officially start.

填空题If a member of the euro runs a budge deficit of 4.0 percent, it will be charged ______________________ of their GDP by the Stability and Growth Pact.

填空题However, ______ (与宇宙的寿命比起来), the history of mankind is just at the beginning stage.

填空题The chief foods eaten in any country _________________________. (大体取决于什么作物在其天气和土壤条件下生长得最好)

填空题Into the Unknown The world has never seen population ageing before. Can it cope? A. Until the early 1990s nobody much thought about whole populations getting older. The UN had the foresight to convene a "world assembly on ageing" back in 1982, but that came and went. By 1994 the World Bank had noticed that something big was happening. In a report entitled "Averting the Old Age Crisis", it argued that pension arrangements in most countries were unsustainable. B. For the next ten years a succession of books, mainly by Americans, sounded the alarm. They had titles like Young vs Old, Gray Dawn and The Coming Generational Storm, and their message was blunt: health-care systems were heading for the rocks, pensioners were taking young people to the cleaners, and soon there would be intergenerational warfare. C. Since then the debate has become less emotional, not least because a lot more is known about the subject. Books, conferences and research papers have multiplied. International organisations such as the OECD and the EU issue regular reports. Population ageing is on every agenda, from G8 economic conferences to NATO summits. The World Economic Forum plans to consider the future of pensions and health care at its prestigious Davos conference early next year. The media, including this newspaper, are giving the subject extensive coverage. D. Whether all that attention has translated into sufficient action is another question. Governments in rich countries now accept that their pension and health-care promises will soon become unaffordable, and many of them have embarked on reforms, but so far only timidly. That is not surprising: politicians with an eye on the next election will hardly rush to introduce unpopular measures that may not bear fruit for years, perhaps decades. E. The outline of the changes needed is clear. To avoid fiscal (财政) meltdown, public pensions and health-care provision will have to be reined back severely and taxes may have to go up. By far the most effective method to restrain pension spending is to give people the opportunity to work longer, because it increases tax revenues and reduces spending on pensions at the same time. It may even keep them alive longer. John Rother, the AARP"s head of policy and strategy, points to studies showing that other things being equal, people who remain at work have lower death rates than their retired peers. F. Younger people today mostly accept that they will have to work for longer and that their pensions will be less generous. Employers still need to be persuaded that older workers are worth holding on to. That may be because they have had plenty of younger ones to choose from, partly thanks to the post-war baby-boom and partly because over the past few decades many more women have entered the labour force, increasing employers" choice. But the reservoir of women able and willing to take up paid work is running low, and the baby-boomers are going grey. G. In many countries immigrants have been filling such gaps in the labour force as have already emerged (and remember that the real shortage is still around ten years off). Immigration in the developed world is the highest it has ever been, and it is making a useful difference. In still-fertile America it currently accounts for about 40% of total population growth, and in fast-ageing Western Europe for about 90%. H. On the face of it, it seems the perfect solution. Many developing countries have lots of young people in need of jobs; many rich countries need helping hands that will boost tax revenues and keep up economic growth. But over the next few decades labour forces in rich countries are set to shrink so much that inflows of immigrants would have to increase enormously to compensate: to at least twice their current size in western Europe"s most youthful countries, and three times in the older ones. Japan would need a large multiple of the few immigrants it has at present. Public opinion polls show that people in most rich countries already think that immigration is too high. Further big in-creases would be politically unfeasible. I. To tackle the problem of ageing populations at its root, "old" countries would have to rejuvenate (使年轻) themselves by having more of their own children. A number of them have tried, some more successfully than others. But it is not a simple matter of offering financial incentives or providing more child care. Modern urban life in rich countries is not well adapted to large families. Women find it hard to combine family and career. They often compromise by having just one child. J. And if fertility in ageing countries does not pick up? It will not be the end of the world, at least not for quite a while yet, but the world will slowly become a different place. Older societies may be less innovative and more strongly disinclined to take risks than younger ones. By 2025 at the latest, about half the voters in America and most of those in western European countries will be over 50—and older people turn out to vote in much greater number than younger ones. Academic studies have found no evidence so far that older voters have used their power at the ballot box to push for policies that specifically benefit them, though if in future there are many more of them they might start doing so. K. Nor is there any sign of the intergenerational warfare predicted in the 1990s. After all, older people themselves mostly have families. In a recent study of parents and grown-up children in 11 European countries, Karsten Hank of Mannheim University found that 85% of them lived within 25kin of each other and the majority of them were in touch at least once a week. L. Even so, the shift in the centre of gravity to older age groups is bound to have a profound effect on societies, not just economically and politically but in all sorts of other ways too. Richard Jackson and Neil Howe of America"s CSIS, in a thoughtful book called The Graying of the Great Powers , argue that, among other things, the ageing of the developed countries will have a number of serious security implications. M. For example, the shortage of young adults is likely to make countries more reluctant to commit the few they have to military service. In the decades to 2050, America will find itself playing an ever-increasing role in the developed world"s defence effort. Because America"s population will still be growing when that of most other developed countries is shrinking, America will be the only developed country that still matters geopolitically (地缘政治上). Ask me in 2020 N. There is little that can be done to stop population ageing, so the world will have to live with it. But some of the consequences can be alleviated. Many experts now believe that given the right policies, the effects, though grave, need not be catastrophic. Most countries have recognised the need to do something and are beginning to act. O. But even then there is no guarantee that their efforts will work. What is happening now is historically unprecedented. Ronald Lee, director of the Centre on the Economics and Demography of Ageing at the University of California, Berkeley, puts it briefly and clearly: "We don"t really know what population ageing will be like, because nobody has done it yet."

填空题We use such early biases to make life easy, as well as _______________.

填空题Euro is the second largest currency in the world today.

填空题The survey reveals that ______ (幸福与财富不是必然成比例的).

填空题Few large cities depend on their attractive natural scenery to make them outstanding.

填空题Facebook Morns A．Kimberly Gervaise, a stay-at-home mother of three in Little Silver, N.J., joined Facebook five years ago and only posts every couple of months, mostly sharing photos from special events, like birthdays. She has 393 friends, and wishes some of them would tuck it in (收敛) a bit. "I get a little annoyed about people who feel the need to post a picture of a straight-A report card—and there are many," she says. "I am sure that most of the time, they are just proud, but I find it annoying." B．Gervaise says more and more mothers are using Facebook as a platform to boast about their lives, their kids, their parenting techniques. And that"s making it harder and harder for moms like her to log on without getting slapped in the face. Bragging about your kids is nothing new, but before Facebook, the Compare they"ve changed how much people brag," says Dr. Pamela Rutledge, director of the Media Psychology Research Center. "The ability to publicize so much has blurred the line between sharing and boasting. When you brag in a group, you notice when they wander away. When you brag on Facebook, it"s harder to tell who you"re alienating." K．Dr. Saedi, author of the blog Millennial Media, thinks it"s important to keep it all in perspective. "Remember that, like TV, not everything you see on Facebook is true. No one"s life is perfect. And the more that people try to prove how great it is, the more it"s often a sign that it"s not. It"s important for rooms on Facebook to take a step back, get some distance and reassess." L．Many feeling-smothered mothers don"t want to "step back"; they want to escape, to be free. "I deleted my Facebook account!" crows a stay-at-home room of two in Austin, Texas. "I hated the "Keeping up with the Joneses" behavior that Facebook engenders." Not everyone is ready—or able—to completely cut the Facebook umbilical cord (脐带). One morn decided she just needed to take control of her page, and silence the braggers and know-everythings. "I cleaned house a year ago and only connect with people I"m actually friends or family with," she says. "I found that I"d catch up on Facebook and be bad-tempered after, so I changed my profile to only let Facebook be what I want it to be." M．Even mommy-blogger Melton took a Facebook vacation. For 40 days, the 101,000 followers of her Momastery website waited patiently as she took a rest. It was during this break that she realized how unhappy Facebook made her at times. "I called my younger sister the other day and said, "I"m going to quit Facebook. I don"t use it right. Whether I want to or not, I just end up comparing myself to everyone else."" N．"And (my) sister said, "Actually, you"re using it for the exact thing it was originally designed for. Remember, some college guys made it so that students could compare women to each other and decide who was hotter."" Melton ponders this for a moment. "And I thought, Ah. Right. Huh. The origin of Facebook is really annoying and offensive, when you think about it. And even more annoying is that we often still use it for what it was originally intended: comparison."

填空题In 1924 Civic Club Dinner, sponsored by Opportunity, bringing black writers and white publishers together, March 21. This event is considered the formal launching of ______ .

填空题In America, marriage is a matter of individual responsibility and decision for the young. They have their own right to 1 their marriage and are independent of their parents. They often fall in love with each other 2 the disapproval of their parents. American young people are generally more affectionate and they 3 consider love to be more important than social class, education, money or religion. They 4 romantic love. Young people can get married to each other even if they have different religious beliefs or backgrounds, although marriages between blacks and whites are still quite 5 . Because of social prejudice, such kinds of marriages 6 perhaps less than one percent of all the marriages. Most American youths live independently after marriage. Most married couples 7 some sort of birth control. They plan the number of children they are going to have and the time when their children are to be born. As they carry out family planning conscientiously (尽责地), the birth rate has been 8 steadily in recent years. Ironically, the divorce rate in America is the highest in the world. A divorce is practically free and natural if a marriage is found to be a failure by the couple. The divorce rate has almost doubled in the past 50 years, and it is 9 that 1/3 of all marriages will end in divorce. In the American family, equal rights are often exercised between husband and wife when a decision is made. The children also can have a say in family affairs when they are old enough. Parents don"t 10 what they wish to do, and children are encouraged to be independent at an early age.

填空题Why haven't you made changes in our plans ______ (照我对你讲的那样).

填空题In the case, several government officials ____________________(被指控经济犯罪).

填空题A handful of cash-rich companies are consolidating power in the technology industry, using their wealth to expand into new businesses and making it harder for small and midsize competitors to break through. Why the industry is evolving this way is rooted in balance sheets. Over the past two years, Apple Inc., Oracle Corp., Google Inc., Microsoft Corp. and six other large tech companies have generated $ 68.5 billion in new cash, compared with just $13.5 billion for the other 65 tech companies in the S & P 500 Index combined, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis of data provided by Capital IQ. The rich few are funding investments at a time when many others have retrenched. Over the past year, Oracle paid $ 7.4 billion to get into the hardware business by acquiring Sun Microsystems, and Dell Inc. bought Perot Systems to add technology services. Cisco Systems Inc. spent more than $ 7 billion to acquire six companies. Google, meanwhile, has tapped its savings to fund moves into computer operating systems and mobile phones. Microsoft has financed its money-losing quest to take on Google in search with its cash. And Apple has used its reserves to develop the iPad and take aim at Google recently by acquiring a mobile-advertising company. Because of their massive cash accumulation, these companies can afford to take risks that smaller companies can't at a time when the economy remains fragile. The result is a bifurcated (一分为二的) tech landscape, says Erik Brynjolfsson, a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Sloan School of Management. The repercussions from the cash discrepancy are being felt throughout the industry. Some midsize tech companies are giving up trying to compete with their larger rivals. Others are gearing up to make their own acquisitions so as not to be left behind. For example, online-software maker Salesforce. corn Inc. nearly doubled its cash reserves in January by taking on $ 575 million in debt that it says it will use in part for future expansion and acquisitions. Other midsize tech companies, such as Ciena Corp., have recently scooped up smaller rivals to bulk up. From the end of 2007 to the end of 2009, the 10 richest tech companies increased their cash levels by 48% to $ 210 billion. The other 65 tech companies listed in the S & P 500 upped their cash only 13% in the same period, to $118 billion. The upshot: The gap between the groups stood at a record. The gap would be even larger, except an accounting change caused Apple to designate about $10 billion of its holdings as long-term investments.

填空题To compete with foreigners, Chinese retailers are taking measures to improve ______ by cutting down on the number of their staff and to improve management by bringing in foreign experts.

填空题According to research, ______ naturally tend to take the positive view on life.