单选题How did it come to this? Over the past two months some of the best-known UK charities, on the front line of environmental and social justice, have become connected to unethical fundraising practices. It"s not surprising we"re in a spin. How can we be sure charities we support behave ethically? The story broke after the death of an elderly charity giver. Before her death, Olive Cooke had revealed to local media that she had received 260 pieces of charity mail and would no longer answer her landline due to repeated requests for donations. Since Olive"s death the near-daily bombardment and insufferable levels of "asks" suffered by many elderly and vulnerable people from and on behalf of charities has been laid bare. Responses have varied, from Friends of the Earth immediately writing to supporters to try to gauge what they found appropriate (the irony being that this involves another mailshot) to Save the Children"s promise to abandon cold calling and trading supporter data. But singling out good and bad charities is a red herring. According to the Information Commissioner"s Office (the body that upholds our data privacy rights) the charity industry has collectively blurred the definition of activities like cold calling. Many charities now use third-party commercial fundraising organisations, including those that trade in our data. So it is the sector as a whole that must clean up. To that end the Fundraising Standards Board has produced eight recommendations, including limiting the number of times a charity can ask for money in one phone call, limiting the number of contacts each year with donors and doing more to ensure that fundraisers do not target elderly and vulnerable people. If you"re feeling besieged by fundraising requests, you can download a firm but fair "don"t contact me" letter produced by The One Show, where I"ve reported on this story. It gives the charity 28 days to comply before a complaint will be lodged with the Information Commissioner"s Office. In addition charities have committed to stopping their fundraisers from approaching properties displaying "No cold calling" signs by September 1 st. We need to re-establish a proper relationship between givers and charities, and this is an opportunity to get everything in the open. Like the man said: "Sunlight is the best of disinfectants, electric light the most efficient policeman."

单选题What can we learn about the City Hall?

单选题In 1880, Sir Joshua Waddilove, a Victorian philanthropist, founded Provident Financial to provide affordable loans to working-class families in and around Bradford, in northern England. This month his company, now one of Britain's leading providers of "home credit"- small, short-term, unsecured loans--began the nationwide rollout of Vanquis, a credit card aimed at people that mainstream lenders shun. The card offers up to ￡200 ( $ 380) of credit, at a price: for the riskiest customers, the annual interest rate will be 69%. Provident says that the typical interest rate is closer to 50% and that it charges no fees for late payments or breaching credit limits. Still, that is triple the rate on regular credit cards and far above the 30% charged by store cards. And the Vanquis card is being launched just when Britain's politicians and media are full of worry about soaring consumer debt. Last month, a man took his own life after running up debts of ￡130000 on 22 different credit cards. Credit cards for "sub-prime" borrowers, as the industry delicately calls those with poor credit records, are new in Britain but have been common in America for a while. Lenders began issuing them when the prime market became saturated, prompting them to look for new sources of profit. Even in America, the sub-prime market has plenty of room for growth. David Robertson of the Nilson Report, a trade magazine, reckons that outstanding sub-prime credit-card debt accounts for only 3% of the $ 597 billion that Americans owe on plastic. The sub-prime sector grew by 7.9% last year, compared with only 2.6% for the industry as a whole. You might wonder, though, how companies can make money from lending to customers they know to be bad risks--or at any rate, how they can do it legitimately. Whereas delinquencies in the credit-card industry as a whole are around 4% --5% , those in the sub- prime market are almost twice as high, and can reach 15% in hard times. Obviously, issuers charge higher interest rates to compensate them for the higher risk of not being repaid. And all across the credit-card industry, the assessment and pricing of risks has been getting more and more refined, thanks largely to advances in technology and data processing. Companies also use sophisticated computer programs to track slower payment or other signs of increased risk. Sub-prime issuers pay as much attention to collecting debt as to managing risk; they impose extra charges, such as application fees; and they cap their potential losses by lending only small amounts ( $ 500 is a typical credit limit). All this is easier to describe than to do, especially when the economy slows. After the bursting of the technology bubble in 2000, several sub-prime credit-card providers failed. Now there are only around 100, of which nine issue credit cards. Survivors such as Metris and Providian, two of the bigger sub-prime card companies, have become choosier about their customers' credit histories. As the economy recovered, so did lenders' fortunes. Fitch, a rating agency, says that the proportion of sub-prime credit-card borrowers who are more than 60 days in arrears (a good predictor of eventual default) is the lowest since November 2001. But with American interest rates rising again, some worry about another squeeze. As Fitch's Michael Dean points out, sub-prime borrowers tend to have not just higher-rate credit cards, but dearer auto loans and variable-rate mortgages as well. That makes a risky business even riskier.

单选题From the beginning of the text, we can learn that

单选题Computer theft includes______.

单选题Right after the global financial crisis exploded in 2008, many economists fretted that countries looking to hold on to their share of a shrinking pie would become more self-interested and protectionist, plunging the planet into an even sharper downturn, just as happened in the 1930s after the Great Depression. Thanks to panic-fueled crisis management by policymakers, it didn't happen. But after three years of pain and very little economic gain, it may be happening now. The signs are everywhere. Europeans are in the middle of a potentially calamitous debt crisis, one that threatens not only the survival of the euro zone but the idea of the European Union itself: politicians are starting to talk about rolling back visa-free travel between countries. Meanwhile, OPEC is falling apart as the Saudis and the Iranians quarrel over how to control the world's energy supply. Then there's the rise of populist politics not only in the U. S. but throughout the rest of the world. All of this underscores the point that globalization, if we define it as the free movement of goods, people and money, was never all it was cracked up to be. The world is just not as flat as pundits would have us think. More than half of global trade, investment and migration still takes place within regions—much of it between neighboring countries. Canada is the U.S.'s biggest trading partner. Some 800% of global stock-market investment, for example, is in companies that are headquartered in the investor's home country. Exports make up only about a quarter of the global economy. Less than 20% of Internet traffic crosses national borders, and so on. The world is becoming more unified, but if anything, it's becoming more fragmented. Some of this reflects the fact that rich countries, especially the U. S., are still much more provincial than you might think, and the political trend in an economic downturn is to become more so—witness the rise of anti-immigrant rhetoric, and the like. Even multinational corporations, those global emissaries of American capitalism, could be a lot more diverse. Only 7% of the directors of FORTUNE 500 firms are foreigners. But greater economic and political fragmentation is also, ironically, a ripple effect of globalization. As wealth and power have shifted to the emerging markets, those nations now have the money and confidence to call their own shots—and their calls tend to be quite different from those we would make. Already this is reflected in company and consumer behavior. Firms like Hermes, General Motors, Levi Strauss and Coca-Cola rigorously tailor products specifically for emerging-market consumers. The big-picture implications are more profound. As developing countries become wealthier and vie for a better seat on the global stage, they are often at odds not only with rich nations but also with each other. That doesn't mean globalization's a bust. In fact, more of it—in the form of freer markets, lower trade barriers and unfettered immigration—would help alleviate tensions by growing the economic pie.

单选题SoBig. F damaged computer programs mainly by______.

单选题Niagara is an Indian word which means "roaring water". Indeed, the roar of the falling water of Niagara can be heard (1) a distance of 5 kms. Imagine (2) of water flowing over a cliff 90 feet high and you will get an idea of that terrible noise. And (3) tremendous power the Niagara River has! It moves big rocks about and throws them into the boiling water below. (4) ago an old ship without single person on board was put in mid-stream. It sailed down the river (5) a toy boat with great speed. Having reached the fall, the ship dropped into the boiling water, never (6) again. There were some people who wanted to become famous (7) swimming across the most dangerous part of the Niagara River. One of them was Captain Webb who said that he would try to swim cross the Niagara, which (8) crowds of people. On the evening of July 1st, 1893, Captain Webb came up to the river and (9) a plunge. His having jumped into the water (10) many people with horror. Soon, he appeared in the middle of the river. A loud shout went up from the crowd, but a moment later there was (11) silence. The man had disappeared under the water. Thousands of eyes (12) on the river, but the man was drowned. In 1902, a certain Miss Taylor decided to go over the falls in a barrel. There were different kinds of pillows inside the barrel to prevent her from (13) . Having examined the barrel carefully, Miss Taylor got in. The barrel was closed and then (14) into the water. Having reached the falls, it overturned and was shot down by the terrible (15) of the water. When the barrel was finally caught and opened, Miss Taylor came out alive (16) with a frightened look in her eyes. Once a crowd of visitors saw a rope (17) over from one bank of the river to the other. Then they saw a man (18) the rope. The man was an actor, Blondin (19) . He managed to cross Niagara Falls on a tight rope. The people on the bank were surprised at his (20) it so well.

单选题The author's attitude toward the service-education concept is

单选题How do the consumers feel about their investment in the housing market?

单选题{{B}}Text 3{{/B}} When a disease of epidemic proportions rips into the populace, scientists immediately get to work, trying to locate the source of the affliction and find ways to combat it. Oftentimes, success is achieved, as medical science is able to isolate the parasite, germ or cell that causes the problem and finds ways to effectively kill or contain it. In the most serious of cases, in which the entire population of a region or country may be at grave risk, it is deemed necessary to protect the entire population through vaccination, so as to safeguard lives and ensure that the disease will not spread. The process of vaccination allows the patient's body to develop immunity to the virus or disease so that, if it is encountered, one can {{U}}ward it off naturally.{{/U}} To accomplish this, a small weak or dead strain of the disease is actually injected into the patient in a controlled environment, so that his body's immune system can learn to fight the invader properly. Information on how to penetrate the disease's defenses is transmitted to all elements of the patient's immune system in a process that occurs naturally, in which genetic information is passed from cell to cell. This makes sure that, should the patient later come into contact with the real problem, his body is well equipped and trained to deal with it, having already done so before. There are dangers inherent in the process, however. On occasion, even the weakened version of the disease contained in the vaccine proves too much for the body to handle, resulting in the immune system succumbing, and, therefore, the patient's death. Such is the case of the smallpox vaccine, designed to eradicate the smallpox epidemic that nearly wiped out the entire Native American population and killed massive numbers of settlers. Approximately 1 in 10,000 people who receives the vaccine contract the smallpox disease from the vaccine itself and dies from it. Thus, if the entire population of the United States were to receive the Smallpox Vaccine today, 3000 Americans would be left dead. Fortunately, the smallpox virus was considered eradicated in the early 1970's, ending the mandatory vaccination of all babies in America. In the event of a reintroduction of the disease, however, mandatory vaccinations may resume, resulting in more unexpected deaths from vaccination. The process, which is truly a mixed blessing, may indeed hide some hidden curses.

单选题The performances in relation to Whorf's claim of the Dani and the Piraha are______.