Soft money is the huge, unlimited contributions from corporations, labor union and wealthy individuals that political parties raise and spend on campaign attack ads and other (1)_____ designed to influence elections. The soft money system undermines campaign finance laws (2)_____ limit contributions and (3)_____ the sources of funds that can be spent on federal campaigns. It provides corporations, labor unions, and wealthy individuals a way to circumvent federal election laws and (4)_____ campaigns with tens of millions of special interest dollars, (5)_____ corporations and unions have been (6)_____ from contributing or spending their treasury finds to influence federal elections since 1907 and 1947, (7)_____. Individuals can contribute to federal (8)_____ through parties and candidates, but only in (9)_____ amounts. The Democratic and Republican parties (10)_____ $262 million in (11)_____ money for the 1996 elections. The parties raise soft money under the (12)_____ that it will be used for general party building activities. (13)_____, soft money pays for campaign ads in the way as issue discussion, political research, polling, fund raising, and get out the-vote efforts all of which affect the (14)_____ of federal elections. Soft money was the source of the 1996 political fund-raising scandals, (15)_____ the selling of the Lincoln bedroom, White House coffees and the influx of foreign money into the (16)_____ campaign. The McCain-Feingold bill (17)_____ the soft money system by prohibiting candidates and national political parties from raising soft money, and by prohibiting state political parties from (18)_____ soft money on activities which affect federal elections. In other (19)_____,the current practice of raising unlimited soft money contributions from corporations, unions and wealthy individuals, and then channeling this money into federal elections would end. The national parties would be (20)_____ to raise all of their funds under the limits and restrictions in the law.

Women"s fertility is determined in large part at birth. They are born with their total number of reproductive cells, which normally influences the age at which menopause—the shutting down of female reproductive system—begins. But in the 1990s, researchers proposed that if a child"s energy is depleted by malnutrition, disease, or other factors, he or she would be less fertile as an adult. By using the natural experiment of migration, researchers demonstrated how differences during childhood do alter the course of reproduction in adult women. Biological anthropologist Gillian Bentley of Durham University in the UK and colleagues compared levels of reproductive hormones in 250 Bangladeshi women, including women who migrated from Sylhet, Bangladesh to London; women who stayed in Sylhet; and Bangladeshi women bom in London. In the first stage of their study, they found that women who migrated from Bangladesh as children had higher levels of reproductive hormones in their saliva than women who lived in Sylhet, but less than women born in London. This had a direct effect on fertility: Migrant women in London had an 11% higher rate of ovulation—discharging of mature ovum—during their lives than did women in Sylhet, the team reported in 2007. The team has now studied 900 women between the ages of 35 and 60 to see if the beginning of menopause varies between migrants and women in Sylhet. Bentley presented preliminary results from their measurement of hormones that regulate the maturation of reproductive cells and are indirect indices of how many ova they can still produce. Her team found that migrants enter menopause later than did women who stayed in Bangladesh but earlier than did those born in London. "The adult migrants seem to be sensitive to improved conditions," says Bentley. The group is trying to find out which environmental factors in Bangladesh lower growing girls" fertility. All the Bangladeshi women in the study came from middle-class, land-owning families, who grew up with adequate calories. However, girls growing up in Bangladesh were probably exposed to more infectious diseases during crucial developmental years. So, they may have had to make tradeoffs among using energy to grow, to maintain their bodies, or to maximize their reproductive potential as adults. Bentley plans to test that idea next year when her team returns to Bangladesh to see if girls there suffer from more diseases than do those in London. "In other words," says Bentley, "where you spend your childhood influences adult reproductive function."

Fears of "mad cow" disease spread (1)_____ the globe last week (2)_____ South Africa, New Zealand and Singapore joining most of Britain"s European Union partners in (3)_____ imports of British beef. In London, steak restaurants were empty following the March 20 announcement by scientists that they had found a (4)_____ link between mad cow disease from British beef and its human (5)_____, Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease(CJD). Efforts to reassure consumers and governments proved (6)_____. France, Germany, Italy, Finland and Greece were among countries which announced bans (7)_____ British beef shipments. A committee of EU veterinary experts, meeting in Brussels, (8)_____ new protective measures but said transmission of the disease from cattle to humans was unproven and did not (9)_____ a general ban on British beef exports. Britain"s own main consumer group advised people to (10)_____ beef if they wanted to be absolutely sure of not (11)_____ CJD which destroys the brain and is always (12)_____. "Could it be worse than AIDS?" The stark headline in Friday"s Daily mail newspaper encapsulated the fear and uncertainty (13)_____ Britain. CJD (14)_____ humans in the same way that BSE makes cows mad—by eating away nerve cells in the brain (15)_____ it looks like a spongy Swiss cheese. The disease is incurable. Victims show (16)_____ of dementia and memory loss and usually die (17)_____ six months. Little is known (18)_____ sure about the group of diseases known collectively as spongiform encephalopathies, which explains (19)_____ some eminent scientists are not prepared to (20)_____ a human epidemic of AIDS-like proportions.

For Tony Blair, home is a messy sort of place, where the prime minister"s job is not to uphold eternal values but to force through some unpopular changes that may make the country work a bit better. The area where this is most obvious, and where it matters most, is the public services. Mr. Blair faces a difficulty here which is partly of his own making. By focusing his last election campaign on the need to improve hospitals, schools, transport and policing, he built up expectations. Mr. Blair has said many times that reforms in the way the public services work need to go alongside increases in cash. Mr. Blair has made his task harder by committing a classic negotiating error. Instead of extracting concessions from the other side before promising his own, he has pledged himself to higher spending on public services without getting a commitment to change from the unions. Why, given that this pledge has been made, should the health unions give ground in return? In a speech on March 20th, Gordon Brown, the chancellor of the exchequer, said that "the something-for-nothing days are over in our public services and there can be no blank cheques". But the government already seems to have given health workers a blank cheque. Nor are other ministries conveying quite the same message as the treasury. On March 19th, John Hutton, a health minister, announced that cleaners and catering staff in new privately-funded hospitals working for the National Health service will still be government employees, entitled to the same pay and conditions as other health-service workers. Since one of the main ways in which the government hopes to reform the public sector is by using private providers, and since one of the main ways in which private providers are likely to be able to save money is by cutting labor costs, this move seems to undermine the government"s strategy. Now the government faces its hardest fight. The police need reforming more than any other public service. Half of them, for instance, retire early, at a cost of ￡1 billion ($1.4% billion) a year to the taxpayer. The police have voted 10-1 against proposals from the home secretary, David Blunkett, to reform their working practices. This is a fight the government has to win. If the police get away with it, other public service workers will reckon they can too. And, if they all get away it, Mr. Blair"s domestic policy—which is what voters are most likely to judge him on a the next election—will be a failure.

land for peace

In the late 1960's, many people in North America turned their attention to environmental problems, and new steel-and-glass skyscrapers were widely criticized. Ecologists pointing【B1】______that a cluster of tall buildings in a city often overburdens public transportation and parking lot【B2】______. Skyscrapers are also enormous【B3】______, and wasters, of electric power. In one recent year, the addition【B4】 17 million square feet of skyscraper office space in New York City raised the 【B5】______ daily demand for electricity by 120,000 kilowatts—enough to【B6】______the entire city of Albany for a day. Glass-wailed skyscraper can be especially【B7】______. The heat loss (or gain) through a wall of half-inch plate glass is more than ten times 【B8】______ through a typical masonry wall filled with insulation board. To lessen the strain【B9】______heating and air-conditioning equipment,【B10】______of skyscrapers have begun to use double-glazed panels of glass, and reflective glasses【B11】______with silver or gold mirror films that reduce【B12】______as well as heat gain. However,【B13】______skyscrapers raise the temperature of the surrounding air and【B14】______neighboring buildings. Skyscrapers put severe pressure on a city's sanitation【B15】______, too. If fully occupied, the two World Trade Center towers in New York City would alone generate 2.25 million gallons of raw sewage each year—as【B16】______as a city the size of Stamford, Connecticut, which has a【B17】______of more than 109,000. Skyscrapers also【B18】______with television reception, block bird flyways, and obstruct air traffic. Still, people【B19】______to build skyscrapers for all the reasons that they have always built them—personal ambition and the【B20】______of owners to have the largest possible amount of rentable space.

Every living thing has an inner biological clock that controls behavior. The clock works all the time; even when there are no outside signs to mark the passing of time. The biological clock tells plants when to form flowers and when the flowers should open. It tells insects when to leave the protective cocoon and fly away. And it tells animals when to eat, sleep and wake. It controls body temperature, the release of some hormones and even dreams. These natural daily events are circadian rhythms. Man has known about them for thousands of years. But the first scientific observation of circadian rhythms was not made until 1729. In that year a French astronomer, Jean Jacques d"Ortous de Mairan, noted that one of his plants opened its leaves at the same time every morning, and closed them at the same time every night. The plant did this even when he kept it in a dark place all the time. Later scientists wondered about circadian rhythms in humans. They learned that man"s biological clock actually keeps time with a day of a little less than 25 hours instead of the 24 hours on a man-made clock. About four years ago an American doctor, Eliot Weitzman, established a laboratory to study how our biological clock works. The people in his experiments are shut off from the outside world. They are free to listen to and live by their circadian rhythms. Dr. Weitzman hopes his research will lead to effective treatments for common sleep problems and sleep disorders caused by aging and mental illness. The laboratory is in the Montefiore Hospital in New York City. It has two living areas with three small rooms in each. The windows are covered, so no sunlight or moonlight comes in. There are no radios or television receivers. There is a control room between the living areas. It contains computers, one-way cameras and other electronic devices for observing the person in the living area. A doctor or medical technician is on duty in the control room 24 hours a day during an experiment. They do not work the same time each day and are not permitted to wear watches, so the person in the experiment has no idea what time it is. In the first four years of research, Dr. Weitzman and his assistant have observed 16 men between the ages of 21 and 80. The men remained in the laboratory for as long as six months. Last month, a science reporter for The New York Times newspaper, Dava Sobel, became the first woman to take part in the experiment. She entered the laboratory on June 13th and stayed for 25 days. Miss Sobel wrote reports about the experiment during that time, which were published in the newspaper.

BPart ADirections: Read the following four texts. Answer the questions below each text by choosing A, B, C or D./B

The meanings of "science" and "technology" have changed significantly from one generation to another. More similarities than differences, however, can be found between the terms. Both science and technology imply a thinking process, both are concerned with causal relationships in the material world, and both employ an experimental methodology that results in empirical demonstrations that can be verified by repetition. Science, at least in theory, is less concerned with the practicality of its results and more concerned with the development of general laws, but in practice science and technology are inextricably involved with each other. The varying interplay of the two can be observed in the historical development of such practitioners as chemists, engineers, physicists9 astronomers, carpenters, potters, and many other specialists. Differing educational requirements, social status, vocabulary, methodology, and types of rewards, as well as institutional objectives and professional goals, contribute to such distinctions as can be made between the activities of scientists and technologists; but throughout history the practitioners of "pure" science have made many practical as well as theoretical contributions. Indeed, the concept that science provides the ideas for technological innovations and that pure research is therefore essential for any significant advancement in industrial civilization is essentially a myth. Most of the greatest changes in industrial civilization cannot be traced to the laboratory. Fundamental tools and processes in the fields of mechanics, chemistry, astronomy, metallurgy, and hydraulics were developed before the laws governing their functions were discovered. The steam engine, for example, was commonplace before the science of thermodynamics elucidated the physical principle underlying its operations. In recent years a sharp value distinction has grown up between science and technology. Advances in science have frequently had their bitter opponents, but today many people have come to fear technology much more than science. For these people, science may be perceived as a serene, objective source for understanding the eternal laws of nature, whereas the practical manifestations of technology in the modern world now seem to them to be out of control. Many historians of science argue not only that technology is an essential condition of advanced, industrial civilization, but also that the rate of technological change has developed its own momentum in recent centuries. Innovations now seem to appear at a rate that increase geometrically, without respect to geographical limits or political systems. These innovations tend to transform traditional cultural systems, frequently with unexpected social consequences. Thus technology can be conceived as both a creative and a destructive process.

You are going to study at the University of Cardiff. Write a letter asking to be enrolled in its language training program. Your letter should be based on the outline given below: 1) the purpose of this letter; 2) your plan for your B.A. degree; 3) your hope. You should write about 100 words. Do not sign your own name at the end of the letter. Use "Li Peng" instead. You do not need to write the address.

Ask just about any high school senior or junior in America—or their parents—and they"ll tell you that getting into a selective college is harder than it used to be. They"re right about that. But the reasons for the newfound difficulty are not well understood. Population growth plays a role, but the number of teenagers is not too much higher than it was 30 years ago, when the youngest baby boomers were still applying to college. And while many more Americans attend college than in the past, most of the growth has occurred at colleges with relatively few resources and high dropout rates, which bear little resemblance to the elites. So what else is going on? One overlooked factor is that top colleges are admitting fewer American students than they did a generation ago. Colleges have globalized over that time, deliberately increasing the share of their student bodies that come from overseas and leaving fewer slots for applicants from the United States. For American teenagers, it really is harder to get into Harvard—or Yale, Stanford, Brown, Boston College or many other elite colleges—than it was when today"s 40-year-olds or 50-year-olds were applying. The number of spots filled by American students at Harvard, after adjusting for the size of the teenage population nationwide, has dropped 27 percent since 1994. At Yale and Dartmouth, the decline has been 24 percent. At Carleton, it"s 22 percent. At Notre Dame and Princeton, it is 14 percent. This globalization obviously brings some big benefits. It has exposed American students to perspectives that our proudly parochial country often does not provide in childhood. Yet the way in which American colleges have globalized comes with costs, too. For one thing, the rise in foreign students has complicated the colleges" stated efforts to make their classes more economically diverse. Foreign students often receive insufficient financial aid and tend to be from well-off families. For another thing, the country"s most selective colleges have effectively shrunk as far as American students are concerned, during the same span that many students and their parents are spending more time obsessing over getting into one. Either way, the research emphasizes a problem with the way colleges have globalized. With only a handful of exceptions (including Harvard, Amherst, M.I.T. and Yale), colleges have not tried hard to recruit an economically diverse group of foreign students. The students instead have become a revenue source.

Condoling with a Friend on His Illness Write a letter of about 100 words based on the following situation: You hear that your friend Ken is ill. Now write a letter to comfort him and offer your help with his missed lessons. Do not sign your own name at the end of the letter. Use "Li Ming" instead. Do not write the address.

Suppose one of your close friends, Mr. Zhang, has been hospitalized for one week. Write a letter of consolation to him. Your writing should include: 1) your reaction and 2) your best wishes. You should write neatly on the ANSWER SHEET.(10 points)

Everyday some 16m barrels of oil leave the Gulf through the Strait of Hormuz. That is enough to fill a soft-drink can for everyone on earth, or to power every motor vehicle on the planet for 25 miles (40 km). Gulf oil accounts for 40% of global trade in the sticky stuff. More important, it makes up two-thirds of known deposits. Whereas at present production rates the rest of the world"s oil reserves will last for a mere 25 years, the Gulf"s will last for 100. In other words, the region"s strategic importance is set to grow and grow. Or at least so goes the conventional wisdom, which is usually rounded out with scary talk of unstable supplies, spendthrift regimes and a potential fundamentalist menace. Yet all those numbers come with caveats. A great deal of oil is consumed by the countries that produce it rather than traded, so in reality the Gulf accounts for less than a quarter of the world"s daily consumption. As for reserves, the figures are as changeable as a mirage in the desert. The most comprehensive research available, conducted by the US Geological Survey, refers to an "expected" total volume for global hydrocarbon deposits that is about double current known reserves. Using that figure, and throwing in natural gas along with oil, it appears that the Gulf contains a more moderate 30% or so of the planet"s future fossil-fuel supplies. Leaving out the two Gulf states that are not covered in this survey—Iran and Iraq—the remaining six between them hold something like 20% of world hydrocarbon reserves, not much more than Russia. All the same, it is still a hefty chunk; enough, you might think, to keep the people living atop the wells in comfort for the foreseeable future. But you might be wrong. At present, the nations of the Gulf Cooperation Council have a combined national income roughly equal to Switzerland"s, but a population which, at around 30m, is more than four times as big. It is also the fastest-growing on earth, having increased at nine times the Swiss rate over the past quarter-century. Meanwhile the region"s share of world oil trade has fallen, as has the average price per barrel. As a result, the income per person generated by GCC oil exports has been diminishing since the 1970s. True, surging demand from America and Asia has recently boosted the Gulf"s share of trade, but the medium-term outlook for oil pries remains weak. Combined with continued growth in oil consumption, this should create sustained upward pressure on prices. And high oil prices will speed the search for alternatives. Who knows, in 20 years" time fuel cells and hydrogen power may have started to become commercial propositions.

America's great labour market slump continues to cast its pall over the economy, leaving one lonely group in particular shrouded in shadows. Over 6m Americans, more than 40% of all those unemployed, have now been out of work for more than six months. Most of these, 4. 5m, haven't worked for a year or more. This crisis of long-term joblessness is unprecedented in the post-war period. Lacklustre growth is the main problem. The pace of new hiring crashed during the recession and has scarcely recovered since. Although America's unemployment rate is down a percentage point from its peak, this is little cause for cheer. Workers are escaping unemployment more slowly than at any time since 1948. The long-term unemployed are struggling most; in the year to June, the newly jobless were three times more likely to find new work in a given month than the long-term unemployed. Many of the latter have given up hope. For the first time in decades, jobless workers are more likely to drop out of the labour force (and cease to be counted as unemployed) than to get a job. Bit by bit, a large mass of American workers is losing touch with the labour market. One might expect unemployment to carry less stigma after a deep recession—bad times, rather than personal shortcoming, being the more likely reason for a sacking. Yet a worker's lifetime earnings are hurt more by a job loss in a weak economy.【F1】 An experienced worker laid off when unemployment is at 9% faces a reduction in lifetime earnings nearly twice that of someone sacked when the rate is 5% : a loss of 20% on average, according to new work by Steven Davis and Till von Wachter. 【F2】 The unemployed increasingly face discrimination in the hiring queue, often enough that Barack Obama proposes to ban the practice, which might encourage employers not to hire at all, for fear of legal action . Policymakers are slowly beginning to respond to the crisis.【F3】 Barack Obama's proposed American Jobs Act would reauthorise for another year current emergency unemployment benefits, which help to support consumption among the jobless, reducing poverty and propping up demand. Mr. Obama proposes to increase the programme's flexibility. Benefits could be used to supplement wages at businesses that cut hours rather than lay off workers, for instance. The president also seems fond of state-level programmes like Georgia Works, which pay benefits to jobless workers engaged in training. Should Congress approve, such measures could light the path back to work for many jobless Americans. The Federal Reserve is also paying heed.【F4】 At a speech in late August, Chairman Ben Bernanke warned that long-term unemployment could harm the economy's long-run growth prospects, though since then he has done little to help. 【F5】 Nothing would be so effective as a strong economy and a tight labour market: despite growing interest in their troubles, that seems a distant prospect for those struggling on the edge of the working world.

John Stuart Mill argued in the 19th century that an individual should be free to do as he pleased, so long as he did not harm anyone else. The ban on smoking in pubs, bars and company cars—in effect, in all enclosed public spaces—that came into effect in England in 2007 was informed by such thinking. Brought in to protect the health of non-smokers who worked in or frequented such places, it seems to have worked. Research published on June 9th this year shows that, since the ban, fewer people have been admitted to hospital with symptoms of a heart attack. Second-hand smoke from a burning cigarette is far more noxious than the nicotine-infused fumes inhaled by the smoker. In the minutes after a neighbor has lit a cigarette, a passive smoker"s chances of suffering an immediate heart attack rise rapidly as toxins in the fug make his blood stickier. His long-term risk also rises, as narrowing arteries threaten him with heart disease and his chances of developing lung cancer and numerous other nasties also increase. Anna Gilmore of the University of Bath and her colleagues looked at how many people were admitted to hospital with a heart attack in England between 2002 and 2008. About 110,000 people are struck down each year; almost a fifth of them die before they reach hospital, and a further tenth within a month of going into one. Ms Gilmore and her team found that, in the 12 months after the smoking ban came into force, some 1,200 fewer people were admitted to hospital with heart attacks than even the prevailing downward trend had suggested was likely. That drop of 2.4% saved ￡8.4m in emergency hospital care. When the ban took effect, England was the largest jurisdiction to forbid smoking in enclosed public spaces. Studying a large population tends to give a more accurate result than studies of smaller places such as Scotland, parts of Italy and New York state, where more impressive reductions have been claimed. When the town of Helena, in Montana, banned smoking for six months, for example, hospital admissions for heart attacks almost halved from seven to less than four a month. Ms Gilmore reckons her figure, which covers far more people, is more robust. Because heart disease is the most common cause of death in wealthy countries, even a relatively small reduction in heart attacks is good news for a great many people. In Britain, the freedom to smoke remains, but not at the expense of others.

TheRealBeautyComesfromVirtueWriteanessayof160-200wordsbasedonthedrawing.Inyouressay,youshould1)describethedrawingbriefly,2)explainitsintendedmeaning,and3)giveyourcomments.

An old saying has it that half of all advertising budgets are wasted—the trouble is, no one knows which half. In the internet age, at least in theory, this fraction can be much reduced. By watching what people search for, click on and say online, companies can aim "behavioral" ads at those most likely to buy. In the past couple of weeks a quarrel has illustrated the value to advertisers of such fin e-grained information: should advertisers assume that people are happy to be tracked and sent behavioral ads? Or should they have explicit permission? In December 2010 America" s Federal Trade Commission(FTC)proposed adding a "do not track"(DNT)option to internet browsers, so that users could tell advertisers that they did not want to be followed. Microsoft" s Internet Explorer and Apple" s Safari both offer DNT; Google" s Chrome is due to do so this year. In February the FTC and Digital Advertising Alliance(DAA)agreed that the industry would get cracking on responding to DNT requests. On May 31st Microsoft set off the row: It said that Internet Explorer 10, the version due to appear in Windows 8, would have DNT as a default. Advertisers are horrified. Human nature being what it is, most people stick with default settings. Few switch DNT on now, but if tracking is off it will stay off. Bob Liodice, the chief executive of the Association of National Advertisers, one of the groups in the DAA, says consumers will be worse off if the industry cannot collect information about their preferences. "People will not get fewer ads," he says. "They" 11 get less meaningful, less targeted ads." It is not yet clear how advertisers will respond. Getting a DNT signal does not oblige anyone to stop tracking, although some companies have promised to do so. Unable to tell whether someone really objects to behavioral ads or whether they are sticking with Microsoft" s default, some may ignore a DNT signal and press on anyway. Also unclear is why Microsoft has gone it alone. After all, it has an ad business too, which it says will comply with DNT requests, though it is still working out how. If it is trying to upset Google, which relies almost wholly on advertising,it has chosen an indirect method:there is no guarantee that DNT by default will become the norm. DNT does not seem an obviously huge selling point for Windows 8—though the firm has compared some of its other products favorably with Google"s on that count before. Brendon Lynch, Microsoft"s chief privacy officer, blogged: "we believe consumers should have more control." Could it really be that simple?

For the first time in history more people live in towns than in the country. In Britain this has had a curious result. While polls show Britons rate "the countryside" alongside the royal family, Shakespeare and the National Health Service(NHS)as what makes them proudest of their country, this has limited political support. A century ago Octavia Hill launched the National Trust not to rescue stylish houses but to save "the beauty of natural places for everyone forever." It was specifically to provide city dwellers with spaces for leisure where they could experience "a refreshing air." Hill's pressure later led to the creation of national parks and green belts.They don't make countryside any more, and every year concrete consumes more of it. It needs constant guardianship. At the next election none of the big parties seem likely to endorse this sentiment. The Conservatives' planning reform explicitly gives rural development priority over conservation, even authorising "off-plan" building where local people might object. The concept of sustainable development has been defined as prof itable. Labour likewise wants to discontinue local planning where councils oppose development. The Liberal Democrats are silent. Only Ukip, sensing its chance, has sided with those pleading for a more considered ap proach to using green land. Its Campaign to Protect Rural England struck terror into many local Conservative parties. The sensible place to build new houses, factories and offices is where people are, in cities and towns where infrastructure is in place.The London agents Stirling Ackroyd recently identified enough sites for half a million houses in the London area alone, with no intrusion on green belt. What is true of London is even truer of the provinces. The idea that "housing crisis" equals "concreted meadows" is pure lobby talk. The issue is not the need for more house but, as always, where to put them. Under lobby pressure, George Osborne favours rural new-build against urban renovation and renewal. He favours out-of-town shopping sites against high streets. This is not a free market but a biased one. Rural towns and villages have grown and will always grow. They do so best where building sticks to their edges and respects their character. We do not ruin urban conservation areas. Why ruin rural ones? Development should be planned, not let rip. After the Netherlands, Britain is Europe' s most crowded country. Half a century of town and country planning has enabled it to retain an enviable rural coherence, while still permitting low-density urban living. There is no doubt of the alternative—the corrupted landscapes of southern Portugal, Spain or Ireland. Avoiding this rather than promoting it should unite the left and right of the political spectrum.

In the following text, some sentences have been removed. For Questions 1-5, choose the most suitable one from the list A-G to fit into each of the numbered blanks. There are two extra choices, which do not fit in any of the blanks. Canada"s premiers (the leaders of provincial governments), if they have any breath left after complaining about Ottawa at their late July annual meeting, might spare a moment to do something, together, to reduce health-care costs. They"re all groaning about soaring health budgets, the fastest-growing component of which are pharmaceutical costs. 【C1】______ What to do? Both the Romanow commission and the Kirby committee on health care—to say nothing of reports from other experts—recommended the creation of a national drug agency. Instead of each province having its own list of approved drugs, bureaucracy, procedures and limited bargaining power, all would pool resources, work with Ottawa, and create a national institution. 【C2】______ But "national" doesn"t have to mean that "National" could mean interprovincial—provinces combining efforts to create one body. Either way, one benefit of a "national" organization would be to negotiate better prices, if possible, with drug manufacturers. Instead of having one province—or a series of hospitals within a province— negotiate a price for a given drug on the provincial list, the national agency would negotiate on behalf of all provinces. Rather than, say, Quebec, negotiating on behalf of seven million people, the national agency would negotiate on behalf of 31 million people. Basic economics suggests the greater the potential consumers, the higher the likelihood of a better price. 【C3】______ A small step has been taken in the direction of a national agency with the creation of the Canadian Coordinating Office for Health Technology Assessment, funded by Ottawa and the provinces. Under it, a Common Drug Review recommends to provincial lists which new drugs should be included. Predictably, and regrettably, Quebec refused to join. A few premiers are suspicious of any federal-provincial deal-making. They (particularly Quebec and Alberta) just want Ottawa to fork over additional billions with few, if any, strings attached. That"s one reason why the idea of a national list hasn"t gone anywhere, while drug costs keep rising fast. 【C4】______ Premiers love to quote Mr. Romanow"s report selectively, especially the parts about more federal money. Perhaps they should read what he had to say about drugs: "A national drug agency would provide governments more influence on pharmaceutical companies in order to try to constrain the ever-increasing cost of drugs." 【C5】______ So when the premiers gather in Niagara Falls to assemble their usual complaint list, they should also get cracking about something in their jurisdiction that would help their budgets and patients.[A] Quebec"s resistance to a national agency is provincialist ideology. One of the first advocates for a national list was a researcher at Laval University. Quebec"s Drug Insurance Fund has seen its costs skyrocket with annual increases from 14.3 percent to 26.8 percent![B] Or they could read Mr. Kirby"s report: "the substantial buying power of such an agency would strengthen the public prescription-drug insurance plans to negotiate the lowest possible purchase prices from drug companies."[C] What does "national" mean? Roy Romanow and Senator Michael Kirby recommended a federal-provincial body much like the recently created National Health Council.[D] The problem is simple and stark: health-care costs have been, are, and will continue to increase faster than government revenues.[E] According to the Canadian Institute for Health Information, prescription drug costs have risen since 1997 at twice the rate of overall health-care spending. Part of the increase comes from drugs being used to replace other kinds of treatments. Part of it arises from new drugs costing more than older kinds. Part of it is higher prices.[F] So, if the provinces want to run the health-care show, they should prove they can run it, starting with an interprovincial health list that would end duplication, save administrative costs, prevent one province from being played off against another, and bargain for better drug prices.[G] Of course, the pharmaceutical companies will scream. They like divided buyers; they can lobby better that way. They can use the threat of removing jobs from one province to another. They can hope that, if one province includes a drug on its list, the pressure will cause others to include it on theirs. They wouldn"t like a national agency, but self-interest would lead them to deal with it.