For most people Britain"s bouncing economy, now growing at its fastest for three years, is cause for cheer. Not,【C1】______for those who manage the country"s electricity power system. For them【C2】______growth means faster progress towards a critical situation. Ofgem, the energy regulator, has long【C3】______that the margin between peak electricity demand and【C4】______supply is falling. In June it said the margin would【C5】______from 14% in 2014 to just 4% in the winter of 2018, increasing the risk of blackouts【C6】______the weather turn cold or a power station or two【C7】______. Since that report Britain"s economy has grown fast. Ofgem"s assessment【C8】______that Britain would grow by about 1.6% in 2017. The Bank of England now【C9】______2.8% growth. This will【C10】______consumption. Over the past decade an increase in peak electricity demand of 0.5%【C11】______each additional percentage point of economic growth. John Feddersen of Aurora Energy Research thinks the capacity margin will therefore【C12】______to 2.6% by 2018 unless action is taken. That【C13】______into a one-in-seven chance of shortages, up from the one-in-twelve chance【C14】______was thought most likely last summer. Falling coal prices have kept Britain"s coal-fired power stations running at full【C15】______. That means many will have to close sooner than was【C16】______because European environmental laws【C17】______the total number of operating hours left to them. At the same time cheap coal has made electricity from gas uncompetitive,【C18】______operators to put some gas-fired plants into long-term【C19】______. Renewable capacity cannot yet make up the【C20】______.

Effective communication is essential for all organisations. It links the activities of the various parts of the organisation and ensures that everyone is working towards a Common goal. It is also extremely important for motivating employees. Staff need to know how they are getting on, what they are doing right and in which areas they could improve. Working alone can be extremely difficult and it is much easier if someone takes an interest and provides support. Employees need to understand why their job is important and how it contributes to the overall success of the firm. Personal communication should also include target setting. People usually respond well to goals, provided these are agreed between the manager and subordinate and not imposed. However, firms often have communications problems that can undermine their performance. In many cases, these problems occur because messages are passed on in an inappropriate way. There are of course, several ways of conveying information to others in the organisation. These include speaking to them directly, e-mailing, telephoning or sending a memo. The most appropriate method depends on what exactly it is you are communicating. For example, anything that is particularly sensitive or confidential, such as an employee"s appraisal, should be done face-to-face. One of the main problems for senior executives is that they do not have the time or resources needed to communicate effectively. In large companies, for example, it is impossible for senior managers to meet and discuss progress with each employee individually. Obviously this task can be delegated but at the cost of creating a gap between senior management and staff. As a result, managers are often forced to use other methods of communication. Like memos or notes, even if they know these are not necessarily the most suitable means of passing on messages. The use of technology, such as e-mail, mobile phones and network system, is speeding up communication immensely. However, this does not mean that more investment in technology automatically proves beneficial, systems can become outdated or employees may lack appropriate training. There are many communications tools now available but a firm cannot afford all of them. Even if it could, it does not actually need them all. The potential gains must be weighed up against the costs, and firms should realise that more communication does not necessarily mean better communication. As the number of people involved in an organisation increase, the use of written communication rises even faster. Instead of a quick conversation to sort something out numerous messages can be passed backwards and forwards. This can lead to a tremendous amount of paperwork and is often less effective than face to face communication. When you are actually talking to someone you can discuss things until you are happy they have understood and feedback is immediate. With written messages, however, you are never quite sure how it will be received. What you think you have said and what the other person thinks you have said can be very different. The amount of written information generated in large organisations today can lead to communication overload. So much information is gathered that it gets in the way of making decisions. Take a look at the average manager"s desk and you will see the problem—it is often covered in letters, reports and memos. This overload can lead to inefficiencies. For example, managers may not be able to find the information they want when they need it. Communication is also becoming more difficult with the changes occurring in employment patterns. With more people working part-time and working from home, managing communication is becoming increasingly complex.

The quest for wisdom is as old as Socrates, but it"s also an up-to-the-minute economic indicator. A contrarian one: when things are going well, you don"t have to go searching for wisdom. It streams nonstop over CNBC, its avatars sit atop, the Forbes list of billionaires and each day it proves again the eternal truths of the free market. Then in due course things go to hell; the elites humbly confess their ignorance to Congress or a grand jury, and the search for new patterns begins. Tellingly, scholars date the modem scientific study of wisdom to the work of the American psychologist Vivian Clayton in the malaise-ridden 1970s. Clayton devised the first empirical tests for wisdom, which she defined as the ability to acquire knowledge and analyze it both logically and emotionally-picking up on the work begun by Socrates. So it"s no coincidence that several dozen researchers in fields ranging from neuroscience to art, music and law have just received wisdom-seeking grants under the auspices of the University of Chicago. The $2.7 million program, funded by the Templeton Foundation, is called Defining Wisdom, a name that implies the researchers will know what they were looking for once they find it. Wisdom, according to Robert J. Sternberg of Tufts University, the author of several books on the topic, is still an obscure field with minimal academic cachet. With so much at stake, the program"s directors, psychologists John Cacioppo and Howard Nusbaum, dismissed the traditional approach to wisdom research; rather they cast their nets wide and deep into the pools of academy. The 38 proposals they approved include ones aimed at finding wisdom in computer operations and in classical literature. Starting at the beginning, one scholar observes that "language is the medium by which wisdom-related knowledge is usually conveyed." That sounds self-evident, but another scientist proposes to "explore music as a form of wisdom." "We are trying to think out of the box," says Nusbaum. Cacioppo and Nusbaum dismiss arguments about the inherent circularity of searching for wisdom at the same time as defining it. But they have some preconceptions about what they expect to find. They see "wisdom" in part as a corrective to the "rational choice" pattern of decision making, the foundation of free-market economics. Rational choice holds that everyone"s happiness is best served when people maximize their short-term individual gains, even at the expense of the broad interests of society or the long-term future. That is precisely opposite the approach of, for example, ants, which are entirely indifferent to their individual fates and don"t, as a rule, over-expand out of reckless greed.

Just how does a person arrive at an idea of the kind of person that he is? He develops this (1)_____ of self through a gradual and complicated (2)_____ which continues throughout life. The notion is an (3)_____ that one establishes only with the help of others. (4)_____ the elementary knowledge that one is short or tall is a comparative judgment that we cannot make (5)_____ we have the opportunity to (6)_____ ourselves with others. One"s idea of qualities which are harder to (7)_____ is even more dependent upon other people"s ideas. Whether one is intelligent, or stupid; attractive, or ugly; these and many other ideas of the self are (8)_____ from the reactions of people with whom we (9)_____ This process of (10)_____ the nature of the self from the reaction of others has been labeled the "Looking-glass Self" by Cooley, who carefully analyzed this psychological (11)_____ of self-discovery. Just as the picture in the mirror gives an image of the physical self, (12)_____ the perception of the reactions of others gives an image of the social self. We know, (13)_____, that we are good at certain things and not at others. This (14)_____ came to us from the reactions of other persons, first our parents and then other individuals (15)_____ in life. It should be remembered that, as other people"s reactions could be (16)_____ and understood in more than one way, the looking-glass self with which the individual (17)_____ may easily differ from the image others have actually formed of his (18)_____ Clearly, it is our perception of the responses of others and not their (19)_____ responses that (20)_____ our self-image, and these perceptions are often not accurate.

Studythefollowingdrawingcarefullyandwriteanessay.Intheessay,youshould1.describethedrawingbriefly,2.explainitsintendedmeaning,andthen3.giveyourcomments.Youshouldwrite160-200wordsneatlyontheAnswerSheet.

Standard & Poor"s maintains a cautious stance on cable-TV operators in the wake of Verizon"s (VZ) announcement in early May of aggressive price cuts for its digital subscriber line (DSL) Internet-access service. Our overall outlook for the S & P Cable & Broadcasting index, which also includes shares of over-the-air TV and radio broadcasters, is neutral to modestly positive. Cable operators have so far ruled out an overt price war on broadband services. However, expect to see near-term responses like increased bundling of services, extended free months, more aggressive marketing and promotions, even modest price cuts from cable outfits that offer multiple services such as broadband as they defend their high growth Internet-access business. Continued rapid growth in digital cable and high-speed data services helped support the industry"s ongoing revenue growth. We at S & P are wary of price pressures on the long-term and short-term economies of cable"s broadband business. That"s especially true as another Baby Bell, SBC Communications (SBC), is also undercutting cable-service providers in many core markets. In their traditional business segment, U.S. cable operators continue to benefit from a modest rebound in advertising spending, following a significant downturn during the economic slump that started in 2001. The industry has actually increased its share of total U.S. ad spending. The cable sector posted uninterrupted revenue growth during the recent downturn, as its greater reliance on subscriber revenues gives it a more defensive posture than broadcasters. Subscriptions remain the industry"s primary revenue source, accounting for roughly 65% of the total, with advertising makes up the rest. Our near-term outlook for cable remains tempered by heightened levels of geopolitical anxieties, though the Iraq war"s end has alleviated their impact on advertising demand. Meanwhile, core subscription growth continues to be driven by robust rates of high-speed data sign-ups and by improved prospects for digital-video ancillary offerings like video-on-demand and high-definition TV. We believe that successful media operators will continue to anticipate, rather than react to, the ever-changing dynamics of an increasingly competitive media environment. Even with increased regulatory surveillance, vertically and horizontally integrated media operators should begin to wield increasing competitive advantages as they leverage operating efficiencies and realize synergies across multiple delivery platforms.

The moral high ground has always been female territory. Men, after all, lie and cheat and rob and pollute the environment and disproportionately populate the prisons, while women do their best to appreciate their good qualities. Some women, at least. But with the rise of feminism, the assaults on men"s moral probity have become more frequent, and the belief in their arrogance and lack of concern for anything but their own selfish ends has become a truism. It"s the men who are greedy. It"s the men who are disloyal. It"s the men who will do anything for money. It"s the men who are immature. In the world of sport, pouty male athletes are Whipping boys of talk radio. They have graced the cover of Sports Illustrate, and on the inside have been vilified for a litany d sins, among them greed, disdain for the fans who pay their exorbitant salaries, and a lack of respect for the game that the fans love and that has made them rich. Female athletes, on the other hand, have been placed on a pedestal—but it has been a pretty easy one to climb. For one thing, there hasn"t been enough money to get greedy about. For another, there haven"t been any fans. And for third, those who didn"t love the game had absolutely no reason to keep playing. But thanks to the rise of women"s basketball, female basketball players are going to find themselves tempted by the same vanities that have seduced so many men- and though we know some will give in, we don"t know how many. For women"s basketball to become a major sport in America, as opposed to a profitable one like arena football, something is going to be offered other than just pure skill. That something should be, and if fact will have to be, a different attitude, a purer sense of sport, than the men deliver. It may be asking too much of women to withstand the temptations that have sucked male athletes into prima donna poses, but then again it may be true that women have occupied the high moral ground for so long because they actually are more sensitive to what"s important in the long run. I honestly don"t know how this drama will play out, but the process will tell us about more than just the fate of women"s basketball. If women, who are steadily gaining more and more control in this world, can truly respond in a more reasoned way to the pull of power, then there is hope for the 21st century. But if women, as a gender, can do no hatter than men when given the chance, then in basketball as in life, we can only look ahead to more of the same.

Until recently, most American entrepreneurs(企业家) were men. Discrimination against women in business, the demands of caring for families, and lack of business training had kept the number of women entrepreneurs small. Now, however, businesses owned by women account for more than $40 billion in annual revenues, and this figure is likely to continue rising throughout the 1980s. As Carolyn Doppelt Gray, an official of the Small Business Administration, has noted, "The 1970s was the decade of women entering management, and the 1980s has turned out to be the decade of the woman entrepreneur." What are some of the factors behind this trend? For one thing, as more women earn advanced degrees in business and enter the corporate world, they are finding obstacles. Women are still excluded from most executive suites. Charlotte Taylor, a management consultant, had noted, "In the 1970s women believed if they got an MBA and worked hard, they could become chairman of the board. Now they"ve found out that isn"t going to happen, so they go out on their own." In the past, most women entrepreneurs worked in "women"s" fields—cosmetics and clothing, for example. But this is changing. Consider ASK Computer Systems, a $22-million-a-year computer software business. It was founded in 1973 by Sandra Kurtzig, who was then a housewife with degrees in math and engineering. When Kurtzig founded the business, her first product was software that let weekly newspapers keep tabs on their newspaper carriers—and her office was a bedroom at home, with a shoebox under the bed to hold the company"s cash. After she succeeded with the newspaper software system, she hired several bright computer-science graduates to develop additional programs. When these were marketed and sold. ASK began to grow. It now has 200 employees, and Sandra Kurtzig owns $66.9 million of stock. Of course, many women who start their own businesses fail, just as men often do. They still face hurdles in the business world, especially problems in raising money; the Banking and finance world is still dominated by men, and old attitudes die hard. Most businesses owned by women are still quite small. But the situation is changing; there are likely to be many more Sandra Kurtzigs in the years ahead.

The job recovery could perhaps best be described as modest , and Friday " s jobs report for May further solidified that description. U. S. employers added 175,000 new jobs last month—a strong showing, but only moderately so. And from the perspective of a central banker, that might be welcome news. An employment report that showed too big of a spike in job creation could spook investors, even as it signals a healthy economy, says Brett Wander, chief investment officer in fixed income at Charles Schwab Investment Management. "There"s some concern[among investors]that in turn[Federal Reserve Chairman Ben]Bernanke"s going to take the punch bowl away. Then it may be a very shortlived party. He wants a long sustained jobs growth," says Wander. That "punch howl" is the Fed"s $85 billion of monthly purchases of bonds and mortgage backed securities, known as QE3. While Bernanke has mentioned the possibility of tapering in coming months. he has also said he believes sustained and substantial job market improvement will be a prerequisite for dialing back the program. Markets have been watching closely for any signs of when that might be. Those bond buys have been keeping interest rates very low. However, even Bernanke"s mention of possible future tapering in a congressional testimony last month sent bond yields spiking. If a job report comes in too strongly, says Wander, it will trigger a bond sell-off, sending bond yields upward. In other words, there is a scenario in which a supremely positive jobs report could, ironically, hurt the economy. "It"s those low yields that are arguably stimulating the economy," says Wander. For example, low bond yields mean low mortgage rates, which could inspire more buyers to get into the housing market. Higher interest rates could slow that down. On the other hand, it"s important to remember that low interest rates are not the Fed"s ultimate goal. Rather, they"re a means to the end of boosting employment. For that reason, it may be that the economic outlook is sunny, whether jobs data is modest or booming. "If you take a bullish view—and we are bullish—we"re kind of in a win-win situation here," says Hank Smith, chief investment officer and director at Haverford Trust. "Yes. better data will lead to the fed starting to pull back from its quantitative easing, but better data is something that is desired. So that should be good for corporate earnings, which is the ultimate driver of stock prices. " In Smith"s opinion, the latest jobs report was better than expected but "still reflective of an economy that"s growing at a below-average rate. " He"s not the only one who considers economic growth middling. In its latest Beige Book report released Wednesday, the Federal Reserve characterized activity as growing at "modest to moderate pace. " So while the chatter grows, even among Fed Presidents, about the prospect of tapering, more mixed data could mean a full punch bowl for at least a few more months.

Writeanessayof160_200wordsbasedonthefollowingdrawing.Inyouressay,youshould1.describethedrawingbriefly,2.analyzethecausesofthisphenomenon,and3.giveyoursuggestionsontheissue.YoushouldwriteneatlyontheANSWERSHEET.(20points)

It was a little weird at first, Erin Tobin said, seeing Harry Potter right there on the stage without his pants, or indeed any of his clothes. Not actually Harry Potter, of course, since he is fictional, but the next best thing. Daniel Radcliffe, who plays him in the movies. Now 17. Mr. Radcliffe has cast off his wand, his broomstick and everything else to appear in the West End revival of Peter Shaffer"s "Equus". He stars as Alan Strang, a disturbed young man who, in a distinctly un-Harry-Potterish moment of frenzied psychosexual madness, blinds six horses with a hoof pick. To make it clear what audiences are in for, at least in part, photographs of Mr. Radcliffe"s buff torso, stripped almost to the groin, have been used to advertise the production. It is as jarring as if, say, Anne Hathaway suddenly announced that instead of playing sweet-natured princesses and fashion-world ingénues, she wanted to appear onstage as a nude murderous prostitute. To explain how is surprising the change of Radcliffe to the audience, the author mentions Anne "Equus" opened last week, and the consensus so far is that Mr. Radcliffe has successfully extricated himself from his cinematic alter ego. Considering that playing Harry Potter is practically all he has done in his career, this is no small achievement. "I think he"s a really good actor, and I sort of forgot about Harry Potter", said Ophelia Oates, 14, who saw the play over the weekend. "Anyway, you can"t be Harry Potter forever". In The Daily Telegraph, Charles Spencer said that "Daniel Radcliffe brilliantly succeeds m throwing off the mantle of Harry Potter, announcing himself as a thrilling stage actor of unexpected depth and range". Mr. Radcliffe told The Daily Telegraph that "I thought it would be a bad idea to wait till the Potter films were all finished to do something else". There are still a few to go. The fifth, "Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix", is scheduled for release on July 13, and Mr. Radcliffe has signed on for the final two installments as well. (Meanwhile, the seventh and last book in the series, "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows", will hit stores on July 21.) Harry and Alan could not be more dissimilar as characters, even if both "come from quite weird backgrounds", as 13-year-old Ella Pitt, another recent theatergoer, put it. (And no. she declared, she was not too young for all the nakedness, swearing and sexuality.) Both characters have unresolved issues relating to their parents: Harry, because his are dead, and Alan, because his have driven him insane. But when it comes to romance, for instance, the celluloid Harry has yet to kiss a girl; the big moment comes in the forthcoming film. Meanwhile, Alan in "Equus" not only engages in some serious equi-erotic nuzzling with an actor playing a horse, but is also onstage, fully nude, for 10 minutes, during which he nearly has sex with an equally naked young woman.

Our visit to the excavation of a Roman fort on a hill near Coventry was of more than archaeological interest. The year"s dig had been a fruitful one and had assembled evidence of a permanent military camp much larger than had at first been conjectured. We were greeted on the site by a group of excavators, some of them filling in a trench that had yielded an almost complete pot the day before, others enjoying the last-day luxury of a cigarette in the sun, but all happy to explain and talk about their work. If we had not already known it, nothing would have suggested that this was a party of prisoners from the nearby prison. This is not the first time that prison labor has been used in work of this kind, but here the experiment, now two years old, has proved outstandingly satisfactory. From the archaeologists" point of view, prisoners provide a steady force of disciplined labor throughout the entire season, men to whom it is a serious day"s work, and not the rather carefree holiday job that it tends to be for the amateur archaeologist. Newcomers are comparatively few, and can soon be initiated by those already trained in the work. Prisoners may also be more accustomed to heavy work like shoveling and carting soil than the majority of students. When Coventry"s Keeper of Archaeology went to the prison to appeal for help, he was received cautiously by the men, but when the importance of the work was fully understood, far more volunteers were forthcoming than could actually be employed. When they got to work on the site, and their efforts produced pottery and building foundations in what until last year had been an ordinary field, their enthusiasm grew till they would sometimes work through their lunch hour and tea break, and even carry on in the rain rather than sit it out in the hut. This was undoubtedly because the work was not only strenuous but absorbing, and called for considerable intelligence. The men worked always under professional supervision, but as the season went on they needed less guidance and knew when an expert should be summoned. Disciplinary problems were negligible: the men were carefully selected for their good conduct and working on a party like this was too valuable a privilege to be thrown away. The Keeper of Archaeology said that this was by far the most satisfactory form of labor that he had ever had, and that it had produced results, in quantity and quality, that could not have been achieved by any other means.

European farm ministers have ended three weeks of negotiations with a deal which they claim represents genuine reform of the common agricultural policy (CAP). Will it be enough to kick off the Doha world trade negotiations? On the face of it, the deal agreed in the early hours of Thursday June 26th looks promising. Most subsidies linked to specific farm products are, at last, to be broken—the idea is to replace these with a direct payment to farmers, unconnected to particular products. Support prices for several key products, including milk and butter, are to be cut—that should mean European prices eventually falling towards the world market level. Cutting the link between subsidy and production was the main objective of proposals put forward by Mr. Fischler, which had formed the starting point for the negotiations. The CAP is hugely unpopular around the world. It subsidizes European farmers to such an extent that they can undercut farmers from poor countries, who also face trade barriers that largely exclude them from the potentially lucrative European market. Farm trade is also a key feature of the Doha round of trade talks, launched under the auspices of the World Trade Organization (WTO) in November 2001. Developing countries have lined up alongside a number of industrial countries to demand an end to the massive subsidies Europe pays its farmers. Several Doha deadlines have already been missed because of the EU"s intransigence, and the survival of the talks will be at risk if no progress is made by September, when the world"s trade ministers meet in Cancun, Mexico. But now even the French seem to have gone along with the deal hammered out in Luxembourg. Up to a point, anyway. The package of measures gives the green light for the most eager reformers to move fast to implement the changes within their own countries. But there is an escape clause of sorts for the French and other reform-averse nations. They can delay implementation for up to two years. There is also a suggestion that the reforms might not apply where there is a chance that they would lead to a reduction in land under cultivation. These let-outs are potentially damaging for Europe"s negotiators in the Doha round. They could significantly reduce the cost savings that the reforms might otherwise generate and, in turn, keep European expenditure on farm support unacceptably high by world standards. Mote generally, the escape clauses could undermine the reforms by encouraging the suspicion that the new package will not deliver the changes that its supporters claim Close analysis of what is inevitably a very complicated package might confirm the sceptics" fears.

The famous hotel had been practically destroyed by the big fire.

The baby doubled its weight in a year.

You are going to read a text about being a better friend, followed by a list of important ways. Choose the best way from the list for each numbered subheading. Back when we were kids, the hours spent with friends were too numerous to count. There were marathon telephone conversations, all-night studying and giggling sessions. Even after boyfriends entered the picture, our best friends remained irreplaceable. And time was the means by which we nurtured those friendships. Now as adult women we never seem to have enough time for anything. Husbands, kids, careers and avocations—all require attention; too often, making time for our friends comes last on the list of priori ties. And yet, ironically, we need our friends as much as ever in adulthood. A friendship network is absolutely crucial for our well-being as adults. We have to do the hard work of building and sustaining the network. Here are some important ways for accomplishing this. Let go of your less central friendships. Many of our friendships were never meant to last a lifetime. It"s natural that some friendships have time limits. Furthermore, now everyone has a busy social calendar, so pull back from some people that you don"t really want to draw close to and give the most promising friendship a fair chance to grow. (41) Be willing to "drop everything" when you"re truly needed. You may get a call from a friend who is really depressed over a certain problem when you are just sitting down to enjoy a romantic dinner with your husband. This is just one of those instances when a friend"s needs mattered more. (42) Take advantage of the mails. Nearly all of us have pals living far away—friends we miss very much. Given the limited time available for visits and the high price of phone calls, writing is a fine way to keep in touch—and makes both sender and receiver feel good. (43) Risk expressing negative feelings. When time together is tough to come by, it"s natural to want the mood during that time to be upbeat. And many people fear that others will think less of you if you express the negative feelings like anger and hurt: (44) Don"t make your friends" problems your own. Sharing your friend"s grief is the way you show deep friendship. Never underestimate the value of loyalty. Loyalty has always been rated as one of the most desired qualities in friends. True loyalty can be a fairly subtle thing. Some people feel it means that, no matter what, your friend will always take you side. But real loyalty is being accepting the person, not necessarily of certain actions your friend might take. (45) Give the gift of time as often as time allows. Time is what we don"t have nearly enough of—and yet, armed with a little ingenuity, we can make it to give it to our friends. The last but not the least thing to keep a friendship alive is to say to your friends "I miss you and love you." Saying that at the end of a phone conversation, or a visit, or writing it on a birthday card, can sustain your friendship for the times you aren"t together.A. But taking on your friend"s pain doesn"t make that pain go away. There"s a big difference between empathy or recognizing a friend"s pain, and over identification, which makes the sufferer feel even weaker—"I must be in worse pain than I even thought, because the person I"m confiding in is suffering so much!" Remember troubled people just need their friends to stay grounded in their own feelings.B. Remember honesty is the key to keeping a friendship real. Sharing your pain will actually deepen a friendship.C. Besides, letters, carols and postcards have the virtue of being tangible—friends can keep them and reread them for years to come.D. The trick is remembering that a little is better than none and that you can do two things at once. For instance, if you both go for a weekly aerobics, go on the same day. If you both want to go on vocation, schedule the same destination.E. Careful listening, clear writing, close reading, plain speaking, and accurate description- will be invaluable. In tomorrow"s fast-paced business environment there will be precious little time to correct any misunderstandings. Communications break down may well become a fatal corporate disease.F. Sometimes, because of our unbreakable commitments or other circumstances, we simply can"t give a needy friend the time we"d like. If you can"t be there at that given moment, say something like, "I wish I could be with you—I can hear that you"re in pain. May I call you tomorrow?" Be sure your friend knows she"s cared about.

It is generally recognized in the world that the second Gulf War in Iraq is a crucial test of high-speed Web. For decades, Americans have anxiously (1)_____ each war through a new communications (2)_____, from the early silent film of World War I to the 24-hour cable news (3)_____ of the first Persian Gulf War. Now, (4)_____ bombs exploding in Baghdad, a sudden increase in wartime (5)_____ for online news has become a central test of the (6)_____ of high-speed Internet connections. It is also a good (7)_____ both to attract users to online media (8)_____ and to persuade them to pay for the material they find there, (9)_____ the value of the Cable News Network persuaded millions to (10)_____ to cable during the last war in Iraq. (11)_____ by a steady rise over the last 18 months in the number of people with high-speed Internet (12)_____, now at more than 70 million in the United States, the Web sites of many of the major news organizations have (13)_____ assembled a novel collage(拼贴) of (14)_____ video, audio reports, photography collections, animated weaponry (15)_____, interactive maps and other new digital reportage. These Internet services are (16)_____ on the remarkable abundance of sounds and images (17)_____ from video cameras (18)_____ on Baghdad and journalists traveling with troops. And they have found a (19)_____ audience of American office workers (20)_____ their computers during the early combat.

For a variety of reasons, travel medicine in Britain is a responsibility nobody wants. As a result, many travelers go abroad ill prepared to avoid serious disease. Why is travel medicine so unloved? Partly there"s an identity problem. Because it takes an interest in anything that impinges on the health of travelers, this emerging medical specialism invariably cuts across the traditional disciplines. It delves into everything from seasickness, jet lag and the hazards of camels to malaria and plague. But travel medicine has a more serious obstacle to overcome. Travel clinics are meant to tell people how to avoid ending up dead or in a tropical Diseases hospital when they come home. But it is notoriously difficult to get everybody to pay out money for keeping people healthy. Travel medicine has also been colonized by commercial interests—the vast majority of travel clinics in Britain are run by airlines or travel companies. And while travel concerns are happy to sell profitable injections, they may be less keen to spread bad news about travelers" diarrhea in Turkey, or to take the time to spell out preventive measures travelers could take. "The NHS consultant finds it difficult to define travelers" health," says Ron Behrens, the only NHS consultant in travel and tropical medicine and director of the travel clinic of the Hospital for Tropical Diseases in London. "Should it come within the NHS or should it be paid for? It"s a grey Tropical Diseases in London area, and opinion is split. No one seems to have any responsibility for defining its role," he says. To compound its low status in the medical hierarchy, travel medicine has to rely on statistics that are patchy at best. In most cases we just don"t know how many Britons contract diseases when abroad. And even if a disease is linked to travel there is rarely any information about where those afflicted went, what they ate, how they behaved, or which vaccinations they had. This shortage of hard facts and figures makes it difficult to give detailed advice to people, information that might even save their lives. A recent leader in the British Medical Journal argued: "Travel medicine will emerge as a credible discipline only if the risks encountered by travelers and the relative benefits of public health interventions are well defined in terms of their relative occurrence, distribution and control." Exactly how much money is wasted by poor travel advice? The real figure is anybody"s guess, but it could easily run into millions. Behrens gives one example. Britain spends more than fl million each year just on cholera vaccines that often don"t work and so give people a false sense of security. "Information on the prevention and treatment of all forms of diarrhea would be a better priority," he says.

It has been a wretched few weeks for America"s celebrity bosses. AIG"s Maurice Greenberg has been dramatically ousted from the firm through which he dominated global insurance for decades. At Morgan Stanley a mutiny is forcing Philip Purcell, a boss used to getting his own way, into an increasingly desperate campaign to save his skin. At Boeing, Harry Stonecipher was called out of retirement to lead the scandal-hit firm and raise ethical standards, only to commit a lapse of his own, being sacked for sending e-mails to a lover who was also an employee. Carly Fiorina was the most powerful woman in corporate America until a few weeks ago, when Hewlett-Packard(HP) sacked her for poor performance. The fate of Bernie Ebbers is much grimmer. The once high-profile boss of WorldCom could well spend the rest of his life behind bars following his conviction last month on fraud charges. In different ways, each of these examples appears to point to the same welcome conclusion: that the imbalance in corporate power of the late 1990s, when many bosses were allowed to behave like absolute monarchs, has been corrected. Alas, appearances can be deceptive. While each of these recent tales of chief-executive woo is a sis of progress, none provides much evidence that the crisis in American corporate governance is yet over. In fact, each of these cases is an example of failed, not successful, governance. At the very least, the beards of both Morgan Stanley and HP were far too slow to address their bosses" inadequacies. The record of the Boeing beard in picking chiefs prone to ethical lapses is too long to be dismissed as mere bad luck. The fall of Messrs Greenberg and Ebbers, meanwhile, highlights the growing role of government-and in particular, of criminal prosecutors in holding bosses to account: a development that is, at best, a mixed blessing. The Sarbanes-Oxley act, passed in haste following the Enron and WorldCom scandals, is imposing heavy costs on American companies; whether these are exceeded by any benefits is the subject of fierce debate and may not be known for years. Eliot Spitzer, New York"s attorney-general, is the leading advocate and practitioner of an energetic "law enforcement" approach. He may be right that the recent burst of punitive actions has been good for the economy, even if some of his own decisions have been open to question. Where he is undoubtedly right is in arguing that corporate America has done a lamentable job of governing itself. As he says in an article in the Wall Street Journal this week: "The hour cede among CEOs didn"t work. Board oversight didn"t work. Ser-regulation was a complete failure." AIG"s board, for example, did nothing about Mr. Greenberg"s use of murky accounting, or the conflicts posed by his use of offshore vehicles, or his constant bullying of his critics let alone the firm"s alleged participation in bid-rigging—until Mr. Spitzer threatened a criminal prosecution that might have destroyed the firm.

In the dimly lit cyber-cafe at Sciences-Po, hot-house of the French elite, no Gauloise smoke fills the air, no dog-eared copies of Sartre lie on the tables. French students are doing what all students do: surfing the web via Google. Now President Jacques Chirac wants to stop this American cultural invasion by setting up a rival French search-engine. The idea was prompted by Google"s plan to put online millions of texts from American and British university libraries. If English books are threatening to swamp cyberspace, Mr. Chirac will not stand idly by. He asked his culture minister, Renaud Donnedieu de Vabres, and Jean-Noel Jeanneney, head of France"s Bibliothèque Nationale, to do the same for French texts—and create a home-grown search-engine to browse them. Why not let Google do the job? Its French version is used for 74% of internet searches in France. The answer is the vulgar criteria it uses to rank results. "I do not believe", wrote Mr. Donnedieu de Vabres in Le Monde, "that the only key to access our culture should be the automatic ranking by popularity, which has been behind Google"s success". This is not the first time Google has met French resistance. A court has upheld a ruling against it, in a lawsuit brought by two firms that claimed its display of rival sponsored links (Google"s chief source of revenues) constituted trademark counterfeiting. The French state news agency, Agence France-Presse,has also filed suit against Google for copyright infringement. Googlephobia is spreading. Mr. Jeanneney has talked of the "risk of crushing domination by America in defining the view that future generations have of the world. "" I have nothing in particular against Google", he told L. Express, a magazine. "I simply note that this commercial company is the expression of the American system, in which the law of the market is king". Advertising muscle and consumer demand should not triumph over good taste and cultural sophistication. The flaws in the French plan are obvious. If popularity cannot arbitrate, what will? Mr. Jeanneney wants a "committee of experts". He appears to be serious, though the supply of French-speaking experts, or experts speaking any language for that matter, would seem to be insufficient. And if advertising is not to pay, will the taxpayer? The plan mirrors another of Mr. Chirac"s pet projects: a CNNà la francaise. Over a year ago, stung by the power of English-speaking television news channels in the Iraq war, Mr. Chirac promised to set up a French rival by the end of 2004. The project is bogged down by infighting. France"s desire to combat English, on the web or the airwaves, is understandable. Protecting France"s tongue from its citizens" inclination to adopt English words is an ancient hobby of the ruling elite. The Académie Francaise was set up in 1635 to that end. Linguists devise translations of cyber-terms, such as arrosage (spare) or bogue (bug). Laws limit the use of English on TV—" Super Nanny" and "Star Academy" are current pests—and impose translations of English slogans in advertising. Treating the invasion of English as a market failure that must be corrected by the state may look clumsy. In France it is just business as usual.