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School bullying is quite common in most schools. According to the American Psychological Association, approximately 40% to 80% of school-age children experience bullying at some point during their school careers. Regardless of the grade level, socioeconomic environment, gender and religion, bullying can happen to anyone. Teachers need to have a certain level of awareness of this issue. This starts with understanding the three forms of bullying: physical, verbal and emotional. Physical bullying is any unwanted physical contact between the bully and the victim. It is the most identifiable form of all. Verbal bullying is any injurious language or statement that causes the victim's emotional suffering. Emotional bullying is any form of bullying that causes damages to a victim's emotional well-being. The consequence of school bullying might be horrible. It is a major cause of school shootings. School shooters that died or committed suicide left behind evidence that they had been bullied. Therefore, enough attention should be given and practical measures should be taken by the school administration to address this issue.

BB: Listening Comprehension/B

A friend of mine, who's a little over 50, met with a big firm about a job recently. The good news was that they loved his ideas. But they said he would have to get someone else to present all his great ideas to clients. In other words, someone who can wear a hoodie to work without irony. Like a business body double. A millennial beard. That way, the company could keep looking young while still benefiting from his deep knowledge of the business and, well, human nature. The concept isn't as unfair as it sounds. As a late boomer, I have high hopes for this arrangement. We are increasingly codependent generations. Millennials need boomers and older Gen X-ers so they know what to improve on. And we need millennials to get our ideas across. Just ask anyone who's tried pitching a startup to investors without a 20-something on her team. Even middle-aged people don't trust anyone over 30. That's why 40- and 50-somethings fall all over themselves in meetings to show who can most enthusiastically agree with a millennial's idea. It' s a little desperate, our bid for relevance by association. But we oldsters feel insecure without a 20-something as backup, especially when it comes to anything involving the word content. Or Snapchat. Or any kind of sharing that doesn' t involve food or money. More important, millennials are now the largest, hardest-working sector of the workforce and the most desirable market for most businesses, and we don't want them to turn on us. At Google, where the median employee age is about 29, the company has a support group for people over 40 called Greyglers. In the blurb about Greyglers, the company notes that they hope to promote "age diversity awareness" at Google and foster the success of their "elders. " Yes, middle age is now a special-interest group. This is perhaps why 28-year-old tech gurus fret about losing their jobs to college interns who are cheaper and more current. It's also why Botox is booming in the Valley among some older engineers. Closely related is a new corporate trend called "reverse mentorship. " That's when millennials take older employees under their wing to teach them how most corporate revenue problems can be solved with a few social-media tricks, and why you shouldn't ever leave voice mails for anyone. Nonetheless, I'm all for millennial mentors.(And I agree about voice mail.)I used to run TIME's editorial-technology department, back when people used dial-up modems. Since then I've learned to make deals in advance with a millennial to ensure support before I suggest anything vaguely technical in a meeting. You need a millennial front person for an idea to succeed. Partly because when they believe in something, they will put in 7,000 thankless hours to make it happen. Plus, life is so much better when it's infused with the energy of people who aren't hobbled by the memory of what didn't work "the last time we tried that. " Turns out, tech knowledge is a lot like online celebrity. It's highly perishable. And that's where we boomers can come in handy for millennials. We've already done all that reckoning. We learned a long time ago that there is always someone younger, thinner and more digital waiting right behind you. Remember, back in the 20th century, we were the smartest kids in the room. But then we had kids ourselves, and the stakes got higher when it came to careers and relationships. We couldn't just keep trading up or moving on: we had to learn to hold on instead. And work started bleeding into our nights and weekends, thanks to the very technology that everyone still struggles to keep ahead of now. Time was no longer limitless, and it stretched thin faster than we expected. This new generation will face all that soon enough. Even Mark Zuckerberg, who famously said that "young people are just smarter," might not feel so smart now that his first child has arrived. Babies can do that. Family is the one variable you can't control for. You can't scrap them for a new version. There's no A/B testing or product road map, and the people in your life will be unfailingly unpredictable. You'll often decide to choose their happiness over your ambitions. And they will get sick or die when you don't expect it. Life is inherently disruptive. You just have to adapt. There's no secret hack, no work-around, no pro tip for that. Except maybe this: to manage the personal hurricanes that will blow your way, you'll need aid and comfort from the people where you work. And that's when a little intergenerational codependence can be a very good thing.

BPassage TranslationDirections: In this part of the test, you will hear 2 passages in English. You will hear the passages ONLY ONCE. After you have heard each passage, translate it into Chinese and write your version in the corresponding space in your ANSWER BOOKLET. You may take notes while you are listening./B

Arab diplomatic sources tell TIME that the Arab-Israeli summit in Sharm el-Sheikh on Monday is intended as a stern message to Hamas: Stop fighting Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, or we'll launch a political war against you. But the sources say that the goal of the Arab regimes is to press for Hamas to join a new Palestinian unity government along with Abbas's Fatah party. Explains a senior Arab official, the decision to hold a meeting between Abbas, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, Jordan's King Abdullah II and Israel's Prime Minister Ehud Olmert "is a diplomatic warning to Hamas: If you try to strip Abbas's authority, think twice. We'll throw all our support to Abbas and work against you". They say the US and Israel have effectively encouraged Hamas and Fatah to resume their bloody power struggle, which resulted in Hamas's armed takeover of Gaza and the collapse of the three-month-old Palestinian national unity government. First, Arab sources say, despite a symbolic resumption of the peace process in January, neither the US or Israel provided any tangible political or financial support to bolster Abbas's increasingly shaky leadership against Hamas's growing political and military challenge. On the eve of this week's Sharm el-Sheikh summit, Olmert announced that Israel will finally transfer to Abbas's emergency government—which excludes Hamas—hundreds of millions of dollars in Palestinian tax revenues collected by Israel but withheld after Hamas won parliamentary elections in 2006. Second, the Arab sources add, by refusing to recognize the Palestinian unity government formed in February in the hope of ending the financial siege, the US and Israel handed Hamas and Fatah an excuse to resume their turf battles. In a TIME interview last month, Saudi Foreign Minister Saud al-Faisal hinted at his government's disappointment. "Palestinians bear the main responsibility, but I think the Western countries and United States could have acted more positively," he said. "For an agreement like that, if you don't show signs of acceptance, and of inclusiveness, it does damage the effort." The new summit comes against a backdrop of deepening Arab frustration and despair over the failure to find a solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, worsened by the spectacle of Palestinians killing each other. "Gaza has become an embarrassing and frightening scene evoking sorrow and grief in the hearts," Saudi commentator Abdulrahman al-Rashid wrote in the pan-Arab newspaper Asharq al-Awsat last week. Lately, Arab officials have grown anxious that their own increased diplomatic efforts are going unrewarded as they watch the growing influence of Iran, which backs radical Arab factions, including Hamas. While Hamas' power play humiliated the Saudis, which took pride in mediating the creation of the Palestinian unity government through February's Mecca Agreement, it also alarms the authorities in Egypt and Jordan, who face political challenges from Islamist parties in their own countries. Arab diplomats say that besides warning Hamas, their aim at the summit is to lobby Olmert to provide help for Abbas in the short term by releasing Palestinian money and easing Israeli security in Fatah-controlled areas, and in the long term by moving toward acceptance of the 2002 peace initiative recently relaunched by the Arab League. Meanwhile, they say, once passions have cooled down, their next move is to encourage Hamas and Fatah to restore their governing partnership. "We will try everything," an Arab diplomat explains. "None of us agrees with Hamas. But they are a political fact that you can't ignore. The Arab position is to encourage Palestinian reconciliation." Robert Malley, Middle East and North Africa Program director of the International Crisis Group, agrees with that approach, warning that, even as they try to help Abbas, neither Israel nor the international community should aim at dividing the Palestinians. Olmert's move Sunday to release funds and improve life in the Palestinian territories, says Malley, a former Middle East advisor in the Clinton White House, is "late, but absolutely welcome, though it should be done with eyes open, not to marginalize or defeat Hamas." The way forward, Malley argues, "sooner rather than later has to entail new compact between Hamas and Fatah. A strategy built on a premise of marginalizing Hamas will not work. Hamas has certainly retained all of the spoiling power they had. We have seen the evidence of that in Gaza. The notion that you could build a peace process, or security and stability, without somehow bringing Hamas in, seems to me to be an illusion. It's a policy divorced from any long-term strategy and any credible assessment of realities on the ground."

When I was growing up, I was only occasionally exposed to the criminal classes. And even then it was mostly in a harmless, almost charming fashion. The Internet has changed that. Now I have round-the-clock dealings with crooks, charlatans, con men and women of easy virtue. Every morning, I wake up to find an avalanche of solicitations from unscrupulous brokerage houses, shady pharmaceutical firms, mysterious surgeons and crooked lawyers. The Highway to Hell seems to run directly through my PC. Emails from illiterate scoundrels hoping to get my personal financial information are forever pouring into my inbox. Sorry, guys, but "credit kard" is a dead giveaway that you're not really from Bank of America. People pretending to be my sister-in-law in rural England try to get me to open attachments that will spread ruinous viruses throughout my computer and ultimately throughout all of society. They also commandeer friends' address books and send me baleful emails begging for money—fast—because they have been mugged by depraved street urchins and are now penniless in Mexico City, Mozambique or Delhi. And then, of course, there are those tearful missives from deposed Nigerian potentates, imploring me to help them recover their stolen fortunes by parting with mine. I am not saying that my childhood was a Garden of Eden. My Uncle Johnny, who fell in with a rough crowd—the U. S. Navy—when he was 16, was always in trouble with the law. He would get sprung from the slammer every couple of years and stop by the house long enough to drag my dad out on a few ill-advised benders. Then he would do something society frowned upon and get shipped right back to the Big House. But Uncle Johnny never once tried to enlist me in knocking over liquor stores or fencing stolen goods or pickpocketing hapless tourists, as I was only a wee tot. Besides, there were no tourists back then. I did know a few hoodlums and low-level drug dealers in high school and college, but I did not have direct contact with them on a daily basis. At the factory jobs I worked in college, there was always someone who handled football pools, but he was just a guy who knew other guys who might actually know wiseguys. He was not a wiseguy himself. Sure, there were always a few shady characters who asked me to look the other way while they "boosted" merchandise from the warehouse. But they didn't ask me to steal it myself: the most they asked was for me to drive the getaway car. Of course I didn't. I didn't have a license. Thus I could go long periods having no direct social congress with felons, so long as I stayed out of certain neighborhoods, certain tap rooms and certain friends' houses. The thing I most hate today is that I never see the faces of the people who are trying to rip me off. In college, I knew who the drug dealers were: they always had names like Shelby or Vega the Trip. But I didn't have to engage with them unless I wanted to. They didn't do much in the way of outreach. These days, I can't avoid daily contact with crooks lurking in the technological shadows. Perfectly legitimate Web searches redirect me to sites operated by Moloch and his sidekick Baal. Last month, I foolishly clicked the "Exit this page" button on a pop-up ad offering me a free phone and was redirected to a shockingly graphic porn site. I didn't get the phone, either. All of which makes me long for the good old days when Uncle Johnny used to stop by the house. At least he was a crook with a human face.

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Passage 1

On his 10-day trip to Asia this week, President George W. Bush is likely to get a polite reception for his ambitious agenda. He wants to rally allies to the war on terror, the confrontation with North Korea and the expansion of transpacific trade. He'll be asking Japan and China to allow their currencies to get stronger, so they will find it cheaper to buy more goods from struggling US manufacturers. Neither the Japanese nor the Chinese will say no outright, but they won't say yes, either. Below the polite ambiguities, something disturbing is happening, at least from an American viewpoint. For all its military power, political clout and economic might, America could be losing its influence in what is arguably the most dynamic region of the world. Big changes are happening in Asia, for which America's policies are increasingly out of step. Washington's preoccupations—the mess in Iraq, the jobless recovery and the escalating fiscal deficit at home—are not Asia's preoccupations. When Bush looks into the future, he sees an American Century with a troubled story line dominated by the fight against terror. When Asians look into the future, they see an Asian Century dominated by rising prosperity and the emergence of China, with terror a minor subplot.

{{B}}SECTION 3 TRANSLATION TESTDirections: Translate the following passage into Chinese and write your version in the corresponding space in your ANSWER BOOKLET.{{/B}}

Passage 1

For as long as multinational companies have existed—and some historians trace them back to banking under the Knights Templar in 1135—they have been derided by their critics as rapacious rich-world beasts. If there was ever any truth to that accusation, it is fast disappearing. While globalisation has opened new markets to rich-world companies, it has also given birth to a pack of fast-moving, sharp-toothed new multinationals that is emerging from the poor world. Indian and Chinese firms are now starting to give their rich-world rivals a run for their money. So far this year, Indian firms, led by Hindalco and Tata Steel, have bought some 34 foreign companies for a combined $10.7 billion. Indian IT-services companies such as Infosys, Tata Consultancy Services and Wipro are putting the fear of God into the old guard, including Accenture and even mighty IBM. Big Blue sold its personal-computer business to a Chinese multinational, Lenovo, which is now starting to get its act together. PetroChina has become a force in Africa, including, controversially, Sudan. Brazilian and Russian multinationals are also starting to make their mark. The Russians have outdone the Indians this year, splashing $11.4 billion abroad, and are now in the running to buy Alitalia, Italy's state airline. These are very early days, of course. India's Ranbaxy is still minute compared with a branded-drugs maker like Pfizer; China's Haier, a maker of white goods, is a minnow next to Whirlpool's whale. But the new multinationals are bent on the course taken by their counterparts in Japan in the 1980s and South Korea in the 1990s. Just as Toyota and Samsung eventually obliged western multinationals to rethink how to make cars and consumer electronics, so today's young thrusters threaten the veterans wherever they are complacent. The newcomers have some big advantages over the old firms. They are unencumbered by the accumulated legacies of their rivals. Infosys rightly sees itself as more agile than IBM, because when it makes a decision it does not have to weigh the opinions of thousands of highly paid careerists in Armonk, New York. That, in turn, can make a difference in the scramble for talent. Western multinationals often find that the best local people leave for a local rival as soon as they have been trained, because the prospects of rising to the top can seem better at the local firm.But the newcomers' advantages are not overwhelming. Take the difference in company ethics, for instance, which worries plenty of rich-world managers. They fear that they will engage in a race to the botto—with rivals unencumbered by the fine feelings of shareholders and domestic customers, and so are bound to lose. Yet the evidence is that companies harmonise up, not down. In developing countries (never mind what the NGOs say) multinationals tend to spread better working practices and environmental conditions; but when emerging-country multinationals operate in rich countries they tend to adopt local mores. So as those companies globalise, the differences are likely to narrow. Nor is cost as big an advantage to emerging-country multinationals as it might seem. They compete against the old guard on value for money, which depends on both price and quality. A firm like Tata Steel, from low-cost India, would never have bought expensive, Anglo-Dutch Corus were it not for its expertise in making fancy steel. This points to an enduring source of advantage for the wealthy companies under attack. A world that is not governed by cost alone suits them, because they already possess a formidable array of skills, such as managing relations with customers, polishing brands, building up know-how and fostering innovation. The question is how to make these count. Sam Palmisano, IBM's boss, foresees nothing less than the redesign of the multinational company. In his scheme, multinationals began when 19th-century firms set up sales offices abroad for goods shipped from factories at home. Firms later created smaller "Mini Me" versions of the parent company across the world. Now Mr. Palmisano wants to piece together worldwide operations, putting different activities wherever they are done best, paying no heed to arbitrary geographical boundaries. That is why, for example, IBM now has over 50,000 employees in India and ambitious plans for further expansion there. Even as India has become the company's second-biggest operation outside America, it has moved the head of procurement from New York to Shenzhen in China. As Mr. Palmisano readily concedes, this will be the work of at least a generation. Furthermore, rich-country multinationals may struggle to shed nationalistic cultures. IBM is even now trying to wash the starch out of its white-shirted management style. But today, General Electric alone seems able to train enough of its recruits to think as GE people first and Indians, Chinese or Americans second. Lenovo's decision to appoint an American, William Amelio, as its Singapore-based chief executive, under a Chinese chairman, is a hint that some newcomers already understand the way things are going.IBM's approach is possible only because globalisation is flourishing. Many of the barriers that stopped cross-border commerce have fallen. And yet, Mr. Palmisano's idea also depends on the fact that the terrain remains decidedly bumpy. Increasingly, success for a multinational will depend on correctly spotting which places best suit which of the firm's activities. Make the wrong bets and the world's bumps will work against you. And now that judgment, rather than tariff barriers, determines location, picking the right place to invest becomes both harder and more important. Nobody said that coping with a new brood of competitors was going to be easy. Some of today's established multinational companies will not be up to the task. But others will emerge from the encounter stronger than ever. And consumers, wherever they are, will gain from the contest.

{{B}}C: Listening Translation{{/B}}

The number of people emigrating from Ireland is currently estimated at 30,000 annually. There is no doubt that the bulk of young Irish emigrants end up in London. And while some of their problems are unique to this generation, many of them work in the same jobs and live in the same conditions as endless previous generations of emigrants to Britain. While some Irish take their degrees to London and use them to get jobs in the burgeoning service industry, for many others who left school in their teens and experienced months, if not years, of unemployment their second act on reaching London is to sign on for social welfare. Their first, and most difficult, is finding somewhere to live. Social welfare benefits, when they include a rent allowance, are better in England. For a young unemployed man or woman, living at home with little or no unemployment assistance in Ireland, this can seem an attractive proposition, offering independence, a subsistence income and at least the hope of a job in a city where unemployment, while real, is a lot lower than in Ireland. Many young Irish emigrants go straight on the dole when they arrive in England. Some find jobs fairly quickly, others remain on the dole for months. Andrew Fox is living on the dole, and is also in receipt of housing benefit. And he is living in relative comfort, as he's staying in Conway House, the hostel for young Irish men run by the Catholic Church in Kilburn. This costs ￡50 a week for bed and breakfast, arid all the young men there spoke glowingly of the facilities it offers and the welcome they receive from staff. There was a 300 per cent increase in demand for places in this hostel in the first six months of last year. But those who get into Conway House are the lucky ones and there is a six month time limit on residence there. It has a capacity for just 300, a drop in the ocean, and thousands of young Irish emigrants live in squats across north London. The squats are empty houses, many of them owned by the local council. They may be being prepared for sale into the private sector. Sometimes the council boards up the windows or removes the stairs, and the electricity is usually cut off. The conditions vary widely in the squats, from those in houses which are in good condition and where the illegal tenants are painters and decorators and do the place up, to those in bad repair where the squatters live on mattresses on the floors in rooms lit only by candles. If they reconnect the electricity they face arrest and charges for stealing it. Loneliness as well as the need for practical help ensures that many Irish people stick together. One of the subjects discussed at a seminar on emigration in Kilburn was the trauma experienced by Irish emigrants, revealed in statistics which showed a disproportionately high number of Irish admissions to mental hospitals. One of the reasons for the sense of alienation was the sense of being foreigners in England and the hostility they experienced from many sections of the media and the police. Those who leave the country voluntarily are more likely to adapt well than those, in the majority, forced to do so out of economic necessity. Most of those who attended the seminar in Kilburn were in no doubt about the category they belonged to. "I love Ireland", says Andrew Fox. "I wouldn't have left it, only there was no work there. "

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中华文明是世界古代文明中始终没有中断、连续五千多年发展至今的文明。中华民族在漫长历史发展中形成的独具特色的文化传统，深深影响了古代中国，也深深影响着当代中国。现时代中国强调的以人为本、与时俱进、社会和谐、和平发展，既有着中华文明的深厚根基，又体现了时代发展的进步精神。 中华文明历来注重以民为本，尊重人的尊严和价值。早在千百年前，中国人就提出“民唯邦本，本固邦宁”、“天地之间，莫贵于人”，强调要利民、裕民、养民、惠民。今天，我们坚持以人为本，就是要坚持发展为了人民、发展依靠人民、发展成果由人民共享，关注人的价值、权益和自由，关注人的生活质量、发展潜能和幸福指数，最终是为了实现人的全面发展。

{{B}}Part B Listening and TranslationTask 1 Sentence TranslationDirections: In this part of the test, you will hear 5 English sentences. You will hear the sentences ONLY ONCE. After you have heard each sentence, translate it into Chinese and write your version in the corresponding space in your ANSWER BOOKLET.{{/B}}

The way Americans plan for retirement is about to change—again. At the urging of President Obama, the Department of Labor is backing a rule that would alter who can offer financial advice on retirement funds. On its face, the idea seems superfluous: the rule, which would go into effect next year, requires that individuals providing advice on retirement savings put their clients' interests ahead of their own. Isn't that what people hire advisers to do in the first place? "Anyone can call themselves a financial adviser," says David Certner, legislative policy director at AARP, the lobbying organization for seniors. Many consumers believe all financial advisers operate under uniform codes like doctors or lawyers. "But people don't understand that there are different types, and they can act against your interest and in their own," says Certner. There are two standards brokers have to adhere to. There's the fiduciary standard, which requires financial advisers—registered investment advisers and those appointed under existing law— to offer financial advice that takes their clients' best interests into consideration. But there's also a less stringent "suitability" standard, which gives advisers leeway to offer advice that works for their client but can also help them earn a higher commission or some other financial incentive. According to the Department of Labor, that loophole causes Americans to lose out on making an additional $ 17 billion on their investments every year. They stakes have grown as the nature of retirement has shifted. Over the past four decades, for example, there has been a sharp decrease in the number of employer- provided retirement-benefit plans, or pensions, and a steep rise in the number of employees setting aside their own funds in 401(k)and 403(b)plans and individual retirement accounts, or IRAs. As a consequence, Americans have grown to rely more heavily on financial advisers and planners who can help them navigate the confusing or stress-inducing process of saving for retirement. According to a survey conducted by the Certified Financial Planners Board, which licenses fiduciary financial planners in the U. S. , 40% of Americans now work with a financial adviser to secure their retirement, up from 28% in 2010. At the Garrett planning network, a national financial-planning firm, advisers often share stories from clients who found themselves on the receiving end of bad retirement advice. During an exchange last spring, one adviser recalled encountering a woman who was about to retire and had asked a nonfiduciary adviser for advice about her $ 1 million 401(k)rollover. She was advised to invest in an annuity and a trust, a move that earned her adviser a tidy 7 % sales commission. Sheryl Garrett, founder of the Garrett Planning Network, claims her advisers see that kind of behavior all the time. Under the Department of Labor rule, which is expected to be finalized in early 2016, the standard will shift toward the consumer. Anyone offering financial advice on retirement accounts would be required to adhere to the fiduciary standard. The rule marks the biggest change to the Employee Retirement Income Security Act, which established minimum standards for pension plans, in 40 years. But many, including Republicans in Congress, argue that the Department of Labor's rule is unworkable and will put unnecessary burdens on small-business owners. Because of how it governs IRAs and employer-provided plans, they argue, the rule would make it hard for small-business owners to help their employees get financial advice. They also say the change will adversely impact lower- and middle-income Americans, the same investors who are the most at risk. "All sides in this debate agree that advisers should work in their clients' best interests. But Americans' best interest will not be served by a regulatory scheme that directs small businesses and people to advisers too costly for Main Street America," Dirk Kempthorne, president and chief executive of the American Council of Life Insurers, wrote to the Washington Post. The Department of Labor found that insufficient or nonexistent investment advice led owners of IRAs and other retirement accounts to lose out on $ 114 billion in 2010. The split over the rule has fallen along party lines. Perhaps not surprisingly, harsh rhetoric on both sides has followed. The Republican-led Congress has drafted a bill that would block the Department of Labor from implementing the new rule. Obama has issued a veto threat. Either way, a great deal is at stake. Says Garrett: "When people have more faith and trust in our industry, they' 11 start investing more. "

When Enoch Powell, a Conservative MP, gave a speech in 1968 calling for an end to immigration, he received so many letters of support that the Royal Mail had to assign him a special van, which made several deliveries a day. Race relations in Britain have since improved, in part thanks to laws passed at the end of the 1960s that criminalised racial discrimination. Laws against other types of discrimination followed. Gay, disabled, old, female—most conditions are covered. But what looks like unfair treatment is often hard to distinguish from the choices made by individuals. The Equalities Review, a semi-independent report that came out on February 28th, shows this all too clearly. The review matters more than many of its kind because it will guide Britain's new super anti-discrimination agency when it begins life later this year. Britain relies not only on its laws to prevent unfair treatment but also on specific bodies charged with enforcing them. People need not bring discrimination cases against palaeolithic employers on their own, or club together to bring class-action suits; government-funded organisations sponsor their cases through employment tribunals. The three main quangos, which cover race, disability and sex discrimination, will in October become the Commission for Equality and Human Rights, under the guidance of Trevor Phillips. In a presentation to an all-party parliamentary group last year, Mr. Phillips wryly predicted that this new arrangement would bring "universal happiness" some time in 2009. In fact the best of all possible worlds may slowly be coming about without the help of the new agency, if a separate report released this week by Richard Berthoud and Morten Blekesaune of the Institute for Social and Economic Research(ISER) at Essex University is right. The Equalities Review suggests that mothers with young children trail the pack in terms of employment; but a far bigger proportion of them are working than 30 years ago. Women are paid less than men, but the main reason is not that potential employers see an oversized handbag stuffed with nappies and ask the next candidate to come through, but that time out of the workforce reduces wages later on. Bangladeshi and Pakistani women have low levels of employment. But this may reflect a cultural preference for women to stay at home (which plenty of them break) rather than covert racism. As for the oldies, the ISER report shows that the chances of someone aged between 50 and 60 being in work have picked up a bit since the late 1990s. The one group that has made no progress at all is the disabled, a broad category that includes anyone with a "limiting longstanding illness". They are the hardest to help, due to a combination of time spent out of work, which sometimes means getting stuck on incapacity benefit, and the fact that people with severe disabilities, simply cannot do some sorts of work. That makes the job of Mr. Phillips and his new organisation harder. The "long-term strategies, with phased targets" that the review calls for will count for little if the wrongs they are designed to right arise from individual choices, unequal results at school, spotty employment histories—or, indeed, from the condition that often underlies all of these: poverty. Undeterred, Mr. Phillips argues for changes in the law to permit positive discrimination where it benefits the public. When he was head of the Commission for Racial Equality, Mr. Phillips says, he had to prevent London's police force from running a programme to recruit black officers, which would have been illegal. He also exasperated intelligence officials by asking how they could seek to hire more Muslims without breaking the law. Mr. Phillips reckons that it might occasionally be necessary to discriminate in favour even of whites. One of the review's findings is that boys from poor white families are "probably the single group most likely to be shut out of higher education in future decades". Mr. Phillips thinks universities where most of the students are from ethnic minorities and disproportionately female should, for example, be allowed to seek out white boys. As discrimination goes, the notion sounds relatively benign—but out of such good intentions come perverse results.