The New Zealand government has banned the sale of existing homes to foreign buyers, saying New Zealanders were sick of being “tenants in our own land”. Associate minister of finance David Parker said the ban would mean housing would become     1     (affordable) for locals, and supply would increase.

“We think the market for New Zealand homes and farms should be set by New Zealand buyers     2     overseas buyers,” said Parker in an interview with the Guardian. “That is to benefit New Zealanders who have their shoulder to the wheel of the New Zealand economy, pay tax here, have families here. We don’t think they     3     be outbid (出价高于) by wealthier people     4     overseas.”

Only a quarter of adults in New Zealand own their own home,     5    (compare) with half in 1991,and in the last five years homeless figures have increased,     6     some New Zealanders forced to live in cars, garages and under bridges. A report by the Economist in 2017 found New Zealand had the most unaffordable house prices in the world, with prices in Auckland     7    (climb) 75% in the last four years,     8     the market has cooled in recent months.

New Zealand has become a destination for Chinese, Australian and Asian buyers and     9    (gain) a reputation as a bolthole (refuge) for the world’s wealthy, who view it as a safe haven from a potential nuclear conflict, the rise of terrorism and civil unrest, or simply as a place to get away from it all.

    10     the latest figures from statistics New Zealand, 3.3% of homes sold in the last quarter were to foreigners, with the bulk of the buyers Chinese, followed by Australians. Tax residents of the UK, US and Hong Kong were also among the biggest buyers of property.

【推荐2】Directions: After reading the passage below, fill in the blanks to make the passage coherent and grammatically correct. For the blanks ‘with a given word, fill in each blank with the proper form of the given word; for the other blanks, use one word that best fits each blank.

On January 10, Uganda reopened schools after the longest closure in the world    1     the coronavirus pandemic. For most students, it was their first time back in the classroom in nearly two years.

When the buildings first shuttered, the Ministry ofEducation broadcast lessons on TV and radio stations, and some schools handed out printed materials. But this did not last for lack of funding. So the     2     (estimate) 15 million children affected by this closure put their studies on hold.        

Uganda’s National Planning Authority in August 2021 projected that 4.5 million of them will likely not return to school. The reasons for the dropouts are manifold. The teen pregnancy rate rose significantly. And many poor children in urban and rural areas    3     (force) to start working to help support their families.，“They turned children into laborers and that was a loss, especially for a family that has relied for almost two years on child labor,” says Munir Safieldin, the UNICEF Uganda representative.

Plus, in an economy pinched by the pandemic, many families cannot currently afford the fees,     4     start at about $135 per term for high school, and other costs (including academic materials and uniforms).

Children who are able to return school have been promoted one grade level, a decision made by the Ministry of Education to guarantee spots for newly     5     (enter) students. But many families and experts are concerned. Mary Goretti Nakabugo, the executive director of Uwezo Uganda, a nonprofit organization working    6     (promote) equitable quality education, argues that even before the closure, many of Uganda’s younger students had not yet acquired basic fundamentals, such as reading and understanding a text. “This is the time for us to rethink our curriculum, our teaching and learning,     7    students who are unprepared for classes will only end up even     8     (far) behind.”

Kusemererwa Jonathan Henry, a teenager living in Kamwokya, one of the largest slums in the capital of Kampala, had just started high school and made new friends     9     the lockdown started. “We were used to the short school breaks but this was too long. At first, all I would do is sit at home and sleep;, he says. Fortunately, his dad’s financial help combined with his personal savings allowed Jonathan to open a fruit and vegetable stall. ”Before the lockdown, I never knew how to fend for     10     , but now I don’t even need to ask for money to   buy clothes.“ Still, Jonathan longed to get back to class. ”The day a date was announced for us to resume school, I washed my uniforms, bags and polished my shoes, that’s how excited I was to get back.”

Machines are once again doing the car-washing in Britain

Warm weather is to ice-cream vans     1    popcorn is to dentists, Saharan dust storms are to car washes. A big dust cloud like the one     2     reached Britain on March 16th boosts revenues by about a quarter, according to Kevin Pay of Wilcomatic, which runs about 800 automatic car washes in Britain. “You love to see it,” he says, as a dusty red Ford Ka joins the queue in Hove in East Sussex, on the south coast.

Until recently, Britain’s drivers usually took their dirty motors to car parks and disused petrol stations,    3     eastern European immigrants had them washed with sponges. In 2018, a parliamentary committee was informed that Britain had 10,000 — 20,000 hand car washes,    4    (compare)with 2,000 automatic “rollover” machines and about 4,000 do-it-yourself jet washes. Hand car washes were     5    (convenient) — drivers simply handed money through the window rather than traipsing into a petrol station to buy a six-digit code-and often cheaper than machines. The industry     6     be a rare example of de-automation.

It is now re-automating. Automatic car washes and jet washes have improved,     7     contactless payment, superior brushes and theatrical foam. But the main reason for their popularity is that hand car washes     8    (disappear). The informal ones can be inferior employers: in 2016 a study of Leicester by two academics, Ian Clark and Trevor Colling, found that many paid less than the legal minimum wage. Car washing is a typical first job for an unskilled immigrant. And Brexit means that Britain has fewer newly arrived unskilled immigrants these days.

Covid-19 further tilted (倾斜) the market towards machines. The government shut down hand car washes for longer than automated ones,    9     they posed a higher infection risk. The pandemic also discouraged drivers from paying with cash.

Alexander Russell of the Car Wash Association, a trade group, says that the industry has gone in a circle. Some petrol stations are now putting automatic car-washing machines into bays that were originally built for     10    , but were then occupied by hand car washes. Car washing has been in a lather, but it is emerging cleaner.