1 . On March 16th I left the offices of The Economist to head home. That was the last day when all editorial staff assembled in our London office. And, at the time of writing, no date for a return to the office is in _______

It is remarkable how quickly we have adapted. The newspaper has been written, edited and produced from couches and kitchen tables. January and February seem like an ancient era — the BC (before coronavirus) to the new AD (after _______).

The shift may _______ great workplace transformations in the 19th and 20th centuries, and it has been a much more sudden transition than occurred with factories, enabled by advanced economies that revolve around services instead of manufacturing. Back in the 1970s, when Britain adopted a three-day week (to commit a miners strike), there were power cub and TV stations had to close down early. This pandemic has not turned the lights _______

Not only that, it has made remote work seem both normal and acceptable. In the past employees who stayed home had to overcome the _______ that they were bunking off (偷懒). Now those who insist on being at the office sound self-important.

Things are _______, of course. Video calls Jack the spontaneity of a normal meeting; no off-the-cuff (即兴的) remarks to lighten the mood. Distance makes it difficult to generate camaraderie. Creativity is probably harder to foster. Experts say new ideas come from weak links in networks — i.e., people you meet occasionally. Such “ _______ collisions” have become rarer.

Yet _________ offices will not disappear, it is hard to imagine that working life will return to BC ways. For more than a century workers have stuffed themselves onto crowded trains and buses to get into the office. For the past two months they have not had to commute. _______, for their part, have maintained expensive offices in city centers because they needed to gather staff in one place. The rent is only part of the cost; there are the cleaning, lighting, printers, catering and security ________.

Another aspect of the AD era may be the disappearance of the five-day working week. Even before the pandemic many workers became used to taking phone calls or answering emails at the weekend. In the AD era, the ________ between home and working life, a useful way of relieving stress, will be even harder to sustain.

In future employees may work and take breaks when they please, with the company video call the only ________. The downside, however, is that the rhythm of life has been disrupted and new ________ are needed. Looking further out, the AD era may bring other changes. Some may decide to live in small towns where housing costs are lower, since they have no need to commute. Men will have ________ excuses to skip cleaning or child care if they are not disappearing to the office. In a sense, this is a(n) ________ to normal: until the 19th century most people worked at or close to their homes. But social historians may still regard 2020 as the start of a new age.

2 . As the coronavirus pandemic shuts down public life on the streets, a new kind of life is opening up online. Many people who are_______ enough to still have their jobs are working from home, often experimenting with video chats and virtual offices for the first time. The outbreak could change the internet as _______ as it is changing our handwashing habits.

Our range of _______ apps has already started to shift. Almost overnight, the video conferencing app Zoom has gone from insignificance to necessity. People are using it to hold meetings with colleagues, teach university classes and have quarantine (隔离) —compliant cocktail hours with friends. For those who don’t want to be “Zoom-bombed”, where a(n) _______ person joins the video call by exploiting bugs in the app, there are video features you can use in Skype, Google Hangouts and Discord.

Popular streaming service Twitch, typically used to watch gaming live, has also had a _______ in fortunes. It has suddenly become a(n)_______ performance space, with musicians, writers and comedians all using it to broadcast live shows that they have had to cancel—and _______ Twitch’s tipping and subscription functions, they can get paid for it, too.

To _______ the experience of inviting people over for a movie night, there are countless apps for watching media online with friends. Though it isn’t as good as a(n)_______visit, these gatherings have eased my loneliness and made the days more bearable. Though we have had online video chat for years, it has always been a sideshow of most social media platforms. Now it is moving to the __________ of our internet experience because it is connecting us with people we would ordinarily see in our day-to-day lives. We want to feel like we are in the room with people we love and depend on, and seeing their faces makes the ________ feel more official and real.

Until recently, the internet was mostly a place of leisure. We went there for entertainment, news and catching up with friends, both distant and imaginary. Yes, it has always been a ________ for some of us, but now millions more people are using apps like Slack and Asana to talk to colleagues all day and organize projects. When the time comes that the majority of us rely on the internet for work, it is________that we will have to take it more seriously.

Of course, the internet could also become an even more powerful means of________ for the millions of people who have lost work in an economic apocalypse (灾难) that is almost as terrifying as covid-19 itself. With nothing to lose, shut in our homes, we may be subjected to extremist manipulation.

After the pandemic is over, the internet won’t feel as much like a(n)________ field any more. It will be as real as a pay cheque—and that might actually make us demand more accountability from our favourite social apps.

3 . Osley Cook, a music teacher, has worked in education for 27 years and he knows how to help his students learn. He used to _________ the emails for digital teaching tools that appeared in his inbox. However, the coronavirus pandemic _________ Cook to adapt, adopting some of those same digital tools in order to facilitate remote and hybrid learning (混合式学习). And even after _________ to in-person instruction, he’s welcoming new technology, like a smart classroom camera system.

“When I’m teaching a mixed class, if I walk over to percussion (打击乐), then the camera _________ me, meaning whoever is watching on the digital side can see the entire lesson going on.” Cook says. Actually when it comes to change, Cook isn’t _______. Education is changing in many ways.

Parents Are Becoming “Co-teachers”

_________ redefined traditional borders between school and home. Educators had to cooperate with parents like never before, creating a “co-teacher system.” Research shows that parents can have a positive influence on academic achievement by supporting learning at home, especially _________ low-income students. “This year, it felt more like a team. Parents were more _________ to listen to what you have to say. And several were much more vocal with helping me to help their child.” says Melissa, an elementary-school teacher.

Education Is Becoming More _________

Consisting of more than 14,000 school districts across 50 states, the American primary-education system is extensive, diverse, and decentralized. In normal times, all of that works against rapid __________. But the pandemic proved that educators can act quickly and creatively when __________ to do so.

At Rolling Hills Elementary School, principal Cherish Pip organized an event in which roughly 120 students and their families drove through the school’s parking lot to collect books and take-home activities. “Our high-school band came to play. We had our mascot (吉祥物) there. It was just __________” he says.

Educators now see an opportunity to release the “enormous __________ for innovation that is inactive in many education systems.” That means addressing the socioeconomic inequalities that __________ affect academic and social outcomes; repairing aging buildings and facilities; offering more services to students in need.

For many educators, education is changing. They can’t go back, for that’s just not a(n) __________.

5 . COVID-19 lockdowns had strange effects on air pollution across the globe

Ever since the covid-19 spread, many changes have come with the _____________ unstoppable virus. China has shown the first sign. Rightly after a strict nationwide lockdown was _____________ in late January, most people were restricted from leaving their homes at all for as long as 3 weeks. As a result, the authority ___________ a sharp decline in the direct emissions of air pollution on a scale never observed before. “Changes in emissions would be significant and ___________ studying for it may bring us new solutions to greenhouse effect,” says Jiset Deew, a chemist at the Harvard University, “The pandemic has caused lots of tragedies, but the lesson we can learn is important.”

Researchers found it a strange but ___________ chance to capture how human economic activity—particularly car traffic—dropped rapidly and thus to seek for the answer to the influence of ___________ traffic on air quality. “Running atmospheric chemistry experiments is often a ___________ task based on the lack of experimental conditions, so we have to _________ really complex reaction chambers and computer models,” says Tg, who now works on the project _____________ organic aerosols at MIT. “But in this unprecedented year, we finally get the chance to __________ our ideas and we hope the new findings will further our understanding of the mechanisms that rule atmospheric chemistry but also offer guidance for policy makers who seek to improve air quality and ____________ climate change.”

During the lockdown, passenger traffic plumbed, and traffic-related emissions—particularly CO₂ and NO₂—__________ accordingly. Vehicles powered by gas directly release huge amounts of CO₂ and NO₂. CO₂, a greenhouse gas, plays a major role in global warming. Besides, NO₂ plays a __________ part in atmospheric reactions that produce ozone which helps __________ UV light (紫外线). Now, experts are still working to __________ how the two gases changed during pandemic.

6 . Two of the most critical lessons learned from the pandemic are the need for effective national leadership and for clear, consistent communication. Countries that fared well had both in abundance; those that didn’t often faltered. The TIMES survey results reflect this, with_________was “leadership and public communication strategies” the only category in which every rated, on average, at least 4 out of 5 for priority. The highest ranking in the category went to “ensuring strong, federally coordinated responses that provincial, state, and local jurisdictions can rely upon for guidance”. The importance of this cannot be overstated. In the U.S., it made no sense to have 50 states _________ their own supplies of masks and tests, and 50 different sets of rules to contain (or not) the disease. As a former local health official, I can tell you that local health departments are chronically under _________ and so rely on federal entities to formulate clear_________ and evidence-based policy guidance, which _______ those closer to the ground to tailor the specifics to their communities. Being able to point to federal guidelines helps serve as political cover-important when the recommendations ask for difficult actions, such as shuttering businesses and _________ stay-at-home orders.

The TIMES survey also identifies global health governance as a top _________ including to “reform the World Health Organization’s regulatory authority”. Unfortunately, the_________of this intervention was rated 2.86. I agree with this low ranking. Any reform at the WHO will be a long and tedious _________. Global health governance needs to occur, but meanwhile, individual governments can take matters into their own ____________. First, they must rigorously evaluate their country’s pandemic response and make necessary ____________ to improve local, regional and national infrastructure and coordination. Second, they should strengthen international scientific____________. Third, willing countries can ____________ multinational agreements for transparency, mutual aid and partnership.

Improvements in global public health must begin locally and be driven by leaders who will learn the hard ____________ from COVID-19. If we can ____________the key factors that need reform, then we must agree on doing what it takes to prevent another tragedy.

7 . The more than 13 million tourists who visit Nara, an ancient capital of Japan, each year tend to follow a well-worn path. On their way into a park at the edge of the city they pass the towering, wooden pagoda of Kofuku-ji, a temple complex founded in 710. They continue to nearby Todai-ji, gazing in _________ at Japan's largest Buddha, a bronze behemoth weighing 400 tons and standing 150 meters tall. And finally they feed shika senbei, a special kind of rice cracker, to the sacred deer, some 1,300 of which live in the park.

The deer, though wild, have come to love the crackers. With tourism _________to a trickle because of the pandemic, they are hungry. Many have begun wandering far from home_________food. A recent study by the Nara Deer Preservation Foundation and Tatsuzawa Shirow of Hokkaido University shows that 20% fewer are spending their days in the park; incidents of damage caused by deer in town have _________. The less enterprising ones, apparently accustomed to eating only crackers, have become emaciated.

The deer are not the only ones going hungry. So are the business in places like Nara, which have come to rely ever more heavily on_________in recent years. Fewer than 7 million foreign tourists visited Japan in 2009; in 2019 some 32 million did_________ from tourism hit a record 4.8trm yen ($46bn). With the Olympic_________ for this past summer, Japan had hoped to welcome 40 million foreigners in 2020._________, after a near-total closure of its borders because of the pandemic, arrivals have dropped by 99.4%.

The government has tried to_________the blow by encouraging its own citizens to get out more. The Diet earmarked 1.35trn yen ($12.9bn) for “Go To Travel” subsidies, which provide discounts of up to 35% at____________hotels and inns; a concurrent program called “Go To Eat” applies to____________. The ministry of tourism says nearly 40 million nights have been booked under the program since it was launched in July. That is a pyrrhic victory (付出极大代价而获得的胜利): the campaign is thought to have____________to a recent uptick in covid-19. Daily cases reached a record of 2,680 on November 28th. Suga Yoshihide, Japan's prime minister, recently announced that the subsidies would be____________ in areas with high caseloads.

Japan is reluctant to give up on tourism, or to let the infrastructure that supports it wither. Officials see spending by foreign visitors as a means to____________for Japan's own shrinking population. Tourism may also help make Japan more open to foreign migrants in the future.

Meanwhile, the more resourceful deer in Nara have____________to a healthier diet of plants and nuts, which has been good for their insides. Their droppings, made pale and runny by the crackers, have become firmer and darker again. If only belt-tightening were as good for the economy.

8 . Cracking down on live-stream shopping

Especially amid the impacts of COVID-19, shopping via live-streams（现场直播）has helped improve the economy and brought vitality to business.

In the first half of 2020, the number of streaming e-commerce sessions in China topped 10 million. Nearly 400,000 people ________ live-steam shopping events that attracted more than 50 billion viewers, according to the Ministry of Commerce.

However, the ________ live-stream e-commerce also brings about ________ about sub-standard products and poor after-sales services.

Luo Yonghao, founder of smart-phone company Smartisan Technology, ________ a statement on Sina Weibo on Dec.15, ________ selling fake products. The wool sweaters they sold during a live-stream in November had been proven to not in fact be made of wool. In response to that, the firm decided to make a triple repayment to more than 20,000 customers who bought the fake products.

This is just one case of poorly-conducted e-commerce. In addition to fake products, many consumers have received damaged goods or not had their items ________ at all. Many have also complained about a ________ of after-sale service.

During this year’s Singles’ Day shopping festival, the China Consumer Association received over 334,000 complaints ________ live-streaming e-commerce. According to the association, Li Jiaqi’s live-streams received complaints about not ________ consumers to return the products. Another high-profile live-streamer, Xinba, was caught selling fake edible birds’ nest on the short video app Kuaishou

Due to the cases that violated（侵犯）consumers’ rights and interests recently, authorities have tightened regulations to better ________ the live-streaming e-commerce market. The State Administration for Market Regulation published an instruction on ________ live-stream sales events, clarifying the ________ and obligations of the involved bodies.

According to new rules by the National Radio and Television Administration, e-commerce platforms are responsible for verifying（核查）the qualifications of retailers who ________ live-streaming sales on their sites.

As live-streaming e-commerce further develops, regulations will only become stricter in the future, said Li Bin, a lawyer with the China Consumers Association. “Both platforms and streamers should carry out live-steaming activities ________ and in compliance with regulations. ”

Also, consumers should be more sensible and make ________ according to their needs, said Lu Laiming, a professor at Beijing Technology and Business University.

9 . A Bold New Era at Work

Adrienne Barnard has worked in human resources since 2004, and has been all manner of concerns and requests from workers. But Barnard, now senior vice president of people operations at Boston tech startup Mainstay, recently found herself shocked at how emboldened some employees had become.

“There’s a sense of _________ that’s buildings,” says Barnard, who’s had to deal with issues like remote workers expressing _________ with the system the company used to deliver them free lunches. “These employees are recognizing, ‘You need me, and if I leave, it’s going to be hard to replace me.’”

Employees in many industries are in a position of power that they haven’t experienced in years, as the economy swiftly _________ from the pandemic and businesses struggle to recruit retain enough workers to keep up with the growth. The rate of monthly _________ hit a record low in May, as job openings notched a record high. Meanwhile, more employees _________ quit their jobs in April than ever previously recorded-a clear sign that they’re confident they can find better options.

On top of the tight labor market, the pandemic has led many people to reconsider the centrality of work in their lives and has _________ some ties to their employers. Surveys suggest roughly 40% of U. S. workers are open to switching jobs in the coming months.

To a significant extent, this is a really good development. Workers had lost leverage with employers over the past four decades, amid a sharp _________ in union membership and an intense focus on shareholders at the expense of employees. The recent rise in wages. and worker’s increasing _________ in workplace practices, in many ways helps reset the balance.

Now, in order to attract and retain the workers they need, leaders are having to _________ their organizations’ practices. A large portion of office-based companies are rolling out flexible schedules, which allow employees to work when they want, and hybrid arrangements, where they __________ their time between office and remote work.

Barnard predicts the four-day workweek may even __________. Already, Kickstarter and other U. S. companies have committed to experimenting with the approach. And in a high-profile test in Iceland, workers were just as __________ and had improved well-being when they worked a shorter weekly schedule.

Another tactic is to conduct “stay interviews.” Employers traditionally hold “__________ interviews” when people leave companies, to better understand what went wrong. __________, managers would be better off if they proactively met with staff individually to better understand any problems they’re having before they get to the point of quitting. Good questions to ask include What do you wish you could spend less time on?

The increasing empowerment of workers is __________ and bewildering for many managers. But in the end, most of them are managed by someone else themselves. And if managers think deeply about what would attract them to an employer or make them stick around, it might help them succeed in this moment. As Bock says, “People forget that the thing that would help their teams the most is to give them what they themselves want.”

10 . With Covid-19 Under Control, China's Economy Surges Ahead

As most of the world still struggles with the coronavirus pandemic, China is showing once again that a fast economic rebound is possible when the virus is brought firmly under control.

The Chinese economy ______ by 4.9 percent in the July-to-September quarter compared with the same months last year, the country's National Bureau of Statistics announced on Monday. The robust performance brings China almost back up to the roughly 6 percent pace of ______ that it was reporting before the pandemic.

Many of the world's major economies have climbed quickly out of the depths of a contraction last spring, when shutdowns caused output to ______ steeply. But China is the first to report growth that significantly surpasses where it was at this time last year. The United States and other nations are expected to report a third-quarter surge too, but they are still behind or just ______ to pre-pandemic levels.

China's lead could widen further in the months to come. It has almost no local transmission of the virus now, ______ the United States and Europe face another accelerating wave of cases.

The vigorous expansion of the Chinese economy means that it is set to dominate global growth— ______ at least 30 percent of the world's economic growth this year and in the years to come. Chinese companies are making up a greater share of the world's ______, manufacturing consumer electronics，personal protection equipment and other goods in high ______ during the pandemic. At the same time, China is now buying more iron ore（铁矿石）from Brazil, more corn and pork from the United States and more palm oil from Malaysia. That has partly ______ a rapid drop in commodity prices last spring and softened the impact of the pandemic on some industries.

______ China's recovery has done less to help the rest of the world than in the past because its imports have not increased nearly as much as its exports. This pattern has created jobs in China but placed a（n） ______ on growth elsewhere.

China's economic recovery has also been dependent for months on huge investments in highways, high-speed train lines and other infrastructure. And in recent weeks, the country has seen the beginning of a recovery in ______ consumption. The well-off and people living in export-centered coastal provinces were the first to start spending money again. But activity is resuming now even in places like Wuhan, the central Chinese city where the new coronavirus first _______.

Determined to keep local transmission of the virus at or near zero, China has resorted to ______ cellphone tracking of its population, weeks long lockdowns of neighborhoods and cities and costly mass testing ______ even the smallest outbreaks.