1 . LONDON—England will join the growing list of places that don’t allow smoking in public buildings, taxis and other places that includes even Buckingham Palace with a strong law.
Pubs, clubs and restaurants will all be smoke-free places. Taxi drivers have been warned that they could be fined(罚款) 50 pounds, or about $100, if they are caught lighting up inside work taxis.
Experts say the bans have become unchangeable because of increasing health costs and public worry over second-hand smoke. Some of the strictest smoking bans are in some of the United States’ states, such as New York and Florida, which include bars and restaurants as smoke-free places.
Spain, Italy, Iran, Norway, Sweden, Singapore, South Africa, Uruguay and New Zealand have made laws to limit smoking. France banned smoking in many public places in February and cafes and restaurants will become non-smoking places next year. Finland will introduce a ban, too.
Bans are spreading among countries, and the World Health Organization supports them, but it said that by 2030 there will be “at least another two billion smokers in the world” and an expected decrease in male smokers “will be offset(抵消) by an increase in female smoking rates, especially in developing countries.”
In advance of the English ban, anti-smoking ads have coated bus stops and the government prepares to pay some money to help people give up smoking. The rest of Britain—Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland—already have smoking bans ready.
1. England does the following to ban smoking EXCEPT________.| A．introduce a ban | B．pay some money |
| C．reduce the health costs | D．put up anti-smoking ads |
| A．More places in Britain forbid smoking. |
| B．Taxis are smoking-free places in England. |
| C．People will be fined for smoking in public places. |
| D．A smoking ban must be put into use in England. |
| A．the smoking situation is still serious around the world |
| B．the number of smokers in Finland is not large at all |
| C．ads didn’t appear in England until the ban was started |
| D．Scotland will be one of the strictest anti-smoking places |
| A．doubtful | B．supportive |
| C．negative | D．indifferent (漠不关心的) |
2 . When the explorers first set foot upon the continent of North America, the skies and lands were alive with an astonishing variety of wildlife. Native Americans had taken care of these precious natural resources wisely. Unfortunately, it took the explorers and the settlers who followed only a few decades to decimate a large part of these resources. Millions of waterfowl (水禽) were killed at the hands of market hunters and a handful of overly ambitious sportsmen. Millions of acres (英亩) of wetlands were dried to feed and house the ever-increasing populations, greatly reducing waterfowl habitat.
In 1934, with the passage of the Migratory Bird Hunting Stamp Act (Act), an increasingly concerned nation took firm action to stop the destruction of migratory (迁徙的) waterfowl and the wetlands so vital to their survival. Under this Act, all waterfowl hunters 16 years of age and over must annually purchase and carry a Federal Duck Stamp. The very first Federal Duck Stamp was designed by J.N. “Ding” Darling, a political cartoonist from Des Moines, Iowa, who at that time was appointed by President Franklin Roosevelt as Director of the Bureau of Biological Survey. Hunters willingly pay the stamp price to ensure the survival of our natural resources.
About 98 cents of every duck stamp dollar goes directly into the Migratory Bird Conservation Fund to purchase wetlands and wildlife habitat for inclusion into the National Wildlife Refuge System — a fact that ensures this land will be protected and available for all generations to come. Since 1934, better than half a billion dollars has gone into that Fund to purchase more than 5 million acres of habitat. Little wonder the Federal Duck Stamp Program has been called one of the most successful conservation programs ever initiated.
1. What was a cause of the waterfowl population decrease in North America?| A．Loss of wetlands. | B．Popularity of water sports. |
| C．Pollution of rivers. | D．Arrival of other wild animals. |
| A．Achieve. | B．Protect. |
| C．Destroy. | D．Divide. |
| A．The stamp price has gone down. |
| B．The hunters have stopped hunting. |
| C．The migratory birds have flown away. |
| D．The government has collected money. |
| A．The Federal Duck Stamp Story |
| B．The National Wildlife Refuge System |
| C．The Benefits of Saving Waterfowl |
| D．The History of Migratory Bird Hunting |
3 . In the USA, youth curfews (宵禁) are traditionally issued by a parent in the interest of safety. This type of curfew is personal, and rightfully so. However, to stop teenagers committing crimes, some officials have turned youth curfews from family decisions into public laws.
The idea may have been thought to have good intentions. In practice, however, these policies have been shown to be unfair and unconstitutional, according to the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). In the town of Sumner, Washington, a father allowed his fourteen-year-old son to go to a convenience store after 11:00 p.m. Sumner had adopted a curfew law that prohibited people under the age of eighteen from being in public places past that hour. The father was fined, and then he pursued a legal challenge against the town. The ACLU, which filed the case on behalf of the father, claimed the curfew laws had violated (侵犯) parents' rights. In the end, Sumner's curfew laws were struck down.
But isn't it irresponsible not to enforce a curfew on teenagers? Curfew laws supporters argue that officials should provide a curfew to ensure teens are home by a reasonable hour. The risk of a serious accident is three times as high for drivers aged sixteen to nineteen as for drivers over twenty. And dangers only increase at night. This indicates to some that a law keeping teens off the road late at night is a positive safety measure. Still, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) says that the best ways for drivers to increase safety are by obeying the speed limit, wearing a seat belt, and paying attention. The NHTSA makes no mention of youth curfews making driving safer.
In cities, curfew enforcement has been ineffective or even had a negative impact on communities. Most crimes committed by teens actually happen around 3：00 p.m. , right after school. On non-school days, that time shifts to between 7:00 p.m. and 9:00 p.m. The curfew hours, usually between 10:00 p.m. and 6:00 a.m. , occur at a time of day when teenage crime is at its lowest. Meanwhile, violent crime rates peak around 10:00 p.m. for adults. When law enforcement performs the teen curfew sweep, policemen are distracted from the more serious violent crimes being committed by adults at that time. Also troubling is the racial discrimination in cities with curfews. For example, recent data have found that in Minneapolis, Minnesota, 56% of youths charged with breaking curfews were African American. Other law enforcement department reports show similar problems. Curfew laws are criticized because they are enforced in a racially discriminatory way.
The ACLU has succeeded in striking down at least one curfew law because of concerns over parental rights. Along with other community and civil rights groups, it continues to pursue other cases, arguing that curfew law enforcement can only increase tension and crime. To arrest teens for driving home from the movies, playing basketball in the park, or simply walking their dog is to punish them for being outside their homes—a policy inconsistent with the individual rights established in the U. S. Constitution.
1. What is the authors attitude towards legal curfews for teenagers?| A．Disapproving. | B．Supportive. |
| C．Uncertain. | D．Indifferent. |
| A．Reasonable curfew hours for teenagers. |
| B．The necessity of enforcing youth curfews. |
| C．Unwanted consequences of youth curfews. |
| D．The impact of youth curfews on adult crimes. |
| A．It helps people defend their individual rights. |
| B．It is in favour of enforcing a curfew on teenagers. |
| C．It stresses the responsibilities of parents to their children. |
| D．It believes youth curfews are highly related to road safety. |
| A．teenagers in the United States love their independence |
| B．enforcing youth curfews will lead to distrust of the policemen |
| C．legal curfews should exist only when parents are irresponsible |
| D．legal curfews violate individual liberties and may be cancelled |
Some American cities are banning drive-through windows at fast—food restaurants. There are two basic reasons for the bans: concern for the environment and the need
In the US, most adults drive automobiles and almost 40% of the adults are overweight. That’s partly
Rules help us live together in a community. At my local park, there is a sign that reads, “Keep off the grass.” Because our community has a need for a nice green space
6 . Some Facts about Britain
School-leaving age
Children have to stay at school until the age of 16. There is no upper age limit.
Alcohol
You have to be 18 to buy alcohol in a shop, but if you’re 16 and you’re having a meal in a pub, you can drink beer or wine with it.
Motor vehicles
16-year-olds can ride a motorbike of up to 50 cc. At 17 you can ride any bike or drive a car.
Smoking
You can smoke cigarettes at any age, but you can’t go into a shop and buy them until you are 18.
Armed forces
Men can join the army at 16, women at 17. If you’re under 18, you need your parents’ permission.
Marriage
You can get married at 16 with your parents’ permission. Otherwise you have to wait till you’re 18.
Paid employment
You can take a part-time job at 14, and a full-time job at 16 (i.e. when you’ve left school).
Entering Parliament(议会)
The minimum age for becoming a Member of Parliament is 21.
1. What is the passage mainly about?| A．People and employment. | B．Children and smoking. |
| C．Age and the law. | D．Safety and traffic. |
| A．take a part-time job | B．drink beer or wine |
| C．drive a car | D．buy cigarettes |
| A．16 | B．17 | C．18 | D．21 |
| A．people can get married at 18 |
| B．people can buy alcohol in a shop at 16 |
| C．children have to study at school until 18 |
| D．a girl of 17 can join the army without asking her parents |
7 . Financial regulations in Britain have imposed a rather unusual rule on the bosses of big banks. Starting next year, any guaranteed bonus of top executives could be delayed 10 years if their banks are under investigation for wrongdoing. The main purpose of this “clawback” rule is to hold bankers responsible for harmful risk-taking and to restore public trust in financial institution. Yet officials also hope for a much larger benefit: more long-term decision-making not only by banks but also by all corporations, to build a stronger economy for future generations.
“Short-termism” or the desire for quick profits, has worsened in publicly traded companies, says the Bank of England’s top economist, Andrew Haldane. He quotes a giant of classical economies, Alfred Marshall, in describing this financial impatience as acting like “Children who pick the strawberries out of their pudding to eat them at once” rather than putting them aside to be eaten last.
The average time for holding a stock in both the United States and Britain, he notes, has dropped from seven years to seven months in recent decades. Transient(短期的) investors, who demand high quarterly profits from companies, can hold back a firm’s efforts to invest in long-term research or to build up customer loyalty. This has been called “quarterly capitalism”.
In addition, new digital technologies have allowed more rapid trading of equities( 股 票 ), quicker use of information, and thus shortens attention spans in financial markets. “There seems to be an advantage of short-term thinking at the expense of long-term investing,” said Commissioner Daniel Gallagher of the US Securities and Exchange Commission in speech this week.
In the US, the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 has pushed most public companies to delay performance bonuses for senior executives by about a year, slightly helping reduce “short-termism.” In its latest survey of CEO pay, The Wall Street Journal finds that “a substantial part” of executive pay is now tied to performance.
Much more could be done to encourage “long-termism,” such as changes in the tax code and quicker disclosure(披露) of stock acquisitions. In France, shareholders who hold onto a company investment for at least two years can sometimes earn more voting rights in a company.
Within companies, the right compensation design can provide motivation for executives to think beyond their own time at the company and on behalf of all shareholders. Britain’s new rule is a reminder to bankers that society has an interest in their performance, not just for the short term but for the long term.
1. According to Paragraph 1, one reason for imposing the new rule is the _______.| A．enhance banker’s sense of responsibility |
| B．help corporations achieve larger profits |
| C．build a new system of financial regulation |
| D．guarantee the bonuses of top executives |
| A．indirect | B．negative |
| C．favorable | D．temporary |
| A．the obstacles to preventing “short-termism”. |
| B．the significance of long-term thinking. |
| C．the approaches to promoting “long-termism” |
| D．the popularity of short-term thinking. |
| A．Failure of Quarterly Capitalism |
| B．Patience as a Corporate Virtue |
| C．Decisiveness Required of Top Executives |
| D．Frustration of Risk-taking Bankers |
8 . Communities across the world are starting to ban facial recognition technologies. The efforts are well intentioned, but banning facial recognition is the wrong way to fight against modern surveillance （监 视）.Generally, modern mass surveillance has three broad components: identification, correlation and discrimination.
Facial recognition is a technology that can be used to identify people without their consent. Once we are identified, the data about who we are and what we are doing can be correlated with other data. This might be movement data, which can be used to "follow” us as we move throughout our day. It can be purchasing data, Internet browsing data, or data about who we talk to via email or text. It might be data about our income, ethnicity, lifestyle, profession and interests. There is an entire industry of data brokers who make a living by selling our data without our consent.
It's not just that they know who we are; it's that they correlate what they know about us to create profiles about who we are and what our interests are. The whole purpose of this process is for companies to treat individuals differently. We are shown different ads on the Internet and receive different offers for credit cards. In the future, we might be treated differently when we walk into a store, just as we currently are when we visit websites.
It doesn't matter which technology is used to identify people. What's important is that we can be consistently identified over time. We might be completely anonymous （匿名的）in a system that uses unique cookies to track us as we browse the Internet, but the same process of correlation and discrimination still occurs.
Regulating this system means addressing all three steps of the process. A ban on facial recognition won't make any difference. The problem is that we are being identified without our knowledge or consent, and society needs rules about when that is permissible.
Similarly, we need rules about how our data can be combined with other data, and then bought and sold without our knowledge or consent. The data broker industry is almost entirely unregulated now. Reasonable laws would prevent the worst of their abuses.
Finally, we need better rules about when and how it is permissible for companies to discriminate. Discrimination based on protected characteristics like race and gender is already illegal, but those rules are ineffectual against the current technologies of surveillance and control. When people can be identified and their data correlated at a speed and scale previously unseen, we need new rules.
Today, facial recognition technologies are receiving the force of the tech backlash （抵制），but focusing on them misses the point. We need to have a serious conversation about all the technologies of identification, correlation and discrimination, and decide how much we want to be spied on and what sorts of influence we want them to have over our lives.
1. According to Para. 2, with facial recognition _______.| A．one’s lifestyle changes greatly |
| B．one's email content is disclosed |
| C．one's profiles are updated in time |
| D．one's personal information is released |
| A．discrimination based on new tech surveillance is illegal |
| B．different browsing data bring in different advertisements |
| C．using mobiles anonymously keeps us from being correlated |
| D．data brokers control the current technologies of surveillance |
| A．people's concern over their safety |
| B．the nature of the surveillance society |
| C．proper regulation of mass surveillance |
| D．the importance of identification technology |
| A．call for banning facial recognition technologies |
| B．advocate the urgent need for changes in related laws |
| C．inform readers of the disadvantages of facial recognition |
| D．evaluate three broad components in modem mass surveillance |
9 . They hide in trees, hang from helicopters, even follow people down on motorcycles—all so that they can snap a shot of a celebrity. They are paparazzi—photographers who make a living by taking pictures of the rich and famous.
This September, California, a state with plenty of celebrities, passed a law aimed at taking action against paparazzi. The law forbids photographers from entering private property to take pictures, from using high-tech devices to take pictures of people on private property, and from “persistently following in order to take a picture.” Violators can be fined or spend time in prison. The United State Congress is considering passing a similar law.
Supporters of the California law say it will protect the privacy of celebrities, whom paparazzi have been bothering for years. Opponents (反对者) say the law restricts photojournalists from doing their job.
Most celebrities seem to like having their pictures taken when they are in public at award shows or other events. After all, it’s free publicity. But when they’re not in public, they say, photographers should leave them alone. Yet paparazzi have been known to secretly look in windows and worse. Actor Michael J. Fox said that paparazzi have even “tried to pretend to be medical personnel at the hospital where my wife was giving birth to our son.”
Celebrities have as much right to their privacy as anyone else, supporters of the law state. Supporters further argue that the California law is a fair way to keep the press at bay, because the law still allows photographers to do their job. It only punishes them, supporters say, when they violate celebrities’ privacy.
Opponents of the law say it violates the First Amendment to the United States Constitution (美国宪法第一修正案), which guarantees that no laws will be made to limit “the freedom of speech, or of the press.”Although some people might not consider paparazzi a part of the legal press, the California law does not single out paparazzi. It applies to photographers working for any publication.
Opponents of the law are also concerned about its wording. “Does ‘persistently’ mean following someone for six minutes, six seconds, or six days?” asked lawyer Douglas Mirell. The wording of the law is too vague, critics complain, and could be used to punish almost any news photographer.
The United States needs a free press to keep the public informed about important news, paparazzi law opponents say. Limiting the press in any way, they argue, limits the freedom of all.
1. Which of the following will be considered illegal by the new California law?| A．Paparazzi slipping into the house of a famous person to take a shot. |
| B．Paparazzi taking photos of famous people with high-tech cameras. |
| C．Paparazzi hiring helicopters as a fast means of transportation. |
| D．Paparazzi rushing towards filming sites on motorcycles. |
| A．it prevents the media from getting worse |
| B．it gives photographers a fair way to compete |
| C．punishment forces paparazzi to quit their job |
| D．privacy of famous people needs special protection |
| A．it will violate paparazzi’s privacy |
| B．the First Amendment will be changed |
| C．some photographers will be wrongly accused |
| D．people will not be informed of important news |
| A．Critical. | B．Neutral. | C．Approving. | D．Skeptical. |
10 . Good afternoon, and welcome to England. We hope that your visit here will be a pleasant one. Today, I would like to draw your attention to a few of our laws.
The first one is about drinking. Now, you may not buy alcohol in this country if you are under 18 years of age, nor may your friends buy it for you.
Secondly, noise, Enjoy yourselves by all means, but please don't make unnecessary noise, particularly at night. We ask you to respect other people who may wish to be quiet.
Thirdly, crossing the road. Be careful. The traffic moves on the left side of the road in this country. Use pedestrian crossings and do not take any risk when crossing the road.
My next point is about litter（throwing away wasted material in a public place）. It is an offence to drop litter in the street. When you have something to throw away, please put it in your pocket and take it home, or put it in a litter bin.
Finally, as regards smoking, it is against the law to buy cigarettes or tobacco if you are under 16 years of age.
I'd like to finish by saying that if you requires any sort of help or assistance, you should get in touch with your local police station, who will be pleased to help you.
Now, are there any questions?
1. The main purpose of this speech would be to ________.| A．prepare people for international travel |
| B．declare the laws of different countries |
| C．give advice to travelers to the county |
| D．inform people of the punishment for breaking laws |
| A．in this country, if you are under 18 years of age, you may not buy alcohol, but your friend can buy it for you. |
| B．you may not buy cigarettes or tobacco unless you are above 16 years of age |
| C．because the traffic moves on the right side of the road, you must use pedestrian crossings when crossing the road. |
| D．you can't make noise except at night. |
| A．A policeman | B．A lawmaker |
| C．A teacher | D．A lawyer |
