-Estamos perdidos. Preguntemos al señor. -__________.

Two years ago, my parents started collecting their Social Security checks, thereby confirming what I had always thought them to be old. When they talked to me about the need to save for my future, I'd just roll my eyes and turn up my stereo. Me, I was never going to be old.

College is a bubble of youthful idealism, nurturing the naive belief that young is forever, old is for parents. Several semesters and dozens of weekends separate most of us from entering the work-force, so how can we be expected to comprehend retirement? We see the money deducted from our part-time jobs that allows our grandparents to retire to Florida, but we never think for a moment that when we get that age, we won't be able to retire in style-or at all. But this is the picture President Bush painted for us in his assault on our Social Security system at a White House forum last Tuesday and in his State of the Union address on Wednesday.

"If you're 20 years old, in your mid-20s, and you're beginning to work, I want you to think about a Social Security system that will be flat bust, bankrupt, unless the United States Congress has got the willingness to act now," Bush told the forum, using his usual rhetoric of impending doom. He argues that the best way to avoid catastrophe is to privatize the system, giving me and my fellow classmates more choice in how we prepare for retirement through personal accounts and investments. The inevitable outcry of opposition soon followed, with critics arguing that the money needed for such an overhaul and the people it would disadvantage are not worth the change Bush suggests.

I went in search of student opinion here at Michigan State with the intention of keeping politics and Social Security reform. separate. We are, after all, talking about the financial future of generations to come, not something that should be decided on a partisan whim. But, to neglect the politics involved ultimately skews the whole issue, because .anything that involves allocating resources automatically becomes political. And as an inherent cynic about all politicians, I can't help but wonder if Bush truly has the best interest of my generation in mind. Through four years of his administration, be has barely acknowledged our needs and now he wants to save us from a threat looming a half century away? I can't help but be a little skeptical.

According to the passage, life is different from college in which _________.

A．we can nurture the belief that youth is forever

B．we can take part-time job to send our parents to Florida

C．our dreams burst

D．our grandparents once dreamed of

The EPAs proposal of listing the Gowanus an official Superfund site will

A．bring in efficient and continuous cleanup on Gowanus Canal.

B．raise fund from the federal government, the New York City and the polluters.

C．turn the community into a cleaner, larger and healthier settlement.

D．be cheerfully welcomed by the current residents in the community.

请找出短文中的前置词： Ayer fuimos a la playa, paseamos ante las palmeras y estuvimos bajo su sombra con otra gente. La intensa luz golpeaba contra nuestras gafas de sol desde la arena. Durante el paseo nos sentamos en un banco solitario que había entre las palmeras y descansamos un poco. Hacia el atardecer llegó hasta nosotros el aviso emitido mediante megafonía para solicitar precaución por el fuerte oleaje que se levantaría según las predicciones. Y sin poder ba?arnos, nos quedamos viendo como sobre la playa golpeaban violentamente las olas una tras otra.

听力原文：M: You'll have to be a lot more persuasive if you want to convince the committee to accept your proposal.

W: I'm not sure what else I could say. Besides I don't think they will reject it.

Q: What does the woman mean?

(15)

A．She believes they will accept it.

B．She thinks they will decline it.

C．She hopes they won't reject it.

D．She is not sure what to do.

听力原文：To keep both ends meet, Jack rides his bike to work to save money on bus fare. He has two very little kids to support.

(24)

A．Jack has a meeting to attend.

B．Jack saves his money by riding his bike to work.

C．Jack is saving his money to buy a bike.

D．Jack saves his money by riding a bus.

New model police

William Bratton, the chief of the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD), likes to say that "cops count". They certainly seem to count when Mr Bratton is in charge of them. New York': crime rate withered when he ran its police force in the mid-1990s, and Los Angeles has be. come more law-abiding ever since he arrived in 2002. Burglaries are down by a fifth, murders by a third and serious assaults by more than half. The setting for innumerable hard boiled detective novels and violent television dramas is now safer than Salt Lake City in Utah

Yet Los Angeles's good fortune is not replicated everywhere. Compared to ten years ago, when crime was in remission across America, the current diagnosis is complex and worrying. Figures released this week by the FBI show that, while property crimes continue to fall, the number of violent crimes has begun to drift upwards. In some places it has soared. Oakland, in northern California, had 145 murders last year—more than half again as many as in 2005. No fewer than 406 people died in Philadelphia, putting the murder rate back where it had been in the bad old days of the early 1990s.

The most consistent and striking trend of the past few years is a benign one. America's three biggest cities are becoming safer. Robberies in Chicago, Los Angeles and New York have tumbled in the past few years, defying the national trend. Indeed, the big cities are now holding down increases in overall crime rates. Between 2000 and 2006, for example, the number of murders in America went up by 7%. Were it not for Chicago, Los Angeles and New York, all of which notched many fewer, the increase would have been 11%.

This is especially surprising given the big cities' recent woes. Thanks to a cut in starting salaries and poaching by suburban forces, New York's police department has lost more than 4,000 officers since 2000. Chicago and Los Angeles also have fewer cops than they did in the late 1990s—and the latter has more people. The LAPD labours under a court decree, imposed in 2001 following revelations of corruption and brutality, which forces it to spend precious time and money scrutinising itself.

The three police forces, though, look increasingly alike when it comes to methods of tackling crime. The new model was pioneered in New York. In the mid-1990s it began to map crimes, allocate officers accordingly (a strategy known as "putting cops on the dots") and hold local commanders accountable for crime on their turf. Since 2002 it has flooded high-crime areas with newly qualified officers. The cops' methods are sometimes crude—police stops in New York have increased five-fold in the past five years—but highly effective. Crime tends to go down by about a third in the flooded areas, which has a disproportionate impact on the overall tally.

In the past few years Chicago and Los Angeles have adopted similar methods: although, having fewer officers, they are less extravagant with them. The Los Angeles police targered just five hot spots last year. Both cities have put local commanders in charge of curting crime on their patches and, like New York, they are moving beyond putting cops on the dots. They now try to anticipate where crimes will occur based on gang intelligence. Wesley Skogan, a criminologist at Northwestern University, reckons such methods are the most likely cause of the continued drop in big-city crime. He has diligently tested most of the explanations proffered for Chicago's falling crime rate and has been able to rubbish most of them. Locking lots of people up, for example, may well have helped cut crime a decade ago, but it can't account for the trend of the past few years: the number of Chicagoans behind bars has declined since 1999. The police simply seem to be doing a better job of deterring lawlessness.

The big cities' methods may sound obvious, yet they are surprisingly rare. Many police forces are not divided into neighbour

A．police officers are paid less.

B．there is less crime for the police to deal with.

C．its officers have been recruited by other forces.

Here are twelve ways to save money in college.

■ Make your own lunch.

■ Shop around. Don't buy the first item(商品) you see.

■ Learn when to say no. Ask yourself whether you really have the money for what you're thinking about buying.

■ Give service instead of spending. For example, agree to watch a friend's children for a few hours in exchange for a good meal.

■ Cut down the number of shopping trips you make.

■ Borrow clothes from friends and relatives(亲戚).

■ Have other students cut your hair.

■ Check newspapers for lower prices on lunches or dinners.

■ Use your college's library services. Read their books and newspapers instead of buying them, for example.

■ Ask other students about the least expensive supermarkets, restaurants, and so on.

■ Ask yourself whether you're buying because you need something or just because other students are buying.

■ Be ready to change your attitude (态度) when necessary. For example, some people think that the most expensive item is the best item, but you don't always get what you pay for.

Who are these suggestions for?

A．College teachers.

B．College students.

C．Parents of college students.

Not a few excellent proposals by the countries of the third world have been ______to the United Nations, acceptance of which will strengthen peace and lessen the danger of war.

A．submitted

B．suggested

C．advanced

D．released