CNN(Cable News Network)
It was with great joy _____ he received the news that his long lost son would soon return home.
When we were having a meeting, the director()the bad news by telephone.
Practice 2
The news couldn’t be worse. Three years of recession or anemic economic growth, Argentina’s debt default and collapse and—more recently—Bolivia’s president run out of office by indigenous people fed up with his pro-business, pro-Washington agenda. Taken together, these trials have seemingly erased the promise of prosperity that wafted across the region a decade ago. Now there’s the specter of a return to the dark days of the 1970s and 80s when economic and political chaos were the norm. Social eruptions have prompted a wide-ranging and contentious reappraisal of the economic orthodoxy—the neoliberal model that has shaped policy in Latin America for the past 15 years. Market-oriented structural reforms have succeeded in a few crucial ways: they ended the ruinous era of hyperinflation, and inculcated a sense of fiscal responsibility among profligate governments. But belt-tightening has not led to the robust economic performance promised when reforms began. After enjoying encouraging GDP expansion in the early and mid-1990s, Latin America has stumbled through about five years of economic stagnation that have left the region’s have-nots in a surly mood. Latin America desperately wants increased access to markets in the United States and Europe, but the region doesn’t want to pursue trade deals on what it perceives to be unfair terms. (Newsweek)
There are a lot of news()today's newspaper
Questions 1 to 5 are based on the following passage.
Good news: Olympic chiefs visit London. Bad news: they’ll be traveling by Tube
It’s crunch week for London’s bid to host the 2012 Games
BY ANDREW JOHNSON and JONATHAN THOMPSON
Commuters waiting at Stratford in East London, Which is the planned site of the 80,000-seat Olympic stadium
Senior government ministers and British sporting heroes will be on hand to extol the capital’s virtues when the 12-member International Olympic Committee (IOC) team visits this week to assess the London 2012 bid.
Although much of their four-day visit is expected to be spent in the exclusive Four Seasons Hotel in Canary Wharf grilling bid organisers in question and answer sessions, the evaluation commission will spend one day visiting London’s proposed venues—and will take a trip on the Tube. It could prove a costly journey.
London 2012 organisers, who have spent up to £20m on the project, have pencilled in trips to the proposed sites, including the planned stadium at Stratford, the Millennium Dome at Greenwich and the ExCel centre in Docklands.
However, the commission can insist on being taken anywhere, including the new Wembley stadium, which will host the football, or to the archery venue at Lord’s, or even to Wimbledon or
Hackney.
Earlier this month, the Madrid bid suffered a setback over lack of accommodations, which was criticised by IOC members. Will transport prove Londons’ Achilles’ heel? On Friday The Independent on Sundaysent four reporters on various journeys across London to put the transport infrastructure to the test.
Questions:
1.How many people can the London’s planned Olympic stadium hold?
2.How many International Olympic Committee (IOC) members will visit London and where are they going to have the question and answer sessions?
3.What does “tube” mean in American English?
4.Why was Madrid criticised by International Olympic Committee members?
5.What is the problem which the authors worried about London’s bid to host the 2012 Olympic Games?
Practice 14 Five hundred years ago, news of important happenings—battles lost and won, kings or rulers overthrown or killed—took months and even years to travel from one country to another. The news passed by word of mouth and was never accurate. (1) Today we can read in our newspapers of important events that occur in faraway countries on the same day they happen.
In the past, news was _____.
When we were having a meeting, the director()the bad news by telephone.
It is the news ()most parents of the hope that there is a safe and socially approved road to a kind of life they themselves have not had, but their children can.