21. At a business place of bad service, the worst one can get is__________

[A] indifference and rudeness

[B] naked hostility and physical violence

[C] having intelligence and integrity questioned

[D] being insulted and threatened

22. One of the reasons for such ill feeling in the marketplace is that

[A] shoppers are usually strident, frustrated and impatient

[B] shoppers often take businesses to court to settle them

[C] businesses use new technology instead of employees

[D] businesses are keen on keeping customers, not getting them

23. What has changed at Vancouver Better Service Bureau in the past five years?

[A] More effective.

[B] Less bureaucracy.

[C]More business.

[D] Better staff.

24. Young clerks often lack interpersonal skills chiefly because they_______________ .

[A] are skilled in dealing with machines not people

[B] are not trained in simple manners at home

[C] fall victims to generational change

[D] take retailing to be a temporary job

25. The author's attitude towards businesses and bad service is_______________ them.

[A] attacking [B] understanding

[C] regretting [D]warning

Text 2

The United States is the United Nations' biggest deadbeat. Conservatives in Congress, led by Senator Jessie Helms, stopped Washington from paying its dues until the UN reduced its as??sessment and made other changes. Now, thanks to the hard work Richard Holbrook, America’s UN representative, and for peacekeeping. Mr. Helms, who has praised the deal, should release the dues he has been holding hostage—$ 582 million of the $1.3 billion the UN says it is owed.

The new formula would reduce the US contribution to the general UN budget to 22 percent from the current level of 25 percent—a symbolic difference of only $ 34 million a year. Washing??ton, which has been paying just over 30 percent of the peacekeeping budget, would now pay 27 percent—a difference of $ 80 million to $ 120 million a year—and that percentage will drop fur??ther. While poor countries would not pay more, the dues of other wealthy nations would rise un??der the new system.

The agreement would probably not have been reached without the intervention of the media magnate Ted Turner, who is already contributing $ 1 billion to UN programs over 10 years. Mr. Turner gave $ 34 million to cover the one-year gap during which other nations prepare to raise their contributions. His offer should embarrass Congress, which forced diplomats to waste their influence at the UN in months of negotiations to save a sum that is modest by federal budget stan??dards.

US debts reduced the UN's ability to reimburse nations that contributed peacekeepers to UN missions worldwide. Pakistan, Bangladesh, Jordan and other poor countries essentially made up for the absence of US financial support. Since Washington benefits from peacekeepers, which damp down conflicts without US troops, It should not be discouraging nations from sending them.

Washington's natural allies at the UN were concerned that the US wanted influence without meeting its treaty obligations. Some of them withheld support for US proposals. Mr. Helms should also end his hold on an additional $244 million in back dues, whose release he has conditioned on a reduction in US dues for specialized UN agencies such as UNICEF and the UN refugee organization. These agencies need full support. Switch by Mr. Helms would help the in??coming Bush administration, which would reap the benefits of the restoration of America’s full in??fluence at the United Nations.

26. Senator Jessie Helms stopped the US government from paying its dues to the UN because he wants .

[A] other countries to pay as much as the US

[B] Washington to make assessments and changes

[C] the UN's general budget to be trimmed ,

[D] the US to share a smaller part of the burden

27. The new formula has adjusted the assessment and will save the US government at least a year.

[A] $114 million [B] $ 154 million

[C] $ 200 million [D] $ 234 million

28. After the budget reassessment, the gap left by the US will be covered by______________ .

[A] Ted Turner [B] peacekeeping countries

[C] all member nations [D] other wealthy nations

29. The author believes that Richard Holbrook's negotiations at the UN were______________ .

[A]A money-saving success

[B] An eye-catching embarrassment

[C] A waste of US influence

[D] A defense of US interest

30. From the passage, we can infer that_____________ .

[A] The US contribution to the UN has become a huge burden to Washington

[B] The new formula has not solved all problems concerning the US dues

[C] The dispute over the US dues has been deliberately made political

[D] Ted turner's intervention saved the US a diplomatic disaster

Text 3

With its cluster of high-rises known as the Frankfurter Manhattan, its big banks and its bustling airport, this is a town with pretensions. Petra Roth, the mayor, sees it as a global city providing hub functions for the Continent,a place that should be as cosmopolitan as New York.

Frankfurt is not just the city of foreign companies, but it is also home to 8000 Muslims, most of them Turks of modest means. Foreigners, including a large contingent from the former Yugoslavia, make up 30 percent of the population; one of the highest ratios for any city in Europe troubled by immigration. But there is no blood on the streets. Quietly flows the Main River be??neath that mock-New World skyline.

As Germany goes these days, so goes Europe. And if Frankfurt, the headquarters for Europe's new Central Bank and so the capital of Europe's nascent shared currency, the euro, is comfortable being a part-Muslim city with 27 mosques, perhaps the so-called New Europe of one money and blurred borders can be a more tolerant place.

Xenophobia is very unusual in Frankfurt,SAID Francesco Renaldo, an Italian banker. Perhaps it's the 300 foreign banks, or the vast airport, or the long American presence. Not until 1994 did 30 000 American troops pack up and go home—the Cold War ended and, so people here say, the city shaped in the soldiers’ open, can-do spirit.

But even here, at the heart of American-influenced Europe, far from the strained psyche of a former East German city like Esau, where rightists this year killed an African immigrant, the ghost of xenophobia is not entirely absent. For Frankfurt—like Germany, like Europe—is strug??gling to define a shifting identity.

As the departed US soldiers suggest, this city is no longer part of a Cold War country living what Safer Seneca, a German intellectual of Turkish descent, has called a quasi a-national exis??tence under the umbrella of the West. Far from it, this is now the financial center of a strong Germany seeking to define and express a new national pride.

But Frankfurt is also the capital of a unique experiment in abolishing the nation-state through the voluntary abandonment of sovereignty involved in giving up national control of monetary poli??cy and adopting a common currency.

So the Continent's largest state, on reborn only in 1990, yet also one that is being abolished, veers, this way and that in its mood, one minute nostalgic for a proud Fatherland, the next in the vanguard of what Foreign Minister Joshua Fischer, himself a child of Frankfurt, calls a post-national era.