问答题Parliamentary Elections in Afghanistan　　For the first time in three decades Afghanistan is holding parliamentary elections. It’s a momentous time for a country still trying to emerge from years of war. There’s been much criticism that these polls will

Passage 6　　The story of Pakistan is one of remorseless tug and pull between the civilian and military rulers on the one hand, and-the liberal and religious forces on the other.　　In the process, the country has failed to become either a democracy, a theocracy or a permanent military dictatorship.　　The chief casualties have been the rule of law, the state institutions and the process of national integration, with grave consequences for the civil society.　　How and why did all this come about?　　The country was born in 1947 with a clean slate and a potential to follow in one of two directions.　　It could opt for democracy. It had inherited democratic institutions and experience from the colonial rule, and was itself the creation of a democratic process involving national elections, parliamentary resolutions and a referendum.　　Or it could become an Islamic emirate. The Pakistan movement was based on the theory that the Muslims of India were a nation and had a right to separate statehood.　　They were granted separate electorate by the British rulers, and used Islamic identity as their main election slogan in 1937 and 1946.　　But instead of making a clear choice, the early leaders tried to mix the two, and inadvertently sparked a series of political, legal and religious debacles that define today’s Pakistan. In political terms, democracy has been the first casualty of this hybrid system.　　Its foundations were shaken by two controversial decisions made by the country’s founder and first Governor-General, Mohammad Ali Jinnah.　　He dismissed the Congress-led government of the North West Frontier Province (NWFP) by decree, and instead of ordering fresh elections, appointed a Muslim League leader as the chief minister with the mandate to whip up parliamentary support for himself.　　Secondly, he declared to a large Bengali speaking audience in Dhaka, the capital of East Pakistan, that Urdu would be the only state language.　　The first action created a precedent for Governor-General Ghulam Mohammad, a former bureaucrat, to dismiss the country’s first civilian government in 1953.　　Since then, the governor-generals, presidents and army chiefs have dismissed as many as ten civilian governments that together ruled the country for 27 years. The remaining 33 years have seen direct military rule.　　Mr. Jinnah’s second action alienated the Bengali population of the eastern wing, and set a precedent for the West Pakistani rulers to neutralise the numerical superiority of East Pakistan through legal entrapments and outright disenfranchisement.　　After the secession of East Pakistan in 1971, the military rulers have repeatedly vitiated the federal and parliamentary character of the 1973 Constitution, thereby alienating the three smaller provinces of the remaining country.　　Legal safeguards against tyranny fell by the wayside in 1954 when the Supreme Court justified the governor-generaP s dismissal of the government and the parliament by invoking the controversial “theory of necessity”.　　The theory has endured, and nearly every dismissal of a civilian government and every military takeover have been upheld by the higher judiciary, undermining democratic traditions.　　On their part, the military rulers have co-opted both surrogate politicians and religious extremists as instruments of political strategy and national security policy.　　The political recruits have provided a civilian facade to military governments, while religious— and sometimes ethnic-extremists have tended to distract and destabilise governments run by secular political forces.　　Last, but not least, the Americans have tended to use their crucial financial and military support selectively against democratic governments.　　The pattern is unmistakably clear.　　The first large-scale American food and military aid started to pour into Pakistan in late 1953, months after the dismissal of its first civilian government.　　It continued for a decade as Pakistan under a military regime joined various US-sponsored defence pacts against the Soviet Union.　　The US started having problems with Pakistan when an elected government came to power in1972, but poured billions of dollars into the country when another military regime took over in 1977 and agreed to fight the Soviets in Afghanistan.　　Similarly, while the elected governments that followed during 1988-1999 had to live with a decade of US sanctions, the military regime of Gen Musharraf, that ousted the last civilian government in 1999, remains a “well supplied” ally in the US, “war on terror”.　　There is also a gathering political storm on the horizon, in keeping with the cyclical pattern of the country’s political weather.　　As elections approach, exiled leaders Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif, both former prime ministers, threaten to return to the country with the express aim of effecting a regime change.　　But Gen Musharraf, like his predecessors, is fighting to keep his military office and his special powers under the constitution to dismiss governments and parliaments.　　Thus, the story of Pakistan continues to be one of despotic regimes using religious extremists and external support to keep the secular democratic forces at bay; and when these forces do assert themselves, to tie them down in legal constraints that are designed to ensure their failure.　　It is the story of a society that has been going round in circles for the last 60 years.　　1. State in one sentence the root cause that has brought Pakistan the unstable and disordered situation since its foundation?　　2. What led to the secession of East Pakistan in 1971?　　3. Describe the big blow to legal safeguards against tyranny and its outcome.　　4. Draw a conclusion of the cyclical pattern of Pakistan’s political weather.

In mid-ocean，the characteristics of a wave are determined by three factors. What is NOT one of these factors?（）

A:Hello, David! I haven't heard from you for a long time. How have you been recently? B:（）

Q4: Do you think it’s a good idea to move staff around within a company from time to time? (Why?/Why not?)

Practice 1　　The catchphrase of the hour is that America is living beyond its means. The expression is used so much by politicians, economists and editorial writers that it is depreciating faster than the dollar. But there's no way around it. It tells the story. The Data Resources numbers show Americans increase their spending this year almost three times as fast as their after-tax income. What else can we explain it? What is more, as a nation, the U.S. has been doing the same thing throughout the 1990s. For years the country has been consuming more than it produces, making up the difference by borrowing abroad. It can't go on.　　The stock market's tumble, which has caused a loss of $1 trillion in paper wealth, is but the first step in a process that must sober the nation. At the same time, in the next few years the U. S. will have to throw its amazing dream machine into reverse and start paying its debts. Inevitably, this will mean a lowering in the U.S. standard of living as Americans are forced to produce more than they consume to service a soaring foreign debt. Per capital income may keep rising but more slowly than in the past. The trade account will go slowly towards balance or even surplus in the mid-1990s. But in the meantime, Americans will receive less for their exports because the dollar will fall considerably before U. S. exports are competitive. And pressures to reduce the federal deficit will tighten the lid on defense spending.

The last time I saw her was （） my brother"s wedding ceremony three years ago.

Practice 6　　If there's a threat of dangerous deflation—a general fall in prices—the causes lie as much in Europe and Japan as in the United States. The inevitable collapse of America's speculative boom need not have been especially damaging if the world's other advanced economies were healthy. Their expanding appetite for imports would have bolstered the United States and so-called emerging market countries, from Brazil to South Korea. The trouble is that other advanced economies aren't healthy.　　Deflation could emerge from simultaneous slumps in the world's three major economies. Prices drop because there's too little global demand chasing too much global supply—everything from steel to shoes. Japan's ills are well known. Its banks are awash in bad loans. Less understood (at least in the United States) is the fact that Europe's troubles stem significantly from Germany. Germany is Europe's “sick man”, just as Japan is Asia's. Only 15 years ago, these countries seemed poised to assume leadership of the world economy. Now they are dragging it down.

Which party won 4 consecutive elections and was in power for quiet a long time from 1979 to 1997?