Read the following article and select the best answer. Article: Several European countries rang in the New Year in new ways. The smoke -filled cafe became a thing of memory inprefix = st1 /France. Cigarettes were forbidden in all indoor locations such as dance clubs, restaurants, hotels, casinos and cafes from Jan. 1, 2008. President Nicolas Sarkozy gave the first traditional New Year's greeting of his presidency, with a "message of hope, faith in life and in the future". In Russia, Vladimir Putin delivered the last New Year's Eve address of his eight - year presidency, boasting of economic improvements and claiming to have restored a sense of unity among Russians, who are likely to see him stay in power as Prime Minister after he steps down in a few months. In Moscow, thousands gathered in Red Square, watching a concert beneath the onion domes of St Basil's Cathedral, and fireworks above. Along with the _ , old traditions were maintained. More than a million people in New York's Times Square cheered at the 100th drop of a giant ball. A century ago the tradition began with a 700 - pound ball of wood and iron, lit with 100 25 - watt bulbs. This year's event featured an energy - efficient ball clothed in Waterford crystals , with 9,576 light - shining diodes that generated a lot of color1s. InLondon, people gathered inTrafalgar Squareand along the banks of the River Thames to watch a firework display and hear Big Ben welcome the New Year with 12 resounding bongs. In Sydney - one of the first cities to celebrate the New Year - one million people cheered as fireworks were launched from theHarborBridgeon New Year's Eve. Question: How many countries are mentioned in this passage - Four. - Five. - Six. - Seven.
Five.

Read the following article and select the best answer. Article: One of those big social networking sites, Facebook, has attracted over 58 million members. Commentator Melody Cramer is no longer one of them. Here is what she shares with us about her story. I deleted all 1,281 of my co!workers, second!grade classmates and people who I don't know at all. I shut down my account, completely. I'm 30, and I've been on Facebook since March of 2004, which makes me one of the website's earliest users. At first, I used it obsessively. If I had a free moment, I'd log on to see whether my friends had updated their profiles. I'd sit alone scrolling through these updates and then run into someone at a coffee shop and have nothing to say because I already knew everything about them, and they knew everything about me. In November, I went to my ten!year high school reunion and was not pleasantly surprised. Lauren became a model, Josh went to law school, Dina was a teacher. I hadn't talked to any of them since graduation, but I knew exactly what they were doing, both now and last week. But lately, I'm overwhelmed . Facebook opened up to everyone, not just college students, and my co!workers started to join, which meant they now knew what I was doing when I wasn't at work. And as a rule: you can NOT make friends with your coworkers because then they'll ask you the next day. But I thought we were friends. And you are friends but not the kind of friends who tell each other what they do outside of work. So now the people you work with can see what you did last night, and you're constantlyworrying what people might say about what you did last night instead of actually doing anything tonight.So I quit. I became a 30!year!old Luddite, a person who is strongly against technology development. I've returned to how the world worked when I was 20, before I knew when my friends and co!workers were counting down the seconds to vacation or entering a complicated relationship. I'm hoping life will be a lot simpler now. People will be more mysterious now that I actually have to talk to them to find out... Question: We can learn from the passage that Melody Cramer _ . - had a 10!year membership of Facebook - used to be very objected to Facebook - was unpleasant to attend high school reunion - was one of the co-founders of Facebook
had a 10!year membership of Facebook

Read the following article and select the best answer. Article: Money spent on advertising is money spent as well as any I know of. It selves directly to bring about a rapid sale of goods at reasonable prices, so setting up a firm home market and so making it possible to provide for export at good prices. By drawing attention to new ideas it helps greatly to raise standards of living. By helping to increase demand it causes an increased need for labor, and is therefore a nice way to fight unemployment. It lowers the costs of many services: without advertisements your daily newspaper would cost four times as much, the price of your television program would need to be doubled, and travel by bus or subway would cost more. And perhaps most important of all, advertising provides a promise of reasonable value in the products and services you buy. Besides the fact that twenty-seven Acts of Parliament govern the terms of advertising, no regular advertiser dare promote a product that fails to live up to the promise of his advertisements. He might fool some people for a little while through misleading advertising. He will not do so for long, for the public has the good sense not to buy the poor article more than once. If you see an article frequently advertised, it is the proof I know that the article does what is promised for it, and that it has good value. Advertising does more for the good of the public than any other force I can think of. There is one more point I feel I ought to touch on. Recently I heard a well-known television person declare that he was against advertising because it persuades rather than informs. He was telling us the real difference. Of course advertising tries to persuade. If its message were nothing but information, that would be difficult to get more people to buy, for even a detail such as the choice of the color of a shirt is a bit persuasive-advertising would be so boring that no one would pay any attention. But perhaps that is what the well-known television person wants. Question: In the author' opinion _ . - advertising can seldom bring material benefit to man by providing information - advertising informs people of new ideas rather than wins them over - there is nothing wrong with advertising in persuading the buyer - the buyer is not interested in getting information from an advertisement
there is nothing wrong with advertising in persuading the buyer