If women are mercilessly exploited year after year, they have only themselves to blame, because they tremble at the thought of being seen in public in clothes that are out of fashion. They are always taken advantage of by the designers and the big stores. Clothes which have been worn only a few times have to be put aside because of the change of fashion. When you come to think of it, only a woman is capable of standing in front of a wardrobe packed full of clothes and announcing sadly that she has nothing to wear.

Changing fashion is nothing more than the intentional creation of waste. Many women spend vast sums of money each year to replace clothes that have hardly been worn. Women who cannot afford to throw away clothing in this way, waste hours of their time altering the dresses they have. Skirts are lengthened or shortened; necklines are lowered or raised, and so on.

No one can claim that the fashion industry contributes anything really important to society. Fashion designers are rarely concerned with vital things like warmth, comfort and durability(耐用) . They are only interested in outward appearance and they take advantage of the fact that women will put up with any amount of discomfort, as long as they look right. There can hardly be a man who hasn’t sometimes in his life smiled at the sight of a woman shaking in a thin dress on a winter day, or delicately picking her way through deep snow in high-heeled shoes.

When comparing men and women in the matter of fashion, the conclusions to be drawn are obvious. Does the constantly changing fashion of women’s clothes, one wonders, reflect basic qualities of instability? Men are too clever to let themselves be cheated by fashion designers. Do their unchanged styles of dress reflect basic qualities of stability and reliability? That is for you to decide.

69. Designers and big stores always make money_____.

   A. by mercilessly exploiting women workers in the clothing industry

   B. because they are capable of predicting the new fashion

   C. by constantly changing the fashion in women’s clothing

   D. because they always improve the quality of women’s clothing

70. To the writer, the fact that women change their old-fashioned dress is seen as_____.

   A. a quality of instability         B. a waste of time and money

   C. an expression of taste        D. an expression of creativity

71. The writer would be less critical if fashion designers placed more stress on the_____.

   A. cost        B. appearance     C. comfort     D. suitability

72. By saying “ the conclusions to be drawn are obvious”, the writer means that_____.

   A. women’s changeableness in their choice of clothing was often laughed at

   B. women are better able to put up with discomfort

   C. men are also exploited greatly by fashion designers

   D. men are more reasonable in the matter of fashion

Treatment for HIV has become more widespread, especially in poorer countries. It's also become cheaper, as medicine companies have lowered their prices for life-saving anti-retroviral drugs(抗逆转录病毒药物). But these drugs are still expensive and many countries are looking to create the biggest impact with limited resources. That's where World Health Organization guidelines come in, says Rochelle Walensky, a disease researcher from Harvard.
Walensky and her colleagues used computer programs to model the most cost-effective disease interventions(干预), as well as collected data from clinics in Africa and India about what works best. They found that among the choices of what to do first, earlier anti-retroviral therapy (疗法)improved five-year survival dramatically and resulted in the longer life expectancy. But cost-effective doesn't always mean affordable, especially for governments in poor countries. Countries still have to make difficult choices about how much treatment they can afford.
People in Nairobi, Kenya on Thursday, Dec. 9, 2010, protest a potential free trade area agreement between the EU and India that could see cheap anti-AIDS drugs phased out（逐步淘汰）. However, Walensky notes that first-line anti-retrovirals—those medicine given to newly diagnosed patients that can keep away from symptoms for years - are much cheaper than they were a decade ago. "Second-line therapy have come down quite a bit but not to the level of first-line and countries are having a hard time affording them and increasingly over time, people are going to fail first-line therapy and they're going second-line therapy and then, eventually, they're going to need third-line therapy, some of them."
According to Walensky, history has shown that drug prices can come down when international pressure is applied to drug makers. But for now, she says, countries should focus on treating as many people as they can, as early as possible
Her paper is published in the online journal PLoS Medicine.
【小题1】 Which is the best title for the passage?

I don't think the watch will ______ much. It is ______ ＄30 at most.

A. cost, worth　        B. worth, cost　        C. spend, worth D. worth, spend

In the more and more competitive service industry, it is no longer enough to promise customer satisfaction. Today, customer “delight” is what companies are trying to achieve in order to keep and increase market share.

It is accepted in the marketing industry, and confirmed by a number of researches, that customers receiving good service will promote business by telling up to 12 other people; those treated badly will tell their tales of woe to up to 20 people, and 80 percent of the people who feel their complaints are handled fairly will stay loyal.

    New challenges for customer care have come when people can obtain goods and services through telephone call centers and the Internet. For example, many companies now have to invest a lot of money in information technology and staff training in order to cope with the “phone rage”—caused by delays in answering calls, being cut off in mid-conversation or left waiting for long periods.

“Many people do not like talking to machines,” says Dr. Storey Senior Lecturer in Marketing at City University Business School. “Banks, for example, encourage staff at call centers to use customer data to establish instant and good relationship with them. The aim is to make the customer feel they know you and that you can trust— the sort of comfortable feelings people have during face-to-face chats with their local branch manager.”

Recommended ways of creating customer delight include: under-promising and over-delivering (saying that a repair will be carried out within five hours, but getting it done within two); replacing a faulty product immediately; throwing in a gift voucher (购物礼卷) as an unexpected “thank you” to regular customers; and always returning calls, even when they are complaints.

Aiming for customer delight is all very well, but if services do not reach the high level promised, disappointment or worse will be the result. This can be eased by offering an apology and an explanation of why the service did not meet usual standards with empathy (for example, “I know how you must feel”), and possible solutions (replacement, compensation or whatever fairness suggests best meets the case).

Airlines face some of the toughest challenges over customer care. Fierce competition has convinced them that delighting passengers is an important marketing tool, while there is great potential for customer anger over delays caused by weather, unclaimed luggage and technical problems .

For British Airways staff, a winning telephone style is considered vital in handling the large volume of calls about bookings and flight times. They are trained to answer quickly, with their name, job title and a “we are here to help” attitude. The company has invested heavily in information technology to make sure that information is available instantly on screen.

British Airways also says its customer care policies are applied within the company and staff are taught to regard each other as customers requiring the highest standards of service.

Customer care is obviously here to stay and it would be a foolish company that used slogans such as "we do as we please”. On the other hand, the more customers are promised, the greater the risk of disappointment.

1.We can learn from Paragraph 2 that         .

A. complaining customers are hard to satisfy

B. unsatisfied customers receive better service

C. Satisfied customers catch more attention

D. well-treated customers promote business

2.The writer mentions “phone rage” (Paragraph 3) to show that________.

A. customers often use phones to express their anger

B. people still prefer to buy goods online

C. customer care becomes more demanding

D. customers rely on their phones to obtain services

3.What does the writer recommend to create delight?

A. Calling customers regularly           B. Giving a “thank you” note.

C. Delivering a quicker service                   D. Promising more gifts.

4.If a manager should show his empathy (Paragraph 6), what would he probably say?

A. “I know how upset you must be.”           B. “I appreciate your understanding.”

C. “I’m sorry for the delay.”                          D. “I know it’s our fault.”

5.Customer delight is important for airlines because________.

A. their telephone style remains unchanged

B. they are more likely to meet with complaints

C. the services cost them a lot of money

D. the policies can be applied to their staff

--- How much do you think the coat will _____?

  --- Not much. It is _____ 50 dollars at the most.

A. cost; worth      B. worth; cost      C. take; cost      D. need; worth