Section A Multiple-Choice QuestionsText AIn a dramatic escalation of the anger unleashed by the economic crisis engulfing Greece, communist protesters stormed the Acropolis today as the Euro and world markets plunged on concerns about the debt-choked country"s huge bailout from the EU and the IMF.Fears that the Greek crisis will spread to other countries sent markets reeling around the world today. The FTSE 100 in London closed down 142 points and, in New York, American markets fell by more than 2% as investors worried that a failure to push through austerity measures in Greece will lead to a spiraling loss of confidence in other indebted countries.In Athens, protesting public sector workers said their action had been prompted by "blind anger" over the near-bankrupt government"s decision to accept the painful policies. The measures, which are aimed at bringing Greece"s public deficit within permissible EU levels by 2014, through a tough cost-cutting regime worth(￡25bn), have hit civil servants the hardest.Furious Greeks have likened the three-year austerity program and the attendant international monitoring of their public finances, to a foreignoccupation.Athens is to receive an estimatedover the next three years, the biggest bailout ever witnessed. But under the deal the Greek government must also freeze wages, slash pensions and do away with a plethora of bonuses and allowances—draconian reforms not seen since the second world war."We want to send a message to the people of Europe," said Panagiotis Papageorgopoulos, a communist party official marching with the protesters. "We can take control of our fate with organized protests so that our lives are not run by the EU and IMF."The stunt, which left bewildered tourists stranded outside the gates of the site, kicked off a day of sometimes violent protests by tens of thousands of Greek public sector employees. Amid growing anger over wage and pensions cuts and a rise in consumer taxes, civil servants extended a one-day strike by 24 hours and staged impromptu protests. In a prelude to tomorrow"s paralyzing general strike, schools, hospitals and domestic flights were disrupted as public servants stepped up action against the measures. Private sector workers, including air traffic controllers at Athens airport, will participate in the walk-out piling the pressure on the government.Spyros Papaspyrou, who is head of the ADEDY union that represents close to half a million civil servants, said "Cutting wages and pensions is the easy option. There are other things the government can do before taking money from a pensioner who earnsa month." Deepening recession—the country"s first in 16 years—has already forced the closure of 65,000 small and medium sized businesses."Once these latest measures begin to bite there will be a huge reaction" said businessman Vasillis Stergios. "What we are seeing now are just "conscience" demonstrations, but when people really find it hard to make ends meet and they become "necessity" demonstrations there will be a social explosion."Text BFinding Nemomay have left local theatres, but in the southern sea, a legion of brightly-coloured anemone fish, or pla cartoon, only recently arrived.For more than a decade, the population of anemone fish in the ocean has been shrinking. Thanks to their cuteness, the fish make popular pets and thus they are often harvested from the sea to be sold at fish markets. These little Nemos are quitevulnerableto environmental changes, though. Many suffer from the lengthy transportation times, becoming weak and plagued by disease on their way to the market. Most die a few days after being kept in a fish tank.Yet the demand continues, and hunters comb the seas, scooping them up and selling them to vendors. To make a quick buck, some even resort to the barbaric practice of sprinkling cyanide in the water: This causes all the fish in the vicinity, the target ones and passersby too, to pass out temporarily and float to the surface. This makes it easier to harvest the desired fish, though many of the fish thus poisoned will soon die.To cope with the situation, the Krabi Coastal Aquaculture Centre with the Department of Fisheries, initiated a breeding campaign in 2000 in an attempt to save the species and increase its numbers."The anemone fish has been threatened severely. We can"t let the situation go on like that. Their population has sharply decreased. Some species like the clown anemone fish are on the verge of extinction because they are so popular among fish lovers," said Paiboon Bunlipatanon, director of the Krabi Coastal Aquaculture Centre. He said the loss of anemone fish can affect the balance of the under-water ecology, and that we might one day feel the repercussions.Paiboon insisted that he has nothing against keeping fish as pets. Yet he wanted to ask fish fans to be considerate when it comes to what kind of fish they keep in their tanks—at what price and to whom "Personally, I don"t have anything against fish lovers who want to keep these decorative fish as pets. But they should accept the fact that what they are doing can be very damaging to aquatic animals. It"s always true, that if there were no buyers, there would be no sellers."The aim of the breeding scheme is to return the miniature creatures to their natural habitat. Eventually, the fish will be bred for commercial purposes. Breeding know-how will then be passed on to villagers wanting to run anemone fish farms, as well as academics across the country. With commercial propagation in place, it is hoped that the population of anemone fish in nature will not be disturbed. Fish traders can buy the clown fish directly from breeders.Unlike fish caught by poisoning, the fish bred at a farm will be healthier and have more chances of surviving in a new environment. "We"re pinning our hopes on villagers. If they are skilful in breeding the fish, the anemone fish can then live happily in the ocean. In addition, the natural environment will not be destroyed," the director said, adding that when poachers try to catch the fish, they inevitably ruin the coral reef.The centre has been successful in breeding seven species of anemone fish found in the Andaman Sea and the Gulf of Thailand. It took the research team three years to fulfill this mission.Text CYou may think that mom-and-pop stores are gradually dying out, giving way to chain stores and big business, but you would be wrong. The online shopping platform Taobao is a game changer and has quietly revolutionized the way we buy and sell.Taobao, or "treasure hunt", recently became the largest e-commerce website in terms of traffic, surpassing Amazon. It has 190 million registered users and serves the biggest marketplace in the world. Half of China"s Internet users go to Taobao, either to browse, buy or sell, according to Web information company Alexa.While Taobao borrowed its original business model from eBay when it started up in 2003, the student soon became the master. Just three years later, eBay shut down its Chinese site and now Taobao controls about 80 percent of the country"s online shopping market.It charges nothing to list items for sale and makes most of its money from advertising. It also plans to share transaction data with its users so they can cash in on buying trends. This allows anyone with an idea and a computer to start a viable business, doing away with the need for significant start-up capital. Instead of opening up a store on the high street selling to passersby, the world is every Taobao user"s oyster.A friend of mine is a typical example. She opened up a store selling children"s clothing near Nuren Jie, a popular market in Beijing. It wasn"t a great success but her online sales through Taobao wentballistic. She closed the store and is now e-commerce only.Effectively, Taobao has become the country"s high street, but with global reach. Since China is the world"s manufacturing base, it is relatively easy for individuals to source cheap goods and sell at a reasonable markup. Micro-stores are opening in their thousands every day and delivering an amazing variety of goods.Among the more bizarre items that have been offered up for sale are perfectly preserved mosquitoes (6 Yuan or $0.88); bottles of confidence (transparent, weightless and odorless); shark fins (banned); coin-sized magnets to detect earthquakes; even tanks and Soviet MiG fighter aircraft.Taobao reminds me of the London store Harrods and its motto: Omnia Omnibus Ubique—"All Things for All People, Everywhere". It had an inauspicious beginning in London"s East End in 1834, but capitalized on the Great Exhibition of 1851 (known today as the Shanghai Expo) to become the world"s best-known store, selling everything from alligators to Noel Coward, to yachts and airplanes.Harrods was founded by a grocer and ended up catering to the world"s elite, creating a template for stores around the world. Taobao, obviously, has a different business model but its impact could be even greater, since it not only sells "all things for all people" but provides morn-and-pop outfits the space to flourish, releasing the entrepreneurial spirit of the masses.
A．professionB．invasionC．nationD．investigation
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