Starting a bank a child’s play? Absolutely, if you ask some enterprising youngsters in India, who have not only managed to establish one, but also, unlike many of the large International banks, run it successfully since 2001. What’s even more impressive is that the young bankers and their 90,004---clients are all homeless!
The Children’s Development Khazana (treasure) opened its first branch in 2001 at a homeless shelter in New Deli as a way to help the street children protect their hard-earned money from thieves. Since then, the idea has caught on like wildfire.
Today, Khazana has 12 branches all across New Deli, with a total of Rupees 12lakh (about 22,000USD) in deposits. Not only that, there are now 77 affiliated branches in other parts of Asia, ranging from Nepal, Bangladesh and Afghanistan to the island of Sri Lanka, and even Kyrgyzstan in Central Asia. While no deposit or balance is too small for the bank, they do have strict regulations about where the money is earned from. Funds obtained by begging or selling drugs are not welcomed at this bank !
Also, unlike the real banks, all employees are volunteers, which means that they go to school or a paying job during the day and work at the bank in the evening. To ensure that everybody gets a chance to participate in running the branch, two volunteer managers are elected from the clients base every six months.
Karan, the current manager is just 14-year-old. During the day he earns a living by helping out the cleaning crew at wedding banquets and other big parties. In the evening, he handles the deposits（存款）and withdrawals（取款）in the bank. After the bank closes, he along with an adult volunteer from the shelter head over to a regular bank and deposit the funds collected into Khazana’s interest-bearing bank account and though it started with one single purpose. The Children’s Development Khazana is today a well-developed bank, one kids can not only deposit money which earns them 5% interest, but also, request loans for family emergencies, to start a business or even to pay for school.The initial aim of starting the Children’s Development Khazana is to______.
| A．provide for jobs for homeless children |
| B．help homeless families with emergencies |
| C．sponsor homeless children to go to school |
| D．safeguard homeless children’s hard-earned money |
The children’s Development Khazana is different from regular banks in that_______.
| A．all its workers are street children |
| B．it pays its customers no interest |
| C．customers can be made its managers |
| D．it opens in the evening six month a year |
According to the passage, the Children’s Development Khazana________.
| A．welcomes all money, however small it is |
| B．offers more and better service than before |
| C．is run by a 14-year-old boy, Karan alone |
| D．has more than 70 branches across India |
The famous director of a big and expensive movie planned to film a beautiful sunset over the ocean , so that the audiences could see his hero and heroine in front of it at the end of the film as they said goodbye to each other for ever. He sent his camera crew (摄制组) out one evening to film the sunset for him.
The next morning he said to the men, “Have you provided me with that sunset？”
“No, sir，”the man answered.
The director was angry. “Why not？”he said.
“Well, sir，” one of the men answered, “We're on the east coast here, and the sun sets in the west. We can get you a sunrise over the sea, if necessary, but not a sunset.”
“But I want a sunset，”the director shouted. “Go to the airport, take the next flight to the west coast, and get one.”
But then a young secretary had an idea. “Why don't you photograph a sunrise, ” she suggested, “and then play it backwards? Then it'll look like a sunset.”
“That's a very good idea！” the director said. Then he turned to the camera crew and said，“Tomorrow morning I want you to get me a beautiful sunrise over the sea.”
The camera crew went out early the next morning and filmed a bright sunrise over the beach in the middle of a beautiful bay. Then at nine o'clock they took it to the director. “Here it is, sir，” they said, and gave it to him. He was very pleased.
They all went into the studio.“All right，”the director explained, “now our hero and heroine are going to say goodbye. Run the film backwards so that we can see the ‘sunset' behind them.”
The “sunset”began, but after a quarter of a minute, the director suddenly put his face in his hands and shouted to the camera crew to stop.
The birds in the film were flying backwards, and the waves on the sea were going away from the beach. Why did the director want to send his crew to the west coast?
| A．Because he changed his mind about getting a sunset. |
| B．Because he has angry with his crew. |
| C．Because it was his secretary's suggestion. |
| D．Because he wanted to get a scene of sunset. |
Which of the following is NOT true?
| A．The crew had to follow the secretary's advice. |
| B．If you want to see a sunrise, the east coast is the place to go to. |
| C．The camera crew wasn't able to film the scene the first day. |
| D．The director ordered his crew to stop filming the“sunset”． |
The director wanted to film a sunset over the ocean because________.
| A．it went well with the separation of the hero and the heroine |
| B．when they arrived at the beach it was already in the evening |
| C．it was more moving than a sunrise |
| D．the ocean looked more beautiful at sunset |
After the“sunset”began, the director suddenly put his face in his hands________.
| A．because he was moved to tears |
| B．as he saw everything in the film moving backwards |
| C．as the sunrise did not look as beautiful as he had imagined |
| D．because he was disappointed (失望的) with the performance of the hero and heroine |
A Festival for the Dead is held once a year in Japan. This festival is a cheerful occasion, for on this day, the dead are said to return to their homes and they are welcomed by the living. As they are expected to be hungry after their long journey, food is laid out for them. Speciallymade lanterns(灯笼) are hung outside each house to help the dead to find their way. All night long, people dance and sing. In the early morning, the food that had been laid out for the dead is thrown into a river or into the sea as it is considered unlucky for anyone living to eat it. In towns that are near the sea, the tiny lanterns which had been hung in the streets the night before, are placed into the water when the festival is over. Thousands of lanterns slowly drift out to sea guiding the dead on their return journey to the other world. This is a moving spectacle(景象，场面), for crowds of people stand on the shore watching the lanterns drifting away until they can be seen no more.The festival is a cheerful one，because________.
| A．people specially make some lanterns |
| B．all night long, people dance and sing |
| C．people make much delicious food |
| D．the dead are said to return to their homes and are welcomed by the living |
Speciallymade lanterns(灯笼) are hung outside each house to________.
| A．help the dead to find their way |
| B．add the cheerful atmosphere |
| C．welcome the dead to go home |
| D．help the dead to find the food |
What happens to the lanterns at the end of the festival?
| A．The lanterns are put away to be used next year. |
| B．They are thrown away. |
| C．They are placed into the water. |
| D．They are hung outside all the way. |
Saturday, October 7th, was a marathon of sad tasks for Anna Politkovskaya. Two weeks earlier, her father, a retired official in the department of foreign affairs, had died of a heart attack as he emerged from the Moscow Metro while on his way to visit Politkovskaya's mother, Raisa Mazepa, in the hospital. She had just been diagnosed(诊断) with cancer and was too weak even to attend her husband's funeral. “Your father will forgive me, because he knows that I have always loved him，” she told Anna and her sister, Elena Kudimova, the day he was buried. A week later, she had an operation and since then Anna and Elena had been taking turns helping her deal with her grief.
Politkovskaya was supposed to spend the day at the hospital, but her twentysixyearold daughter, who was pregnant, had just moved into Politkovskaya's apartment, on Lesnaya Street, while her own place was being prepared for the baby. “Anna had so much on her mind，” Elena Kudimova told me when we met in London, before Christmas. “And she was trying to finish her article.” Politkovskaya was a special reporter for the small newspaper Novaya Gazeta, and, like most of her work, the piece focused on the terror that can be seen all over the southern republic of Chechnya. This time, she had been trying to report repeated cruel acts done by people faithful to the Prime Minister, Ramzan Kadyrov, who are in favour of Russia. In the past seven years, Politkovskaya had written dozens of accounts of life during wartime; many had been collected in her book “A Small Corner of Hell: reports from Chechnya.” Politkovskaya was far more likely to spend time in a hospital than on a battlefield, and her writing bore frequent witness to robbery, and the uncontrolled cruelty of life in a place that few other Russiansand almost no other reporterscared to think about. Politkovskaya's father died of ________.
| A．tiredness | B．a heart disease |
| C．an attack | D．an accident |
From the text we know that Raisa Mazepa ________.
| A．didn't love her husband |
| B．didn't attend her husband's funeral |
| C．was having an operation the day her husband was buried |
| D．was too sad to attend her husband's funeral |
The underlined word “emerged” most likely means ________.
| A．came out | B．went into |
| C．disappeared | D．left for |
How many family members of Anna are mentioned in the passage?
| A．Three. | B．Four. | C．Five. | D．Six. |
For more than two days in September 1974, the people of Honduras shut their windows, locked their doors and covered in their homes. Fifi was outside, and they were frightened.
By the time Fifi had left, 8,000 people were dead, Fifi wasn't a pet dog as the name suggests. It was a hurricane, one of the most destructive natural phenomena in the world.
Why do we give human names to storms and hurricanes?
We didn't always. Two hundred years ago, many hurricanes in the Caribbean were named after the saint's(基督徒的)day on which the storm occurred. Later, storms were known by the name of the city where they came ashore.
Meteorologists (气象学家) then tried naming storms after the latitude (纬度) and longitude (经度) where they occurred.
Finally, in 1953, hurricanes started getting people's names —specifically, female names. Male names were added in 1979.
There are six sets of names for what the experts call “Atlantic tropical cyclones”( 热带风暴)．
Each list is used every six years and consists of 21 names, starting with every letter but Q, U, X, Y ，Z. the names alternate (交替)between male and female.
A storm won't get a name until its winds reach 39 mph or about 62.4 kph, at which point it becomes a tropical storm. At 74 mph or 118.4 kph it's declared a hurricane.
The 126 names on the list are used only for storms that form off the Atlantic coast of the US. There are separate lists for the Pacific.
So what happens if a hurricane should cross from the Atlantic to the Pacific? It's happened before. The storm just gets a new name and sometimes a new sex.
Max Mayfield is the director of the National Hurricane Centre, headquartered in Miami, Florida. He is in charge of picking new names for storms off the Atlantic coast.
He doesn't do it alone, though. His counterparts in two dozen other countries in the Caribbean, Central America and North America vote on what names will replace retired names.From the first paragraph we can find that ________.
| A．Honduras is a country which was destroyed by Fifi |
| B．Honduras is a country which has no mountains |
| C．Honduras is a country which faces the ocean |
| D．Honduras is a country which lies at high latitude |
Which of the following is true according to the passage?
| A．There were no hurricanes two centuries ago. |
| B．The Caribbean is a state of the United States. |
| C．The Caribbean is a place where hurricanes occur often. |
| D．Fifi was formed off the Pacific. |
The names for storms and hurricanes, as this passage shows，________.
| A．are set for use. |
| B．are all from American English |
| C．are difficult to spell |
| D．are easy to fix |
The underlined word “counterparts” in the last paragraph means ________.
| A．citizens holding the same opinion |
| B．people with a similar position or function |
| C．passengers traveling by sea |
| D．assistants working abroad |
Diana Jacobs thought her family had a workable plan to pay for college for her 21yearold twin sons: a combination of savings, income, scholarships, and a modest amount of borrowing. Then her husband lost his job, and the plan fell apart.
“I have two kids in college, and I want to say ‘come home'，but at the same time I want to provide them with a good education，” says Jacobs.
The Jacobs family did work out a solution: They asked and received more aid from the schools, and each son increased his borrowing to the maximum amount through the federal loan (贷款) program. They will each graduate with $20,000 of debt, but at least they will be able to finish school.
With unemployment rising, financial aid administrators expect to hear more families like the Jacobs. More students are applying for aid, and more families expect to need student loans. College administrators are concerned that they will not have enough aid money to go around.
At the same time, tuition(学费)continues to rise. A report from the National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education found that college tuition and fees increased 439% from 1982 to 2007, while average family income rose just 147%. Student borrowing has more than doubled in the last decade.
“If we go on this way for another 25 years, we won't have an affordable system of higher education，” says Patrick M. Callan, president of the center. “The middle class families have been financing it through debt. They will send kids to college whatever it takes, even if that means a huge amount of debt.”
Financial aid administrators have been having a hard time as many companies decide that student loans are not profitable enough and have stopped making them. The good news, however, is that federal loans account for about three quarters of student borrowing, and the government says that money will flow uninterrupted. According to Paragraph 1，why did the plan of Jacobs family fail?
| A．The twins wasted too much money. |
| B．The father was out of work. |
| C．Their saving ran out |
| D．The family fell apart. |
How did the Jacobses manage to solve their problem?
| A．They asked their kids to come home. |
| B．They borrowed $20,000 from the school. |
| C．They encouraged their twin sons to do parttime jobs. |
| D．They got help from the school and the federal government. |
Financial aid administrators believe that ________.
| A．more families will face the same problem as the Jacobses |
| B．the government will receive more letters of complaint |
| C．college tuition fees will double soon |
| D．America's unemployment will fall |
．What can we learn about the middle class families from the text?
| A．They blamed the government for the tuition increase. |
| B．Their income remained steady in the last decade. |
| C．They will try their best to send kids to college. |
| D．Their debts will be paid off within 25 years |
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