【正文】 riminate affair, something that is tried on with any remotely plausible woman who es within range and, of course, with all degrees of tentativeness. What decides the issue of whether a genuine courtship is going to get under way is the woman39。s. (2) A problem that affects a much larger number of working wives is the need to reallocate domestic tasks if there are children. In The Road to Wigan Pier Gee Orwell wrote of the unemployed of the Lancashire coalfields: Practically never ... in a workingclass home, will you see the man doing a stroke of the housework. Unemployment has not changed this convention, which on the face of it seems a little unfair. The man is idle from morning to night but the woman is as busy as ever more so, indeed, because she has to manage with less money. Yet so far as myexperience goes the women do not protest. They feel that a man would lose his manhood if, merely because he was out of work, he developed in a 39。s opinion American firms are not doing anything to deal with the issue of the ageing workforce mainly because A. they have not been aware of the problem. B. they are reluctant to hire older workers. C. they are not sure of what they should do. D. they have other options to consider. 20. Which of the following best describes the author39。a lot of time39。 Young found that although corporate America foresees a significant workforce shortage as boomers retire, it is not dealing with the issue. Almost threequarters of the 1,400 global panies questioned by Deloitte last year said they expected a shortage of salaried staff over the next three to five years. Yet few of them are looking to older workers to fill that shortage。s most advanced manufacturer, has adapted its workstations to older workers. The shortage of skilled labour available to the automotive industry has made it unusually keen to recruit older workers. BMW recently set up a factory in Leipzig that expressly set out to employ people over the age of 45. Needs must when the devil drives. Other firms are polishing their alumni works. IBM uses its work to recruit retired people for particular projects. Ernst amp。 about 35% of Deere39。s latest list es Deere amp。s worth of experience has walked out the door, leaving insufficient talent to fill in the void. Some also face a shortage of expertise. In aerospace and defence, for example, as much as 40% of the workforce in some panies will be eligible to retire within the next five years. At the same time, the number of engineering graduates in developed countries is in steep decline. A few panies are so squeezed that they are already taking exceptional measures. Earlier this year the Los Angeles Times interviewed an enterprising Australian who was staying in Beverly Hills while he tried to persuade locals to emigrate to Toowoomba, Queensland, to work for his engineering pany there. Toowoomba today。 palace. No guides were available so it was doityourself, using our guidebook, which cheated us of a lot of interesting history and anecdotes that a professional guide could provide. Next time, we resolved to make such arrangements in advance. On this trip, we wandered through the magnificent plex, with its imperial treasures, its courtyards and its harem. The last required a bit of explanation that we would have happily lef~to a learned third party. 11. The couple chose Istanbul as their holiday destination mainly because A. the city is not too far away from where they lived. B. the city is not on the list of the . State Department. C. the city is between the familiar and the exotic. D. the city is more familiar than exotic. 12. Which of the following statements is INCORRECT? A. The family found the city was exactly what they had expected. B. Their friends were opposed to their holiday plan. C. They could have been more cautious about bringing kids along. D. They were a bit cautious about the quality of water in the city. 13. We learn from the couple39。 desire to try something new amid children39。 it would be easy to get lost. For our two, whose buying experience consisted of department stores and shopping mall boutiques, it was amazing to discover that you could bargain over price and perhaps end up with two of something for the price of one. They also learned to figure out the relative value of the Turkish lira, not a small matter with its many zeros. Being exposed to Islam was an important part of our trip. Visiting the mosques, especially the enormous Blue Mosque, was our first glimpse into how this major religion is practiced. Our children39。s major tourist sites. This not only got us some morning exercise, strolling over the Karakoy Bridge, but took us past a colorful assortment of fishermen, vendors and shoe shiners. From a teenager and preteen39。t see a lot of children among the foreign visitors during our sixday stay in Istanbul, but we found the tourist areas quite safe, very interesting and varied enough even to suit our son, whose oftrepeated request is that we not see every single church and museum in a given city. Vaccinations weren39。t change our planning, although we might have more prudently checked with the . State Department39。d been exposed to during our travels in Europe and the United States. In thinking about what was possible from Geneva, where we are based, we decided on a trip to Istanbul, a twohour plane ride from Zurich. We envisioned the trip as a prelude to more exotic ones, perhaps to New Delhi or Bangkok later this year, but thought our 11 and 13yearolds needed a first step away from manicured boulevards and pristine monuments. What we didn39。based on the foUowing news. At the end of the news item, you will be given 20 seconds to answer the questions. Now listen to the news. 6. Which of the following is the main cause of global