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Walt Disney Co.'s board of directors was re-elected by a margin of 92.2 percent in a preliminary count of a shareholder vote announced at the media giant's annual meeting Friday. Disney did not give tallies for individual board members at the meeting, which comes a year after a shareholder revolt roiled Disney and led to Chief Executive Michael Eisner being stripped of his role as board chairman.
Disney's annual meeting for shareholders, which is taking place in Minneapolis, contrasts greatly with last year's confab in Philadelphia, which at times resembled a heavyweight bout with dissident ex-director Roy E. Disney taking the stage to challenge the leadership of company CEO Michael Eisner. Since then, the company has delivered on its promise to grow earnings more than 50 percent and the stock has also seen a double-digit rise in value. A hostile all-stock takeover bid from cable TV giant Comcast Corp., which hung over last year's meeting, has since disappeared as Disney's stock has outperformed that of its rival.
Eisner joked about the year gone by at a recent analyst meeting, a gathering that last year "was punctuated by a vacation postcard from [ Comcast CEO ] Brian Roberts," Eisner said. The card was returned to sender," he said, noting that the past year Disney has delivered "stellar performance that defied the gravity of a year ago." But as shareholders gather Friday in Minneapolis, they will also hear the echoes of the troubles that roiled last year's meeting, when investors delivered a stinging vote of no confidence to Eisner, who later relinquished his role as board chairman.
In contrast to last year, most proxy consulting firms have endorsed Disney's board and lauded the company for the corporate governance strides it has made. Yet just in time for the meeting, a hefty new book, written with Disney's cooperation, paints an unflattering portrait of Eisner and his heir apparent, President and Chief Operating Officer Bob Iger.
The book, "DisneyWar," by James B. Stewart, shows Eisner unsure about the qualifications of his second-in command and Iger complaining about his lack of visibility in the company. "No one takes me seriously," Iger said to one executive outside of Disney, according to the book. Iger's comment came in the midst of his effort to mm around Disney's troubled ABC network, which was fourth in the ratings and, according to the book, Eisner's growing impatience with that effort.
Why was Michael Eisner stripped of his role as the board chairman of the Walt Disney Co. a year ago?

A. He was too old.
B. He carded out a series of wrong policies.
C. The shareholders agitated the Disney and he had to leave.
D. He wanted to enjoy an earlier retirement.

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The message is clear: Just as tea and banana can't go together, ______ should the son of a

A. either
B. not
C. neither
D. or

After showing Fiorina the door this week, HP's board made its near-term intent clear: It wants to keep the strategy but change how it is executed. "The board is firmly committed to the business strategy that is in place," said Patricia Dunn, HP's new non-executive chairman. Chief Financial Officer Robert Wayman is serving as interim CEO until a successor is named.
Though HP is giving no hints as to a permanent successor, observers have mentioned Michael Capellas, the current MCI Inc. CEO and former Compaq chief who helped arrange 2002's HP- Compaq merger, and Ed Zander, the former Sun Microsystems Inc. president who now heads Motorola Inc.
It's possible, but less likely, the new CEO will be pulled from HP's ranks. Possibilities inelude Ann Livermore, who heads HP's enterprise business, and Vyomesh Joshi, the printer division chief who was recently named to head the combined imaging and PC businesses.
Regardless of who is named, the new leader must face hard facts about HP's growth and over- all performance since Fiorina embarked on reinventing HP in 1999, particularly fallout from the $19 billion Compaq merger and its unimpressive stock price over the last several years.
HP, No. 11 in the Fortune 500, now finds itself in the position of trying to sell low-profit, commodity products while at the same time trying to be a respected player in the high-end businesses.
It's not doing spectacularly well in either as its bottom line has been propped up by its printer and ink business. "What it boils down to is HP is trying to do a straddle, and ends up as the filling in the sandwich of two competitors," Frank Gillett, a principal analyst at Forrester Research, said Thursday.
The HP board considered breaking up the company on three occasions but rejected the idea each time, Fiorina said at an analyst meeting two months before her ouster.
We can sense throughout the passage that _________.

A. HP will go bankrupt soon
B. kip has never been better
Compaq merger is the biggest merger ever
D. HP's new CEO is undecided

Sweden, Britain and France warned they feared that nearly ______ of their citizens missing

A. 1,000
B. 1,200
C. 1,100
D. 1,300

听力原文: Haitian hunger strikers at the U.S. naval base at Guantanama Bay, Cuba, have begun refusing all fluids and medical treatment. 15 of the 267 Haitians at the base say they are prepared to die if necessary to force the U.S. to admit the rest of them. The Haitians are eligible to pursue political asylum in the U.S. but have been barred from entry because most have the AIDS virus. The Clinton administration says it will lift the ban on their entry but it is not known when.
Some Haitians are on strike in order to______

A. get proper medical treatment
B. ask for their political rights
C. protest against the U.S. decision
D. demand food supply aid from the USA

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