题目内容

Urban people left cities for the following reasons EXCEPT

A. more economic opportunities.
B. a freer social and political environment.
C. more educational opportunities.
D. a more relaxed religious environment.

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1 Cooperative competition. Competitive cooperation. Confused? Airline alliances have travellers scratching their heads over what's going on in the skies. Some folks view alliances as a blessing to travellers, offering seamless travel, reduced fares and enhanced frequent- flyer benefits. Others see a conspiracy of big businesses, causing decreased competition, increased fares and fewer choices. Whatever your opinion, there's no escaping airline alliances: the marketing hype is unrelenting, with each of the two mega-groupings, Oneworld and Star Alliance, promoting itself as the best choice for all travellers. And, even if you turn away from their ads, chances are they will figure in any of your travel plans. By the end of the year, Oneworld and Star Alliance will between them control more than 40% of the traffic in the sky. Some pundits predict that figure will be more like 75%in 10 years.
2 But why, after years of often ferocious competition, have airlines decided to band together? Let's just say the timing is mutually convenient. North American airlines, having exhausted all means of earning customer loyalty at home, have been looking for ways to reach out to foreign flyers. Asian carriers are still hurting from the region-wide economic downturn that began two years ago — just when some of the airlines were taking delivery of new aircraft. Alliances also allow carriers to cut costs and increase profits by pooling manpower resources on the ground (rather than each airline maintaining its own ground crew) and code-sharing — the practice of two partners selling tickets and operating only one aircraft.
3 So alliances are terrific for airlines — but are they good for the passenger? Absolutely, say the airlines: think of the lounges, the joint FFP (frequent flyer programme) benefits, the round-the-world fares, and the global service networks. Then there's the promise of "seamless" travel: the ability to, say, travel trom Singapore to Rome to New York to Rio de Janiero, all on one ticket, without having to wait hours for connections or worry about your bags. Sounds utopian? Peter Buecking, Cathay Pacific's director of sales and marketing, thinks that seamless travel is still evolving. "It's fair to say that these links are only in their infancy. The key to seamlessness rests in infrastructure and information sharing. We're working on this." Henry Ma, spokesperson for Star Alliance in Hong Kong, lists some of the other benefits for consum ers: "Global travellers have an easier time making connections and planning their itineraries." Ma claims alliances also assure passengers consistent service standards.
4 Critics of alliances say the much-touted benefits to the consumer are mostly pie in the sky, that alliances are all about reducing costs for the airlines, rationalizing services and running joint marketing programmes. Jeff Blyskal, associate editor of Consumer Reports magazine, says the promotional ballyhoo over alliances is much ado about nothing. "I don't see much of a gain for consumers: alliances are just a marketing gimmick. And as far as seamless travel goes, I'll believe it when I see it. Most airlines can't even get their own connections under control, let alone coordinate with another airline."
5 Blyskal believes alliances will ultimately result in decreased flight choices and increased costs for consumers. Instead of two airlines competing and each operating a flight on the same route at 70% capacity, the allied pair will share the route and run one full flight. Since fewer seats will be available, passengers will be obliged to pay more for tickets.
6 The truth about alliances and their merits probably lies somewhere between the travel utopia presented by the players and the evil empires portrayed by their critics. And how much they affect you depends on what kind of traveller you are.
7 Those who've already

A. Delight.
B. Indifference.
C. Objection.
D. Puzzlement.

S单位拥有土地使用权,但S单位不在土地所在地,凶此交由M单位代管,则M单位为城镇土地使用税的纳税人。 ()

A. 正确
B. 错误

房产出租时,如果以劳务为报酬抵付房租收入的,应根据当地同类劳务的半均价格折算为房租收入,据此计征房产税。 ()

A. 正确
B. 错误

SECTION B INTERVIEW
Directions: In this section you will hear everything ONCE ONLY. Listen carefully and then answer the questions that follow. Questions 1 to 5 are based on an interview. At the end of the interview you will be given 10 seconds to answer each of the following five questions.
Now listen to the interview.
听力原文: The first era in American urban history extended from the early 17th century to about 1840.Throughout those years, the total urban population remained small and so were the cities. At the first federal census in 1790, city dwellers made up nearly 5. 1% of the total population and only 2 places had more than 25,000 inhabitants. Fifty years later, only 10.8% of the nation's population fell into the urban category and only one city — New York — contained more than 50,000 people. Largely because of the unsophisticated modes of transportation, even the more popular places in the early 19th century remained small enough that people easily walked from one end of the city to the other in those days.
Though small by modern standards, these walking cities, as it were, performed a variety of functions in those days. One was economic. Throughout the pre-modern era, this part of the urban life remained so overwhelmingly commercial that almost every city owed its development to trade. Yet city dwellers concerned themselves not only with promoting agricultural activities in their rural areas. They also collected and processed goods from these areas and then distributed them to other cities. From the beginning then and increasingly in the 18th and early 19th centuries, cities served as centres of both commerce and simple manufacturing.
Apart from the economic functions, the early cities also had important non-economic functions to play. Since libraries, museums, schools, and colleges were built and needed people to go there to visit or to study, cities and the larger early towns, with their concentrations of population, tended to serve as centres of educational activities and the points from which information was spread to the countryside. In addition, the towns with people of different occupational, ethnic, racial and religious affiliations became focuses of formal and informal organizations, which were set up to foster the security and to promote the interests and influence of each group. In these days, the pre-industrial city in America functioned as a complex and varied organising element in American life, not as a simple, homogeneous and static unit.
The vitality of these early cities was reinforced by the nature of their location and by the process of town spreading. Throughout the pre-industrial period of American history, the cities occupied sites on the eastern portion of the then largely undeveloped continent and the settlement of countryside generally followed the expansion of the towns in that region. The various interest groups in each city tended to compete with their counterparts in other cities for economic, social and political control, first of nearby and later of more distant and larger areas. And always there remained the undeveloped regions to be developed through the establishment of new towns by individuals and groups.
These individuals and groups sought economic opportunities or looked for a better social, political or religious atmosphere. In this sense, the city still helped the development of the successions of urban frontiers. Well, this kind of circumstance made Americans one of the most political and self-conscious city-building peoples of their time. It did not result in a steadily urbanizing society in the sense that decade by decade an even larger proportion of population lived in cities. In 1690, an estimated 9—10% of American colonists lived in urban settlements. A century later, that is, the end of the 18th century, though 24 places had 2, 500 persons or more, city dwellers accounted for only

A. the urban pupulation was stable.
B. few people lived in cities.
C. transport was backward.
D. it was originally planned.

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