In 1999, the price of oil hovered around $16 a barrel. By 2008, it had (1) _______ the $100 a barrel mark. The reasons for the surge (2) ______ form the dramatic growth of the economies of China and India to widespread (3) _______ in oil-producing regions, including Iraq and Nigeria’s delta region. Triple-digit oil prices have (4) _______ the economic and political map of the world, (5) _______ some old notions of power. Oil-rich nations are enjoying historic gains and opportunities, (6) _______ major importers—including China and India, home to a third of the world’s population— (7) _______ rising economic and social costs
    Managing this new order is fast becoming a central (8) ______ of global politics. Countries that need oil are clawing at each other to (9) _______ scarce supplies, and are willing to deal with any government, (10) _______ how unpleasant, to do it.
    In many poor nations with oil, the profits are being lost to corruption, (11) _______ these countries of their best hope for development. And oil is fueling enormous investment funds run by foreign governments, (12) ________ some in the West see as a new threat.
    Countries like Russia, Venezuela and Iran are well supplied with rising oil (13) _______, a change reflected in newly aggressive foreign policies. But some unexpected countries are reaping benefits, (14) _______ costs, from higher prices. Consider Germany. (15) _______ it imports virtually all its oil, it has prospered from extensive trade with a booming Russia and the Middle East. German exports to Russia (16) _______ 128 percent from 2001 to 2006.
    In the United States, as already high gas prices rose (17) _______ higher in the spring of 2008, the issue cropped up in the presidential campaign, with Senators McCain and Obama (18) _______ for a federal gas tax holiday during the peak summer driving months. And driving habits began to (19) _______, as sales of small cars jumped and mass transport systems (20) _______ the country reported a sharp increase in riders.

    Henric Ibsen, author of the play “A Doll’s House”, in which a pretty, helpless housewife abandons her husband and children to seek a more serious life, would surely have approved. From January 1st, 2008, all public companies in Norway are obliged to ensure that at least 40% of their board directors are women. Most firms have obeyed the law, which was passed in 2003. But about 75 out of the 480 or so companies it affects are still too male for the government’s liking. They will shortly receive a letter informing them that they have until the end of February to act, or face the legal consequences—which could include being dissolved. 
    Before the law was proposed, about 7% of board members in Norway were female, according to the Centre for Corporate Diversity. The number has since jumped to 36%. That is far higher than the average of 9% for big companies across Europe or America’s 15% for the Fortune 500. Norway’s stock exchange and its main business lobby oppose the law, as do many businessmen.“I am against quotas for women or men as a matter of principle,” says Sverre Munck, head of international operations at a media firm. “Board members of public companies should be chosen solely on the basis of merit and experience,” he says. Several firms have even given up their public status in order to escape the new law.
    Companies have had to recruit about 1,000 women in four years. Many complain that it has been difficult to find experienced candidates. Because of this, some of the best women have collected as many as 25-35 directorships each, and are known in Norwegian business circles as the  “golden skirts” One reason for the scarcity is that there are fairly few women in management in Norwegian companies—they occupy around 15% of senior positions. It has been particularly hard for firms in the oil, technology and financial industries to find women with enough experience.
    Some people worry that their relative lack of experience may keep women quiet on boards, and that in turn could mean that boards might become less able to hold managers to account. Recent history in Norway, however, suggests that the right women can make strong directors.   “Women feel more compelled than men to do their homework,” says Ms. Reksten Skaugen, ‘who was voted Norway’s chairman of the year for 2007, “and we can afford to ask the hard questions, because women are not always expected to know the answers.”

    While there’s never a good age to get cancer, people in their 20s and 30s can feel particularly isolated. The average age of a cancer patient at diagnosis is 67. Children with cancer often are treated at pediatric (小儿科的) cancer centers, but young adults have a tough time finding peers,  often sitting side-by-side during treatments with people who could be their grandparents.
    In her new book Crazy Sexy Cancer Tips, writer Kris Carr looks at cancer from the perspective of a young adult who confronts death just as she’s discovering life. Ms. Carr was 31 when she was diagnosed with a rare form of cancer that had generated tumors on her liver and lungs.
    Ms. Carr reacted with the normal feelings of shock and sadness. She called her parents and stocked up on organic food, determined to become a “full-time healing addict.” Then she picked up the phone and called everyone in her address book, asking if they knew other young women with cancer. The result was her own personal “cancer posse: a rock concert tour manager, a model, a fashion magazine editor, a cartoonist and a MTV celebrity, to name a few. This club of “cancer babes” offered support, advice and fashion tips, among other things.
    Ms. Carr put her cancer experience in a recent Learning Channel documentary, and she has written a practical guide about how she coped. Cancer isn’t funny, but Ms. Carr often is. She swears, she makes up names for the people who treat her (Dr. Fabulous and Dr. Guru), and she even makes second opinions sound fun (“cancer road trips,” she calls them).
    She leaves the medical advice to doctors, instead offering insightful and practical tips that reflect the world view of a young adult “I refused to let cancer ruin my party,” she writes, “There are just too many cool things to do and plan and live for.”
    Ms. Carr still has cancer, but it has stopped progressing. Her cancer tips include using time-saving mass e-mails to keep friends informed, sewing or buying fashionable hospital gowns so you’re not stuck with regulation blue or gray and playing Gloria Gaynor’s “I Will Survive” so loud you neighbors call the police. Ms. Carr also advises an eyebrow wax and a new outfit before you tell the important people in your illness. “People you tell are going to cautiously and not so cautiously try to see the cancer, so dazzle them instead with your miracle,” she writes.
    While her advice may sound superficial, it gets to the heart of what every cancer patient wants: the chance to live life just as she always did, and maybe better.

    Should a leader strive to be loved or feared? This question, famously posed by Machiavelli, lies at the heart of Joseph Nye’s new book. Mr. Nye, a former dean of the Kennedy School of Government atHarvard and one-time chairman of America’s National Intelligence Council, is best known for promoting the idea of “soft power”, based on persuasion and influence, as a counterpoint to “hard power”, based on coercion (强迫) and force.
    Having analyzed the use of soft and hard power in politics and diplomacy in his previous books, Mr. Nye has now turned his attention to the relationship between power and leadership, in both the political and business spheres. Machiavelli, he notes, concluded that “one ought to be both feared and loved, but as it is difficult for the two to go together, it is much safer to be feared than loved.” In short, hard power is preferable to soft power. But modern leadership theorists have come to the opposite conclusion.
    The context of leadership is changing, they observe, and the historical emphasis on hard power is becoming outdated. In modern companies and democracies, power is increasingly diffused and traditional hierarchies (等级制) are being undermined, making soft power ever more important. But that does not mean coercion should now take a back seat to persuasion. Mr. Nye argues. Instead, he advocates a synthesis of these two views. The conclusion of The Powers to Lead, his survey of the theory of leadership, is that a combination of hard and soft power, which he calls “smart power”, is the best approach.  
    The dominant theoretical model of leadership at the moment is, apparently, the “transformational leadership pattern”. Anyone allergic (反感) to management term will already be running for the exit, but Mr. Nye has performed a valuable service in rounding up and summarizing the various academic studies and theories of leadership into a single, slim volume. He examines different approaches to leadership, the morality of leadership and how the wider context can determine the effectiveness of a particular leader. There are plenty of anecdotes and examples, both historical and contemporary, political and corporate.
    Alas, leadership is a slippery subject, and as he depicts various theories, even Mr. Nye never quite nails the jelly to the wall. He is at his most interesting when discussing the moral aspects of leadership—in particular, the question of whether it is sometimes necessary for good leaders to lie—and he provides a helpful 12-point summary of his conclusions. A recurring theme is that as circumstances change, different sorts of leaders are required; a leader who thrives in one environment may struggle in another, and vice versa. Ultimately that is just a fancy way of saying that leadership offers no easy answers.

    Americans don’t like to lose wars. Of course, a lot depends on how you define just what a war is. There are shooting wars—the kind that test patriotism and courage—and those are the kind at which the U.S. excels. But other struggles test those qualities too. What else was the Great Depression or the space race or the construction of the railroads? If Americans indulge in a bit of flag-waving when the job is done, they earned it.
    Now there is a similar challenge global warming The steady deterioration (恶化) of the very climate of this very planet is becoming a war of the first order, and by any measure, the U.S. is losing. Indeed, if America is fighting at all, it’s fighting on the wrong side. The U.S. produces nearly a quarter of the world’s greenhouse gases each year and has stubbornly made it clear that it doesn’t intend to do a whole lot about it. Although 174 nations approved the admittedly flawed Kyoto accords to reduce carbon levels, the U.S. walked away from them. There are vague promises of manufacturing fuel from herbs or powering cars with hydrogen. But for a country that tightly cites patriotism as one of its core values, the U.S. is taking a pass on what might be the most patriotic struggle of all. It’s hard to imagine a bigger fight than one for the survival of a country’s coasts and farms, the health of its people and stability of its economy.
    The rub is, if the vast majority of people increasingly agree that climate change is a global emergency, there’s far less agreement on how to fix it. Industry offers its pans, which too often would fix little. Environmentalists offer theirs, which too often amount to naive wish lists that could weaken American’s growth. But let’s assume that those interested parties and others will always be at the table and will always demand that their voices be heard and that their needs be addressed. What would an aggressive, ambitious, effective plan look like—one that would leave the U.S. both environmentally safe and economically sound?  
    Halting climate change will be far harder. One of the more conservative plans for addressing the problem calls for a reduction of 25 billion tons of carbon emissions over the next 50 years. And yet by devising a consistent strategy that mixes short-term solutions with farsighted goals, combines government activism with private-sector enterprise and blends pragmatism (实用主义) with ambition, the U.S. can, without major damage to the economy, help halt the worst effects of climate change and ensure the survival of its way of life for future generations. Money will do some of the work, but what’s needed most is will. “I’m not saying the challenge isn’t almost overwhelming,” says Fred Krupp. “But this is America, and America has risen to these challenges before.”

    With the nation’s financial system teetering (蹒跚) on a cliff the compensation arrangements for executives of the big banks and other financial firms are coming under close examination again.
    Bankers’ excessive risk-taking is a significant cause of this financial crisis and has contributed to others in the past. In this case, it was fueled by low interest rates and kept going by a false sense of security created by a debt-fueled bubble in the economy.
    Mortgage lenders gladly lent enormous sums to those who could not afford to pay them back, dividing the loans and selling them off to the next financial institution along the chain, which took advantage of the same high-tech securitization (证券化) to load on more risky mortgage-based assets.
    Financial regulation will have to catch up with the most irresponsible practices that led banks down in this road, in hopes of averting the next crisis, which is likely to involve different financial techniques and different sorts of assets. But it is worth examining the root problem of compensation schemes that are tied to short-term profits and revenues, and thus encourage bankers to take irresponsible levels of risk.

    It is known that text message (手机短信) has both advantages and disadvantages. Some people think it is a blessing, while others regard it as a hell. In this section, you are asked to write an essay on text messaging. You can take either stand and provide specific reasons and examples to support your idea. You should write at least 150 words.