While Henny de Ruiter, supervisory board chairman, said the salary was a fair reflection of what a company in Ahold's unfavorable circumstances had to pay to attract a top manager,
furious investors accused it of pushing through the package regardless of investor opinion.
Furthermore, Dutch media commentators noted that the scandal at Ahold had been the trigger for the Dutch government to appoint a commission to strengthen corporate governance.
That commission has recommended a limit on executive bonuses, far below the potential two-and-a-half times annual salary that Mr. Moberg could earn.
Meanwhile, Mr. Moberg is trying to distance himself from the row and focus on strategy. He told the FT that measures had already been taken to raise its stake in the ICA-Ahold joint
venture in Scandinavia.
Ahold had included in its forecasts an amount necessary to buy the shares of either of its joint venture partners, should either exercise a put option and sell their stake from April 2004.
1. The decision on Anders Moberg's pay package has
[A] incurred much criticism from the shareholders.
[B] helped restored public confidence in Ahold.
[C] freed the supervisory board from another crisis,
[D] put pressure on the new chief executive.
2. The recovery strategy by Ahold's management includes
[A] avoiding further accounting scandal.
[B] diverting investment to other fields.
[C] issuing rights to more retailers.
[D] selling the retailers with poor performance.
3. Anders Moberg thought that ifhis salary had been announced earlier,
[A] the board's position would have become less difficult.
[B] he would have agreed to the contract with Ahold.
[C] more time could have been devoted to his recovery plan.
[D] the shareholders' reaction wouldn't have been misjudged.
4. Before the scandal at Ahold, the executive bonuses in Dutch companies
[A] were higher than what Moberg earned.
[B] were regulated by a commission.
[C] were not monitored by the government.
[D] were not set by corporate management.
5. According to Moberg's recovery strategy, Ahold will
[A] sell its stake to other joint venture companies.
[B] buy shares of its Scandinavian partners.
[C] choose to put money in its chain shops in Scandinavia.
[D] exercise its potential influence on partners.
Unit 3
Directions
Read the following four texts. Answer the questions below each text by choosing A, B, C or D. Mark your answers on ANSWER SHEET 1. (40 points)
Text 1
U. S.-led occupation authorities have begun a secret campaign to recruit and train agents with the once-dreaded Iraqi intelligence service to help identify resistance to American forces here after months of increasingly sophisticated attacks and bombings, according to U. S. and Iraqi officials.
The extraordinary move to recruit agents of former president's security services demonstrates a growing recognition among U. S. officials that American military forces--already stretched thin--cannot alone prevent attacks like the devastating truck bombing of the U. N. headquarters recently, the officials said.
Authorities have stepped up the recruitment over the past two weeks, one senior U. S. official said, despite sometimes firm objections by members of the U. S.-appointed Iraqi Governing Council, who complain that they have too little control over the pool of recruits. While U.S. officials acknowledge the sensitivity of cooperating with a force that embodied the ruthlessness of the overthrown president's rule, they assert that an urgent need for better and more precise intelligence has forced unusual compromises.
The only way you can combat terrorism is through intelligence, the senior official said. It's the only way you're going to stop these people from doing what they're doing. He added Without Iraqi input, that's not going to work.
Officials are reluctant to disclose how many former agents have been recruited since the effort began. But Iraqi officials say they number anywhere from dozens to a few hundred, and U.S. officials acknowledge that the recruitment is extensive.
We're reaching out very widely, said one official with the U.S.-led administration, who like most spoke on condition of anonymity because of sensitivity over questions of intelligence and sources.
Added a Western diplomat There is an obvious evolution in American thinking. First the police are reconstituted, then the army. It is logical that intelligence officials from the regime would also be recruited.
Officials say the first line of intelligence-gathering remains the Iraqi police, who number 6,500 in Baghdad and 33,000 nationwide. But that force is hampered in intelligence work by a
lack of credibility with a belief-broken public, and its numbers remain far below what U. S. officials say they need to bring order to an unruly capital. Across Iraq, walk-in informers have provided tips on weapons hidings and locations of suspected guerrillas, but many Iraqis dismiss those reports as occasional and sometimes motivated by a desire for personal gain.
The emphasis in recruitment appears to be on the intelligence service known as the Mukhabarat, one of four branches in the former security service, although it is not the only target for the U.S. effort. The Mukhabarat, whose name itself inspired fear in ordinary Iraqis, was the foreign intelligence service, the most sophisticated of the four.
1. America's attitude towards Iraqi intelligence was one of
[A] disgust.
[B] hatred.
[C] fear.
[D] resent.
2. The word devastating (Line 3, Paragraph 2) is closest in meaning to
[A] destructive.
[B] regretful.
[C] frustrating.
[D] terrible.
3. The U.S. officials consider the nature of the recruitments of former security services
[A] give-ins to the bombing.
[B] setbacks of US-led administration.
[C] examples of US-Iraqi cooperation.
[D] compromises of some kind.
4. Which of the following is true regarding the recruitment of the intelligence
[A]The new-release people are unwilling to tell anything about themselves.
[B] It is just a preparatory step for the reconstruction of the Iraqi armed forces.
[C]The western world as a whole dislikes the idea of reconstruction in this way.
[D] An obvious connection exists in the reconstructions of the army and the police.
5. A large part of the Iraqi people hold information about weapon hidings as
[A] fear-inspired.
[B] money-driven.
[C] unreliable.
[D] sophisticated.
Text 2
The real heroine of the novel stands at one remove to the narrative. On the face of it, readers are more likely to empathize with, and be curious about, the mysterious and resourceful slave, Sarah, who forms one point of an emotional triangle. Sarah is the property of Manon, and came with her to a failing Louisiana sugar plantation on her marriage to the good-for-nothing, bullying owner. But Manon's husband is soon struck by Sarah, and the proof lies in their idiot small son, Walter.
However, the reader is forced to see things through Manon's eyes, not Sarah's, and her consciousness is not a comfortable place to be. Never a please or a thank you passes her lips when talking to slaves, though manners is the order of the day in white society. Manon is enormously attracted by inter-racial marriage (for the place and time -- the early 19th century--such a concern would not be unusual, but in her case it seems pathological). Walter, with his father's curly red hair and green eyes, his mother's golden skin, her full, pushing-forward lips, is the object of her especial hatred, but she chatters on about all the dreadful mixed-blooded, the objectionable yellow people.
Beyond Manon's polarized vision, we glimpse free negros and the emerging black middle-class. To Manon's disgust, such people actually have self-respect. In New Orleans buying shoes, Manon is taken aback by the shopkeeper's lack of desired respect. Mixed race prostitutes acquired the affections of male planters by giving them something mysterious their wives cannot
often What that might be, and why wives can't offer it too, are questions Manon can't even ask, let alone answer.
The first third of the book explores the uneasy and unsustainable peace between Manon, Sarah and the man always called just my husband or he. Against the background of violent slave revolts and equally savage revenges, it's clear the peace cannot last. It's part of the subtlety of this book that as the story develops and the inevitable explosion occurs, our view of all the characters swiftly changes. Sarah turns out to deserve all the suspicion Manon directs at her; at the point of death Manon's husband displays an admirable toughness and courage; and Manon herself wins the reader's reluctant admiration for her bravery, her endurance, and her total lack of self-pity.
Perhaps the cruelest aspect of this society is the way it breaks down and distorts family affections. A slave's baby is usually sold soon after birth; Sarah's would-be husband, if he wants her, must buy her; and Manon herself, after all, is only the property of her husband.
1. Which of the following reflects Manon's attitude towards colored people
[A] Sympathetic.
[B] Suspicious.
[C] Concerned.
[D] Disgusted.
2. It can be inferred from the text that the novel is written
[A] with a mobile point of view.
[B] with a limited third person singular.
[C] from Manon's perspective.
[D] from Sarah's eye as a slave.
3. According to Manon, black people should
[A] emerge as free middle class citizens.
[B] behave submissively towards the whites.
[C] have self-respect in the mixed race marriage.
[D] learn to offer more affection to their wives.
4. We learn that as the story develops
[A] readers will think differently of all the characters.
[B] Manon's husband will win back her admiration.
[C] the emotional crisis will be swiftly resolved.
[D] all the suspicion will be proved against Sarah.
5. From the text we learn that
[A] Manon's husband is a nameless but bullying person.
[B]Manon is the real heroine who deserves readers' sympathy.
[C] Sarah is in fact smarter than her master Manon.
[D] Walter is a proof of the mixed race prostitution.
Text 3
I am not one who golfs. The only time I tried it I was confident that a dozen balls would be an adequate supply. This is the sport of retired people how hard could it be The confidence was misplaced, also, one by one, the balls, and I had to quit somewhere around the seventh hole. On the sixth, actually, I hit a car--there was absolutely no reason for a highway to be that close to a golf course--but that's another story. The point is that the game did not yield up its mystery to me; I remain, in the golfing universe, a child of darkness. I do find that I am able to watch golf on television, however, where it is possible to experience a calmness that the game itself sadly lacks. Spread out on a couch and indifferent to the outcome (very important), you watch tiny white balls sail improbable distances over the biggest lawns in the world, interrupted occasionally by advertisements for expensive cars. One of the players is named Tiger. Another is named Love. If you have access to a bottle of Martinis (optional), the joy potential can be quite huge.
There is usually a price for pleasure so mindless. In the case of TV golf, it is listening to the commentators analyze the players' swings. What looks to you like a single, continuous, and not difficult act is revealed, via slow motion and a sort of virtual-chalkboard graphics, to be a sequence of intricately measured adjustments of shoulder to hip, head to arm, elbow to wrist, and so on. Where you see fluidity, the experts see geometry; what to you is nature is machinery to them--parallel lines, extended planes, points of impact. They murder to examine. Yet, apparently, these minute and individualized measurements make all the difference between being able reliably to land a golf ball in an area, three hundred yards away, the size of a bathmat and, say, randomly hitting a car, which, let's face it, only a fool would drive right next to a golf course. There is a major disproportion, in other words, between the straightforwardness of the game and the fantastic precision required to play it, a disproportion mastered by a difficult but, to the ordinary observer, almost invisible technique.
Short stories are the same. A short story is not as restrictive as a sonnet, but, of all the literary forms, it is possibly the most single-minded. Its aim, as it was identified by the modem genre's first theorist, Edgar Allan Poe, is to create an effect-- by which Poe meant something almost physical, like a sensation or an extreme excitement.
1. The author quotes his own experience with golfto show that
[A] things are often not so simple and easy as they seem.
[B] his experience with golf has been a frustrating failure.
[C] that experience of his offered much for his later life.
[D] apparent truths are more often than not unreliable.
2. The author enjoys watching golf games on TV because
[A] the access to drinks makes the game more joyful.
[B] a more enjoyable view of the game is provided,
[C] he is thus unaffected by the result of the game.
[D] that is more likely real appreciation of the game.
3. What does the author imply when he says There is usually.., so mindless(Paragraph 2)
[A] Commentators often interrupt your attention.
[B] TV golf is frequently unaffordable for many.
[C] One needs to pay handsomely for the setting.
[D] Some essential parts of the game are missing.
4. In the part succeeding the third paragraph, the author will mostly probably
[A] draw an analogy between golf and short story.
[B] elaborate the effect of short story.
[C] show other examples similar to golf games.
[D] show impact of golf games on short story.
5. What is the relationship between Paragraph 1 and Paragraph 2
[A] Paragraph 1 is an introduction to Paragraph 2.
[B] Paragraph 2 provides an example for Paragraph 1.
[C] Paragraphs 1 and 2 are both supporting details.
[D] Paragraph 2 serves as an analogy to Paragraph 1.
