Questões de Inglês

Electronic junk will create pollution problem around world, U.N. study warns


BALI, Indonesia — Sales of household electrical gadgets will boom across the developing world in the next decade, wreaking environmental havoc if there are no new strategies to deal with the discarded TVs, cell phones and computers, a U.N. report said today.
The environmental and health hazards posed by the globe"s mounting electronic waste are particularly urgent in developing countries, which are already dumping grounds for rich nations" high-tech trash, the U.N. Environment Program study said.
Electronic waste is piling up around the world at a rate estimated at 40 million U.S. tons a year, the report said, noting that data remain insufficient.
China produces 2.6 million tons of electronic waste a year, second only to the United States with 3.3 million tons, it said.
UNEP Executive Director Achim Steiner said the globe was ill-prepared to deal with the explosion of electronic gadgets over the past decade.
"The world is now confronted with a massive wave of electronic waste that is going to come back and hit us, particularly for least-developed countries, that may become a dumping ground," Steiner told The Associated Press ahead of a UNEP executive meeting in Bali.
He said some Americans and Europeans have sent broken computers to African countries falsely declared as donations. The computers were dumped outside slums as toxic waste and became potential hazards to people, he said.
The report predicts that China"s waste rate from old computers will quadruple from 2007 levels by 2020. Meanwhile, in India, waste from old refrigerators — which contain hazardous chlorofluorocarbons and hydrochlorofluorocarbon gases — could triple by 2020.
It said the fastest growth in electronic waste in recent years has been in communications devices such as cell phones, pagers and smart phones.
Most of the recycling of electronic waste in developing countries such as China and India is done by inefficient and unregulated backyard operators. The environmentally harmful practice of heating electronic circuit boards over coal-fired grills to leach out gold is widespread in both countries.
The report called for regulations for collecting and managing electronic waste, and urged that technologies be transferred to the industrializing world to cope with such waste.
While electrical products such refrigerators, air conditioners, printers, DVD players and digital music players account for only a small part of the world"s garbage, their components make them particularly hazardous.
Prof. Eric Williams, an Arizona State University expert on industrial ecology who did not participate in the UNEP study, said it was difficult to comment on the credibility of the electronic waste growth forecasts because the report gives little explanation of how they were calculated.
"It is the environmental intensity of e-waste rather than its total mass that is the main concern," Williams told the AP via e-mail.
"If e-waste is recycled informally in the developing world, it causes far worse pollution than the much larger mass of regular waste in landfills," he said.

http://www.cleveland.com/world/index.ssf/2010/02/electronic_junk_will_create_po.html (06/06/12)



Regulations for colleting and managing electronic waste are

a) sufficient.
b) enough.
c) not important.
d) necessary.
e) not urgent.

A resposta correta é:

TEXT I

Spain"s property crash casts a long shadow over a place in the sun

Graham Norwood, The Guardian, Saturday 2 April 2011

Spanish homeowners used to have little in common with the wealthy north Europeans snapping up holiday villas and
apartments on the Costas. Now both are united in adversity. Both are suffering in a market preoccupied with falling values,
negative equity, a glut of unsold new property and, in some cases, doubts about the legality of new estates. An estimated
600,000 new homes, and 200,000 part-completed ones remain unsold, a sizeable proportion of which are in holiday areas.
The Bank of Spain says official house prices have fallen 17% since 2007, but many observers believe that the market is
much worse than that, as the bank"s index is based on valuations, not achieved sale prices. Estate agents say prices of homes
have typically fallen 20% to 50% in different parts of the country, with no sector unaffected.

"There is an entire generation of young Spaniards with a millstone round their necks," says Enrique Quemada of One to One
Capital Partners, a business consultancy. "They will have to work their whole lives to pay for houses now worth half what
they bought them for." Meanwhile, the holiday home market also remains in the doldrums. A three-bedroom bungalow in
Castellon, north of Valencia, has been slashed by its British owner from £109,000 to £79,000, and then to £66,000, but still
has no takers. Taylor Wimpey, a British developer which has been building homes in Spain for more than 50 years, has new
villas on the Costa Blanca for sale at £140,000, down from £235,000. On the Balearic Islands, until recently thought of as
immune from the crash, prices are down as much as 40%.

"There are some real bargains, especially at the top of the market," says a spokeswoman for Savills estate agency, which has
one new luxury villa on Mallorca slashed from £15.4m to a mere £9.5m. Desperate developers are also faced with a slump in
British demand because of the poor euro-sterling exchange rate. As a result, a golfing resort in Catalunya is selling its homes
with a guaranteed rate of €1.25 to the pound on all purchases over the summer; the market rate is €1.14. Most commentators
believe that more price falls are inevitable, but even if Britons choose to buy now, the prospect of getting a Spanish mortgage
is "pretty bleak," according to Melanie Bien of broker Private Finance.

"Spain stands out with a housing market and a lending record that"s far worse than France, Portugal or Italy. If you must buy,
somehow try to remortgage money from your own home back in Britain," she advises. The latest figures to emerge from
Spain show little respite from a downturn that is now in its fourth year. Although there was a small rise in the number of
homes sold early in 2010, this was driven by the desire to beat deadlines for the scrapping of mortgage tax relief and a rise on
VAT on new homes. By the end of last year, sales volumes were again on the slide. Despite the glut of unsold new homes,
another 257,443 were completed in 2010. Even so, there has been a 43% collapse in the value of the Spanish construction
industry, according to EU figures, and a collapse in land prices of about 50%.

Spanish banks – many of which hold thousands of repossessed homes as assets – are legally obliged to start selling these
homes after holding them for two years. As a result, more properties are expected to flood the market for sale this year.
Meanwhile, as if that"s not enough, the scandal of Spain"s "illegal homes" continues. For more than a decade there have been
disputes over some new developments retrospectively declared illegal by councils, controversial compulsory purchase
powers given to developers by some local authorities, and politicians who have been jailed for accepting bungs.

The most recent controversy blew up last month when 12,697 new homes were declared illegal in the Almanzora Valley in
south-east Spain, an area popular with holiday-home buyers. Some 920 have been earmarked for demolition, while the
remainder may be rezoned, thus allowing them to be declared legal and have utilities connected. "How many will be made
homeless, or lose their life savings, if 920 houses are demolished? Who"s going to compensate those who bought in good
faith?" asks Maura Hillen, president of Abusos Urbanisticos Almanzora No, a local pressure group composed mainly of
British residents. Similar groups of disgruntled UK buyers exist across many of Spain"s tourist areas.

Now the housing crash has become so much a part of the modern Spanish psyche it has been accorded the ultimate tribute –
its own television soap opera. Crematorio has a storyline that includes unhappy foreign buyers, corrupt councilors, lurid
affairs, drugs and violence against a backdrop of the Spanish Costas.

Far-fetched? Not this time. Many believe the fiction is some way behind the fact. Britain and Spain aren"t a million miles
apart when it comes to home ownership aspirations. Both are big on owner-occupation. Spain has one of the highest rates in
the whole EU – a whopping 82% – with the rental market concentrated in a few major cities such as Madrid and Barcelona,
says the Rics European Housing Review 2011, a major annual study of Europe"s property markets. Tax breaks have
encouraged people to invest in housing, though many of these have now been scrapped as part of the recent austerity
measures.

And it"s not just Brits and other northern Europeans who have responded to the siren call of Spain"s sun-kissed beaches. The
Rics study points out that, among Spaniards, "there is also a high propensity to aspire to own a second home in the
countryside or on the coast: over a fifth of households own one. This helps to make crowded urban conditions more tolerable
for those that can afford it".

The latter point is a reference to the fact that Spain"s houses are typically pretty busy, bustling places. Says the report: "This
cramped lifestyle reflects cultural factors, as well as housing shortages, as several generations of families may live together
in dense urban accommodation. The number of rooms per dwelling is quite high by average EU standards, yet they tend to be
small, with the usable floor area towards the bottom of the rankings."

Property prices may have fallen, but last month Spain was named one of the world"s most overvalued housing markets. A
report in The Economist claimed Spanish homes are overvalued by more than 43%, and said this compared with just under
30% for Britain, 20% for Ireland and -12% for Germany (ie, the market in Germany is "undervalued"). It reckons home
prices should reflect the rents that tenants pay, so its index calculates the ratio of prices to rents in 20 economies. Spain was
the fourth most overvalued after Australia, Hong Kong and France.

But, writing on his Spanish Property Insight website, Mark Stucklin says: "You have to take these figures with a pinch of salt
as far as Spain is concerned." The problem, he says, is they are based on official figures which "significantly understate the
true extent to which prices have fallen. Spanish prices have fallen much further than this index suggests ... If you want to
know what"s going on in the residential property market, a much more revealing figure is the collapse in planning approvals,
down by 90% since 2006".

(source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/money/2011/apr/02/spain-property-prices-collapse)


In the following excerpts taken from the text - "many of which hold thousands of repossessed homes as assets"; "who have been jailed for accepting bungs"; "who have responded to the siren call of Spain"s sun-kissed beaches" -, the relative pronouns refer, respectively, to:

a) "thousands"; "developers"; "beaches".
b) "repossessed homes"; "powers"; "Spain".
c) "Spanish banks"; "politicians"; "Brits and other north Europeans".
d) "assets"; "bungs"; "sun-kisses".
e) "Spanish construction industry"; "compulsory purchase"; "Spaniards".

A resposta correta é:

Electronic junk will create pollution problem around world, U.N. study warns


BALI, Indonesia — Sales of household electrical gadgets will boom across the developing world in the next decade, wreaking environmental havoc if there are no new strategies to deal with the discarded TVs, cell phones and computers, a U.N. report said today.
The environmental and health hazards posed by the globe"s mounting electronic waste are particularly urgent in developing countries, which are already dumping grounds for rich nations" high-tech trash, the U.N. Environment Program study said.
Electronic waste is piling up around the world at a rate estimated at 40 million U.S. tons a year, the report said, noting that data remain insufficient.
China produces 2.6 million tons of electronic waste a year, second only to the United States with 3.3 million tons, it said.
UNEP Executive Director Achim Steiner said the globe was ill-prepared to deal with the explosion of electronic gadgets over the past decade.
"The world is now confronted with a massive wave of electronic waste that is going to come back and hit us, particularly for least-developed countries, that may become a dumping ground," Steiner told The Associated Press ahead of a UNEP executive meeting in Bali.
He said some Americans and Europeans have sent broken computers to African countries falsely declared as donations. The computers were dumped outside slums as toxic waste and became potential hazards to people, he said.
The report predicts that China"s waste rate from old computers will quadruple from 2007 levels by 2020. Meanwhile, in India, waste from old refrigerators — which contain hazardous chlorofluorocarbons and hydrochlorofluorocarbon gases — could triple by 2020.
It said the fastest growth in electronic waste in recent years has been in communications devices such as cell phones, pagers and smart phones.
Most of the recycling of electronic waste in developing countries such as China and India is done by inefficient and unregulated backyard operators. The environmentally harmful practice of heating electronic circuit boards over coal-fired grills to leach out gold is widespread in both countries.
The report called for regulations for collecting and managing electronic waste, and urged that technologies be transferred to the industrializing world to cope with such waste.
While electrical products such refrigerators, air conditioners, printers, DVD players and digital music players account for only a small part of the world"s garbage, their components make them particularly hazardous.
Prof. Eric Williams, an Arizona State University expert on industrial ecology who did not participate in the UNEP study, said it was difficult to comment on the credibility of the electronic waste growth forecasts because the report gives little explanation of how they were calculated.
"It is the environmental intensity of e-waste rather than its total mass that is the main concern," Williams told the AP via e-mail.
"If e-waste is recycled informally in the developing world, it causes far worse pollution than the much larger mass of regular waste in landfills," he said.

http://www.cleveland.com/world/index.ssf/2010/02/electronic_junk_will_create_po.html (06/06/12)



What does e-waste mean in Portuguese?

a) Lixo ambiental.
b) Lixo reciclado.
c) Poluição ambiental.
d) Poluição eletrônica.
e) Lixo eletrônico.

A resposta correta é:

Question 21 refer to the text below:

The Harmonized Commodity Description and Coding
System generally referred to as "Harmonized System"
or simply "HS" is a multipurpose international product
nomenclature developed by the World Customs
Organization (WCO).

It comprises about 5,000 commodity groups; each
identifi ed by a six digit code, arranged in a legal and logical
structure and is supported by well-defi ned rules to achieve
uniform classifi cation. The system is used by more than
200 countries and economies as a basis for their Customs
tariffs and for the collection of international trade statistics.
Over 98 % of the merchandise in international trade is
classifi ed in terms of the HS.

The HS contributes to the harmonization of Customs and
trade procedures, and the non-documentary trade data
interchange in connection with such procedures, thus
reducing the costs related to international trade.

(Source: http://www.wcoomd.org/home_hsoverviewboxes_hsharmonizedsystem.htm)


According to the text, the Harmonized System

a) serves more than one purpose.
b) is used by around fi ve thousand groups of countries.
c) typically has dozen-digit codes.
d) was devised by the WTO.
e) keeps international trade costs high.

A resposta correta é:

TEXT I

Spain"s property crash casts a long shadow over a place in the sun

Graham Norwood, The Guardian, Saturday 2 April 2011

Spanish homeowners used to have little in common with the wealthy north Europeans snapping up holiday villas and
apartments on the Costas. Now both are united in adversity. Both are suffering in a market preoccupied with falling values,
negative equity, a glut of unsold new property and, in some cases, doubts about the legality of new estates. An estimated
600,000 new homes, and 200,000 part-completed ones remain unsold, a sizeable proportion of which are in holiday areas.
The Bank of Spain says official house prices have fallen 17% since 2007, but many observers believe that the market is
much worse than that, as the bank"s index is based on valuations, not achieved sale prices. Estate agents say prices of homes
have typically fallen 20% to 50% in different parts of the country, with no sector unaffected.

"There is an entire generation of young Spaniards with a millstone round their necks," says Enrique Quemada of One to One
Capital Partners, a business consultancy. "They will have to work their whole lives to pay for houses now worth half what
they bought them for." Meanwhile, the holiday home market also remains in the doldrums. A three-bedroom bungalow in
Castellon, north of Valencia, has been slashed by its British owner from £109,000 to £79,000, and then to £66,000, but still
has no takers. Taylor Wimpey, a British developer which has been building homes in Spain for more than 50 years, has new
villas on the Costa Blanca for sale at £140,000, down from £235,000. On the Balearic Islands, until recently thought of as
immune from the crash, prices are down as much as 40%.

"There are some real bargains, especially at the top of the market," says a spokeswoman for Savills estate agency, which has
one new luxury villa on Mallorca slashed from £15.4m to a mere £9.5m. Desperate developers are also faced with a slump in
British demand because of the poor euro-sterling exchange rate. As a result, a golfing resort in Catalunya is selling its homes
with a guaranteed rate of €1.25 to the pound on all purchases over the summer; the market rate is €1.14. Most commentators
believe that more price falls are inevitable, but even if Britons choose to buy now, the prospect of getting a Spanish mortgage
is "pretty bleak," according to Melanie Bien of broker Private Finance.

"Spain stands out with a housing market and a lending record that"s far worse than France, Portugal or Italy. If you must buy,
somehow try to remortgage money from your own home back in Britain," she advises. The latest figures to emerge from
Spain show little respite from a downturn that is now in its fourth year. Although there was a small rise in the number of
homes sold early in 2010, this was driven by the desire to beat deadlines for the scrapping of mortgage tax relief and a rise on
VAT on new homes. By the end of last year, sales volumes were again on the slide. Despite the glut of unsold new homes,
another 257,443 were completed in 2010. Even so, there has been a 43% collapse in the value of the Spanish construction
industry, according to EU figures, and a collapse in land prices of about 50%.

Spanish banks – many of which hold thousands of repossessed homes as assets – are legally obliged to start selling these
homes after holding them for two years. As a result, more properties are expected to flood the market for sale this year.
Meanwhile, as if that"s not enough, the scandal of Spain"s "illegal homes" continues. For more than a decade there have been
disputes over some new developments retrospectively declared illegal by councils, controversial compulsory purchase
powers given to developers by some local authorities, and politicians who have been jailed for accepting bungs.

The most recent controversy blew up last month when 12,697 new homes were declared illegal in the Almanzora Valley in
south-east Spain, an area popular with holiday-home buyers. Some 920 have been earmarked for demolition, while the
remainder may be rezoned, thus allowing them to be declared legal and have utilities connected. "How many will be made
homeless, or lose their life savings, if 920 houses are demolished? Who"s going to compensate those who bought in good
faith?" asks Maura Hillen, president of Abusos Urbanisticos Almanzora No, a local pressure group composed mainly of
British residents. Similar groups of disgruntled UK buyers exist across many of Spain"s tourist areas.

Now the housing crash has become so much a part of the modern Spanish psyche it has been accorded the ultimate tribute –
its own television soap opera. Crematorio has a storyline that includes unhappy foreign buyers, corrupt councilors, lurid
affairs, drugs and violence against a backdrop of the Spanish Costas.

Far-fetched? Not this time. Many believe the fiction is some way behind the fact. Britain and Spain aren"t a million miles
apart when it comes to home ownership aspirations. Both are big on owner-occupation. Spain has one of the highest rates in
the whole EU – a whopping 82% – with the rental market concentrated in a few major cities such as Madrid and Barcelona,
says the Rics European Housing Review 2011, a major annual study of Europe"s property markets. Tax breaks have
encouraged people to invest in housing, though many of these have now been scrapped as part of the recent austerity
measures.

And it"s not just Brits and other northern Europeans who have responded to the siren call of Spain"s sun-kissed beaches. The
Rics study points out that, among Spaniards, "there is also a high propensity to aspire to own a second home in the
countryside or on the coast: over a fifth of households own one. This helps to make crowded urban conditions more tolerable
for those that can afford it".

The latter point is a reference to the fact that Spain"s houses are typically pretty busy, bustling places. Says the report: "This
cramped lifestyle reflects cultural factors, as well as housing shortages, as several generations of families may live together
in dense urban accommodation. The number of rooms per dwelling is quite high by average EU standards, yet they tend to be
small, with the usable floor area towards the bottom of the rankings."

Property prices may have fallen, but last month Spain was named one of the world"s most overvalued housing markets. A
report in The Economist claimed Spanish homes are overvalued by more than 43%, and said this compared with just under
30% for Britain, 20% for Ireland and -12% for Germany (ie, the market in Germany is "undervalued"). It reckons home
prices should reflect the rents that tenants pay, so its index calculates the ratio of prices to rents in 20 economies. Spain was
the fourth most overvalued after Australia, Hong Kong and France.

But, writing on his Spanish Property Insight website, Mark Stucklin says: "You have to take these figures with a pinch of salt
as far as Spain is concerned." The problem, he says, is they are based on official figures which "significantly understate the
true extent to which prices have fallen. Spanish prices have fallen much further than this index suggests ... If you want to
know what"s going on in the residential property market, a much more revealing figure is the collapse in planning approvals,
down by 90% since 2006".

(source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/money/2011/apr/02/spain-property-prices-collapse)


In the sentence "There are some real bargains, especially at the top of the market", the idea brought by the expression in bold is:

a) expressly expensive.
b) clearly overvalued.
c) really magnified.
d) specially costly.
e) actually cheap.

A resposta correta é:

Skillset vs. Mindset: Which Will Get You the Job?

By Heather Huhman

There’s a debate going on among career
experts about which is more important: skillset or
mindset. While skills are certainly desirable for many
positions, does having the right ones guarantee
you’ll get the job?

What if you have the mindset to get the work
accomplished, but currently lack certain skills
requested by the employer? Jennifer Fremont-Smith,
CEO of Smarterer, and Paul G. Stoltz, PhD, coauthor
of Put Your Mindset to Work: The One Asset
You Really Need to Win and Keep the Job You Love,
recently sat down with U.S. Newsto sound off on this
issue.

Heather: What is more important to today’s
employers: skillset or mindset? Why?

Jennifer: For many jobs, skillset needs to come
first. The employer absolutely must find people who
have the hard skills to do whatever it is they are being
hired to do. Programmers have to know how to program.
Data analysts need to know how to crunch numbers in
Excel. Marketers must know their marketing tools and
software. Social media managers must know the tools
of their trade like Twitter, Facebook, WordPress, and
have writing and communication skills.
After the employers have identified candidates
with these hard skills, they can shift their focus to their
candidates’ mindsets - attitude, integrity, work ethic,
personality, etc.

Paul: Mindset utterly trumps skillset.
Heather: Do you have any data or statistics to
back up your argument?
Jennifer: Despite record high unemployment,
many jobs sit empty because employers can’t find
candidates with the right skills. In a recent survey
cited in the Wall Street Journal, over 50 percent of
companies reported difficulty finding applicants with
the right skills. Companies are running lean and mean
in this economy – they don’t have the time to train for
those key skills.
Paul: [Co-author James Reed and I] asked
tens of thousands of top employers worldwide this
question: If you were hiring someone today, which
would you pick, a ) the person with the perfect skills
and qualifications, but lacking the desired mindset, or
B) the person with the desired mindset, but lacking
the rest? Ninety-eight percent pick A. Add to this that
97 percent said it is more likely that a person with the
right mindset will develop the right skillset, rather than
the other way around.
Heather: How do you define skillset?

Jennifer: At Smarterer, we define skillset as the
set of digital, social, and technical tools professionals
use to be effective in the workforce. Professionals
are rapidly accumulating these skills, and the tools
themselves are proliferating and evolving – we’re giving
people a simple, smart way for people to validate their
skillset and articulate it to the world.

Heather: How do you define mindset?

Paul: We define mindset as “the lens through
which you see and navigate life.” It undergirds and
affects all that you think, see, believe, say, and do.

Heather: How can job seekers show they have
the skillset employers are seeking throughout the
entire hiring process?
Jennifer: At the beginning of the process, seekers
can showcase the skills they have by incorporating
them, such as their Smarterer scores, throughout
their professional and personal brand materials. They
should be articulating their skills in their resume, cover
letter, LinkedIn profile, blog, website - everywhere
they express their professional identity.

Heather: How can job seekers show they have
the mindset employers are seeking throughout
the entire hiring process?
Paul: One of the most head-spinning studies
we did, which was conducted by an independent
statistician showed that, out of 30,000 CVs/resumes,
when you look at who gets the job and who does not:

A. The conventional wisdom fails (at best). None
of the classic, accepted advice, like using action verbs
or including hobbies/interests actually made any
difference.

B. The only factor that made the difference was
that those who had one of the 72 mindset qualities
from our master model, articulated in their CV/resume,
in a specific way, were three times as likely to get the
job. Furthermore, those who had two or more of these
statements, were seven times more likely to get the
job, often over other more qualified candidates.
Available at: .Retrieved on: 17 Sept. 2011. Adapted.




Based on the meanings in the text, the two items are synonymous in

a) "accomplished" (line 7) - started
b) "currently" (line 7) - actually
c) "hired" (line 19) - rejected
d) "key" (line 39) - main
e) "proliferating" (line 55) - decreasing

A resposta correta é:

Question 22 refer to the text below:

The Harmonized Commodity Description and Coding
System generally referred to as "Harmonized System"
or simply "HS" is a multipurpose international product
nomenclature developed by the World Customs
Organization (WCO).

It comprises about 5,000 commodity groups; each
identifi ed by a six digit code, arranged in a legal and logical
structure and is supported by well-defi ned rules to achieve
uniform classifi cation. The system is used by more than
200 countries and economies as a basis for their Customs
tariffs and for the collection of international trade statistics.
Over 98 % of the merchandise in international trade is
classifi ed in terms of the HS.

The HS contributes to the harmonization of Customs and
trade procedures, and the non-documentary trade data
interchange in connection with such procedures, thus
reducing the costs related to international trade.

(Source: http://www.wcoomd.org/home_hsoverviewboxes_hsharmonizedsystem.htm)


The benefi ts of the HS described in the text include:

a) user-friendliness and clarity.
b) fl exibility and range.
c) uniformization and economy.
d) wide use and speed.
e) simplicity and practicality.

A resposta correta é:

Based on the five elements of the Service Lifecycle of ITIL - Information Technology Infrastructure Library, match the column on the left with the one on the right.

(I) Service Transition.
( A ) Day-to-day execution of services and service management processes.

(II) Service Strategy.
( B ) Activities embedded in the service lifecycle.

(III) Service Design.
( C ) Standards, Policies and Strategies.

(IV) Service Operation.
( D ) Management of the changeover of a new or changed service and/or service management process into production TI.

(V) Continual Service Improvement.
( E ) Plans to create and modify services and service management processes.


Choose the alternative with the right association.

a) I-B, II-D, III-E, IV-A, V-C.
b) I-B, II-E, III-C, IV-D, V-A.
c) I-D, II-B, III-A, IV-E, V-C.
d) I-D, II-C, III-E, IV-A, V-B.
e) I-E, II-D, III-C, IV-B, V-A.

A resposta correta é:

Question 23 refer to the text below:

The Harmonized Commodity Description and Coding
System generally referred to as "Harmonized System"
or simply "HS" is a multipurpose international product
nomenclature developed by the World Customs
Organization (WCO).

It comprises about 5,000 commodity groups; each
identifi ed by a six digit code, arranged in a legal and logical
structure and is supported by well-defi ned rules to achieve
uniform classifi cation. The system is used by more than
200 countries and economies as a basis for their Customs
tariffs and for the collection of international trade statistics.
Over 98 % of the merchandise in international trade is
classifi ed in terms of the HS.

The HS contributes to the harmonization of Customs and
trade procedures, and the non-documentary trade data
interchange in connection with such procedures, thus
reducing the costs related to international trade.

(Source: http://www.wcoomd.org/home_hsoverviewboxes_hsharmonizedsystem.htm)


Which information below cannot be found in the text:

a) "Harmonized System" is the abbreviated form of a longer term.
b) The HS includes raw materials only.
c) The system described has wide acceptance around the world.
d) Customs authorities rely on the HS for tariff purposes.
e) World trade figures are based on HS classifi cation.

A resposta correta é:

TEXT I

Spain"s property crash casts a long shadow over a place in the sun

Graham Norwood, The Guardian, Saturday 2 April 2011

Spanish homeowners used to have little in common with the wealthy north Europeans snapping up holiday villas and
apartments on the Costas. Now both are united in adversity. Both are suffering in a market preoccupied with falling values,
negative equity, a glut of unsold new property and, in some cases, doubts about the legality of new estates. An estimated
600,000 new homes, and 200,000 part-completed ones remain unsold, a sizeable proportion of which are in holiday areas.
The Bank of Spain says official house prices have fallen 17% since 2007, but many observers believe that the market is
much worse than that, as the bank"s index is based on valuations, not achieved sale prices. Estate agents say prices of homes
have typically fallen 20% to 50% in different parts of the country, with no sector unaffected.

"There is an entire generation of young Spaniards with a millstone round their necks," says Enrique Quemada of One to One
Capital Partners, a business consultancy. "They will have to work their whole lives to pay for houses now worth half what
they bought them for." Meanwhile, the holiday home market also remains in the doldrums. A three-bedroom bungalow in
Castellon, north of Valencia, has been slashed by its British owner from £109,000 to £79,000, and then to £66,000, but still
has no takers. Taylor Wimpey, a British developer which has been building homes in Spain for more than 50 years, has new
villas on the Costa Blanca for sale at £140,000, down from £235,000. On the Balearic Islands, until recently thought of as
immune from the crash, prices are down as much as 40%.

"There are some real bargains, especially at the top of the market," says a spokeswoman for Savills estate agency, which has
one new luxury villa on Mallorca slashed from £15.4m to a mere £9.5m. Desperate developers are also faced with a slump in
British demand because of the poor euro-sterling exchange rate. As a result, a golfing resort in Catalunya is selling its homes
with a guaranteed rate of €1.25 to the pound on all purchases over the summer; the market rate is €1.14. Most commentators
believe that more price falls are inevitable, but even if Britons choose to buy now, the prospect of getting a Spanish mortgage
is "pretty bleak," according to Melanie Bien of broker Private Finance.

"Spain stands out with a housing market and a lending record that"s far worse than France, Portugal or Italy. If you must buy,
somehow try to remortgage money from your own home back in Britain," she advises. The latest figures to emerge from
Spain show little respite from a downturn that is now in its fourth year. Although there was a small rise in the number of
homes sold early in 2010, this was driven by the desire to beat deadlines for the scrapping of mortgage tax relief and a rise on
VAT on new homes. By the end of last year, sales volumes were again on the slide. Despite the glut of unsold new homes,
another 257,443 were completed in 2010. Even so, there has been a 43% collapse in the value of the Spanish construction
industry, according to EU figures, and a collapse in land prices of about 50%.

Spanish banks – many of which hold thousands of repossessed homes as assets – are legally obliged to start selling these
homes after holding them for two years. As a result, more properties are expected to flood the market for sale this year.
Meanwhile, as if that"s not enough, the scandal of Spain"s "illegal homes" continues. For more than a decade there have been
disputes over some new developments retrospectively declared illegal by councils, controversial compulsory purchase
powers given to developers by some local authorities, and politicians who have been jailed for accepting bungs.

The most recent controversy blew up last month when 12,697 new homes were declared illegal in the Almanzora Valley in
south-east Spain, an area popular with holiday-home buyers. Some 920 have been earmarked for demolition, while the
remainder may be rezoned, thus allowing them to be declared legal and have utilities connected. "How many will be made
homeless, or lose their life savings, if 920 houses are demolished? Who"s going to compensate those who bought in good
faith?" asks Maura Hillen, president of Abusos Urbanisticos Almanzora No, a local pressure group composed mainly of
British residents. Similar groups of disgruntled UK buyers exist across many of Spain"s tourist areas.

Now the housing crash has become so much a part of the modern Spanish psyche it has been accorded the ultimate tribute –
its own television soap opera. Crematorio has a storyline that includes unhappy foreign buyers, corrupt councilors, lurid
affairs, drugs and violence against a backdrop of the Spanish Costas.

Far-fetched? Not this time. Many believe the fiction is some way behind the fact. Britain and Spain aren"t a million miles
apart when it comes to home ownership aspirations. Both are big on owner-occupation. Spain has one of the highest rates in
the whole EU – a whopping 82% – with the rental market concentrated in a few major cities such as Madrid and Barcelona,
says the Rics European Housing Review 2011, a major annual study of Europe"s property markets. Tax breaks have
encouraged people to invest in housing, though many of these have now been scrapped as part of the recent austerity
measures.

And it"s not just Brits and other northern Europeans who have responded to the siren call of Spain"s sun-kissed beaches. The
Rics study points out that, among Spaniards, "there is also a high propensity to aspire to own a second home in the
countryside or on the coast: over a fifth of households own one. This helps to make crowded urban conditions more tolerable
for those that can afford it".

The latter point is a reference to the fact that Spain"s houses are typically pretty busy, bustling places. Says the report: "This
cramped lifestyle reflects cultural factors, as well as housing shortages, as several generations of families may live together
in dense urban accommodation. The number of rooms per dwelling is quite high by average EU standards, yet they tend to be
small, with the usable floor area towards the bottom of the rankings."

Property prices may have fallen, but last month Spain was named one of the world"s most overvalued housing markets. A
report in The Economist claimed Spanish homes are overvalued by more than 43%, and said this compared with just under
30% for Britain, 20% for Ireland and -12% for Germany (ie, the market in Germany is "undervalued"). It reckons home
prices should reflect the rents that tenants pay, so its index calculates the ratio of prices to rents in 20 economies. Spain was
the fourth most overvalued after Australia, Hong Kong and France.

But, writing on his Spanish Property Insight website, Mark Stucklin says: "You have to take these figures with a pinch of salt
as far as Spain is concerned." The problem, he says, is they are based on official figures which "significantly understate the
true extent to which prices have fallen. Spanish prices have fallen much further than this index suggests ... If you want to
know what"s going on in the residential property market, a much more revealing figure is the collapse in planning approvals,
down by 90% since 2006".

(source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/money/2011/apr/02/spain-property-prices-collapse)


The connective meanwhile in the sentence "Meanwhile, the holiday home market also remains in the doldrums." could be replaced, without changing meaning, by:

a) albeit.
b) indeed.
c) throughout.
d) at the same time.
e) in the course of things.

A resposta correta é: