Questões de Concurso Sobre voz ativa e passiva | passive and active voice em inglês

Google as well as Yahoo, Microsoft and AOL among

others are gearing up to keep a much closer eye on all of us,

so that within five years these and other firms will routinely

track our movements, friends, interests, purchases and

5 correspondence – then make money by helping marketers

take advantage of the information.

These companies' brash plans are pushing us toward a

thorny choice that will determine the future of computing.

Google and other Web-oriented, information-service giants are

10 determined to build a breathtaking array of services based on

your personal information, and they're betting you'll be willing

to share it with them in order for you to reap the benefits. But

if we cooperate and let them in on the details of our lives, we'll

lose much of our privacy, and possibly a lot more.

15 A privacy backlash, however, would stifle these potentially

revolutionary services before they get off the ground – and

leave the computer industry's biggest plans for growth in

tatters. That may be just what some people want. The U.S.

Congress is considering four bills that would make it illegal to

20 collect and share information online or through cell phones

about people without clearer warning and permission. These

sorts of restrictions are already in effect throughout much of

Europe, thanks in part to European Union directives on privacy

and electronic communications passed in 2002 and 2003.

25 The good news is that there's no reason to choose

between technology and privacy. New technologies are

emerging that can doctor our data so that companies know

just enough about us to ply us with customized services, while

preventing them from getting a clear picture of our private

lives. The question is again one of trust: in this case, whether

people will come to trust the companies that are trying to build

these new technologies.

(abridged from Next Frontiers in Newsweek, April 3, 2006)

INSTRUCTIONS: Read the text carefully and then answer the questions from 33 to 38 by choosing the correct alternative.

Brazil corruption scandals: All you need to know

For the past three years, Brazil has been gripped by a scandal which started with a state-owned oil company and grew to encapsulate people at the very top of business - and even presidents.

On the face of it, it is a straightforward corruption scandal - albeit one involving millions of dollars in kickbacks and more than 80 politicians and members of the business elite.

But as the tentacles of the investigation dubbed Operation Car Wash fanned out, other scandals emerged.

It has led to some of those who have found themselves accused claiming they are the victims of political plots, designed to bar them from office.

What is Operation Car Wash?

Operation Car Wash began in March 2014 as an investigation into allegations that Brazil's biggest construction firms overcharged state-oil company Petrobras for building contracts.

Investigators accused directors at the firm - named the world's most ethical oil and gas company in 2008 - of skimming the extra money off the top as a bribe for awarding the contract.

Which is bad enough - but then the Workers' Party found itself dragged into the corruption scandal amid allegations of having funneled some of these funds to pay off politicians and buy their votes and help with political campaigns.

Among those accused in the scandal were dozens of politicians, and Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva - the country's extremely popular former president, known affectionately as "Lula".

Read the excerpt below and answer the questions 34 to 40.

1. The transfer of Alaska from Russia to the United States formed one of those unbelievable incidents of
2. history because by 1867, Russia was nervously eager to get rid of it, while the United States still
3. recovering from the Civil War and immersed in the impending impeachment of President Johnson,
4. refused to accept it on any terms.
5. At this impasse an extraordinary man monopolized center stage. He was not a Russian, a fact which
6. would become important more than a century later, but a soi-disant baron of dubious background; half
7. Austrian, half Italian, and a charmer who was picked up in 1841 for temporary duty representing Russia in
8. the United States and who lingered there till 1868. In that time, Edouard de Stoeckl, parading himself as a
9. nobleman, although no one could say for sure how or when or even if he had earned his title, became
10. such an ardent friend of America that he married an American heiress and took upon himself the task of
11. acting as marriage broker between Russia, which he called homeland, and the United States, his adopted
12. residence.
13. He faced a most difficult task, for when the United States showed hesitancy about accepting Alaska,
14. support for the sale withered in Russia, and later when Russia wanted to sell, half a dozen of the most
15. influential American politicians led by Secretary of State William Seward of New York looked far into the
16. future and saw the desirability of acquiring Alaska to serve as America's artic bastion, yet the hard-
17. headed businessmen in the Senate, the House and the general public opposed the purchase with all the
18. scorn they could summon. 'Seward's Icebox' and 'Seward's Folly' were two of the gentler jibes. Some
19. critics accused Seward of being in the pay of the Russians; others accused De Stoeckl of buying votes in
20. the House. One sharp satirist claimed that Alaska contained nothing but polar bears and Eskimos, and
21. many protested that America should not accept this useless, frozen domain even if Russia wanted to give
22. it away.
23. Many pointed out that Alaska had no wealth of any kind, not even reindeer, which proliferated in other
24. northern areas, and experts affirmed that an arctic area like this could not possibly have any minerals or
25. other deposits of value. On and on went the abuse of this unknown and somewhat terrifying land, and the
26. castigations would have been comical had they not influenced American thinking and behavior and
27. condemned Alaska to decades of neglect.
28. But an ingenious man like Baron de Stoeckl was not easily diverted from his main target, and with
29. Seward's unflinching support and admirable statesmanship, the sale squeaked by with a favorable margin
30. of one vote. By such a narrow margin did the United States come close to losing one of her potentially
31. valuable acquisitions, but of course, had one viewed Alaska from the vantage point of frozen Fort Nulato
32. in 1867, with the thermometer at minus-fifty-seven and about to be attacked by hostile Athapascans, the
33. purchase at more than $7,000,000 would have seemed a poor bargain.
34. Now the comedy intensified, became burlesque, for although the U.S Senate had bought the place,
35. the U.S. House refused to appropriate the money to pay for it, and for many tense months the sale hung
36. in the balance. When a favorable vote was finally taken, it was almost negated by the discovery that
37. Baron de Stoeckl had disposed of $125,000 in cash for which he refused to give an accounting. Widely
38. suspected of having bribed congressmen to vote for land that was obviously worthless, the baron waited
39. until the sale was completed, then quietly slipped out of the country, his life's ambition having been
40. achieved.
41. One congressman with a keen sense of history, economics and geopolitics said of the whole affair:
42. 'If we were so eager to show Russia our appreciation of the help she gave us during the Civil War, why
43. didn't we give her the seven million and tell her to keep her damned colony? It'll never be of any use to
44. us.'

Excerpt from: MICHENER, James A. Alaska. Fawcett Books: New York, 1988, p. 369 - 370.