Brazil’s big year
Kick-off approaches
Latin America’s largest economy enters an unpredictable election year“IT’S not about the 50 cents” reads a scrawl on a shop shutter on Avenida Faria Lima, one of S?o Paulo’s main thoroughfares. Next door, the message is blunter: “Screw the police”. Six months after a small demonstration against a 50-cent rise in bus fares blew up into the biggest street protests Brazil had seen in a generation, few visible signs remain of the wider anger they revealed-about corruption, poor public services and rising living costs.
这里的破折号的作用如同托福考试中，作用是进一步的解释和说明
Recent attempts to organise a reprise have attracted only a few hundred marchers. Support for the president, Dilma Rousseff of the Workers’ Party, which plummeted after June’s protests, has rebounded. A poll in November of voting intentions in next October’s elections gave her 47%, against 30% for her two likeliest adversaries combined.
逗号之后的“against---“表示伴随状语。在托福考试中，伴随状语，目的状语和结果状语通常以动词ing形式出现。
Even so, the race is hard to call. The same poll found that two-thirds of voters want Brazil’s next president to make sweeping, if unspecified, policy changes. That suggests the spirit of June is still alive-and that some of Ms Rousseff’s support could melt away if a strong alternative emerges. Political analysts say that many Brazilians’ voting strategy is to plump for the perceived front-runner, whoever that may be, meaning that a challenger who manages to advance in the polls could quickly take a commanding lead.
Neither of Ms Rousseff’s probable adversaries is yet campaigning in earnest. Aécio Neves’s Party of Brazilian Social Democracy has been hit by evidence of bribery and overbilling on public contracts in its heartland state of S?o Paulo. Eduardo Campos, the governor of the state of Pernambuco, is hammering out a programme with his likely running mate, Marina Silva, an environmentalist who joined his party after missing a deadline to set up her own.
插入语结构经常在托福阅读中出现，而我们需要注意对于插入语通常可以选择忽略，因为这属于次要内容，无关考点。忽略插入语可以加速我们的阅读效率。
The economy offers a line of attack for both candidates. Since Ms Rousseff took office in 2011, growth has been anaemic. Unemployment is low and, until recently, incomes had risen faster than inflation. But job creation and wage growth are now cooling, while prices are still going up. The public finances have deteriorated-and will not be repaired in an election year.
Deteriorated在
A spoof calendar circulating on social-networking sites paints 2014 as another lost year for growth, with a late Carnival extending the summer break from Christmas to March and a three-month shutdown around the football World Cup, which Brazil is hosting. It shows May devoted to preparations, June to the tournament and July to celebration-or, just conceivably, mourning. Extra spending on beer, replica kit and new televisions will barely offset the closure of schools and government offices on match days in order to get locals off host cities’ congested roads and allow fans to get to games.
Offset是个重点词，意为抵消。这个词也是词汇题考察的高频词。同样多次出现在经济类文章中。
The World Cup brings other risks for the incumbent. Last June’s marches coincided with the Confederations Cup, a dress rehearsal for this year’s tournament. The timing added fuel to protesters’ rage by highlighting the contrast between pricey new stadiums and shoddy public infrastructure, and gave them a chance to air grievances with the world watching. Brazilians’ passion for football and national pride makes a full-blown repeat during the main event unlikely. But “Black Blocs”-shifting, leaderless youths who march dressed in black, hooded and masked, and seek violent confrontation with the police-have no such qualms.