A、As many as 44 heads of state are expected to attend the games. B、Athletes from 87 National Olympic Committees are to compete.

New York, The United States
    Micro-blogging site Twitter has reported a net loss of 645 million dollars for 2013, just three months after its flotation on the New York Stock Exchange. The loss was expected by analysts, who highlighted Twitter’s revenues, which rose 110% last year to reach 665 million dollars.
    But a reported slow growth in user numbers was a bigger concern for investors. Twitter averaged 241 million monthly users in the last quarter of the year, up just 3. 8% on the previous quarter. That represents a slowdown compared with a growth rate of 10% seen at the beginning of 2013.
Seattle, The United States
    Young women who smoke may have an increased risk of a common type of breast cancer, according to a new study.
    Researchers found that women between 20 and 44 years old who had smoked a pack of cigarettes per day for at least 10 years were 60 percent more likely than those who smoked less to develop so-called estrogen receptor-positive breast cancer.
    "I think that there is growing evidence that breast cancer is another health hazard associated with smoking," said Dr. Christopher Li, a senior researcher from the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle.
    Previous research has found links between smoking and breast cancer, Li and his colleagues note in the journal Cancer. The studies looking at breast cancer among younger women have produced conflicting results, however.
Athens, Greece
    The jobless rate in Greece reached a record high of 28% in November, according to newly released government figures. The rate increased from 27. 7% in the previous month. For those under the age of 25, unemployment hit 61. 4%.
    Harsh austerity measures have led the Greek economy to shrink by a quarter in four years. However, other economic indicators have suggested that there are signs of recovery.
    The BBC’s Mark Lowen in Athens says the bleak unemployment numbers are in contrast to a message that the government has been trying to push: that Greece has turned a corner, with six years of recession due to end this year and light on the horizon.
London, The United Kingdom
    Some 530,000 people migrated to the UK in the year ending September, up from the 490,000 people who arrived during the previous year, while 320,000 left the country, down from the 34,000 the previous year.
    Net UK migration increased to 210,000 in the year to September 2013, pushing it further away from the Conservatives’ target of below 100,000, according to official estimates.
    The Office for National Statistics said the net flow, the numbers moving to the UK minus the numbers leaving it, rose from 150,000 in the previous year.
    The increase has been driven by a big growth in the number of European Union citizens coming to Britain.
Sochi, Russia
    The 2014 Winter Olympics, which have cost ￡30bn to stage, start in Sochi in Russia on Thursday. It is the first time in 30 years that events are getting under way before the opening ceremony, which will take place at the Fisht stadium on the newly-built Olympic Park on Friday.
    There will be 98 gold medals won over 16 days of competition, with 2,871 athletes from 87 National Olympic Committees competing, seven of which, Dominica, Zimbabwe, Malta, Paraguay, Togo, Tonga and East Timor, are entering for the first time.
    The organizing committee has been working 24 hours a day to get all the venues ready for competition, while there have been problems with hotels being finished in the mountain cluster and controversy over the culling of stray dogs.
    A spokesman for the IOC, the International Olympic Committee, says up to 44 heads of state are expected to attend, believing the figure shows the Games have been given an "international seal of approval. "
Question No. 6 What do we know about the Micro-blogging site Twitter from the news?
Question No. 7 What’s the finding of a new study done by a cancer research centre in Seattle?
Question No. 8 What’s the jobless rate in Greece in November according to the government figures?
Question No. 9 What figure is the net migration to the UK in the year to September 2013?
Question No. 10 According to the IOC spokesman, which of the following has given the Sochi Winter Games an international seal of approval?