听力4新闻原文

Unit 1

News item 1

China’s wasted no time in setting out the latest plans for its ambitious space program. A senior official said the next manned mission will be in 2007, when the astronauts will attempt a space walk. After that, scientists will focus on developing the capability to rendezvous and dock with other spacecraft. He added that China also wanted to recruit female astronauts in the near future.

The announcement comes just hours after the country’s second manned space mission touched down in the remote grasslands of Inner Mongolia. The returning astronauts have been given a hero’s welcome, riding in an open car in a nationally televised parade. Thousands of soldiers and groups of schoolchildren lined the route, waving Chinese flags. It’s a sign of the great importance China attached to its space program, viewing it as a source of national pride and international prestige.

News item 2

China’s economy has recovered earlier and more strongly than any other. This latest data is further evidence of that trend. The rise in industrial output confirms what factory owners have been saying for some time now, that customers have been restocking their inventories and confidence is returning.

There are still question marks though over the stability of the recovery. The property sector is showing signs of overheating. The government this week announced measures to try to cool it. At the same time officials decided to extend tax subsidies for purchases of small vehicles and appliances suggesting that some here still believe Chinese manufactures need government support.

Growth was strongest in heavy industries such as coal, steel, power generation and automobiles. Consumer prices rose in November for the first time since February. But the rise was small and probably reflected higher food prices caused by early snowstorms which destroyed crops and disrupted transport.

News 3

If you visit almost any marketplace in Africa, many of the consumer goods on sale, from buckets to razor blades to hurricane lamps, are likely to be Chinese. In a very large number of African capitals, the main football stadium is likely to have been built with Chinese aid money.

Sino-African trade, and aid, is large and growing. Some estimate put it as high as 12 billion dollars a year. Although direct comparisons are difficult, the links between the world’s largest developing country, China, and the world’s largest developing continent could grow to challenge the post-colonial links between Europe and Africa. The meeting in Addis Ababa has heard Chinese promises to cancel debts, grant duty-free access into China for African products and increase Chinese investments in Africa.

Unit 2

News item 1

Representatives of nearly 150 countries meeting in Hong Kong are still trying to reach a new agreement on global trade.

For many countries the biggest prize they realistically hoped for on this meeting was a date

for ending the European Union subsidies to help farmers sell their produce on world markets. The EU was already committed in principle to doing this. Now a senior official says they are prepared to name the date as part of a wider deal. “If there isn’t an agreement here in Hong Kong, the date of 2013 will be in it,” he confirmed. The United States trade representative Rob Portman said he would still prefer a date of 2010, but he is trying to be accommodating.

News item 2

The G20 have come up with a package of plans that add up to well over a trillion dollars to tackle the recession.

One key component is an agreement to treble to seven hundred and fifty billion dollars the resources available to the International Monetary Fund for lending to countries in trouble.

They also want a tenfold increase in what are called special drawing rights which are rather like an IMF currency and which strengthen the foreign exchange reserves of its member countries.

The G20 also plan closer regulation of financial firms with curbs on executive pay and new oversight of large hedge funds.

The British Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, described the summit as marking a new consensus on tackling global problems.

News item 3

The conference opened to applause forty minutes late. It began with an environmental film from Danish children, a message from the next generation for those delegates whose decisions here over the next fortnight may help shape the lives they lead.

34,000 people have tried to get accredited for this extraordinary meeting – an unprecedented demand.

Hopes are high here that a deal can be done to lower emission and raise cash to help poor countries adapt to climate change and obtain clean energy. The question is whether that agreement will be strong enough to meet the expectations of those children of the future.

Unit 3

News item 1

The piracy problem looks like it’s here to stay despite the recent muscular interventions by the French and American navies. Whether this latest attempted hijacking was the promised revenge for the killing of three Somali pirates by the US navy isn’t clear. But is does suggest at the very least that the pirates haven’t been deterred.

So why does the problem persist? “Put it simply,” maritime security analysts say. “Piracy will continue as long as the financial rewards for a successful hijacking remain so great and Somalia remains so lawless. Certainly the international effort to thwart the problem is relatively limited. At any one time there are only fifteen to eighteen international warships in the area to police an expanse of sea covering more than a million square kilometers.”

The reluctance to mount a major international naval operation in the area may also be down to the relatively small scale of the problem. Last year, nearly twenty-three thousand ships passed through the Gulf of Aden. Only 92 were hijacked.

News item 2

The President is making it clear that leaving Afghanistan is not an option; it’s not on the table. According to one White House source, he told the meeting that he wouldn’t shrink the number of troops in Afghanistan or opt for a strategy of merely targeting al-Qaeda leaders. But he wouldn’t be drawn on the military request for more troops.

There appears to be a frustration that the review of strategy has sometimes been portrayed in black-and-white terms of a massive increase of reduction of troop numbers.

President Obama told the group made up of the most senior Republican and Democrat senators and congressmen that his assessment would be “rigorous and deliberate”. But it’s going on too long for some Republicans and members of the President’s own party are dubious about committing more resources and military personnel to a conflict where there is no end in sight. The word “Vietnam” is heard more and more on Capitol Hill.

News item 3

There were traffic jams on the road north, families heading to Gaza City to reunite with friends and relatives. Long lines of cars backed up at the makeshift roadblocks the Israelis have left behind. But the tanks are gone, only the deep tracks remain.

There were buildings pitted with Israeli tank rounds; from the holes that have been punched in the walls it was clear there had also been snipers waiting for them. North of Khan Younis we saw some of the Qassam fighters returning home, their rifles slung lazily around their shoulders.

For three weeks the Israelis pounded the tunnels that run beneath the perimeter wall but last night we met people who insist that some of these tunnels are still open and still some fuel is being pumped from the Egyptian side. If the border crossings remain close, say the Palestinians, these tunnels are their only link to the outside world.

Unit 4

News item 1

This morning in the Ingush capital of Nazran, local police were standing to attention in the courtyard of their headquarters to receive their orders for the day, when a bomber drove a truck loaded with explosives into the gates of the building.

The blast set the building alight destroying much of it and many of the vehicles parked there. Local officials have warned that the number of dead could still rise as local apartment blocks were also hit and children were among the wounded. the bombing is one of the deadliest in months and damages the Kremlin’s claims that the Republic’s new president is bringing the region under control.

The Ingush president Y unus-Bek Yevkurov, who was still convalescing after surviving an assassination attempt in June, spoke about the attack this morning. He pointed the finger at the West saying that it was behind the blast. He said that western powers would never allow Russia to reclaim its status as a world power.

News item 2

Malaysia’s Prime Minister, Najib Razak, announced ambitious targets last week to tackle street crime. He wants a 20% fall by this time next year. Retired policemen are being brought back and members of Malaysia’s people’s volunteer corps are being enlisted to fight on the frontline. They’ll join police on street patrols.

The problem is though, most of the first batch were not considered up to it. Of 500 volunteers who were sent for assessment, just 142 were fit enough. The rest were too fat, unfit or had what the head of the corps told an English language newspaper was poor overall presentation and grooming. Corps members wear military uniforms but most of them are unpaid volunteers with limited powers.

Street crime, particularly mugging, is seen as a serious problem in Malaysia’s major cities. The opposition has called for the country’s top policeman to be replaced because of the failure to tackle the issue.

News item 3

Australian police say a nuclear reactor may have been the intended target of a group of terrorist suspects arrested last week in Sydney and Melbourne. The suspects were among a group of 18 Muslims charged with terrorism-related offences.

This is the first official indication as to what the target of this alleged plot might have been. The Lucas Heights nuclear facility is on the outskirts of Sydney and is Australia’s only reactor. In documents released today the police have said that three of the suspects were stopped and questioned near the plant last December. It’s claimed that the defendants have been trying to stockpile large quantities of chemicals. It is also alleged they attended military style training camps in the Australian outback. Lawyers for the accused have insisted that the case against them was weak and politically motivated.

Unit 5

News item 1

Scientists have produced evidence showing dramatically that the current temperature rise there is highly unusual. For most of the last two thousand years, the Arctic slowly cooled, a consequence of variations in the Earth’s orbit.

But over the last century, the cooling abruptly reversed, and the region is now warmer than at any time in the 2,000-year record. Writing in the journal Science, the researchers say this shows how quickly the Arctic responds to climatic changes.

News item 2

The international conservation group, WWF, has accused European toilet and tissue paper manufacturers of contributing to global deforestation by not using enough recycled material. A spokesman said more than a quarter of a million trees were in fact being flushed down toilets or discarded as rubbish each day.

The report found alarmingly low levels of recycled fibers in the vast majority of products and said the fibers were instead being taken from natural forests in South Africa, Asia, Europe and across the Americas. Using virgin forest to make toilet paper, says the report, is wasteful and unnecessary. The report also warns that illegal and unsustainable logging and conflicts over land rights still exist in many of these areas and that all but on of the companies have so far failed to take effective measures to prevent illegal or controversial timber from being used in their products.

News item 3

Scientists are warning that climate change could drive some species of migrating animals towards extinction. A report by European ornithologists and zoologists says that birds, mammals and reptiles are finding it increasingly difficult to follow their usual migration patterns.

This report by ornithologists and zoologists warns that global warming will cause increasing problems for many migrating species. For example, the spreading Sahara Desert could make it impossible for swallows to make their epic journey from Southern Africa, and rising sea levels will destroy many coastal habitats for turtles and wading birds. The study even suggests that warmer oceans could lead to some turtle species becoming entirely female. The selection of sex is closely linked to sea temperature.

Unit 6

News item 1

Several years ago Edgar and Nina Otto froze the DNA of their dog, Lancelot. When he died last year, the couple were devastated and they decided to get a clone produced by a South Korean laboratory.

The biotech firm Best Friends Again claim that Lancelot Encore, as the y’ve named the new puppy, is the world’s first commercially cloned dog, the laboratory in South Korea, BioArts, includes a scientist that lost his research professorship at Seoul University in 2004, after fraudulently claiming he’d cloned human embryos and stem cells.

The new owners here in Florida say they’re happy with their new dog and don’t plan to clone any others. It’s thought that between three and four million unwanted dogs are killed at shelters across the US every year.

News item 2

Five years ago President Bush set out his lofty vision of sending astronauts back to the Moon by the year 2020. it was meant to be the staging post for the next frontier – a manned landing on Mars. Now a panel of space experts says that’s pretty much pie in the sky.

Their report, commissioned by President Obama, says the current US human space flight programme appears to be on an unsustainable trajectory. It suggests the only way forward is to increase the funding of NASA by billions of dollars, or to cooperate with private companies now embarking on commercial space flights.

The panel says visits to Near-Earth Objects such as asteroids are far more realistic too. The experts also argue for keeping the International Space Station going till 2020, rather than pulling the plug in six year s’ time.

News item 3

The study looked at nearly 400 men who developed Alzheimer’s disease. It assessed the time they spent in full-time education, the type of work they did and the point at which they retired.

The researchers detected no link between the onset of dementia and education or occupation. But they found that every extra year at work was associated with a six-week delay in Alzheimer’s. They say this points to the value of keeping the brain active by working.

They also acknowledge that the nature of retirement is changing, and for some people it may be as intellectually stimulating as working. The Alzheimer’s Research Trust, which funded the study, says more people than ever retire later in life to avert financial hardship, but there may be a

silver lining: lower dementia risk. However it says much more research is needed in order to understand how to delay or prevent dementia.

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