寄托家园留学论坛
标题: ★征战AW，不忘阅读★Times or Economist系列精读★ [打印本页]
作者: Stefana 时间: 2009-11-9 02:23:01 标题: ★征战AW，不忘阅读★Times or Economist系列精读★
AW的三大关键：思想+词汇+句型。
思想可以在阅读中提炼，词汇可以在阅读中积累熟悉，阅读中还可以复习掌握词汇的精确用法，注意长句难句，今后又可以在做填空题的时候不费吹灰之力。也学学人家最IN的表达习惯，要知道AW写作也不见得是句子越长越难越好的。总之阅读嘛，正所谓一举多得。另外，建议摘抄背诵词汇、句子和例子，学习最in最标准的英文表达方法。
决定开这个贴是考虑很久的事情。草草以前常教导，出来混，迟早是要还的。以前不懂其深邃含义哇，直到考场上吃亏才知道。于是我跟qqqaaazzz在0910G之后开这样一个阅读大贴。一方面是督促自己每日巩固提高英文阅读，另一方面也希望用这样的形式来鼓动各位板油可以一起来做。
每篇文章不限时间，选材也没有什么特殊的要求。可以是类似GRE阅读的题材，也可以是自己专业方面的，也可以是一些好玩的新闻，这样的学习会很快乐。阅读的要求也很简单，仅仅是读懂为止，学习词汇和句子，目的是在平时打好基本功，为AW做准备，也是为以后的各种英文考试做准备。让阅读跟写作水平一同提升。
[attach]135739[/attach]
用美丽的西湖美景图开篇，也希望这英语学习之路一路风景优美绚烂。
……………………………………………………………这是美妙的分界线………………………………………………………………
对了，如果阅读中遇到疑问，可以跟贴提出。大家一起讨论。
From The Times
September 21, 2009
Green and confused: How safe are incinerators?
Q: I was persuaded to sign a petition as part of a successful campaign preventing the building of a local incinerator. Now I’m wondering if I was too hasty: I know that we can’t continue just dumping waste in the ground — is incineration safe?
A: A petition is thrust at you. An incinerator will be harmful to health — think of your children. It will emit a serious pong. It will be unsightly and, the final weapon in the anti-incinerator armoury, having one nearby is sure to bring down the value of your house.
Amid all the emotion and Nimbyism (“邻避”主义,原指垃圾场、核电厂、殡仪馆等设施的存在会给当地居民的生活、心理、荣誉等带来诸多负面影响,从而激发他们的嫌恶情结,滋生“不要建在我家后院”的心理,而这样一种高喊“别在我家后院（动工）”的主义就为“邻避”主义.)about waste disposal, the facts tend to go up in smoke. Modern incinerators are far more efficient and well-designed than those of only 15 years ago.
According to a recent report by the Health Protection Agency (HPA), air pollution — expressed in volumes of what’s called particulate matter — is a tiny fraction of that caused by the exhaust fumes from cars and lorries.
“The evidence suggests that any potential damage to the health of those living close to incinerators is likely to be very small, if detectable,” the HPA says.
The Germans, Swedes and Danes have been happily incinerating on a big scale for years. The UK at present has 23 incinerators in operation, with another 70-80 planned. Burn it, don’t bury it is the new catchphrase: as you say, we can’t go on shoving our refuse into holes in the ground. Landfill creates large amounts of methane, one of the most potent of greenhouse gases. If we don’t find alternative ways of dealing with waste, the EU will clobber us with ever-bigger fines.
While the health issue might not be so important, incineration does give rise to other problems. A modern incinerator, capable of not only burning enormous amounts of rubbish but also of generating energy to be fed into the grid, is an extremely expensive piece of kit. Waste companies want to be sure that they will have enough waste in the future to justify their investment.
The trouble is that it’s very difficult to forecast just how much waste will be generated in the years ahead. After all, we’re all being told to recycle as much as possible: in some areas waste volumes are already falling.
What’s needed are smaller high-tech incinerators on the edge of most big towns and cities. But the waste business talks of “economies of scale” — the bigger the plant, the more cost-effective it is.
It’s a real conundrum, so don’t worry too much about being confused. We all are.
Kieran Cooke
作者: Stefana 时间: 2009-11-9 02:47:35
嗯，再看一篇新点的。
我发现Times上的文章难度还是有限的。
From Times Online
November 8, 2009
Barack Obama's healthcare reform bill passes first hurdle
The House of Representatives handed President Obama the first major domestic victory of his presidency when it narrowly passed a sweeping reform Bill to provide healthcare to all Americans.
Mr Obama called the vote on Saturday “historic” and said that he was absolutely confident that he would sign a health reform Bill by the end of the year. All eyes now turn to the next battleground in the Senate, where passage of legislation is still far from assured.
Democrats have sought for decades to provide universal health coverage and when the Bill was passed by 220 votes to 215 late Saturday night, cheers erupted as Nancy Pelosi, the House Speaker, declared victory.
The vote marked the first time that a chamber of Congress has voted to back such sweeping reform of the US health industry. Mrs Pelosi compared the moment to the passage of a state pension system in 1935 and government health coverage for the elderly and poor in 1965.
Yet Mr Obama and his allies on Capitol Hill still face a tough battle to achieve his signature domestic issue. There is a significant risk that the debate will slide into 2010, a mid-term election year when vulnerable Democrats in conservative and moderate districts might fail to back a final Bill because of its huge cost.
Many are mindful of the Democratic losses last week in Virginia and New Jersey’s gubernatorial races, when voters declared their misgivings about Mr Obama’s spending plans at a time of record deficits. On Saturday night 39 Democrats voted against the Bill. Only one Republican backed it.
The Senate must now come up with its own version of a health reform Bill and Harry Reid, the Democratic leader in the chamber, is under enormous pressure from the White House to win passage before the end of the year. Mr Reid is struggling to find the 60 votes that he needs to overcome Republican blocking tactics despite his party’s Senate majority.
Even if Mr Reid succeeds in getting legislation out of the Senate, his bill — which will be markedly different from the liberal, 1,990-page, $1.2 trillion (£720 billion) behemoth passed by the House — will have to be reconciled into one piece of legislation in negotiations with the lower chamber, another very difficult challenge.
The success of the House Bill was, despite the obstacles ahead, a major victory for Mr Obama and provided significant political momentum In his drive for health reform. The vote came after he visited Capitol Hill on Saturday afternoon to corral wavering Democrats.
“It provides coverage for 96 per cent of Americans. It offers everyone, regardless of health or income, the peace of mind that comes from knowing they will have access to affordable health care when they need it,” declared John Dingell, the 83-year-old Michigan Democrat who has introduced universal health insurance legislation in every Congress since his arrival in 1955.
The huge package will transform large parts of the health industry, which currently accounts for a sixth of the US economy. Private insurers will no longer be able to deny coverage to people with pre-existing conditions, limit coverage or drop it altogether when people become ill.
The Bill also contains a government-run health insurance option to provide competition to private insurers, something that is bitterly opposed by Republicans and an issue that triggered heated and sometimes violent popular protests during the summer.
Under the House Bill most people will be required to obtain health insurance if it is not provided by their employers. All but the smallest companies will have to give employees coverage or face a fine as high as 8 per cent of payroll. Overall, the Bill would cover an additional 36 million Americans, leaving 18 million without insurance by 2019, about a third of them illegal immigrants.
The package will be paid for by increasing taxes on individuals earning more than $500,000 (£300,000) and on families taking in over $1 million a year by more than five per cent. The scope of that tax will increase quickly because the income thresholds would not be indexed to inflation.
Republicans remain almost unanimously opposed, decrying its huge cost and the tax increases needed to pay for it.
作者: qqqaaazzz 时间: 2009-11-9 03:59:48
改格式好麻烦。。。原谅俺用个链接。。
The odd couple from economist
作者: 单眼皮vs肿眼皮 时间: 2009-11-9 11:50:34
思想可以在阅读中提炼，词汇可以在阅读中积累熟悉，阅读中还可以复习掌握词汇的精确用法，...Stefana 发表于 2009-11-9 02:23 
谢谢小乔！
作者: Stefana 时间: 2009-11-9 14:45:01
China's reaction to Communism's collapse
Keep calm and carry onNov 5th 2009 | BEIJING
From The Economist print edition
How Deng Xiaoping neutralised the country’s worst moment
“THE East German people are now strengthening their unity under the leadership of the party.” So declared China’s Communist Party mouthpiece, the People’s Daily, in October 1989. A month later the Berlin Wall fell. Even today, China’s leaders find the memory painful.
China’s state-owned media have mostly avoided the subject, as they have also stayed silent about the anniversary in June of China’s own pro-democracy upheaval of 1989—tumult that was witnessed by Mikhail Gorbachev, Russia’s leader, and which was bloodily suppressed only when he had gone home. They are probably obeying instructions from the Central Propaganda Department of the party. The party’s keen interest in the cause of national unification (in its case, reclaiming Taiwan) has not helped ease its qualms about the fate of East Germany.
Yet China’s ruling party has devoted considerable energy to dissecting the causes of communism’s collapse in eastern Europe and the Soviet Union. Official publishing houses have produced several works analysing them and drawing lessons from them. The first shock over, the party was quick not only to cement ties with eastern Europe’s new democracies but also to develop strategies for avoiding their predecessors’ fate.
In late 1989 China’s anxiety was so profound and its diplomacy in such confusion that it was difficult to imagine it would ever come to terms with the new world order. Fresh unrest seemed unavoidable. It was far from certain that Jiang Zemin, a little known leader who had been appointed party chief in the wake of the Tiananmen Square unrest, was on firm ground.
China’s dogged insistence that nothing untoward was happening in eastern Europe ensured that its awakening would be harsh. In early October 1989, even after thousands of East Germans had fled their country, China sent a senior leader to East Germany’s official celebration of four decades of communism (a “glorious” 40 years, the People’s Daily called it). East Germany’s 77-year-old leader, Erich Honecker, was a conservative much respected by China’s own gerontocrats, and a backer of the crackdown in Tiananmen. His resignation that October was appalling to them.
It was an appeal for cool heads by China’s 85-year-old senior leader, Deng Xiaoping, that helped China’s rulers weather the storm. In September 1989 he told them—in a speech only published years later—to be “calm, calm and again calm” and to carry on with China’s (mostly economic) reforms. Mr Deng’s advice, and its later elaboration, remains China’s guiding philosophy. Its central message is often summarised as taoguang yanghui, meaning “concealing one’s capabilities and biding one’s time”. Mr Deng wanted China to get on with building its economy and avoid ideological battles. The economy, in effect, would save the party.
David Shambaugh, an American scholar, wrote in a book published last year that China’s most important conclusion from communism’s ruin elsewhere was that an ossified party-state with a dogmatic ideology, entrenched elites, dormant party organisations and a stagnant economy was a certain recipe for collapse. The Chinese party, he argues, has been “very proactive” in reforming itself and adjusting its policies to new conditions.
Not everyone is satisfied. A website set up by a German group to gather internet users’ comments on the Berlin Wall anniversary, www.berlintwitterwall.com, has been deluged with postings from Chinese complaining about China’s “great firewall”, as the country’s state-managed internet filtering system is often called. Access to the website has been blocked by China’s internet censors for several days.
But China’s media controls are not as impermeable as they were when the Berlin Wall fell. One magazine, Southern Metropolis Weekly—known for its risqué reporting—devoted 19 pages to the Berlin Wall in its October 30th issue. “Among those who love freedom, efforts will never cease to tear down walls that block and restrict interaction,” said one of the articles. Another said that no matter what difficulties Germans now faced, “there are probably very few who want to return to the days before the Berlin Wall’s collapse”.
When President Barack Obama comes to China on November 15th, he will diplomatically avoid any public suggestion that China’s party should disappear like its east European counterparts. In July, addressing a meeting of senior Chinese and American officials in Washington, Mr Obama noted that the tearing down of the Berlin Wall had unleashed a “rising tide of globalisation that continues to shape our world”. Perhaps to avoid embarrassing a crucial economic partner, Mr Obama did not mention the event’s impact on communism. Mr Deng’s strategy has paid off nicely.
作者: Stefana 时间: 2009-11-10 02:50:05
本帖最后由 Stefana 于 2009-11-10 02:51 编辑
From The Times
November 9, 2009
The Rite of Spring at London Coliseum
In a shocking sequence the men, trousers down, roll in the earth, thrusting against it as if trying to penetrate the soilDebra Craine
Even before The Rite of Spring starts, you’re in the mood for something disturbing and offbeat. Duke Bluebeard’s Castle, the first half of this ENO double bill, has seen to that. But Michael Keegan-Dolan’s savage and inspired rewrite of Stravinsky is stranger still, as exhilarating as it is harrowing.
A ritual yes, just as it was in 1913 Paris when Stravinsky’s ballet had its premiere, but a ritual imbued with the dangerous, chaotic energy of an isolated Catholic community, not a pagan Russian one. Keegan-Dolan says his production isn’t necessarily set in his native Ireland: “It’s an imagined community, a patriarchal one, somewhere in North Atlantic Europe”.
It’s winter: snow falls lightly, villagers are in coats and hats; to the side is a statue of the Virgin Mary. Three maidens arrive — symbolically— in summer frocks riding their bicycles. Presiding over all is Olwen Fouéré’s compelling queen of winter, a divine hag dressed in black and smoking a cigarette to Stravinsky. That this is a patriarchal community is never in doubt. The stage pulses with the testosterone energy of an 18-strong male gang (members of Fabulous Beast Dance Theatre). Moving in unison, they present an ensemble of searing intensity, despite the simplicity of Keegan-Dolan’s punchy, tight-knit choreography, while the music’s churning rhythms are vibrantly realised by Edward Gardner and his orchestra.
Violence erupts as knives are drawn and one man is singled out as the object of their aggression (a Christ figure?). The women are raped in a frenzy of sexual sadism; at one point their heads are covered in hare masks as if to emphasise their victim status. This is a society where impulses are out of control. In a shocking sequence the men, trousers down, roll in the earth, thrusting against it as if trying to penetrate the very soil. It’s at this point that the hag and a young boy hand out cardboard boxes to the men. Inside is a giant dog mask. Since you behave like an animal, the message is, you might as well look like one.
The sudden eruption of fear is palpable as the pack of dog-men attack the young women, killing two. And then, in a brilliant flourish, Keegan-Dolan throws a twist into the mix. A long rope of coloured fabric is unfurled only to separate into 18 women’s dresses, one for each man. The men disrobe in a kind of ritual cleansing, rejecting negative masculinity and embracing the positive of femininity as they don the frocks. The sacrificial dance is performed — in a state of exaltation — by Daphne Strothmann’s Chosen One, but it plays out against all expectation. In a stunning finale, the arrival of spring turns out to be a victory in more ways than one.
作者: qqqaaazzz 时间: 2009-11-10 02:50:58 标题: Unsweetened
本帖最后由 qqqaaazzz 于 2009-11-10 02:59 编辑
[size=0.8em]Kraft's bid for Cadbury
Unsweetened
[size=0.7em]Nov 9th 2009
From Economist.com
Kraft goes hostile with its bid for Cadbury, a British confectioner
[size=0.74em]AFP
[size=0.8em]CHOCOLATES are universally recognised as a potent means of winning over hearts. And usually a suitor who presents a bigger box of treats is thought to have a better chance of success than one who brandishes a smaller one. So the decision of Kraft Foods to launch a hostile bid for Cadbury on Monday November 9th that fails to match up to its original offer of a couple of months ago is unlikely to result in a happy union. The American company’s hand was forced by a ruling from Britain’s Takeover Panel that it must make a full bid (which it has now done, in effect restating the original offer) or walk away for at least six months.
[size=0.8em]The hostile bid, like the offer that the American food giant made at the beginning of September, offers £3 ($5) and around one Kraft share for every four shares of the British maker of Crunchies and Creme Eggs. The potential burden of Kraft’s purchase of Cadbury and some lacklustre results have depressed the American firm’s share price (while Cadbury unveiled quarterly numbers that were better than expected). The current offer values the deal at £9.8 billion compared with £10.2 billion when Kraft made its initial approach.
[size=0.8em]
[size=0.8em]Cadbury also reiterated that it was unwilling to be consumed by a “low-growth conglomerate” insisting that its fortunes would be far better served by remaining independent. But if Kraft is a low-growth company it is also a huge and profitable one. Its bid for Cadbury is designed to give a sugar-rush to its confectionery business, the fifth biggest in the world. In combination with Cadbury, the world’s second-largest sweetmaker, it would challenge Mars-Wrigley for top spot and add strong businesses in rich countries such as Britain and Australia as well as faster-growing developing countries like India, Brazil and Mexico. Together the two firms would have revenues of $50 billion and Kraft estimates that a deal would allow it to lop $625m off its costs each year.If the price has changed a little, the response of Cadbury’s board has not altered one jot. Cadbury originally said that Kraft’s offer “significantly undervalued” the company and was “unappealing”, just as an American’s idea of chocolate is to the British palate. This time round Cadbury’s appetite for a deal is no greater. It “emphatically rejected” Kraft’s direct offer to its shareholders, adding, just for good measure, that it was “derisory”.
[size=0.8em]Kraft is as keen to get hold of Cadbury as the British chocolate-maker is to resist. But some analysts suggest that its shareholders may start to take an interest if Kraft comes back with an improved offer that values the firm at over £8 a share (rather than around £7.17, which is currently on the table). Others suggest that it might take something closer to £9 to attract Cadbury’s investors. That may be too rich for Kraft’s boss, Irene Rosenfeld, who has said that she is determined not to overpay for Cadbury.
[size=0.8em]A drawn-out game is now about to start. British takeover rules give Kraft 28 days to send its formal offer to Cadbury ’s shareholders. After that a 60-day offer-period begins during which Kraft may revise the terms of its bid to garner enough support from shareholders for a deal and Cadbury can argue against the offer. Kraft will undoubtedly raise its offer once it has gauged reaction to its formal bid.
[size=0.8em]The timetable could be upset if a rival bidder were to emerge. Unilever, another global food giant that had been touted as a possible bidder, ruled itself out recently. And Switzerland’s Nestlé, mooted as another possible suitor with America’s Hershey, seems unlikely to step in after recently announcing that it would splash out on a $3 billion share buyback. Even if no rival bid is forthcoming, Kraft, dazzled by the attractions of its quarry, may be tempted to spend too much on Cadbury.
[size=0.8em]from http://www.economist.com/businessfinance/displayStory.cfm?story_id=14838497&source=features_box1. All rights reserved by economist.com.
作者: qqqaaazzz 时间: 2009-11-11 08:24:36
本帖最后由 qqqaaazzz 于 2009-11-11 08:27 编辑
[size=0.8em]Banyan
Having it both ways [size=0.7em]Nov 5th 2009
From
The Economist
print edition
Despite protestations to the contrary, China needs NATO to fight in Afghanistan
[size=0.74em]Illustration by M. Morgenstern 
[size=0.8em]ONE day early this summer, when it was still possible to claim progress in Afghanistan, Robert Gates, America’s defence secretary, was at an Asian security gathering, reeling off the names of countries who had contributed to it. The list—Canada, Mongolia, Poland—went on and on, while the harrumphing of a Chinese general in the third row grew ever louder. Eventually, he held back no longer. “Why no China?” he demanded. “Where is China on this list?”
[size=0.8em]Where indeed? The question seemed odd. Unlike the other countries on Mr Gates’s list, China has no military presence in Afghanistan. Though China has peacekeepers as far afield as Haiti and Sudan, it is allergic to sending them to neighbouring countries. Perhaps, this columnist later inquired of the general, he meant the modest intelligence that China shares with the United States on jihadists with connections in Xinjiang, China’s restive, preponderantly Muslim, western region? No, he replied testily. “I mean the mine. Our copper mine.”
[size=0.8em]Since then, the mine, at Aynak, a former al-Qaeda stronghold in Logar province just south of Kabul, has shot to prominence. It is the second-biggest untapped source of copper in the world, no less, and China’s $3.5 billion investment, signed in late 2007, is easily Afghanistan’s biggest. Several miles of sandbags and chain-link fence now surround the mine. Row upon row of neat prefabricated dormitories house several hundred Chinese. When production starts, from 2011, the Chinese owners get half the output and a multi-billion-dollar return on their investment.
[size=0.8em]And here the controversy begins. For the mine’s security, in a land that epitomises insecurity, is paid for by others. Some 1,500 Afghan police guard the site, subsidised by the Japanese. The American army’s Tenth Mountain Division patrols the area. As America wobbles over its Afghanistan commitments, Robert Kaplan, an American journalist, puts it thus in the
New York Times: “The problem is that while America is sacrificing its blood and treasure, the Chinese will reap the benefits. The whole direction of America’s military and diplomatic effort is toward an exit strategy, whereas the Chinese hope to stay and profit.”
[size=0.8em]Mr Kaplan acknowledges that exploiting mineral reserves creates Afghan jobs and fills the state exchequer. He says China is not ordained to be America’s adversary. So America’s vision of a moderately stable Afghanistan that no longer harbours extremists is not at odds with China’s vision of a secure conduit for natural resources dug out in Afghanistan or brought up from ports on the Indian Ocean. Still, Mr Kaplan’s opinion, and a more critical strain, which argues that a murky bid process gave China the Aynak mine and that anyway such Chinese projects do not bring local prosperity, has touched a nerve in China. Even calling China “resource-hungry” is inflammatory, says one commentary. It all adds a “precarious element” to Sino-American relations.
[size=0.8em]If that is so, China is partly to blame. A growing chorus in its official press calls for America to admit its blunders and pull its troops out of Afghanistan. And though Hillary Clinton, the secretary of state, recently assured Pakistan it had American support in the face of Taliban terror, China points out that it will be in Pakistan long after the Americans are gone. China prides itself on being Pakistan’s “all-weather” friend, regardless of the prevailing government—civilian and democratic, or military and repressive.
[size=0.8em]For Indian hawks, China’s growing presence in Afghanistan and deep entrenchment in Pakistan, including big infrastructure projects in disputed Kashmir, is all too much. Giving themselves further frights, they point to a letter the China-dominated Shanghai Co-operation Organisation (SCO, which includes Russia and Central Asian members) recently received from the Taliban. It asked for SCO help in driving the American infidels out of Afghanistan. To the hawks, ever sensitive about historical mischief from the north-west, this is another Great Game. So India, too is investing heavily in Afghanistan.
[size=0.8em]Yet for all China’s sneering at America’s military efforts in Afghanistan, China offers no alternative. For now, both countries’ interests are not far apart. China is as concerned as is the United States—and India, for that matter—about the prospect of a return to pre-war days. The arrival in Palau this week of six Uighurs, originally from Xinjiang, and recently freed from prison in Guantánamo, is a reminder. Under the Taliban, Afghanistan had given them shelter. China still shivers at the idea of disaffected Uighurs fleeing to the wilds of Afghanistan or Pakistan to consort with jihadists. American military power so close to China is not welcome in Beijing; Taliban-backed militant havens even less so.
The Pakistani connection
[size=0.8em]Admittedly, for all China’s self-serving efforts to portray Xinjiang as victim of extremist violence by militants linked to al-Qaeda, evidence for this is slim. Chinese concerns about a jihadist movement spreading across its borders from Afghanistan or Pakistan have until now been overblown. A home-grown reaction to Chinese oppression is reason enough to explain Uighur unrest. Yet even Pakistanis have at times been surprised by the vehemence of China’s concerns. When Pakistan’s then military ruler, Pervez Musharraf, visited Beijing in 2003 to sign an extradition treaty between the two countries, he was taken aback by the ferocity of Chinese remonstrances about Uighur militants on Pakistani soil.
[size=0.8em]So China’s signals that it wants limits on the spread of American power in Central Asia should be taken with a pinch of salt. The rhetoric is like that over America’s presence in East Asia: China grumbles about it publicly, but values America for its restraint on Japan. In Afghanistan China grumbles but lets America guard its economic interests. There’s little unusual in that: rising powers have always hitched a ride on the back of declining ones.
[size=0.8em]For more information, please visit http://www.economist.com/world/asia/displayStory.cfm?story_id=14794723 and http://www.yeeyan.com/articles/view/37076/67241, all rights reserved by economist.com and yeeyan.com.
作者: 银落 时间: 2009-11-11 23:54:44
本帖最后由 银落 于 2009-11-12 09:35 编辑
Good word
Gre word
New word
Nice structure
Great idea
Reserve currencies
Cross my palm with euros?
The dollar’s days as the world’s reserve currency are far from over
Nov 11th 2009
ShutterstockWORRIES about the dollar’s dominance of the global monetary system are not new. But debate about replacing the beleaguered dollar, whose trade-weighted value has dropped by 11.5% since its peak （这种表达方式很好。一般大家都喜欢用最高级。用名词来表示很不错）in March 2009, has resurfaced in the wake of a global financial and economic crisis that began in America. China and Russia, which have huge reserves that are mainly dollar denominated, have talked about shifting away from the greenback. India changed the composition of its reserves by buying 200 tonnes of gold from the IMF.
None of this threatens the dominance of the dollar yet, particularly as a dramatic shift out of the currency would be damaging to the countries (such as China) that hold a huge amount of dollar-denominated （一般我们会用定语从句来修饰dollar。会写成hold a huge amount of assets which is denominated by dollar. 但是aw里面需要简练。因此。这种组词方法是特别好的。~）
assets. But a new paper by（省略动词） economists at the IMF, released on Wednesday November 11th, acknowledges that the global crisis has reignited the debate about anchoring the world’s monetary system on one country’s currency.
Some say that America’s role as the principal（请回忆一连串的重要，eg：crucial important consequent essential necessary vital significant major main momentous staple central）issuer of the global reserve currency gives it an unfair advantage. America has a unique ability to borrow from foreigners in its own currency, and wins when the dollar depreciates, since its assets are mainly in foreign currency and its liabilities in dollars. By one estimate America enjoyed a net capital gain of around $1 trillion from the gradual depreciation of the dollar in the years before the crisis.
In a sense the world is hostage to America’s ability to maintain the value of the dollar. But as the IMF points out, the currency’s primacy arises at least partly because China and other emerging countries have chosen to accumulate dollar reserves. The depth of America’s financial markets and the country’s open capital account have made the dollar attractive.(多多变换句型。估计很多人用it is attractive for dollar because of the depth of america’s financial markets and the country’s open captical account) So some of the advantage has been earned.
But large and persistent surpluses in countries like China mean continued demand for American assets, reducing the need for fiscal adjustment by either country. This, in turn, has contributed to the build-up of the macroeconomic imbalances that many blame for the financial crisis.
Dealing with these imbalances could begin by finding ways to reduce reserve accumulation in emerging countries. The IMF reckons that about two-thirds of current reserves (about $4 trillion-$4.5 trillion) are held by countries as insurance against shocks, including sudden reversals of capital flows, banking crises and so on. In theory, groups of countries could pool reserves, so that a smaller amount would suffice than if countries each maintain their own buffers. Other alternatives include precautionary lines of credit, such as the American Federal Reserve’s with the central banks of Brazil and Mexico, or the IMF’s flexible credit line.
But what are the alternatives to relying on the dollar? One possibility is a system with several competing reserve currencies. Over time, the euro and China’s yuan (if it became convertible) could emerge as competitors. This would require a great deal of policy co-ordination among issuing countries. But by having several reserve currencies the “privilege” that America now enjoys would be available more widely, providing an incentive to compete to attract users to different currencies.
Another alternative is a greater reliance on SDRs, the IMF’s quasi-currency, which operates as a claim on a basket of currencies: the dollar, euro, sterling and yen. Because the SDR’s value depends on several currencies, it shares many of the benefits of a multiple-currency system. But even the IMF says that using SDRs seems “doubtful unless the system…fails in a major way”.
The most radical solution of all is a new global currency that could be used in international transactions and would float alongside domestic currencies. The fund argues that this would have to be issued by a new international monetary institution “disconnected from the economic problems of any individual country”. This currency could serve as a risk-free global asset.
Radical as this may sound （好句型。。倒装）, it is not a new idea. John Maynard Keynes had something similar in mind when he proposed an International Clearing Union. This global bank would issue its own currency, called the bancor, in which all trade accounts would be settled. In the absence of such a bank the world will have to make do with the current system. So worries about the dollar’s value aside, its global dominance is secure for now.
From Economist.com
Review~
Greenback 美钞
Precautionary lines 警戒线
Quasi- 准
作者: Stefana 时间: 2009-11-12 03:06:09
本帖最后由 Stefana 于 2009-11-12 03:08 编辑
Very sad story, depression is a very big problem around the world and deserves a lot of respect.
I love the last sentence,that's way I marked it in purple.
From Times Online
November 11, 2009
Widow of suicide goalkeeper Robert Enke tells how he hid depression
The widow of Germany's national goalkeeper, Robert Enke, choked back tears as she described how he lived a life of fear before throwing himself in front of the train that killed him.
The suicide has stunned Germany and triggered a debate about the concealment of mental illlness in high-profile competitive sport. A friendly game against Chile on Saturday has been cancelled as a mark of respect.
The 32-year-old keeper had been fighting for years against clinical depression but had been determined to keep it secret lest it spell the end of his footballing career, said his widow Teresa. Most of all he was afraid that the ensuing publicity would lead to the authorities cancelling their adoption of a new-born baby last May.
"When he was acutely depressive, it was difficult," said his 30 year old widow, dressed all in black, "Difficult above all because he didn't want anything to get out. That's the way he wanted it, because he was terrified of losing his sport."
Mrs Enke appeared at a press conference organised by her husband's old club Hannover 96. Although officials stressed that it was her own decision to talk to reporters less than 24 hours after the suicide, it was plain that the club wanted to demonstrate it had not put Enke under pressure or encouraged him to hide his illness. They were simply unaware of a problem.
"We were very close, yet even I didn't notice how acute was the threat," said Valentin Markser, Enke's therapist, who had been treating him since 2003. "He knew how to hide the scope of his illness, had developed defence mechanisms."
A suicide letter was found on the passenger seat of his abandoned Mercedes jeep, in which Enke apologised to his wife and to his doctor for not revealing the true depth of his depression, and expressed his sense that there was no alternative.
That morning, before setting out for goalkeeper training, Enke had rung his doctors and told them he was breaking off treatment since he felt well enough to carry on. After training he appears to have driven around and then, at about 6pm, he parked close to a level crossing. It was a place where he would go sometimes with his four dogs and was only about 2.5 km away from his home.
As the train approached at 160 km per hour, the keeper left the note and his wallet on the side seat of his car, the doors unlocked as if he had just popped out to buy a newspaper, and lay down on the tracks.
Dr Markser said that football had if anything helped Enke control his depressive phases.
His widow agreed: "It was what he lived for, it was life elixir, and knowing how much it meant to him I would go with Robert to the training sessions."
Yet it was also the fear of failure on the pitch that contributed to Enke's condition.
When he came to me in 2003 he was suffereing from depressive bouts and failure anxieties," said Dr Markser.
"I treated him for months on an almost daily basis so that by the Spring of 2004 he could play again in Spain and then in Hanover."
He appeared to stabilise, but this October he was hit by a stomach virus that weakened him. He slipped from the national squad for several matches, even though the trainer stressed that he was the first choice as goalkeeper for Germany in the 2010 World Cup squad. He was being groomed as the natural successor to goalkeeping veterans Oliver Kahn and Jens Lehman.
The combination of high expectations and his own sense of physical weakness, the nagging fear that his mental state would somehow be revealed, all compounded his depression.
And none of his co-players noticed anything. "When I discussed it with them on Wednesday morning they were genuinely flabbergasted, really moved, needed to discuss the implications seriously among themselves," said Theo Zwanziger, chairman of the German Football Association.
A similar fate befell one of Germany's most talented players, Sebastian Dreisler, who dropped out of the game in 2007, at the age of 27, because of the impossibility of balancing a depressive condition and keeping up an act.
"In the cabin of Bayern Muenchen you only succeed if you say - 'I'm the greatest'," said Mr Dreisler, who is no longer a sportsman.
"You pump yourself up and repress your true feelings. On the one side there was my talent and ambition, on the other this feeling that you can't do anything."
But the crucial factor for Robert Enke, said his widow, was the deep fear that everything was about to crumble: not only the football career but also his family.
Three years ago, the couple had lost their two year old daughter Lara. She had a serious heart defect and had spent much of her life in intensive care.
"You live with the knowledge that if a call comes from a nurse at midnight, it is to tell you to come and say your farewells to your daughter," said Enke in a 2007 interview. "That's when you start to fear the sound of a telephone."
Today Mrs Enke said:"After Lara's death we were fused together, and we thought we can do this together. I told him all the time, we'll find a solution."
In May, they adopted Leila - but his fears for the new child, however healthy, piled unforeseen pressures on the goalkeeper.
"He didn't want to seek professional help any more, and he didn't want it because he was afraid that it would all come out -and that we would lose Leila," said his widow.
"It was the fear about what people would say about a child with a depressive father. And I always told him - don't worry. Right to the end he cared lovingly for Leila."
Ms Enke's repressed tears broke out when she accepted that her husband's suicide was a kind of personal defeat.
"We thought that we could do it all, that with love everything was possible. But sometimes it's not enough."
作者: Stefana 时间: 2009-11-12 03:15:51
这个文章结构挺清晰的。下划线标出来的是各段TS。
Hispanic higher education
Closing the gap
Improving performance is linked in part to immigration policy
Nov 5th 2009 | el paso
THE University of Texas-El Paso (UTEP) is one of the most binational of America’s big universities. Some 90% of its students come from the borderplex—the Texan city of El Paso and its much larger sister-city, Ciudad Juárez, on the Mexican side of the Rio Grande. More than 70% of its students are Mexican or Mexican-American.
And that, in turn, means that the El Paso campus is rather different from the University of Texas’s flagship campus in Austin. More than half of UTEP students are among the first in their families to go to college, and roughly a third come from families with incomes below $20,000 a year. Diana Natalicio, UTEP’s president, says that for many of her students trouble at work, or an unexpected expense, can derail a whole year of college. UTEP tries to help, offering after-hours advice and instalment plans for tuition fees. Such measures have helped it to become one of the country’s leading sources of degrees for Hispanic students.
UTEP’s experience provides pointers for college administrators elsewhere, who are looking for ways to close the gap in achievement between Hispanic and “Anglo” students. According to a report in October from the Pew Hispanic Centre, 89% of Latino high-school students say that a college degree is important, but only 48% plan to go to university themselves. Hispanic students are more likely to drop out of high school than Anglos, and those who finish are less likely to go on to college. Those who go are more likely to enroll in two-year community colleges, which have lower rates of completion than four-year universities. In 2007, according to the National Centre for Education Statistics, only 7.5% of bachelor’s degrees were awarded to Hispanic students, even though Latinos made up about 15% of the American population that year.
Most Latino college students are native-born Americans, but the Mexican-born students have a hard time, and youngsters without the right documents have the hardest time of all. Stella Flores, of Vanderbilt University in Tennessee, argues that the best thing that can be done at the state level is to adopt policies that allow all of a state’s high-school students to pay fees at its public universities at the discounted rate that normally applies to people from that state, regardless of their legal status.
Such policies already exist in a number of states, including California and Texas, where the Latino population is so large that few like the idea of denying a proper education to crowds of undocumented youngsters. A federal bill called the DREAM Act would expand that approach and provide some undocumented students with a path to citizenship, but it is hardly at the top of the long to-do list now facing Congress. Separately, measures are afoot to expand federal financial aid to students, and over the summer President Barack Obama announced that the federal government is to put about $12 billion into community colleges.
In the meantime, Deborah Santiago of Excelencia in Education, a non-profit research group, says that some good steps are free. For example, El Camino College in California holds pronunciation classes for staff who might otherwise struggle with Hispanic names. When students are crossing the stage to get their diplomas, they should not have their names butchered in front of the gathered family and friends.
The Economist Newspaper | United States
作者: tracywlz 时间: 2009-11-12 08:03:55
本帖最后由 tracywlz 于 2009-11-12 08:05 编辑
过来顶一下。我也要跟着ste阅读~
这楼不是水滴啊
我会贴上的~
作者: 银落 时间: 2009-11-12 09:36:35
恩。。跟在水水后面继续占楼
。。fana哇。。。某只的那楼不水了呢。。已经改成economist了。。》《。。。
这楼到时候也会编辑。。~。。。放心吧。。
绝对不水好帖子。。
作者: Stefana 时间: 2009-11-12 13:51:44
豆瓣电台在放maximillian Hecker的Birch，感觉很适合再做一篇阅读。
上午在图书馆收纳书四本，这个星期有活干了。哈，撒花欢迎水水跟落落加入阅读大贴。
差点把自己的帖子水了，话不多说咯，上文章！
蓝色——不记得或者词义记得不确切的词
紫红——提炼出来的短语
绿色——用法值得学习的词语或者短语
下划线——写法值得学习的句子
The Berlin Wall
So much gained, so much to loseNov 5th 2009
From The Economist print edition
Over the past 20 years economic freedom has outpaced political liberty. Neither should be taken for granted
“OF ALL places it was in divided Berlin in divided Germany in divided Europe that the cold war erupted into an east-west street party,” this newspaper observed 20 years ago (see article). Even to those who had been confident of the eventual triumph of the West, the fall of the Berlin Wall was surprisingly accidental. When 200,000 East Germans took advantage of Hungary’s decision to open its borders and fled to the West, their communist government decided to modify the travel restrictions that imprisoned them. Asked about the timing, the unbriefed propaganda minister mumbled: “As far as I know, effective immediately.” When that was reported on television, the Berliners were off. Baffled border guards who would have shot their "comrades” a week earlier let the crowd through—and a barrier that had divided the world was soon being gleefully dismantled. West Germany’s chancellor, Helmut Kohl, was so unready for history that he was out of the country.
The destruction of the Iron Curtain on November 9th 1989 is still the most remarkable political event of most people’s lifetimes: it set free millions of individuals and it brought to an end a global conflict that threatened nuclear annihilation. For liberals in the West, it still stands as a reminder both of what has been won since and what is still worth fighting for.
Remember the Stasi, but don’t forget the fridgesYet the past two decades have seen economic freedom advance further than political freedom. Talk 20 years ago of a peaceful new world order has disappeared. New divisions have emerged out of nationalism, religion or just “fear of the other”. Rather than making the case for democracy unassailable, plenty of countries, including, alas, a few of the old Warsaw Pact members, most of the Arab world and China, have been able to run shamelessly repressive authoritarian regimes. When Western leaders visit Moscow, Riyadh or Beijing, they merely mumble about human rights. The presumption has become that such regimes will endure.
By contrast, “globalisation”, that awkward term that covers the freer movement of goods, capital, people and ideas around the globe, has become the governing principle of commerce. That does not mean it is universally accepted: witness the travails of the Doha round of trade talks. But few places openly oppose it. In the economic sphere, illiberalism usually has to disguise itself through governments trying to adapt it, stressing “capitalism with Chinese characteristics”, “stakeholder capitalism”, “fair trade” and so on. Even after the crunch, the commercial classes assume that the world will become more integrated: who can resist economic logic and technology?
It is not hard to see why such a presumption should exist. Consider two successes of economic liberalism, both somewhat under-appreciated at the moment. The first is its role 20 years ago (see article). The East Berliners rushing to the West were not just fleeing the Stasi; they also came in search of fridges, jeans and Coca-Cola from supermarkets. By then communism, for all its tanks and missiles, was plainly a less efficient economic machine. Mikhail Gorbachev deserves credit for allowing so many serfs to escape so peacefully; but the Soviet Union crumbled because it could not produce the goods.
And even if the current round of globalisation technically began before the wall fell, it was spurred on by it. (The word seldom appeared in The Economist before 1986 and began to be common only in the 1990s.) Globalisation would have meant much less if half of Europe had been bricked in; many instinctively statist giants of the emerging world, such as Brazil, India or even China, would have been far slower to open up their economies if a semi-credible alternative had still existed.
That points to the second under-appreciated success. At present capitalism is too often judged by the excesses of a few bankers. But when historians come to write about the past quarter-century, Lehman Brothers and Sir Fred “the Shred” Goodwin will account for fewer pages than the 500m people dragged out of absolute poverty into something resembling the middle class. Their success is not just a wonderful thing in itself—the greatest leap forward in economic history. It has also helped spur on other chaotic freedoms: look at the way ideas, good, bad and mad, are texted around the world.
For in the end, no matter what China’s leaders tell Mr Obama when he visits Beijing later this month, economic and political liberty are linked—not as tightly as people hoped 20 years ago, but still linked. Look forward, and China’s internet-obsessed emerging middle class will surely have an appetite for liberty beyond the purely economic. Change could happen as unexpectedly as it did in 1989. Even the most fearsome fortresses of repression can eventually be breached. Then it was Honecker and Ceausescu; tomorrow it might be Castro, Ahmadinejad or Mugabe; one day Chávez or even Hu.
Marx to marketPut another way, the presumption that political freedom will never catch up with economic freedom could turn out to be joyously wrong. The problem is that this gap could also be closed another way. Economic freedom could be slowed down, perhaps even reversed, by politics.
For Western liberals, even ones who believe in open markets as unreservedly as this paper, that means facing up to some hard facts about the popularity of their creed. Western capitalism’s victory over its rotten communist rival does not ensure it an enduring franchise from voters. As Karl Marx pointed out during globalisation’s last great surge forward in the 19th century, the magic of comparative advantage can be wearing—and cruel. It leaves behind losers in concentrated clumps (a closed tyre factory, for instance), whereas the more numerous winners (everybody driving cheaper cars) are disparate. It makes the wealthy very wealthy: in a global market, you will hit a bigger jackpot than in a local one. And capitalism has always been prone to spectacular booms and busts.
Above all politics remains stubbornly local. All that economic integration has not been matched politically. And to the extent that there is a global guarantor of the current system, it is America, a country which as globalisation works will continue to lose relative power. Thanks to its generosity in exporting the secrets of success, it now has China closer to its shoulder and other emerging giants are catching up. Public support for protectionism has surged in the United States.
In the affairs of man, wounded pride and xenophobia often trump economic reason. Why else would Russia terrorise its gas customers? Or Britons demonise the EU? In a rational world China would not stir up Japanophobia and rich Saudis would not help Islamic extremists abroad. Many businesspeople, too busy on their BlackBerrys to worry about nationalism or fundamentalism, might ponder Keynes’s description of a prosperous Londoner before August 1914: sipping his morning tea in bed, ordering goods from around the world over the telephone, regarding that age of globalisation as “normal, certain, and permanent, except in the direction of further improvement” and dismissing “the politics of militarism” and “racial and cultural rivalries” as mere “amusements in his daily newspaper”.
Be prepared, be very preparedRecognising the political shortcomings of globalisation should redouble Western liberals’ determination to defend it: to close the gap in the right way. That involves a myriad of things, from promoting human rights to designing better jobs policies (see article). But it also requires defending the enormous benefits that capitalism has brought the world since 1989 more forcefully than the West’s leaders have done thus far. And above all perhaps, taking nothing for granted.
Review:
dismantle：拆除, 剥除, 分解, 取消
chancellor: (英)名誉校长，(美)大学校长；(德)总理
nuclear annihilation: 核毁灭
unassiailable: 攻不破的(无争论余地的, 无懈可击的)
stakeholder: someone entrusted to hold the stakes for two or more persons betting against one another; must deliver the stakes to the winner
jackpot: 彩票头等奖，极大的成功
xenophobia：仇外，排外
作者: Stefana 时间: 2009-11-13 11:30:13
撒花欢迎Bela加入阅读大贴~
From Times Online
November 12, 2009
Kirsty Moore, first woman Red Arrows pilot, was inspired by her father
The first woman to become a Red Arrows pilot said today she had been inspired to join the RAF by her father.
Flight Lieutenant Kirsty Moore, 32, was speaking for the first time since she made history by joining the prestigious aerobatics display team in September.
She paid tribute to her father Robbie Stewart, a retired Tornado navigator. “My dad is immensely proud. He encouraged me to join the RAF,” she said. “He is one of those people who everyone loves and I keep on bumping into people who say they know him. Nobody has ever had a bad word to say about him.”
Flight Lieutenant Moore has completed two operational tours of Iraq with a Tornado squadron based at RAF Marham in Norfolk and it was there that she first thought about joining the display team, which puts on 80-90 shows across the world every year.
She joined the RAF in 1998 after studying aeronautical engineering at Imperial College, London. She is been married to Nicky Moore, 34, who is still a flying instructor at RAF Valley.
Flight Lieutenant Moore said: “It’s an awesome job. To be told I had been selected was one of the best days of my life. It was incredible.
“The girl thing is an aside for me because I have been a female all my life and I’ve been a pilot since joining the RAF.
“I know for outsiders it is a big thing but for me it is about timing and someone was always going to be the first woman to join the Red Arrows. I’m lucky enough it’s happened to me and I’m very proud.
The flame-haired pilot said: “You can get ribbed for almost everything and the boys will pick up on anything so my hair colour gets a mention but as long as I’ve got something to come back with, then everything’s OK.”
Squadron Leader Ben Murphy, said she was selected for her calm personality as well as her skills as a pilot.
“It is a milestone for the Red Arrows but, that said, we do have female aircrew in all our squadrons and this is a great way of getting the message across to women thinking of joining the Red Arrows,” he said.
“She is very calm under pressure but Red Arrow pilots also have to be able to do the job on the ground as well as the flying job and she has a very calm and level-headed approach.”
作者: qqqaaazzz 时间: 2009-11-18 22:07:18
本帖最后由 qqqaaazzz 于 2009-11-18 22:09 编辑
[size=0.8em]Reserve currencies
Cross my palm with euros? [size=0.7em]Nov 11th 2009
From Economist.com
The dollar’s days as the world’s reserve currency are far from over
[size=0.74em]Shutterstock
[size=0.8em]WORRIES about the dollar’s dominance of the global monetary system are not new. But debate about replacing the beleaguered dollar, whose trade-weighted value has dropped by 11.5% since its peak in March 2009, has resurfaced in the wake of a global financial and economic crisis that began in America. China and Russia, which have huge reserves that are mainly dollar denominated, have talked about shifting away from the greenback. India changed the composition of its reserves by buying 200 tonnes of gold from the IMF.
[size=0.8em]None of this threatens the dominance of the dollar yet, particularly as a dramatic shift out of the currency would be damaging to the countries (such as China) that hold a huge amount of dollar-denominated assets. But a new paper by economists at the IMF, released on Wednesday November 11th, acknowledges that the global crisis has reignited the debate about anchoring the world’s monetary system on one country’s currency.
[size=0.8em]Some say that America’s role as the principal issuer of the global reserve currency gives it an unfair advantage. America has a unique ability to borrow from foreigners in its own currency, and wins when the dollar depreciates, since its assets are mainly in foreign currency and its liabilities in dollars. By one estimate America enjoyed a net capital gain of around $1 trillion from the gradual depreciation of the dollar in the years before the crisis.
[size=0.8em]In a sense the world is hostage to America’s ability to maintain the value of the dollar. But as the IMF points out, the currency’s primacy arises at least partly because China and other emerging countries have chosen to accumulate dollar reserves. The depth of America’s financial markets and the country’s open capital account have made the dollar attractive. So some of the advantage has been earned.
[size=0.8em]But large and persistent surpluses in countries like China mean continued demand for American assets, reducing the need for fiscal adjustment by either country. This, in turn, has contributed to the build-up of the macroeconomic imbalances that many blame for the financial crisis.
[size=0.8em]Dealing with these imbalances could begin by finding ways to reduce reserve accumulation in emerging countries. The IMF reckons that about two-thirds of current reserves (about $4 trillion-$4.5 trillion) are held by countries as insurance against shocks, including sudden reversals of capital flows, banking crises and so on. In theory, groups of countries could pool reserves, so that a smaller amount would suffice than if countries each maintain their own buffers. Other alternatives include precautionary lines of credit(信用额度), such as the American Federal Reserve’s with the central banks of Brazil and Mexico, or the IMF’s flexible credit line.
[size=0.8em]But what are the alternatives to relying on the dollar? One possibility is a system with several competing reserve currencies. Over time, the euro and China’s yuan (if it became convertible) could emerge as competitors. This would require a great deal of policy co-ordination among issuing countries. But by having several reserve currencies the “privilege” that America now enjoys would be available more widely, providing an incentive to compete to attract users to different currencies.
[size=0.8em]Another alternative is a greater reliance on SDRs, the IMF’s quasi-currency, which operates as a claim on a basket of currencies: the dollar, euro, sterling and yen. Because the SDR’s value depends on several currencies, it shares many of the benefits of a multiple-currency system. But even the IMF says that using SDRs seems “doubtful unless the system…fails in a major way”.
[size=0.8em]The most radical solution of all is a new global currency that could be used in international transactions and would float alongside domestic currencies. The fund argues that this would have to be issued by a new international monetary institution “disconnected from the economic problems of any individual country”. This currency could serve as a risk-free global asset.
[size=0.8em]Radical as this may sound, it is not a new idea. John Maynard Keynes had something similar in mind when he proposed an International Clearing Union. This global bank would issue its own currency, called the bancor, in which all trade accounts would be settled. In the absence of such a bank the world will have to make do with the current system. So worries about the dollar’s value aside, its global dominance is secure for now.
[size=0.8em]For more information, please visit http://www.economist.com/businessfinance/displayStory.cfm?story_id=14842922&source=features_box_main and http://www.yeeyan.com/articles/view/sailorpj/68117.
作者: Stefana 时间: 2009-11-19 15:34:55
本帖最后由 Stefana 于 2009-11-19 15:37 编辑
T-Paw stakes his claim
Nov 12th 2009 | ST PAUL
From The Economist print edition
The long, winding road to the Republican nomination
PRESIDENTIAL hopefuls find a natural habitat in Iowa. Before the caucuses, this energetic species can be seen marching in parades and munching pies at county fairs. Some, however, can be spotted by keen watchers a lot earlier than others. On November 7th Tim Pawlenty, Minnesota’s governor, gave the keynote speech at the Iowa Republicans’ annual autumn dinner. “Are you fired up?” he asked the crowd, echoing the young long-shot of 2008. “Are you ready to fight back?”
The answer, apparently, is not quite yet. In a field of veterans such as Sarah Palin and Mike Huckabee, Mr Pawlenty lags far behind. Seventy-two percent of respondents in a recent poll had no opinion of him at all. This has a least one advantage: Mr Pawlenty is a fresh face. Now his camp is trying to fashion him into the future of the party. But with Republicans in turmoil, Mr Pawlenty is proving just how difficult the road to 2012 will be.
Mr Pawlenty is in some ways a natural antidote to Barack Obama. He is young, just 48 years old (the same age as the president), and like him he has a compelling personal history. The son of a truck driver, he rose through the state legislature before winning the governor’s office in 2002. He is evangelical, anti-abortion and pro-gun, but manages to be all those things without appearing as abrasive as Mrs Palin. Most important, he describes himself as a fervent fiscal hawk. He has refused to raise state taxes, which Democrats say will leave Minnesota with gaping shortfalls. This year he slashed programmes from the budget unilaterally, a move being challenged in court. However, though Minnesota’s liberal voters may not like all of the governor’s policies, they do like “T-Paw”.
Mr Pawlenty is coy about his ambitions, but he is plainly looking beyond Minnesota’s borders. On October 1st he formed a political action committee with a suitably bland name (Freedom First) and a benign premise (electing other conservatives). He has become one of cable television’s most talkative heads. The speech in Iowa followed a big fund-raiser; Mr Pawlenty is now off to Florida and New Hampshire. All this is supposed to build a base of support. But there is also room for disaster.
In the era of tea-party conservatives, Mr Pawlenty is calculatedly veering to the right. Speaking to The Economist in St Paul, Minnesota, he recently explained that the earth might be warming, but that it is unclear “to what extent that is the result of natural causes.” After a blog called him “milquetoast establishment” for not endorsing a conservative candidate in New York over a moderate Republican, Mr Pawlenty hastily endorsed the conservative. A Democrat won the race. On November 3rd he questioned Olympia Snowe’s place within the Republican Party. He later called Ms Snowe, a moderate senator, to apologise.
Despite these swings, Mr Pawlenty insists that the best path to power is to uphold conservative tenets. “It’s about trying to convince Democrats and independents to join us because our views, our ideas, our values are hopefully attractive to them.” But the governor has his work cut out. “My base?” he asked in St Paul, and pointed to an aide and his dog.
caucus n. 干部会议v. 开干部会议
turmoil n. 骚动, 混乱
evangelical n. 信福音主义者 adj. 福音(书), 新教会的
shortfall n. 不足之量, 差额
unilaterally adj. 单方面的, 单边的, 片面的, 单系的
milquetoast n. 胆小者, 意志薄弱的人
作者: 银落 时间: 2009-11-19 23:54:39
Music industry
How to sink pirates
Nov 12th 2009
From The Economist print edition
The decline of music piracy holds lessons for other industries
Illustration by Claudio Munoz
YOU open a window on your computer’s screen. You type in the name of a cheesy song from the 1980s. A list of results appears. You double-click on one of them, and within a few seconds the song is playing. This is what it was like to use Napster a decade ago; and it is also how Spotify, another free online-music service, works today. The difference? Napster was an illegal file-sharing service that was shut down by the courts. Spotify, by contrast, is an entirely legal, free service supported by advertising. This shows how much things have changed in the world of （在某个领域中~）online music in the past decade. It also explains why online music piracy may at last be in decline.
For most of the past decade the music industry focused on litigation（诉讼）
to try to prevent piracy. Over the years the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) has accused 18,000 internet users of engaging in illegal file-sharing. Most of them settled, though two cases went to court this year. In both cases the defendants (a single mother and a student) lost and were ordered to pay damages (of $1.92m and $675,000 respectively). But the industry has realised that such cases encourage the publication of embarrassing headlines more than they discourage piracy（比喻用得超赞~，encourage the publication of embarrassing headlines来代替various case concerning illegal file-sharing）, for as each network was shut down, another would sprout in its place.
Yet as piracy flourished on illegal networks, legal alternatives also started to appear. Apple launched its iTunes Music Store, offering downloads at $0.99 per track, in 2003. Many others have followed, including a new, above-board version of Napster. And in the past two years new music sites and services have proliferated. Spotify offers free, advertising-supported streams（又是很漂亮的比喻~用stream来比喻源泉~）; paying customers are spared the ads and can use the service on smart-phones. Nokia’s Comes With Music scheme includes a year’s unlimited downloads in the price of some mobile phones. TDC, a Danish telecoms operator, bundles access to a music service with its broadband packages.
All of these different, legal music services offer the “celestial jukebox”—whatever you want, right away, from the internet—that made Napster so compelling when it appeared on the scene. True, revenue from these services will be less than from CD sales, but it is much better than nothing. The recorded-music industry will get smaller—but it will not disappear.
That is because there is growing evidence that this plethora of new services adds up to an attractive alternative to piracy for many (see article). In June a poll of Swedish users of file-sharing software found that 60% had cut back or stopped using it; of those, half had switched to advertising-supported streaming services like Spotify. In Denmark, over 40% of subscribers to TDC’s broadband-plus-music package also said they were making fewer illegal downloads as a result. In a British poll published in July, 17% of consumers said they used file-sharing services, down from 22% in December 2007. Music executives reckon people are moving from file-sharing networks to Spotify, though they may continue to download some music illegally.
To be sure, the carrots of more attractive legal services are being accompanied by innovative forms of stick.（很好的比喻，carrot和stick） In particular, a new approach called “graduated response” is gaining momentum. As its name indicates, it involves ratcheting up the pressure on users of file-sharing software by sending them warnings by e-mail and letter and then cutting off or throttling their internet access if they fail to respond after three requests. Graduated-response laws were introduced earlier this year in Taiwan and South Korea, and were enacted in France last month. Other countries are expected to follow suit.
But mainly carrots
Yet in Britain music file-sharing seems to be in decline even though a graduated-response law has yet to be introduced. The country also boasts one of the broadest selections of legal music services: Spotify and Comes With Music were both launched there before most other countries, and two of Britain’s biggest internet-service providers have borrowed TDC’s bundled-music model. This suggests that when it comes to discouraging music piracy, carrots may in fact be more important than sticks.
All of this offers a lesson for other types of media, such as films and video games. Piracy thrives because it satisfies an unmet demand. The best way to discourage it is to offer a diverse range of attractive, legal alternatives. The music industry has taken a decade to work this out, but it has now done so. Other industries should benefit from its experience—and follow its example.
Smartphone 智能手机
Telecom 电信
Bundle 捆绑
Broadband 宽带
Jukebox 自动唱片点唱机
作者: Stefana 时间: 2009-11-21 11:30:44
From The Times
November 21, 2009
Patients spreading drug-resistant swine flu strain
A form of swine flu that is resistant to antiviral drugs has begun spreading between hospital patients in Wales, health officials said.
A strain that appears resistant to Tamiflu, the most common treatment has infected five patients at the University Hospital of Wales in Cardiff. All of them had serious underlying health conditions.
One patient apparently developed resistance to the antiviral drug and the strain was then passed on to others, the National Public Health Service for Wales (NPHS) said. The case is thought to be the first time in Europe that a drug-resistant strain has passed between people.
Two of the five patients have recovered and been discharged from hospital, one is in critical care and two are being treated on the ward. Britain has bought enough doses of Tamiflu, which can shorten the duration of swine flu and reduce the risk of complications, for half of the population.
There have been several dozen reports around the world of people developing resistance to Tamiflu, but there has been only one case of person-to-person transmission of a Tamiflu-resistant strain, between two people at a summer camp in the United States.
The Department of Health said that it was taking the cases seriously, but added that the risk to the general population was low.
“The Tamiflu-resistant virus has emerged in a group of particularly vulnerable individuals . . . these patients are known to be at increased risk of developing resistance to the drug, a spokesman for the Department of Health said.
“Our strategy to offer antivirals to all patients with swine flu is the right one — to help prevent complications and reduce the severity of the illness.”
The NPHS said that the resistant strain did not appear more severe than the virus circulating since the spring. All patients have been tested and those with the resistant strain have been given other antivirals.
Dr Roland Salmon, director of the NPHS Communicable Disease Surveillance Centre, said: “The emergence of influenza A viruses that are resistant to Tamiflu is not unexpected in patients with serious underlying conditions and suppressed immune systems, who still test positive for the virus despite treatment.
“In this case, the resistant strain of swine flu does not appear to be any more severe than the swine flu virus that has been circulating since April. For the vast majority of people, Tamiflu has proved effective in reducing the severity of illness.
“Vaccination remains the most effective tool we have in preventing swine flu so I urge people identified as being at risk to look out for their invitation to be vaccinated by their GP surgery.”
作者: 灿烂千阳灿烂 时间: 2009-11-21 13:36:04
过来狠狠赞一下~
作者: Stefana 时间: 2009-11-24 02:28:18
If words were food, nobody would go hungryNov 19th 2009 | ROME
From The Economist print edition
Investment in agriculture is soaring. So, worryingly, is distrust of markets and trade
“THE world’s attention is back on your cause.” That was Bill Gates talking to agricultural scientists gathered recently to honour the late Norman Borlaug, father of the Green Revolution. The tycoon-turned-philanthropist was right. This week, the world—in the guise of 60-odd heads of state including the pope—held the first United Nations food summit since 2002. As the world’s attention turns from the receding financial crisis, it is switching to one emerging in agriculture.
The UN conference on food security took place at a point of relative calm between two storms. The first occurred in 2007-08, when world food prices experienced their sharpest rise for 30 years. Food riots swept through three dozen countries and two governments (Haiti’s and Madagascar’s) were overthrown by the events that the price rises set in train.
The next storm is likely within a few years and everyone fears its arrival. The price spike of 2007-08 was the result of structural imbalances in the world food chain, not just temporary fluctuations like bad weather or government mistakes. These imbalances have not gone away: food demand is still rising because of changing appetites and rising incomes in emerging markets; biofuels are still competing with food crops for available land; yield growth in cereals is declining.
In 2008-09 food problems were masked for a while by the financial crisis. But as Jacques Diouf, head of the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), said this week, “when the recovery picks up, we will be back to square one.” Jeffrey Currie of Goldman Sachs argues that while most recession-hit industries in the rich world are operating at 60-70% of capacity, agriculture is at full capacity, in the sense that last year’s cereals crop was the largest on record and there is little fallow land ready to be taken under the plough. If there were another supply or demand shock, the farm-trade system would not cushion the blow.
It may not be many years away. In the first ten months of this year, food prices rose by 9.8%, prompting fears of a resumption of the surge that began in 2007, the first of the two years of crisis (see chart, left). The “breakfast commodities” (tea, cocoa, sugar, important sources of calories in some parts of the world) are trading at their highest levels for 30 years. Worse, the price respite, while it lasted, did nothing for the poorest and most vulnerable. According to the FAO, the number of malnourished people in the world rose to over 1 billion this year, up from 915m in 2008 (see chart, below). Economists at the World Bank reckon that the number living on less than $1.25 a day will rise by 89m between 2008 and 2010 and those on under $2 a day will rise by 120m. A quarter of a century after a famine in Ethiopia which dramatised failings in the food system, famine is again stalking the Horn of Africa. Has anything been done to prepare for future food shocks?
Certainly, say most governments. Money is starting to pour into agriculture after 30 years of neglect. There has been a spasm of institutional reform. And public and private sectors are doing more to help farmers than ever.
At their meeting in L’Aquila in July, the Group of Eight (G8) large rich economies promised to increase spending on agricultural development by $20 billion over the next three years. Not much of this was new money (probably $3 billion-5 billion) and it is not clear how much, if any, has been delivered. The amount also falls far short of the $44 billion that the FAO guesses will be needed each year to end malnutrition (and even shorter, aid agencies reflect, of the $14 trillion poured by rich countries into their banks). Still, the amount is not trivial. It would finance for three years the annual $7 billion that the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), a think tank in Washington, DC, estimates will be the bill for developing countries to protect agriculture from the impact of climate change. And it excludes the far greater sums developing countries themselves are promising to farming.
Agriculture and food security have become “the core of the international agenda”, as the G8 called it. In 2009, the World Bank increased its spending on agriculture by 50%, to $6 billion. The Islamic Development Bank is creating an agriculture department for the first time.
Barack Obama asked Congress to double to just over $1 billion America’s aid for agricultural development in 2010. And in a sign that food productivity means more than warm words and cash, he nominated a pundit, not a politician, to head USAID, the assistance agency: Rajiv Shah, the chief scientist for the Department of Agriculture. In the West, there is a new consensus on the need to invest more in agriculture in emerging markets.
Jeffrey Sachs, an economist at America’s Columbia University, has argued that the next step should be to create a new international agency to co-ordinate all the money and perhaps have a big budget of its own. He wants something similar to the global fund to fight HIV/AIDS, a public-private partnership. Earlier food shortages, in the 1970s, had also produced institutional shake-ups: the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) and the Consultative Group for International Agricultural Research (CGIAR), influential groups in the field, were both set up then.
But the latest crisis has not spawned any institutional children, mainly because the UN food agencies—FAO, IFAD and the World Food Programme—spent too much time bickering. Instead, institution-building took the form of tinkering. The idea for what was grandly labelled a global partnership on food security began with the French president, Nicolas Sarkozy, in the spring of 2008 and morphed into a UN committee and a “high-level task force” attached to the secretary-general’s office. So far, this modest arrangement seems to be working rather well, at least in terms of mobilising attention and resources.
The most important activity, though, is taking place at the national level. Here, the price rises of 2007-08 have unleashed an unprecedented pack of policies. Practically every developing country, however cash-strapped, has done something (often a lot) to help farmers. African governments are finally starting to fulfil a promise they made in 2003 to spend 10% of their budgets on agriculture. The most popular measures have been to build rural roads, subsidise inputs such as seeds and fertilisers, give special help to the poorest smallholders as a kind of safety net, and to intervene in the operation of markets, sometimes to improve and sometimes to control them.
The Philippines set up a seed bank to improve the quality of seeds and provide a reserve against occasions when crops are wrecked by typhoons (the country is prone to such disasters). Lesotho and Uganda created “seed fairs” in the hope of increasing the varieties on offer to give farmers. Tanzania and Mali tried to achieve the same end by subsidising the grain and fertiliser merchants directly. Nepal and Jamaica offered cheap kits (pumps, drip feeds) to persuade smallholders to irrigate their fields. Malawi kept going its much-studied fertiliser subsidy, which practically gives the stuff away to the poorest farmers. The jury is still out on what will happen if and when the country can no longer afford the programme, which is eating up 4.2% of GDP. But there is no doubting the impact so far: the programme has turned Malawi into a breadbasket: in 2005, the country imported over 40% of its food; this year, it will export more than half its output, including to famine-stricken Kenya, having trebled the maize harvest in four years.
Brazil also subsidised inputs, launching a programme that provided credit for 14,000 tractors in its first year. But its bigger intervention was to expand a safety net which allows family farmers to sell $800 worth of food to the government each year; the government uses part of the food for reserves to help stabilise prices and another portion for school meals which are part of the country’s much-admired conditional-cash transfer scheme, Bolsa Familia.
Many countries are using help to farmers as an anti-poverty measure. India, for example, last year extended to every rural district its National Rural Employment Guarantee Act, which guarantees 100 days of minimum-wage employment on public works to every rural household that asks for it. The act, one of the biggest job-creating schemes in the world, is widely credited with maintaining rural demand in the face of one of the worst monsoons for years. India also introduced a one-off agricultural-debt waiver programme for about 40m farmers.
At the height of the food-price spike in 2008, many of the biggest food producers banned the export of crops (they sought to cushion the domestic impact of rising world prices). Most of these restrictions have been lifted and replaced by a variety of price and marketing policies. Many of them are sensible. Uganda, for example, reckons farmers got 5-15% more for their crops after publishing price and market information more widely. Kenya improved peoples’ nutrition by removing restrictions on the sale of unpasteurised milk (milk is one of the most important foodstuffs in east Africa). There is also a fashion for creating grain reserves to smooth out local price fluctuations by building silos in villages: Burkina Faso, Burundi and Gambia are doing this.
It all sounds admirable. And it is matched by an almost equally frenetic pace of change among commercial food companies. Some have started to invest directly—often for the first time—in farming in poor countries, providing farmers with new varieties of seeds or drought- and disease-resistant plants (see article for a case study of Monsanto). Agricultural business centres—one-stop shops where farmers can go to buy seeds and fertilisers, rent farm equipment, and get crop insurance—are springing up everywhere.
This little piggy didn’t go to market
Yet there are worrying signs that all is not well. For alongside the increases in investment and attention is something more insidious: a turn away from trade, markets and efficiency. Depending on how far this goes, the trend could undo much of the benefits of new investment.
The price rises of 2008 were traumatic. When Thailand and Vietnam, the world’s two largest rice exporters, banned exports, the Philippines, the world’s largest importer, concluded that the international grain trade could no longer be trusted to supply its needs. Fearing what might happen as a result of India’s poor harvest this year, the Philippines in the past two weeks has concluded contracts to buy 1.5m tonnes of rice—equivalent to 5% of the total annual trade in the grain. This is panic buying driven by mistrust. In turn, India is negotiating directly with Thailand and Vietnam for rice, which would further reduce the tradable supply of an already thinly traded commodity.
The large “land grabs” in Africa and Asia are also signs of distrust in world markets. Food importers which can afford it—like Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, China, South Korea—have opted to grow food on land they own or control abroad rather than import it through international trade. “Land grabbers” (mostly state companies or governments) have concluded contracts to buy or lease roughly 20m hectares (50m acres) of the best farmland in poor countries.
Trust in world grain markets seems weak among industrial countries, too. Western countries share the blame for the failure to complete the Doha round of trade talks. They have done little to reduce subsidies to biofuels, which have taken large quantities of maize out of food markets and put it into petrol tanks. IFPRI and others have urged countries to calm the wildest price fluctuations (and hence provide a measure of reassurance to importers) by setting up a system of international or regional grain reserves or by providing emergency financing to be drawn upon if prices spike. But the summit did nothing to improve the operation of world markets or to cut biofuels subsidies.
And just as distrust of world trade seems to be growing, so confidence in domestic markets seems to be falling. According to a review of national farm policies by the FAO, around two-thirds of developing countries have undertaken some sort of non-market-based measures to support farmers since 2007, including input subsidies and price interventions. The governments of Burkina Faso and Sierra Leone have started to negotiate with wholesalers to control prices indirectly. Other countries, such as Madagascar, have imposed direct price controls. The picture here is mixed: some countries are seeking to improve the operation of their markets. But six of 34 African countries which reported their policy responses to the FAO said they were proposing price controls.
Perhaps the most striking trend is the move from “food security” towards “food self-sufficiency” as a goal of national policy. The first means ensuring everyone has enough to eat; the second, growing it yourself. The Philippines says it hopes to grow 98% of the rice it needs by next year, though whether it can meet this target is unclear. “Indonesia must struggle to reach food self-sufficiency,” said President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono last year, announcing big increases in seed, fertiliser and credit subsidies. Senegal imports 80% of its rice, putting this small African nation in the top ten rice importers. Rocked by food riots in 2008, the government responded with what it called the “Great Offensive for Food and Abundance”, and promised to become self-sufficient in staples. Others with the same aim include China, Malaysia, Colombia and Honduras.
This shift towards self-sufficiency coincides with growing scepticism about world trade, examples of price controls and more extensive government involvement. The FAO has even suggested the shift may amount to “a change of paradigm” in farming.
Such a shift could undermine the hopes raised by new investment because farmers would get bogus price signals, efficiency would be compromised and because, says IFAD’s head of operation, “it’s harder to do good projects where the policy environment is poor.” Food policy has never been free. For the past 20 years, agriculture in developing countries has been dominated by a gradual decline in investment and a shift towards a somewhat more liberal policy environment. The first trend is now being reversed, for the better. The worry is that the second trend will be reversed, too—for the worse.
作者: Stefana 时间: 2009-11-25 09:45:16
Turning the screw some moreNov 24th 2009
From Economist.com
A UN report suggests that striking progress is being made in the fight against AIDS
ALL epidemics run their course. AIDS will be no exception. Butconcerted action can give them a helping hand to the finish line, andthe latest report from the World Health Organisation and UNAIDS, thetwo United Nations agencies charged with tackling the epidemic, claimsthat is what is happening.
The most important figure in the report, which was published onTuesday November 24th, is 17%. This is the estimated drop in the annualnumber of new infections compared with 2001, the year that the UnitedNations Declaration of Commitment on HIV/AIDS was signed. The biggestproportionate fall, 25%, has been in East Asia. In sub-Saharan Africa,where the disease is most rampant, the decline is estimated at 15%.That corresponds to 400,000 fewer African infections in 2008 than in2001, though 1.9m Africans are still becoming infected each year.
The death rate is also falling, as antiretroviral drugs becomeubiquitous. Over the five years to 2008, the report claims, the numberof AIDS-related deaths around the world fell by 10%, though it stillstands at about 2m annually.
A consequence of the falling death rate, of course, is that thereare more infected people who need treatment. The number of those“living with HIV”, to use the politically correct argot of the field,is somewhere between 31m and 36m. Not all of these people need drugsimmediately, but almost all will need them eventually. Since the drugsprolong life, but do not cure, the rising number of infected peoplewill provide a challenge to the pockets of rich-world taxpayers, theprincipal source of funds for these drugs in the poorest parts of theworld.
It is not clear how much the falling number of new infections is aresult of the activities of the agencies that distribute those funds,and the governments they support, in chivvying people to change theirbehaviour（为啥这里是单数呢？）. The report talks of the benefits of integrating HIVprevention and treatment programmes with other health andsocial-welfare services, and other such fine phrases, but the directconsequences of such things are hard to measure. What is clear, though,is that the spread of the drugs themselves has been crucial toprevention as well as treatment. In particular, the strategicdeployment of antiretrovirals to pregnant women has, the reportestimates, stopped some 200,000 mother-to-child infections in the 12years to 2008.
As to the cause of the drop in the adult infection rate, that isless certain. In this case, too, the drugs may be important. Althoughantiretroviral drugs do not cure the user, they cause the level of thevirus in his body to drop to a point where it is harmless—and alsounlikely to be passed on to sexual partners. The report quotes researchsuggesting that those on the drugs are only a tenth as likely totransmit the virus as those who are not.
The bad news—no report on AIDS would be complete without some—isthat there is evidence of a long-feared generalisation of the epidemicin some parts of the world where it has hitherto been confined togroups at special risk. It appears that the risky groups, such asintravenous drug users, and prostitutes and their clients, are startingto spread the virus, through sex, to others. This is particularly truein the case of drug users for eastern Europe and Central Asia, and forprostitutes’ clients in other parts of Asia. The overall message,though, is cautiously optimistic. AIDS may not yet be in full retreat,but progress is being made.
作者: qqqaaazzz 时间: 2009-11-28 00:38:57
本帖最后由 qqqaaazzz 于 2009-11-28 00:40 编辑
[size=0.8em]China's currency
A yuan-sided argument
[size=0.7em]Nov 18th 2009 | HONG KONG
From
The Economist
print edition
Why China resists foreign demands to revalue its currency
[size=0.74em]Shutterstock
[size=0.8em]PRESIDENT Barack Obama, on his first visit to China this week, urged the government to allow its currency to rise. President Hu Jintao politely chose to ignore him. In recent weeks Jean-Claude Trichet, the president of the European Central Bank, and Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the managing director of the International Monetary Fund, have also called for a stronger yuan. But China will adjust its currency only when it sees fit, not in response to foreign pressure.
[size=0.8em]China allowed the yuan to rise by 21% against the dollar in the three years to July 2008, but since then it has more or less kept the rate fixed. As a result, the yuan’s trade-weighted value has been dragged down this year by the sickly dollar, while many other currencies have soared. Since March the Brazilian real and the South Korean won have gained 42% and 36% respectively against the yuan, seriously eroding those countries’ competitiveness.
[size=0.8em]Speculation about a change in China’s currency policy increased in the week before Mr Obama’s visit, after the People’s Bank of China tweaked the usual wording in its quarterly monetary-policy report. It dropped a phrase about keeping the yuan “basically stable” and added that foreign-exchange policy will take into account “international capital flows and changes in major currencies”. But exchange-rate policy is decided by the State Council, not the central bank. And many policymakers, notably in the Ministry of Commerce, do not favour a revaluation right now.
[size=0.8em]Indeed, Chinese officials have become bolder in standing up to Washington. “We don’t think that it’s good for the world economic recovery, and it is also unfair, that you ask others to appreciate while you depreciate your own currency,” said a spokesman for the Ministry of Commerce on November 16th. The previous day Liu Mingkang, China’s chief banking regulator, blasted Washington for its low interest rates and for the falling dollar, which, he claimed, was encouraging a dollar carry trade and global asset-price bubbles. He strangely ignored the fact that China’s own overly lax monetary policy, partly the result of its fixed exchange rate, is fuelling bubbles in shares and property.
[size=0.8em]Foreigners argue that a stronger yuan would not only help reduce global imbalances, such as America’s trade deficit, but would also benefit China. It would help China regain control of its monetary policy. By pegging to the dollar, it is, in effect, importing America’s monetary policy, which is too loose for China’s fast growing economy. A stronger yuan would also help rebalance China’s economy, making it less dependent on exports, putting future growth on a more sustainable path.
[size=0.8em]If a stronger exchange rate is in China’s own interest, why does it resist? Beijing rejects the accusation that its exchange-rate policy has given it an unfair advantage. It is true that other emerging-market currencies have risen sharply this year, but this ignores the full picture. Last year China held its currency steady against the dollar throughout the global financial crisis, while others tumbled. Since the start of 2008, the yuan has actually risen against every currency except the yen.
[size=0.8em]Beijing also argues that it has done a lot to help global rebalancing. Thanks to its monetary and fiscal stimulus, domestic demand has contributed an incredible 12 percentage points to GDP growth this year, while net exports subtracted almost four percentage points. Its current-account surplus has almost halved to around 6% of GDP from 11% in 2007. Chinese policymakers accept that the yuan needs to appreciate over the longer term, but say now is the wrong time, because exports are still falling, by 14% over the past 12 months.
[size=0.8em]Another reason for hesitation is that the theory that revaluing the yuan will allow Beijing to tighten its monetary policy is too simplistic. China’s experience since 2005 shows that a gradual rise encourages investors to bet on further appreciation; hot-money inflows then swell domestic liquidity. A large one-off increase might work, as it would stem expectations of a further rise. But the sort of increase required—perhaps 25%—is politically unacceptable because it would put many exporters out of business overnight.
[size=0.8em]Some Chinese economists warn that the benefits to America from yuan revaluation are much exaggerated. In particular, a stronger yuan would not significantly reduce America’s trade deficit. There is little overlap between American and Chinese production, so American goods cannot replace Chinese imports. Instead, consumers would simply end up paying more for imports either from China or other producers, such as Vietnam. This would be like imposing a tax on American consumers.
[size=0.8em]These arguments help explain why China is dragging its feet. Nevertheless, in the long run, a stronger yuan would benefit China’s economy—and the world’s—by helping shift growth from investment and exports towards consumption. It would boost consumers’ purchasing power and squeeze corporate profits, which have accounted for most of the increase in China’s excessive domestic saving in recent years. China will probably allow the yuan to start rising again early next year. This will not be the result of foreign lobbying—indeed, China is more likely to change its policy if foreign policymakers shut up. But by early next year China’s exports should be growing again, its year-on-year GDP growth could be close to 10%, and its inflation rate will have turned positive. The arguments in favour of revaluation will then loom much larger.
[size=0.8em]For more information, please visit http://www.economist.com/businessfinance/displayStory.cfm?story_id=14901104&source=most_commented and http://www.yeeyan.com/articles/view/sailorpj/69882.
作者: rafael 时间: 2009-12-2 12:47:22
我终于开始看阅读了
作者: 林小乔 时间: 2009-12-10 07:41:13
The Copenhagen climate-change conference
Searching for harmonyDec 7th 2009 | COPENHAGEN
From Economist.com
Will the Copenhagen climate conference end with a deal on carbon emissions?
DELEGATES turning up to the 15th Conference of the Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change—known as the Copenhagen conference—face a fortnight of negotiation, beginning on Monday December 7th, almost as rich in complexity as in hyperbole. The range of different possibilities in the negotiations means that there is, potentially, something for everyone, which raises hopes for success. At the same time, there is the near certainty of almost everyone being disappointed to some extent.
The conference has two different sets of aims, which may well be united into one road forward by the end. One set of negotiations is on the Kyoto protocol. The protocol, negotiated in 1997, entered into force in 2005 and imposes targets for carbon-emission reductions on developed countries for the period 2008 to 2012. It imposes no obligations on developing countries, but did set up the clean development mechanism (CDM) by which developed countries could meet commitments by reducing emissions in developing countries, transferring capital in their direction in the process. One track of the Copenhagen negotiations deals with the requirement under Kyoto to agree terms for a second commitment period after 2012, with new and tougher levels of emission reductions dealt with in the existing regime.
The other main track of negotiation is on “long-term co-operative action”—finding a way to a new protocol that would involve commitments of some sort from developing countries. Many richer countries are keen that these negotiations should produce something along these lines to replace the ongoing Kyoto commitments. Many poorer countries are not so keen, and want any new agreement to sit alongside new legally binding (though not necessarily legally enforceable) limits negotiated under Kyoto.
As delegates began speaking, they largely restated old positions. A Sudanese representative, speaking for the poor Group of 77 countries and China, excoriated the rich world’s unwillingness to put up more money for the poor ones, for example. In the run up to the conference, various countries have staked out their positions. America, which has not ratified Kyoto, has offered emissions cuts that would take it 3% below 1990 levels by 2020. The EU is offering at least a 20% cut with respect to 1990 levels, and says it is willing to go up to 30% as part of an ambitious deal. Overall, developed countries are offering reductions of about 16% compared with 1990.
Some poorer countries, such as South Africa, are also offering proposed emission reductions, though they will not necessarily be willing to have them made binding. A lot of these depend on payments from developed countries that will help developing countries to slow deforestation and other land-use changes which emit carbon dioxide. A deal on these payments, which goes by the name of REDD (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation, which becomes REDD+ if conservation issues are added to the mix), is a high priority for environmental organisations and the countries which stand to benefit.
The largest developing-world emitters, China and India, are offering cuts to the “carbon intensity” of their economies—the amount of carbon emitted per dollar of GDP. For an historically fast-growing country like China, a large cut in intensity (40% below 2005 levels by 2020) is quite compatible with continuing growth in absolute emissions.
According to an eve-of-conference update by Nicholas Stern, a British economist, the various offers on the table would, if enacted, add up to about 80% of the reductions required for a good chance of keeping overall global warming to 2°C. Bigger cuts would make the chances of such an outcome better. But the provisos and conditions attached to the current offers will make for high hurdles. Some of the most contentious problems surround the hundreds of billions of dollars that poorer countries want transferred from richer ones to cover the costs of reduced emissions and adaptation to the changes that are already inevitable; how much money might be offered, and by what mechanisms, is an important negotiating point. Kyoto's CDM mechanism was not designed for such flows, and may well need reform even if other channels open up.
There is all but universal agreement that the negotiations will not end in a new protocol, or a binding extension of the old protocol. What they might provide is the outline of a deal on most of the important issues that could be turned into a legal protocol early next year; Copenhagen could, though, provide considerably less than that.
作者: adammaksim 时间: 2009-12-10 23:49:50
本帖最后由 Stefana 于 2009-12-11 00:48 编辑
问个问题~~
And here the controversy begins.For the mine’s security, in a land that epitomizes insecurity, is paid for by others.
For是做因为讲么,可以这么用的么，是不是应该向下面这么用呢？
And here the controversy begins，for the mine’s security, in a land that epitomizes insecurity, is paid for by others.
作者: qqqaaazzz 时间: 2009-12-11 00:53:46
问个问题~~
And here the controversy begins.For the mine’s security, in a land that epitomizes insecurity, is paid for by others.
For是做因为讲么,可以这么用的么，是不是应该向下面这么用呢？
And here ...
adammaksim 发表于 2009-12-10 23:49
我觉得原文可以吧，我不太精通语法。。不过我是这么想的，And here the controversy begins.是上一段的一个总结，对于本段来说，后面的内容都是来解释这句话的，所以这句话可以算是独立的，用句号应该并无不可吧，LS很细心。。。赞一个。。不过我觉得不用过分抠语法。。
作者: Stefana 时间: 2009-12-11 00:55:31
问个问题~~
And here the controversy begins.For the mine’s security, in a land that epitomizes insecurity, is paid for by others.
For是做因为讲么,可以这么用的么，是不是应该向下面这么用呢？
And here ...
adammaksim 发表于 2009-12-10 23:49
For在这里作conj用，可以这么用的。
作者: adammaksim 时间: 2009-12-11 22:12:49
多谢二位~~
作者: qqqaaazzz 时间: 2009-12-14 11:09:42
本帖最后由 qqqaaazzz 于 2009-12-14 11:11 编辑
[size=0.8em]The Copenhagen climate talks
Filthy lucre fouls the air [size=0.7em]Dec 10th 2009 | COPENHAGEN
From
The Economist
print edition
Arguments over money dampened the euphoria at the start of the Copenhagen climate talks
[size=0.8em]DESPITE the gloomy talk that preceded the UN climate conference, the opening was upbeat. Most big countries had vowed to cut or limit emissions during the previous few weeks. As delegates arrived, America’s Environmental Protection Agency announced that carbon-dioxide emissions were an “endangerment” to health. This allows Barack Obama to regulate them, whatever Congress does.
[size=0.8em]The happiness did not last. On December 8th a draft agreement which had been discussed some weeks ago was leaked to the Guardian, a British newspaper. It caused a furore. The “Danish text” had been circulated by the hosts, but not to all parties; and it seems to confirm the futility of moves towards the legally binding treaty that many still want.
[size=0.8em]It also seems to link any rich-to-poor transfers of money to specific actions taken by developing countries to curb emissions. Embarrassed Danes said the text was one of several unofficial papers that had been floated, not a basis for real bargaining. The lead negotiator for the “G77 plus China” group of developing countries, Lumumba Di-Aping, was unsoothed. “This text…is a major violation that threatens the success of the Copenhagen negotiations,” he fumed, saying two years’ work had been swept aside.
[size=0.8em]Can there still be a deal? The main obstacle may not be emissions cuts, which will not change much, but the closely linked issues of the shape of a deal and how much money it involves.
[size=0.8em]Everyone agrees that poorer countries, including India and China, need cash for climate “mitigation”—adopting green technology and new approaches to land use and forest conservation—and for “adaptation”: coping with the anticipated effects of climate change, some of which (like a degree of sea level rise) look unavoidable. America has joined the list of countries accepting such transfers, saying it will pay its “fair share”. Rich countries have talked of a “quick start” fund. The leaked Danish text has it starting in 2010-12 at a value to be determined; the UN has suggested $10 billion. To poor countries, this sounds paltry: responses range from “bribery” to “it will not even pay for the coffins”. Instead, the G77 has asked for 0.5% to 1% of the rich countries’ GDPs. That implies hundreds of billions of dollars on top of existing development aid. The idea that rich countries will hand over 1.2% to 1.7% of their wealth in perpetuity is not going to fly.
[size=0.8em]Some transfers occur already. Rich states meet emissions targets by paying poor countries to do the cutting, under Kyoto’s Clean Development Mechanism. This system is under fire in Copenhagen for being too choosy or too arbitrary in the projects it backs. It is also too small: it abates only 330m tonnes of carbon dioxide per year, and billions of tonnes must be cut.
[size=0.8em]On Thursday, George Soros, a philanthropist, proposed turning on a much bigger tap: he wants a new use of Special Drawing Rights, effectively the IMF’s in-house gold-backed “currency”, mainly held by the rich countries. The IMF extended an extra $153 billion to rich countries last year to help them with the financial crisis. Most of it was unused. Mr Soros wants rich countries to lend $100 billion-worth to poor ones, creating a “green fund” to jump-start mitigation. The IMF’s gold reserves could pay the (small) interest amounts that poor countries would otherwise owe.
[size=0.8em]Other proposals abound. The REDD initiative on forestry should move lots of money to countries which avoid felling trees. If emissions from ships and aircraft are cut, using a tax or an emissions market, that could provide cash. Less promisingly, France wants a levy on financial transactions. And the European Climate Foundation, a think-tank, says more could be taken from existing carbon markets: cash could be winkled from traders who arbitrage the price difference between green projects in poor places and the “allocation” paid by rich-world emitters.
[size=0.8em]The question of who gets paid what, and how, feeds back into the main issue in these and inevitable future talks: to what extent will obligations under the Kyoto protocol be extended beyond the developed countries to developing ones? Rich countries account for most of the past emissions that now fill the air, but less than half the world’s current emissions.
[size=0.8em]Settling this question will mean some differentiation between developing countries, a term that includes both industrial giants and hapless victims, whose interests are very different. Some people think this was the reason for the leaking of the Danish text. Those most offended by it are the smallest, weakest countries, which are vulnerable and emit very little. They are more interested in strong action than in who pays for it or who has to make the cuts. The calculus is different for the larger, more industrialised emerging markets, at least four of which—Brazil, India, South Africa and China—saw the text before it was leaked. They have more to gain from keeping the onus of action and payment on the developed world alone.
[size=0.8em]These countries have produced their own draft document, which would absorb any new agreement into the existing Kyoto framework. If the leak serves to firm up resistance to a deal that spreads the duties of reduction wider, China and other large developing states may be the gainers
作者: nvligre 时间: 2009-12-17 20:30:24
本帖最后由 nvligre 于 2009-12-17 20:37 编辑
Good word
Gre word
New word
Nice structure
Seeking compromise
THE Copenhagen climate conference is supposed to be making a fresh start, as ministers and heads of government prepare to arrive in the Danish capital in the coming days. Instead, it has endured a fresh stall. The meeting was to focus on two sparkling new texts （应该可以理解为有争议的问题或者是集中关注的问题吧）that are notable at least for their concision. The draft statement for one of the two main “tracks” of discussion（表达针对某个问题的不同观点，比different views好多了） (on long term co-operation) has shrunk from 179 pages at the beginning of last week to six.
But on Monday December 14th progress on the substantial discussions stuttered（问题进展的不顺利）, more or less, to a halt as poorer countries, grouped as G77 and China, walked out（离去，to depart ，get away ，drop away）temporarily. By the time things had started again some of the sessions were facing their first late-night negotiations. There will be a lot more.
The problem was not specifically over the strength of the measures being called for, though that is a point of difference between the most vulnerable countries and the more developed ones. Last week the Alliance of Small Island States called for global warming to be limited to 1.5ºC over pre-industrial levels, something which many other poor countries support. Most richer countries, by contrast, are working on the basis of a limit of 2ºC. This seems one of the easier issues to resolve as many studies relating emissions to temperature agree that limiting a rise to 1.5ºC is in all practical ways impossible.
Some of the poorer countries appear to be using the 1.5ºC figure as a useful bargaining position from which to press for bigger emissions cuts from the rich world. The cuts proposed so far, although larger than might have been expected a year ago, are unlikely to limit global warming even to 2ºC. In addition, many poorer countries are seeking to extract more money from rich ones. A “fast start” package of $10 billion a year, over the next few years, which is being put together by rich countries is seen as grossly（比较好的非常的表达方法，还有的表达：very ，extraordinary ，）insufficient by poor-country negotiators, who talk of transfers of “5% of GDP”. On all this the new slimline text which is supposed to frame an agreement to replace the Kyoto protocol is magnificently reticent: “To be elaborated: a long-term goal for financing.”
The overall shape of the Copenhagen agreement is proving to be the main bone of contention. One proposal is that rich countries should remain subject to Kyoto-level emission cuts, which are due to expire in 2012, until 2020. Poor countries are adamant that richer countries should be held responsible with a binding protocol. But the rich countries that signed up to Kyoto (mostly European ones) are refusing to agree to do this unilaterally because they would get nothing in return from America, which is not party to Kyoto, or from any developing countries, on which Kyoto makes no demands.
A compromise that is contained in the draft text, suggesting that richer countries would cut emissions, but without the binding nature of Kyoto, may offer some way to get beyond this impasse. But there are plenty of other ways for things to go wrong once the heads of government turn up. One concern is the question of （看着简单的结构但是很少用这个结构）what, if anything, poorer countries will be bound to do themselves. The current text requires that developing countries act only when rich countries pay them to do so. It seems highly unlikely that an agreement will be reached without further requirements of some sort.（此句可以用在不同的文章针对不同有分歧的问题有待解决的时候） It is up to the conference to work out what they might be.
可用于发生利益冲突的例子
作者: emily_feifei 时间: 2009-12-17 21:25:52
考完了~在忙申请了~但是看到这个贴忍不住收藏了~学校上不了T 和E~顶~
作者: Stefana 时间: 2009-12-18 09:58:00
需要记忆的词汇
用得恰当的词汇
短语提炼
句子表述提炼
The world economy
The Great StabilisationDec 17th 2009
From The Economist print edition
The recession was less calamitous than many feared. Its aftermath will be more dangerous than many expect
IT HAS become known as the “Great Recession”, the year in which the global economy suffered its deepest slump since the second world war. But an equally apt name would be the “Great Stabilisation”. For 2009 was extraordinary not just for how output fell, but for how a catastrophe was averted. （提出文章的T-word——great stablisation）
Twelve months ago, the panic sown by the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers had pushed financial markets close to collapse. Global economic activity, from industrial production to foreign trade, was falling faster than in the early 1930s. This time, though, the decline was stemmed within months. Big emerging economies accelerated first and fastest. China’s output, which stalled but never fell, was growing by an annualised rate of some 17% in the second quarter. By mid-year the world’s big, rich economies (with the exception of Britain and Spain) had started to expand again. Only a few laggards, such as Latvia and Ireland, are now likely still to be in recession.
There has been a lot of collateral damage. Average unemployment across the OECD is almost 9%. In America, where the recession began much earlier, the jobless rate has doubled to 10%. In some places years of progress in poverty reduction have been undone as the poorest have been hit by the double whammy of weak economies and still-high food prices. But thanks to the resilience of big, populous economies such as China, India and Indonesia, the emerging world overall fared no worse in this downturn than in the 1991 recession. For many people on the planet, the Great Recession was not all that great.
That outcome was not inevitable. It was the result of the biggest, broadest and fastest government response in history. Teetering banks were wrapped in a multi-trillion-dollar cocoon of public cash and guarantees. Central banks slashed interest rates; the big ones dramatically expanded their balance-sheets. Governments worldwide embraced fiscal stimulus with gusto. This extraordinary activism helped to stem panic, prop up the financial system and counter the collapse in private demand. Despite claims to the contrary, the Great Recession could have been a Depression without it.
Stable but frail
So much for the good news. The bad news is that today’s stability, however welcome, is worryingly fragile, both because global demand is still dependent on government support and because public largesse has papered over old problems while creating new sources of volatility. Property prices are still falling in more places than they are rising, and, as this week’s nationalisation of Austria’s Hypo Group shows, banking stresses still persist. Apparent signs of success, such as American megabanks repaying public capital early, make it easy to forget that the recovery still depends on government support. Strip out the temporary effects of firms’ restocking, and much of the rebound in global demand is thanks to the public purse, from the officially induced investment surge in China to stimulus-prompted spending in America. That is revving recovery in big emerging economies, while only staving off a relapse into recession in much of the rich world.
This divergence will persist. Demand in the rich world will remain weak, especially in countries with over-indebted households and broken banking systems. For all the talk of deleveraging, American households’ debt, relative to their income, is only slightly below its peak and some 30% above its level a decade ago. British and Spanish households have adjusted even less, so the odds of prolonged weakness in private spending are even greater. And as their public-debt burden rises, rich-world governments will find it increasingly difficult to borrow still more to compensate. The contrast with better-run emerging economies will sharpen. Investors are already worried about Greece defaulting, but other members of the euro zone are also at risk. Even Britain and America could face sharply higher borrowing costs.
Big emerging economies face the opposite problem: the spectre of asset bubbles and other distortions as governments choose, or are forced, to keep financial conditions too loose for too long. China is a worry, thanks to the scale and composition of its stimulus. Liquidity is alarmingly abundant and the government’s refusal to allow the yuan to appreciate is hampering the economy’s shift towards consumption. But loose monetary policy in the rich world makes it hard for emerging economies to tighten even if they want to, since that would suck in even more speculative foreign capital.
Walking a fine line
Whether the world economy moves smoothly from the Great Stabilisation to a sustainable recovery depends on how well these divergent challenges are met. Some of the remedies are obvious. A stronger yuan would accelerate the rebalancing of China’s economy while reducing the pressure on other emerging markets. Credible plans for medium-term fiscal cuts would reduce the risk of rising long-term interest rates in the rich world. But there are genuine trade-offs. Fiscal tightening now could kill the rich world’s recovery. And the monetary stance that makes sense for America’s domestic economy will add to the problems facing the emerging world.
That is why policymakers face huge technical difficulties in getting the exit strategies right. Worse, they must do so against a darkening political backdrop. As Britain’s tax on bank bonuses shows, fiscal policy in the rich world risks being driven by rising public fury at bankers and bail-outs. In America the independence of the Federal Reserve is under threat from Congress. And the politics of high unemployment means trade spats are becoming a bigger risk, especially with China.
Add all this up, and what do you get? Pessimists expect all kinds of shocks in 2010, from sovereign-debt crises (a Greek default?) to reckless protectionism (American tariffs against China’s “unfair” currency, say). More likely is a plethora of lesser problems, from sudden surges in bond yields (Britain before the election), to short-sighted fiscal decisions (a financial-transactions tax) to strikes over pay cuts (British Airways is a portent). Small beer compared with the cataclysm of a year ago—but enough to temper the holiday cheer.
WORDS REVIEW:
slump:
n. 暴跌,意气消沉,(土地)下沉
vi. 猛然掉落,坍塌,大幅度下跌
常常在经济类词汇里与recession一起用，eg.The current economic slump is an earnest of the major recession to come.
larggard:
n. 落后者
adj. 缓慢的, 落后的
eg.The problems existed in the prior period of construction project,such as laggard work and imperfect scheme,are pointed out in this paper.
whammy:
n. 晦气, 剧烈的打击
teetering:
adj.摇摆的，摇摇欲坠的
eg.Their teetering currency rates have caused their purchasing power to be weakened.
rev
v. 发动机旋转, 加快速度
eg.Since the introduction of new techniques, the production has been revving up.
divergence
n. 分歧，散度(数学用语)
eg.Sufficient coordination between banking and marketing executives should be enough to eliminate divergence of results.
Liquidity
n.流动性, 偿债能力
Hong Kong's financial markets are characterised by a high degree of liquidity.
作者: 懒羊羊123 时间: 2009-12-18 10:24:22
本帖最后由 懒羊羊123 于 2009-12-20 21:46 编辑
The world this yearDec 17th 2009
From The Economist print edition
Reuters
Barack Obama was inaugurated as America’s 44th president. In a whirlwind first year in office, Mr Obama overturned a prohibition on federal funding for stem-cell research, eased some restrictions on dealing with Cuba, lifted a ban on people with HIV travelling to the United States, pushed Congress to pass health-care reform, promised to close the detention camp at Guantánamo, pledged a cut in America’s emissions and promoted the first Hispanic person to the Supreme Court.
whirlwind：resembling a whirlwind especially in speed or force <a whirlwind campaign> <a whirlwind romance>
A new sheriff in townMr Obama also set about changing the tone of American foreign and security policy, for example by seeking to “reset” relations with a prickly Russia and by stopping the use of torture during intelligence interrogations. Speaking in Cairo, Mr Obama’s call for “a new beginning” with Muslims was applauded by the Arab world. The new president was awarded the Nobel peace prize, though many said this was premature. He defended the use of force in “just wars”.
set about
: to start doing or dealing with something, especially something that needs a lot of time and effort
prickly:
3 a : TROUBLESOME, VEXATIOUS <prickly issues> b : easily irritated <had a prickly disposition>
Iran and North Korea
remained belligerent despite Mr Obama’s plea to tyrannies to “unclench your fist”. Iran moved ahead with its nuclear programme, conducting missile tests just before it attended talks in Geneva with six leading powers. A secret Iranian uranium-processing facility was discovered. North Korea launched a rocket that the West believed could target Alaska. Two American female journalists held by North Korea were freed when Bill Clinton went to Pyongyang to meet Kim Jong Il, the Hermit Kingdom’s ailing dictator.
American troops withdrew from Iraq’s big cities in June. Earlier, Mr Obama presented a plan to withdraw most troops from Iraq in 2010. Sporadic bursts of suicide-bombings that killed scores of people continued to plague the country. A general election will be held in March.
scores of : a lot of people or things
Efforts to stabilise Afghanistan were hampered by a disputed presidential election. Amid claims of corruption and poll-rigging, Hamid Karzai was declared the winner, but only after his remaining rival pulled out of a run-off ballot.
rig: to manipulate or control usually by deceptive or dishonest means
It was the worst year by far for coalition casualties in the war in Afghanistan. General Stanley McChrystal, the American commander there, requested more forces to fight the resurgent Taliban, but Mr Obama came in for some flak for dithering over his response. He eventually agreed to send an extra 30,000 troops.
dithering over :
to keep being unable to make a final decision about something
The violence also intensified in Pakistan, with the most savage terrorist assaults carried out in Peshawar, capital of the North-West Frontier Province. In October the Taliban attacked Pakistan’s army headquarters in Rawalpindi. Pakistani troops began a campaign against the Taliban in the tribal areas of South Waziristan.
To the right, quick marchA military coup in Honduras ousted Manuel Zelaya from the presidency. Mr Zelaya found refuge in the Brazilian embassy in the capital. After much fruitless diplomacy, an election was won by Porfirio Lobo, the centre-right candidate, though many governments said they would not recognise the result.
found refuge:接受避难
The European Union’s Lisbon treaty finally came into force after the Irish approved it in a second referendum and the Czech president (eventually) signed it. This did not lessen the enthusiasm of Eurosceptics for bashing the document. Herman Van Rompuy, Belgium’s prime minister, was elevated to the lofty position of permanent president of the European Council.
come into force: if a new law, rule, change etc comes or is brought into force, it starts to exist
referendum: the principle or practice of submitting to popular vote a measure passed on or proposed by a legislative body or by popular initiative
Mexico’s government in December achieved a rare success in its war on drugs when troops killed Arturo Beltrán Leyva, a leading trafficker. In March, the United Nations renewed its commitment to drug prohibition, though there were more waverers. Marijuana is becoming legal in many parts of the Americas.
trafficker: someone who buys and sells illegal goods, especially drugs
Marijuana:大麻
China’s economy began to roar ahead again; imports and exports grew following a sharp decline and itsreturning appetite for raw materials was partly responsible for a rise in commodity prices.
Labour painsGovernments around the world took measures to tackle the worst economic crisis in decades as unemployment shot up. The American Congress passed a massive $787 billion stimulus package in January and the Bank of England implemented a programme of “quantitative easing” thatpumped £200 billion ($330 billion) of new money into Britain’s economy.
shoot up: to increase very quickly and suddenly
As a result of such measures Western economies emerged tentatively from recession, allaying fears that the world would enter a Depression-style slump. But worries were soon aired about the sustainability of large budget deficits: America’s hit more than $1.4 trillion. The IMF, European Central Bank and others urged countries to take steps to unwind their stimulus schemes.
unwind: to undo (a financial arrangement or position) through the necessary legal or financial steps <unwound most of its natural gas hedges ― N.Y. Times>
With stockmarkets up, and after passing government “stress tests” to see how they would cope in future downturns, many banks, including Bank of America, Citigroup and Wells Fargo, began to repay the bail-out money they had received at the height of the crisis. Many financed this by offering shares through big capital-raising plans.
‘Tis the season to be jollyBank bosses were roasted by politicians for continuing to pay out large bonuses. The revelation that bonuses were given to executives at American International Group, a troubled insurer that obtained a $170 billion bail-out, sparked outrage. Britain’s chancellor imposed a supertax on bankers’ bonuses in Britain.
roast: to subject to severe criticism or ridicule <films have been roasted by most critics ― H. J. Seldes>
Bernie Madoff received a 150-year jail sentence for defrauding clients of $65 billion in his Ponzi scheme. Sir Allen Stanford, a Texan billionaire and cricket promoter, was arrested for allegedly defrauding investors out of $8 billion through his bank in Antigua.
An Air France jet en route from Rio de Janeiro to Paris crashed into the mid-Atlantic in June killing 228 people, the worst plane crash in a decade.
The Iranian presidential election brought about the Islamic Republic’s worst crisis since the 1979 revolution. Polls had suggested that Mir Hosein Mousavi, a reform-minded candidate, might defeat Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. The scale of Mr Ahmadinejad’s victory caused millions to take to the streets to protest against what they said was a rigged election. Hundreds were arrested in Tehran and elsewhere. Dissidents were sentenced in a series of televised trials.
After a quarter of a century of conflict, Sri Lanka’s civil war came to an end when the army overwhelmed the last remnants of the rebel Tamil Tigers. Thousands were killed in the final days of fighting and up to 300,000 were displaced.
Australia suffered its worst-ever outbreak of wildfires in February, in which more than 170 people died across Victoria.
Deck the hallsRevelations about the expenses charged by British members of Parliament
crushed many reputations. The juicier claims included those for duck islands, manure, moat-cleaning and adult films.
General Motors went bust with debts of $172 billion, America’s biggest-ever industrial failure. The American government took a majority stake in the carmaker as it emerged from bankruptcy protection. GM and its rivals benefited from “cash-for-clunkers” subsidies schemes, which encouraged consumers to trade in their old bangers for more fuel-efficient models.
bust: to ruin financially
emerge from :
to come out of a difficult experience
Chrysler also went bankrupt and was eventually rescued by Fiat. Other companies of note that went to the wall included Nortel Networks, a telecoms-equipment maker, Reader’s Digest, Six Flags, an amusement-park operator, Trump Entertainment, a casino-owner in Atlantic City, the publisher of the Chicago Sun-Times, and Waterford Wedgwood, a maker of crystal and china.
go to the wall:
if a company goes to the wall, it fails, especially because of financial difficulties
A power-sharing government in Zimbabwe saw Robert Mugabe retain the presidency and Morgan Tsvangirai, the opposition leader, become prime minister. A month after being sworn in Mr Tsvangirai was injured in a car crash in which his wife died.
After Hamas stepped up its rocket attacks at the end of 2008, Israel began a major offensive in the Gaza Strip, launching air strikes and a ground invasion. Hundreds of Palestinian civilians were killed and thousands injured before Israel pulled out in mid-January. Following an investigation, the UN’s Goldstone report, published in September, accused both Israeli forces and Hamas of committing war crimes, but reserved its harshest criticism for Israel, which rejected the document as grossly biased.
pulled out : to get out of a bad situation or dangerous place, or to make someone or something do this
Binyamin Netanyahu became prime minister of Israel—for the second time—at the head of a coalition government following an election. Diplomacy over prisoner exchanges and settlement freezes continued at a glacial pace, frustrating many, though in June Mr Netanyahu for the first time publicly accepted the idea of Palestinian statehood.
Venezuela’s Hugo Chávez won a referendum that abolished term limits for the presidency. Mr Chávez continued to harass the opposition and threatened military action against Colombia, after its government updated an agreement which allows American troops to use its bases to fight drug-traffickers.
The H1N1 influenza virus, or swine flu, spread from Mexico prompting the World Health Organisation to declare a global pandemic. Countries advised their citizens to restrict travel and avoid public places. At least 9,500 people worldwide are thought to have died from the disease so far.
Global swarmingHordes of environmental activists mingled with heads of state at the Copenhagen conference on climate change, at which governments tried to thrash out agreements to reduce emissions.
thrash out : to discuss something thoroughly with someone until you find an answer, reach an agreement, or decide on something
In other elections, Angela Merkel was returned to power in Germany
at the head of a new centre-right coalition, the Congress party increased its majority in India, Jacob Zuma was chosen as South Africa’s new president and Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono was re-elected president in Indonesia. Japan’s election was won by the Democratic Party of Japan, ending almost half a century of uninterrupted rule by the Liberal Democratic Party.
Greenland celebrated home rule from Denmark by distributing two tonnes of rare whale meat.
Georgia’s entry was banned from the Eurovision song contest. Its ditty, “We Don’t Wanna Put In”, was deemed to be a swipe at Vladimir Putin, Russia’s prime minister, whose “negative move” was allegedly “killin’ the groove”.
swipe :
a sharp often critical remark <took a parting swipe at management>
作者: 懒羊羊123 时间: 2009-12-18 10:28:40
And here the controversy begins.For the mine’s security, in a land that epitomizes insecurity, is paid for by others.
懒羊羊认为for 做“因为”的意思，因为前后两句有因果的关系。in a land作为状语。
作者: Stefana 时间: 2009-12-18 17:32:41
A special report on climate change and the carbon economy
Getting warmer
Dec 3rd 2009 From The Economist print edition
So far the effort to tackle global warming has achieved little. Copenhagen offers the chance to do better, says Emma Duncan (interviewed here)
Illustration by M. Morgenstern
THE mountain bark beetle is a familiar pest in the forests of British Columbia. Its population rises and falls unpredictably, destroying clumps of pinewood(from wikipedia:The wood of the pine; A forest of pine trees) as it peaks which then regenerate as the bug recedes. But Scott Green, who studies forest ecology at the University of Northern British Columbia, says the current outbreak is “unprecedented in recorded history: a natural background-noise disturbance has become a major outbreak. We’re looking at the loss of 80% of our pine forest cover.”* Other parts of North America have also been affected, but the damage in British Columbia is particularly severe, and particularly troubling in a province whose economy is dominated by timber.
(The outbreak of bark beetle is unprecedented)
Three main explanations for this disastrous outbreak suggest themselves. It could be chance. Populations do fluctuate dramatically and unexpectedly. It could be the result of management practices. British Columbia’s woodland is less varied than it used to be, which helps a beetle that prefers pine. Or it could be caused by the higher temperatures that now prevail in northern areas, allowing beetles to breed more often in summer and survive in greater numbers through the winter.
(Three explanations for disastrous outbreak of bark beetle)
The Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), which the United Nations adopted at the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, is now 17 years old. Its aim was “to achieve stabilisation of greenhouse-gas concentrations in the atmosphere at a level that would prevent dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system”. The Kyoto protocol, which set about realising those aims, was signed in 1997 and came into force in 2005. Its first commitment period runs out in 2012, and implementing a new one is expected to take at least three years, which is why the 15th conference of the parties to the UNFCCC that starts in Copenhagen on December 7th is such a big deal. Without a new global agreement, there is not much chance of averting serious climate change.
(The aim of the UNFCCC)
Since the UNFCCC was signed, much has changed, though more in the biosphere than the human sphere. According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the body set up to establish a scientific consensus on what is happening, heat waves, droughts, floods and serious hurricanes have increased in frequency over the past few decades(可以弄到AW里举例用); it reckons those trends are all likely or very likely to have been caused by human activity and will probably continue. Temperatures by the end of the century might be up by anything from 1.1ºC to 6.4ºC.
(The change of the biosphere since the UNFCCC was signed)
In most of the world the climate changes to date are barely perceptible or hard to pin on warming. In British Columbia and farther north the effects of climate change are clearer. Air temperatures in the Arctic are rising about twice as fast as in the rest of the world. The summer sea ice is thinning and shrinking. The past three years have seen the biggest losses since proper record-keeping started in 1979. Ten years ago scientists reckoned that summer sea-ice would be gone by the end of this century. Now they expect it to disappear within a decade or so.
(The facts to prove the effects of the climate change are pin on warming.)
Since sea-ice is already in the water, its melting has little effect on sea levels. Those are determined by temperature (warmer water takes up more room) and the size of the Greenland and Antarctic ice caps. The glaciers in south-eastern Greenland have picked up speed. Jakobshavn Isbrae, the largest of them, which drains 6% of Greenland’s ice, is now moving at 12km a year—twice as fast as it was when the UNFCCC was signed—and its “calving front”, where it breaks down into icebergs, has retreated by 20km in six years. That is part of the reason why the sea level is now rising at 3-3.5mm a year, twice the average annual rate in the 20th century.
(The bad effects of global warmming.)
As with the mountain bark beetle, it is not entirely clear why this is happening. The glaciers could be retreating because of one of the countless natural oscillations in the climate that scientists do not properly understand. If so, the glacial retreat could well stop, as it did in the middle of the 20th century after a 100-year retreat. But the usual causes of natural variability do not seem to explain the current trend, so scientists incline to the view that it is man-made. It is therefore likely to persist unless mankind starts to behave differently—and there is not much sign of that happening.
(The reason caused the outbreak of the bark beetle is not clear.)
Carbon-dioxide emissions are now 30% higher than they were when the UNFCCC was signed 17 years ago. Atmospheric concentrations of CO2 equivalent (carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases) reached 430 parts per million last year, compared with 280ppm before the industrial revolution. At the current rate of increase they could more than treble by the end of the century, which would mean a 50% risk of a global temperature increase of 5ºC. To put that in context, the current average global temperature is only 5ºC warmer than the last ice age. Such a rise would probably lead to fast-melting ice sheets, rising sea levels, drought, disease and collapsing agriculture in poor countries, and mass migration. But nobody really knows, and nobody wants to know.
(Some facts about CO2.)
Some scientists think that the planet is already on an irreversible journey to dangerous warming. A few climate-change sceptics think the problem will right itself. Either may be correct. Predictions about a mechanism as complex as the climate cannot be made with any certainty. But the broad scientific consensus is that serious climate change is a danger, and this newspaper believes that, as an insurance policy against a catastrophe that may never happen, the world needs to adjust its behaviour to try to avert that threat.
(Some thoughts about dangerous warming.)
The problem is not a technological one. The human race has almost all the tools it needs to continue leading much the sort of life it has been enjoying without causing a net increase in greenhouse-gas concentrations in the atmosphere. Industrial and agricultural processes can be changed. Electricity can be produced by wind, sunlight, biomass or nuclear reactors, and cars can be powered by biofuels and electricity. Biofuel engines for aircraft still need some work before they are suitable for long-haul flights, but should be available soon.
(Some problems in other fields.)
Nor is it a question of economics. Economists argue over the sums (see article), but broadly agree that greenhouse-gas emissions can be curbed without flattening the world economy.
A hard sell
It is all about politics. Climate change is the hardest political problem the world has ever had to deal with. It is a prisoner’s dilemma, a free-rider problem and the tragedy of the commons all rolled into one. At issue is the difficulty of allocating the cost of collective action and trusting other parties to bear their share of the burden. At a city, state and national level, institutions that can resolve such problems have been built up over the centuries. But climate change has been a worldwide worry for only a couple of decades. Mankind has no framework for it. The UN is a useful talking shop, but it does not get much done.
(The climate change is a worldwide worry for the governments.)
The closest parallel is the world trading system. This has many achievements to its name, but it is not an encouraging model. Not only is the latest round of negotiations mired in difficulty, but the World Trade Organisation’s task is child’s play compared with climate change. The benefits of concluding trade deals are certain and accrue in the short term. The benefits of mitigating climate change are uncertain, since scientists are unsure of the scale and consequences of global warming, and will mostly accrue many years hence. The need for action, by contrast, is urgent.
(Some actions for the climate change.)
The problem will be solved only if the world economy moves from carbon-intensive to low-carbon—and, in the long term, to zero-carbon—products and processes. That requires businesses to change their investment patterns. And they will do so only if governments give them clear, consistent signals. This special report will argue that so far this has not happened. The policies adopted to avoid dangerous climate change have been partly misconceived and largely inadequate. They have sent too many wrong signals and not enough of the right ones.
(The way to solve the problem.)
That is partly because of the way the Kyoto protocol was designed. By trying to include all the greenhouse gases in a single agreement, it has been less successful than the less ambitious Montreal protocol, which cut ozone-depleting gases fast and cheaply. By including too many countries in detailed negotiations, it has reduced the chances of agreement. And by dividing the world into developed and developing countries, it has deepened a rift that is proving hard to close. Ultimately, though, the international agreement has fallen victim to domestic politics. Voters do not want to bear the cost of their elected leaders’ aspirations, and those leaders have not been brave enough to push them.
(The outcomes of the international aggrement.)
Copenhagen represents a second chance to make a difference. The aspirations are high, but so are the hurdles. The gap between the parties on the two crucial questions—emissions levels and money—remains large. America’s failure so far to pass climate-change legislation means that a legally binding agreement will not be reached at the conference. The talk is of one in Bonn, in six months’ time, or in Mexico City in a year.
(A legally binding agreement will not be reached at the conference.)
To suggest that much has gone wrong is not to denigrate the efforts of the many people who have dedicated two decades to this problem. For mankind to get even to the threshold of a global agreement is a marvel. But any global climate deal will work only if the domestic policies through which it is implemented are both efficient and effective. If they are ineffective, nothing will change. If they are inefficient, they will waste money. And if taxpayers decide that green policies are packed with pork, they will turn against them.
(The attitude of the taxpayers.)
WORDS REVIEW:
fluctuate
vi. 变动, 上下, 动摇
vt. 使动摇
eg.Statistics about Internet usage fluctuate greatly depending upon the source, and change almost daily.
prevail
vi. 获胜, 盛行, 主导
eg.This view did not prevail in all parts of the executive branch.
anthropogenic
adj. 人类发生的，人类起源的，人为的
reckon
vt. 计算,估计,认为
vi. 计(算),判断,依靠
eg.If we reckon up the numbers of visitors to the exhibition for the past week, we shall see a surprising total.
marvel:
n. 奇异的事物, 罕见的例子
v. 惊异于, 惊异
eg.The foreign tourists marvel at the fine view of the West Lake.
bark beetle(from wikipedia):
A bark beetle is one of approximately 220 genera with 6,000 species of beetles in the subfamily Scolytinae. Traditionally this was considered a distinct family Scolytidae, but nowadays it is understood that bark beetles are in fact very specialized members of the "true weevil" family (Curculionidae). Well-known species are members of the type genus Scolytus - namely the European elm bark beetle S. multistriatus and the large elm bark beetle S. scolytus, which like the American elm bark beetle Hylurgopinus rufipes transmit Dutch elm disease fungi (Ophiostoma). Another well-known species of Europe is the Ips typographus.
作者: windandrain2004 时间: 2009-12-19 09:36:01
本帖最后由 windandrain2004 于 2010-1-13 22:08 编辑
From Times Online
January 13, 2010
Google defies Chinese censors after cyberattacks on Gmail accounts of activists
Chinese man, under the watchful eyes of a security guard, talks to the media after he places bouquets of flowers in front of the Google China office in Beijing on January 13, 2010.
Watched by police, a passer-by places flowers in front of Google's China headquarters after the internet company said it would no longer censor content
Google has announced it will no longer submit to Chinese internet censors(A person authorized to examine books, films, or other material and to remove or suppress what is considered morally, politically, or otherwise objectionable) in protest after it discovered cyber attacks aimed at Chinese human rights activists.
The internet company's decision to take a stand may cost it its share of the lucrative and growing Chinese market.
The internet giant company said last night that it had detected a “highly sophisticated and targeted attack on our corporate infrastructure originating from China”.
Further investigation showed that “a primary goal of the attackers was accessing the Gmail accounts of Chinese human rights activists”. Google said that at least 20 other large companies from a range of businesses had been similarly targeted.
Google believes that the attack was mostly blocked and that only minor information, such as creation dates and subject lines, were stolen from two accounts.
It said the investigation showed that accounts of dozens of China human rights activists using Gmail in Europe, China or the United States had been “routinely accessed” using malware (malicious software).
Despite its government-mandated filters, Google remains one of the few sites where images of images of students crushed to death under tanks in the 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown can be found.
That may cease if Google holds to its promise to stop censoring its search engine and pulls its plug on the world’s biggest internet population.
Google officials plan to talk to the Chinese Government to determine whether there is a way that the company can still provide unfiltered search results in the country.
If an agreement cannot be worked out, as is most likely, Google is prepared to leave China
four years after it created a search engine bearing China’s web suffix, “.cn”, to put itself in a better position to profit from the world's most populous country.
David Drummond, Google’s top lawyer, wrote in a blog posting yesterday: “The decision to review our business operations in China has been incredibly hard, and we know that it will have potentially far-reaching consequences.”
The authorities have so far kept silent on the statement from Google.
Hillary Clinton, the US Secretary of State, swiftly stepped into the fray, signalling that President Obama may be ready to take a harder line towards Beijing. Mrs Clinton said: “We have been briefed by Google on these allegations(n.指控), which raise very serious concerns and questions. We look to the Chinese Government for an explanation.
"The ability to operate with confidence in cyberspace is critical in a modern society and economy.
“I will be giving an address next week on the centrality of internet freedom in the 21st century, and we will have further comment on this matter as the facts become clear."
Jeremy Goldkorn, a Beijing-based media expert, said: “It’s quite remarkable. It is unprecedented for a foreign company with significant operations in China to publicly state such things with such evident hostility.
"It will be interesting to see what the fallout would be.”
In a sign that not all Chinese fall into line with some angry web comments that users would manage just fine without Google, some people had been delivering bouquets of flowers to the company’s Beijing office.
One accompanying note read: “Google: a real man.”
Wen Yunchao, the prominent and outspoken Chinese blogger, said: “This attack from China really targets some democracy activists, and for Google this is a challenge to their morals and their legal bottom line. "Google has fired an arrow and they know they can't take it back.”
He added: “The Chinese Government cannot allow Google to operate without censorship. Of course, we hope that following its economic development, China could have more self-confidence and could be a little more open and globalised. The pity is that since 2008, things have been going backwards with the internet.”
The company that has “Don’t be evil” as its motto had been a late entrant into China and its market share is estimated at just over 30 per cent, compared with more than 60 per cent for giant Baidu.
The latter is the mainstay of China’s internet population, which, at more than 300 million, exceeds the entire population of the US.
Chinese internet filters are intended to block access content that the Government deems threatening – such words as Tibetan independence, the Dalai Lama, Taiwan independence and, of course, the Tiananmen Square crackdown.
Even with the filters, some references dribble through – far more than can be obtained via Baidu.
Previously, Google had repeatedly said that it would obey Chinese laws requiring some politically and socially sensitive issues to be blocked from search results available in other countries.
The acquiescence had outraged free-speech advocates and even some shareholders, who argued Google's co-operation with China violated its motto.
文中有两处用到line（已标出），根据AHD里的释义，第一处可以解释为An official or prescribed policy，第二处个人理解为words，其实第一处也可以理解为words，不过是official。
作者: 長安 时间: 2010-1-6 00:03:41
留個爪，看了第一篇，每天看一點，堅持到考試
謝謝斑竹！
作者: 長安 时间: 2010-1-6 19:06:15
看完了第二篇，Obama的healthcare reform那個，末尾有句話看不大明白
“The scope of that tax will increase quickly because the income thresholds would not be indexed to inflation. ”
threshold， index to...查了詞典還是不甚清楚，請教T_T
作者: 嘻嘻芝麻 时间: 2010-1-7 14:43:51
提示: 作者被禁止或删除 内容自动屏蔽
作者: 霁月难逢 时间: 2010-1-8 23:50:45
本帖最后由 霁月难逢 于 2010-1-8 23:53 编辑
“The scope of that tax will increase quickly because the income thresholds would not be indexed to inflation. ”
threshold， index to...查了詞典還是不甚清楚，請教T_T
長安 发表于 2010-1-6 19:06
income threshold算是经济学的术语了 收入限额 可以扩展解释为“缴纳个人所得税的最低限额”
index to不用过于字面的去翻译，直接理解成lead to就可以了
至于这里面的关系简单去解释的话就是：
增加税收之后因为人们手头的钱更少了，所以就可以让钱更值钱
而通货膨胀的原因则是因为钱越来越不值钱，所以增加收入限额之后不会导致通货膨胀
作者: 逆风的船 时间: 2010-1-10 08:21:02
凑凑热闹
The Lock Keeper's Inn outside Belfast is an attractive but otherwise unremarkable café. Serving up the usual Northern Irish fare of sausage rolls and stew, it's a place to stop for a quiet coffee after walking along the nearby riverbank. A world away, it would seem, from the bitter feuds of Northern Irish politics. （就是地道）But following a series of remarkable revelations this week, the inn is at the center of a scandal that could threaten the career of Northern Ireland's top politician.
On Thursday, a BBC television program called Spotlight issued a report accusing First Minister Peter Robinson's wife Iris of breaking the law by failing to disclose her financial interest in a 2008 business deal that helped launch the café. The report alleged that Iris Robinson — then aged 59 and, like her husband, a well-known politician in Northern Ireland — had obtained $80,000 from two property developers for a 19-year-old man, Kirk McCambley, with whom she had been having an affair. According to the report, the teenager allegedly used most of the money to set up the café but saved $8,000 to give back to his lover, the appropriately named Mrs. Robinson.
(See pictures of new hope for Belfast.)
The revelation followed a series of other disclosures about the Robinsons' private lives over the past couple of weeks. On Dec. 28, Iris Robinson, who currently serves in both the British Parliament and Northern Ireland assembly, announced she would be ending her 20-year political career, saying she had been suffering from "serious bouts of depression." Then, on Jan. 6, a handful of television journalists were invited to meet Peter Robinson at his home outside Belfast. Robinson, leader of the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP), Northern Ireland's largest political party, is known for his clinical, dispassionate public image. As the cameras rolled, Robinson appeared to fight back tears as he revealed his wife's extramarital affair and the fact that Iris had attempted suicide last March because she'd been "racked with guilt" over the relationship. The Spotlight program subsequently revealed McCambley's identity and his age at the time the affair began (he's now 21).
The news has stunned Northern Ireland, a staunchly conservative society in which many politicians, particularly those in Protestant-backed unionist parties, see themselves as unofficial guardians of public morality. The Robinsons — who are practicing Evangelical Christians — were certainly no exception.
(See pictures of the British army leaving Northern Ireland.)
Two years ago, Iris Robinson caused an outcry when, during a BBC radio interview, she described homosexuality as "an abomination" and suggested that gay people could be "turned around" through counseling. A few days later, she reiterated her views, telling a TV interviewer that "just as a murderer can be redeemed by the blood of Christ, so can a homosexual." Gay-rights activists accused her of inciting hatred, and scores of complaints were lodged with the police. According to the Spotlight report, Robinson's relationship with McCambley had started before those comments were made.
Although Evangelical influence over the DUP has waned in recent years, Evangelical congregations — particularly those in rural Northern Ireland — still form the backbone of the party founded by the Rev. Ian Paisley in 1971. The couple's standing among these devout members is now likely to deteriorate. "The Robinson affair will be difficult for core DUP supporters," says Gladys Ganiel, a lecturer at Trinity College Dublin and author of a book on Evangelicalism in Northern Ireland. "It certainly doesn't hurt to talk about your faith in public in Northern Ireland politics, and no one has done that more than Iris Robinson. But Evangelical voters expect a certain moral standard, and this [affair] could prove to be a real fly in the ointment."
(Read "Belfast's Paisley Loses His Flock.")
Although Iris Robinson had already indicated her intention to quit politics before the Spotlight show aired, she now faces calls to resign immediately. As for her husband's political future, much depends on how much Peter knew of the money his wife is alleged to have obtained for her lover. The majority of the BBC's evidence came from Selwyn Black, a former political adviser to Iris, who produced several text messages sent by his employer referring to the business deal and her husband. Black also claims that, during phone calls with Iris, he overheard Peter allegedly advising his wife on how the money should be repaid.
Peter Robinson issued a statement Friday denying any personal wrongdoing: "While I have learned from Spotlight for the first time some alleged aspects of my wife's affair and her financial arrangements, I will be resolutely defending attacks on my character and contesting any allegations of wrongdoing." But that hasn't stopped his opponents from pondering whether he'll continue to have a political future. Reg Empey, the leader of the Ulster Unionist Party, has called for an investigation into the claims, describing the revelations as being of "deep concern to all those concerned with the integrity of political life and the democratic process."
The disclosures come at a delicate time for Northern Ireland's fragile power-sharing government of Catholic and Protestant parties. Peter Robinson and his Deputy First Minister, Martin McGuinness of the Sinn Fein party, have failed to reach an agreement over the devolution of policing and justice powers from London to Northern Ireland, despite months of negotiations. Catholic republicans have for years accused the British-run law-and-order system of having a pro-Protestant bias, while Protestant unionists have been reluctant to alter the current setup. The impasse has added to the public's frustration over a perceived lack of progress on a host of key issues.
(Read "Site of IRA Hunger Strike Haunts Northern Ireland.")
At the end of Peter Robinson's emotional TV interview on Wednesday, the First Minister said he had no intention of resigning. "I am determined to try and put this issue behind me," he said. "It is my intention ... to continue the work the people of Northern Ireland have entrusted to me." But with the Northern Irish now scrutinizing the Robinson family ever more closely, business as usual looks increasingly unlikely.
See the top 10 everything of 2009.
sausage 香肠腊肠 allegedly 据说 fight back 抵制 spotlight 照明灯车头灯 Protestant 新教徒
unionist 工会会员 abomination 憎恨 可憎的事 has waned 减少 delicate time 微妙的时间
作者: 長安 时间: 2010-1-11 17:40:33
本帖最后由 長安 于 2010-1-11 19:17 编辑
income threshold算是经济学的术语了 收入限额 可以扩展解释为“缴纳个人所得税的最低限额”
index to不用过于字面的去翻译，直接理解成lead to就可以了
至于这里面的关系简单去解释的话就是：
增加税 ...
霁月难逢 发表于 2010-1-8 23:50
to霽月難逢：謝謝:) 記下了，index to居然equates "lead to"...這個用法應該不常見，不知是否適用于aw...
income threshold幾本上用不著了，“purchase power購買力”這個或許還能用上
to Nirvana: Hello there, and yes, I'm back:)
China's reaction to Communism's collapse
"the website has been deluged with postings from Chinese complaining about China’s “great firewall”, as the country’s state-managed internet filtering system is often called."
I would have protested as well. The CCP has cross the line way too much. can't even access Youtube
作者: panpancx 时间: 2010-3-4 23:03:14
来学习了~
弱问 第一篇 垃圾焚化那个~A modern incinerator, capable of not only burning enormous amounts of rubbish but also of generating energy to be fed into the grid, is an extremely expensive piece of kit. 焚烧垃圾产能不是好事吗~为什么说extremely expensive piece of kit呢~
后面这句更是不懂Waste companies want to be sure that they will have enough waste in the future to justify their investment.
求指教~
作者: 長安 时间: 2010-3-13 11:00:25
49# panpancx
to panpancx: 能焚燒垃圾同時generating energy，和後面的is an extremely expensive piece of kit沒有轉折關係。只是一個陳述句，說這樣機器很貴。
既然機器很貴，買了回來如果沒垃圾好焚燒，當然不划算。所以那些waste companies要保證有enough waste來justify他們（購置機器）這樣昂貴的投資。
作者: after17 时间: 2010-3-13 14:42:29
先收藏了 只要上网就来看一篇，
作者: chenheng0528 时间: 2010-3-15 11:05:42
同上
作者: 長安 时间: 2010-3-31 09:05:45
本帖最后由 長安 于 2010-3-31 14:09 编辑
花了近一月時間，每天一篇把前面的文都看完了。發現沒人再貼，好吧，我來
Google and China
Searching questionsGoogle defies China's censors and risks being blocked. Its woes send a chilling messageMar 22nd 2010 | From The Economist online
Economist.03.31
Google and China
Searching questions
Google defies China's censors and risks being blocked. Its woes send a chilling message.
AFTER a couple of months of talks with the Chinese authorities, Google announced on Monday March 22nd that it had stopped censoring search results on its China portal(n.門戶網站), Google.cn, and was automatically redirecting its users to Google.com.hk, an uncensored portal in Hong Kong. The company said it would try to maintain an advertising-sales operation in China, and would continue research and development work there. However, it acknowledged that the Chinese authorities(這個authorities好，以後不用動不動都是government) might block access to its site, in effect putting(in effect doing sth.爲了達到某目的) it out of business. Google's decision follows several attempts to hack(v.劈砍hacker黑客) its e-mail system(誰那么缺德啊。唉。Hack email system破壞系統，好表達), ever stronger censorship of its searches, legal complaints tied to its digitisation(數字化) of books, and—always a worrying sign in China—growing vitriol(n.硫酸;刻薄 a dictator who rants his vitriol on to a captive audience.captive=被俘虜迷惑的) in the state-controlled press.
If Google, which first raised the prospect of withdrawal in January, seems to have hesitated on the way towards the exit, there are 400m reasons why. That is the number of people in China, the government reckons, who use the internet. Increasingly, they are choosing it over other media, notably television, as a source of entertainment, information and opinion, say Max Magni and Yuval Atsmon of McKinsey, a consultancy. Over the past decade revenues from digital advertising have grown exponentially, admittedly from a tiny base, and the trend, predicts Mr Atsmon, will continue for some time.
Foreign internet firms operating in China have been quick to see its potential but largely unable to grasp it. Foreign companies operating in China have been quick to see this potential but largely unable to grasp it. Facebook, Twitter and YouTube are all explicitly blocked. EBay faltered because of its own managerial errors(managerial problems管理問題,可以用於argument), but also because of delayed approval for PayPal, its online payment system, which this week announced a partnership with a Chinese rival. Yahoo! caused a stir by allowing the Chinese authorities to probe its users’ e-mails in a hunt for political dissidents—something it has since pledged not to do.
There are now domestic Chinese equivalents (counterpart=coeval= contemporaries) of all these sites—Baidu for Google, Taobao for eBay, Renren for Facebook, QQ for instant messaging, games and social networking—and they are doing well (see chart). The vast traffic they attract brings huge potential revenues and lots of useful data that could help them shape the internet in future, rather than merely following Western models, says Duncan Clark, chairman of BDA China, a consultancy.
To the extent that Western firms have seized on the growth of the internet in China, it has often been as a marketing tool. McKinsey cites two examples: Nestlé has promoted coffee in a tea-drinking country with clever online ads about the joy of a coffee break, and Nokia has run music promotions and competitions, accessed via its handsets, in conjunction with video sites.
Outright revenues from the internet may become even harder to capture in years to come as China takes further steps to control access. Content providers like Google have always needed to obtain local licences, and have thus been required to have a Chinese subsidiary(子公司,附屬機構) or partner. As awkward as this has been, new rules expand these impediments(障礙obstacles), requiring the licensing of domain names and, potentially, foreign sites as well.
Google’s possible departure from the Chinese market sends a chilling message to companies that remain. Advertisers and workers can both see that they will be better off with entities the Chinese government favours, which means domestic firms. A withdrawal would also cast a new light on Google itself. It is often perceived to be successful because of advanced technology, but, as China shows, it thrives only to the extent that local laws permit it to link to content and distribute it without interference. Alter the legal environment and the commercial results are quite different.
sigh, 目前為止還好google還沒撤離。我的gmail還能用~真悲哀啊，到時全中國就真的被河蟹得萬馬齊喑了。
作者: zuoyedefeng 时间: 2010-3-31 09:19:49
Can there still be a deal?
作者: 長安 时间: 2010-4-1 08:37:24
本帖最后由 長安 于 2010-4-1 10:04 编辑
Another Russian tragedyTwo horrifying terrorist metro bombings in Moscow, but still there is a need for a new approach to the north CaucasusMar 31st 2010 | MOSCOW | From The Economist print edition
Economist.04.01
Another Russian tragedy
BY EARLY evening on March 29th Moscow’s metro was functioning normally. It was emptier than usual and some people crossed themselves(在自己胸前劃十字祈禱) as they boarded. Blood stains, pieces of shattered glass and flowers marked the sites where 12 hours earlier two bombs had killed at least 39 people. The first explosion struck just before 8
am at Lubyanka station, near the headquarters of Russia’s security service, the FSB. Within 40 minutes a second bomb went off at Park Kultury. Both bombs, say the authorities, were detonated by young female suicide bombers. They put the blame on the north Caucasus(高加索), a mostly Muslim region. Some Russian reports say the Moscow police may have had a warning. Yet terrorists can slip through any net, especially given the
woeful(悲傷His woeful eyes betrayed his feelings.) state of the Russian police.
The security services soon identified the two suicide bombers and their minders (看護者) on security cameras as they boarded their trains(board train上火車). The response of the emergency services was fast and efficient, evacuating people, providing access to ambulances and setting up a special headquarters. Indeed, in large measure(to a large extent) the city coped well with the attacks.
That may be because Moscow’s metro has had several terrorist attacks in the past two decades. The deadliest was in 2004, when 41 people died. That black year saw two bombs on the Moscow metro, two lost aircraft and, worst of all, the siege(n.圍攻) of a packed school in Beslan(比斯蘭小學人質劫持事件).
since then Moscow has had no terrorist attacks and has lived in relative comfort, insulated from the simmering(慢慢燉,快沸騰≈seethe沸騰) violence of the north Caucasus. The war in Chechnya was over and the republic appeared relatively calm under its strongman president, Ramzan Kadyrov. This former rebel had secured elements of autonomy, and massive subsidies, for Chechnya from Moscow.
However, in recent years, violence has spread from Chechnya throughout the region. (Alexander Bortnikov, head of the Russian security service, was careful to identify the sources of the Moscow bombing as the north Caucasus, not Chechnya.) Russia’s president, Dmitry Medvedev, has described the situation in the north Caucasus as Russia’s biggest domestic political problem. Two days after the Moscow attacks, a pair of bombs exploded in Dagestan, which neighbours(鄰近locates closely to) Chechnya, killing many and injuring scores.
Arbitrary killings, disappearances, torture, inter-clan warfare and corruption have become normal in the region. As Russia’s own officials have admitted, some of the money and weapons come from corrupt bureaucrats who pay off terrorists. The corruption and brutality of those who identify themselves as representatives of the state have also helped the terrorists to recruit radicalised youths.
Last month Doku Umarov, a terrorist leader and the self-proclaimed(自稱的)
emir(king of Muslim) of the north Caucasus, warned that war was coming to Russia’s cities. Several high-ranking leaders of militant organisations led by him have been killed in counter-terrorist operations in recent weeks. Some observers see the Moscow bombings as an act of revenge. Others say they would have been in preparation for months.
Few Russians outside the north Caucasus pay attention to the violence in the region. Although it is part of the Russian Federation, few Muslims from the region feel comfortable and welcome outside their home. Yet as the Moscow metro bombings show, the north Caucasus is part of Russia—and changing the situation there requires reforms in the whole country.
Even after the Moscow attacks, there is little public discussion about the roots of the violence in the north Caucasus. Instead, politicians and commentators have talked up(talk up=大肆宣揚let talk up the game and get a bigger crowd.) the explosions to their own political advantage(to one's own advantage). Apologists(辯護者) for the Kremlin blame the civilian deaths on liberals who destabilise the country with their criticism of the authorities. The government has used previous terrorist attacks to justify scrapping independent television broadcasts and cancelling regional elections. This makes the apologists’ pseudo-patriotic slogans of unity with the Kremlin all the more alarming. Yet the Kremlin’s opponents, just as worryingly, all but accuse it of orchestrating(管弦樂配樂;精心策劃meditate. The demonstration was carefully orchestrated in order to attract maximum publicity.) the attacks as an excuse to grab more power.
Few Russian public figures rose above immediate political concerns. An exception was Lyudmila Alexeyeva, a veteran human-rights defender, who was one of only a few to agonise over whether to join an anti-government protest on March 31st. In the end, as she wrote in her blog, she decided to pay her respects to the dead instead. Depressingly few politicians or other public figures in Russia even recognised her dilemma.
作者: Stefana 时间: 2010-5-13 10:53:10
蓝色：GRE词汇
玫红：模棱两可的词汇
下划线：值得学习的表达方式
Croatia's troubles
Zagreb wars
The problems caused when two leaders fall outMay 6th 2010 | ZAGREB | From The Economist print edition
IT IS war, says Nino Djula, editor of Globus, a Croatian weekly. Croatia has plenty of war to talk about: its part in the Bosnian wars, a war against corruption, trouble with the UN war-crimes tribunal in The Hague. But the war Mr Djula refers to is an outbreak of vicious hostility between the president, Ivo Josipovic, and the prime minister, Jadranka Kosor.
tribunal
n 法庭；法官席
【记】源于：trial（n 试验；审判）"
vicious
adj 残酷的；邪恶的（恶毒的、不道德的或者堕落的）
【记】vic＝vice（n 罪恶），ious－邪恶的
【反】benignant（adj 仁慈的）"
When Mr Josipovic was elected in January he was seen as a nice, inoffensivelawyer. To voters, his main virtue lay in never having held high office, which was taken as a sign that he was not corrupt. A Social Democrat, he was also expected to build bridges to Mrs Kosor, who comes from the centre-right Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ). That expectation has proved false.
inoffensive
adj 不冒犯人的；无害的；不反感的＝unobjectionable
【记】offensive（adj 讨厌的；攻击性的）"
high office 高职位
centre-right n. 右翼联盟
From wikipedia:The centre-right (or center-right), also known as right of centre, is a political term commonly used to describe or denote individuals, political parties, or organizations (such as think tanks) whose views stretch from the centre to the right on the left-right spectrum, excluding far right stances. Centre-right can also describe a coalition of centrist and right-of-centre parties. Many political parties of the centre-right are known to have various factions and members who advocate right-of-centre policies.
The latest fallout between the two came when Mr Josipovic went to the Bosnian parliament last month to express regret for Croatia’s role in the Bosnian war. This had led to human suffering and divisions that still plague us today, he said. Many might consider such words uncontroversial, but the HDZ reacted furiously. The party has reformed itself, but many grandees remain loyal to the memory of its founder (and the country’s wartime leader), Franjo Tudjman. Mrs Kosor complained that the president should make foreign policy with the government, not by himself. He responded by demanding that she show he had breached the constitution or resign.
fallout
n. 原子尘的降下，辐射性微尘，原子尘
n. 余波，附带结果
parliament
n.议会，国会
plaguen （高度传染且经常是致命的）瘟疫；突然的灾害
【区】plaque（n 血小板；斑），play＋que：玩时不能缺血小板，否则血流而死。Plague也可以想成玩时缺，缺了瘟疫才能玩。"
vt. 折磨，烦扰，造成麻烦
uncontroversialadj. 非争论性的，未引起争论的
furiously
ad.狂怒地；有力地
founder
v 沉没＝sink；倒塌＝collapse；（计划）失败＝fail；n 奠基者；缔造者
【区】flounder（vi 在水中挣扎n 比目鱼）flow underfounder来自词根found底部
【反】stay aloft（在高处）；succeed（v 成功）"
grandee
n.贵族；显贵的人
breach
v 违背；打破，突破；n （与of连用）违背，不履行；缺口＝fissure＝rent＝rift＝schism＝hiatus
【例】You are in breach of the contract 你违反了合同。
【记】breach＝break（n 破裂；v 打破，违犯）
【反】solder（v 焊接）"
Later in April both leaders attended a memorial ceremony at Jasenovac, Croatia’s second-world-war death camp, in which Serbs, Jews, Roma and undesirable Croats were murdered. Mr Josipovic was cheered but Mrs Kosor was jeered. She said bitterly that this was organised.
Croatia hopes to finish its European Union membership negotiations by the end of the year, so it can join in 2012. Yet the UN war-crimes tribunal could still be an obstacle. Its chief prosecutor thinks Croatia is not doing enough to find missing documents (a charge the Croats deny). As with other Balkan countries, a negative opinion from The Hague may delay or block EU accession.
negotiation
n 商议；谈判
【记】读：你got，ia，tion－你有得到东西的病－需要通过谈判
【类】clog:drainage＝stalemate:negotiations阻塞排水＝僵持谈判negotiator:agreement＝? 谈判者:协议＝?
【反】tenacious（adj 顽强的）－negotiable（adj 可通过谈判解决的）"
prosecutor
n.起诉人
If the government cannot give people good news about the EU and the economy remains creaky, that would be bad for Mrs Kosor, who faces an election in 2011. When she came to power in July 2009 her popularity soared. Now it is falling, while Mr Josipovic’s is rising. In March a former deputy prime minister from HDZ was arrested on corruption charges. Mr Josipovic hopes more arrests will follow. This war will go on.
creaky
adj. 叽叽嘎嘎的，发辗的
——————————————————————————————
因为最近看文勇的IBT阅读，看到辛勤的翻译版本，故决定偶尔更新提供翻译版本，由于长期不曾涉及翻译，中文水平稚嫩，还望各大看客谅解，同时欢迎各大板油跟帖提出异议和疑问。
克罗地亚的烦恼
萨格勒布战争
因两位领导失和带来的问题
2010年5月6日|萨格勒布|来自The Economist印刷版
这是一场战争，克罗地亚周刊Globus的编辑Nino Djula说。克罗地亚有很多场战争可以给人们谈论：波斯尼亚战争，一场反腐战争，与海牙（荷兰城市）的联合战争犯罪法庭的问题。但是这场战争，Djula指的是总统Ivo Josipovic与首相Jadranka Kosor残酷敌意的爆发。
当Josipovic于1月刚刚被选举出的时候，他被看成一个友好的，不冒犯人的律师。对于投票者来说，他最大的优点就存在于他从来没有拥有过高职位，即他从来没有腐败过的标注。一个社会民主主义者，他也被期待成为与克罗地亚民主主义右翼联盟Kosor成员的桥梁。但是这个期待已被证明成是错误的。
这个战争最近的余波表现在上个月Josipovic去参加波斯尼亚国会表达克罗地亚在波斯尼亚战争中的角色表示遗憾时。他说，这导致至今还烦扰着人们的痛苦和分裂。也许很多人会觉得那些话语是不会引起争论的，但右翼联盟的反应了十分强烈的怒气。政党已经自己重组了，但还有很多贵族们仍然忠于这些记忆的奠基者（和这个国家的战时领导），Franjo Tudjman。Kosor曾经抱怨说总统制造外交政策应该与政府成员一起，而不是他自己。他要求她秀出他曾经破坏或者重新修订宪法的证据。
四月末的时候所有的领导都出席了在Jasenovac举办的纪念仪式，克罗地亚的二战死亡集中营，即塞尔维亚人，犹太人，罗马人和令人不悦的克罗地亚人被谋杀的地方。Josipovic显得很兴奋但Kosor只是嘲笑。她说看似充满仇恨的这些都是安排好的。
克罗地亚希望在年末完成它与欧盟成员的协商，这样它就能在2012年的时候加入欧盟。但是联合战争犯罪仍然是一大障碍。它的主要起诉者认为克罗地亚已经足够努力在寻找丢失的文件（一个对克罗地亚抵赖的指控）。和其他巴尔干半岛上的国家一起，一个负面的观念就是海牙可能延迟或者阻碍欧盟的就职到位。
如果政府不能给予命中更多的关于欧盟和经济持续叽叽嘎嘎发展的好消息，形势将不利于即将面临2011年新一轮选举的Kosor.自她2009年7月上任以来她的名声猛增。但现在。当她与Josipovic的矛盾不断攀升，她的名声也在不断下降。三月的时候，一个右翼联盟以前的代理首相因腐败的指控被逮捕。Josipovic希望接下来有更多的人被逮捕。这场战争还在继续。
原文链接：http://www.economist.com/world/europe/displayStory.cfm?story_id=16063940&source=hptextfeature
作者: 眼泪成诗 时间: 2010-5-13 13:58:01
提示: 作者被禁止或删除 内容自动屏蔽
作者: friendjihao 时间: 2010-7-9 14:38:16
虽然我是考托，但也来报个名，最近在收集作文的例子，希望能有所收获！
作者: zhangxiaohang1 时间: 2010-7-9 20:21:28
占楼收藏
作者: ggjy 时间: 2010-7-9 21:35:13
不错不错，才发现自己英语文章都快不会看了。。。虽然在准备AW但是阅读确实不能放，G后还有T呢。。。
作者: wuqian0801 时间: 2010-7-10 13:53:47
58# friendjihao
托福作文贴近生活比较好。。 GRE issue之类的都是绕来绕去说 比较不适合。。 不过遣词造句还是很有帮助的。。
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