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(单词翻译:双击或拖选)
Fox producer's warning against Jeanine Pirro surfaces in Dominion1 defamation2 suit
The November 2020 email from an anguished4 Fox News news producer to colleagues sent up a flare5 amid a fusillade of false claims.
The producer warned: Fox cannot let host Jeanine Pirro back on the air. She is pulling conspiracy6 theories from dark corners of the Web to justify7 then-President Donald Trump8's lies that the election had been stolen from him. The existence of the email, confirmed by two people with direct knowledge of it, is first publicly disclosed by NPR in this story. Fox News declined comment.
Pirro was far from alone in broadcasting such false claims. In the weeks that followed Election Day 2020, other prominent Fox stars, commentators9 and their guests heavily promoted them.
A repeat target was Dominion Voting Systems, the election machine and technology company. Trump and his allies alleged10 on Fox that Dominion was engaged in a conscious effort to throw the 2020 race to Joe Biden. They implied and falsely asserted on Fox programs that Dominion's machines and software either discarded Trump's votes or transferred them to Biden. Dominion argues their false claims were frequently egged on by Fox's own stars.
The producer's email is among the voluminous correspondence acquired by Dominion's attorneys as part of its discovery of evidence in a $1.6 billion defamation suit it filed against Fox News and its parent company. Dominion alleges11 it has been "irreparably harmed" by the lies, conspiracy theories and wild claims of election fraud that aired on Fox.
The role of Pirro - a former New York state judge and Westchester County district attorney - remains12 under sharp scrutiny13. In 2019, Trump called for her return to the airwaves after the network publicly condemned14 her anti-Muslim remarks. In 2020, she attended Trump's belligerent15 address late on Election Night from the White House and advanced his arguments on the air in the days and weeks that followed.
On Nov. 14, 2020, for example, the day that Biden clinched16 his victory, Pirro questioned why vote counts shifted against Trump over the course of Election Night in such states as Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin. (Some counties were counted later than others; ballots17 cast the same day were often tallied18 before those cast by mail.) "The Dominion Software System has been tagged as one allegedly capable of flipping19 votes," Pirro told viewers, as she promoted Trump campaign attorney Sidney Powell's "findings" on Dominion. (A federal judge in Michigan later officially sanctioned Powell for her actions in court on Trump's behalf after the elections, while the Texas state law bar is seeking to have her formally punished.)
Pirro was among those Fox hosts with increasingly tough talk ahead of the January 2021 certification of Biden's election win. On Jan. 3, 2021, Pirro compared those gathering20 to protest in Washington with Trump to the American soldiers in the Revolutionary War, adding, "Jan. 6 will tell us whether there are any in Congress willing to battle for America." That day led to bloody21 battles at the U.S. Congress. As one of his last acts in office, Trump pardoned Pirro's husband for two-decades-old convictions for tax evasion22.
Dominion and Fox News' lawyers have clashed in recent days, as court records reflect the voting systems company seeks to convince the court to compel Pirro to testify over private texts that, it argues, are relevant to its defamation case.
As high-powered stars testify, high stakes come into focus
As the summer has unfolded, Fox's star TV news hosts such as Tucker Carlson and Sean Hannity have been grilled23 under oath. High-powered attorneys are bearing down on the Murdochs, the most powerful family in English-language media. And it's all part of an all-out legal war. Dominion is seeking to strip away the curtain protecting what happens behind the scenes at the nation's most watched cable news channel, which holds a singular role on the American political scene. The suit could also define what's fair game in journalism24 and politics in a democracy very much on the edge. The trial date is set for April of next year.
The fraud allegations, made without any tangible25 evidence, were repudiated26 by state and local elections officials, Republicans as well as Democrats27, as well as Trump's own attorney general and cyber security chief. In more than 60 substantive28 court rulings, Trump's assertions were found to be groundless, with one limited exception. Fox News argues that it was covering inherently newsworthy claims by inherently newsworthy figures — including the nation's top elected official. It also points to segments where its reporters and news anchors cast cold water on the allegations.
Fox executives publicly say they will prevail
"Freedom of the press is foundational to our democracy and must be protected," a senior spokeswoman for Fox News said in a statement to NPR. She called the damages claims "outrageous29, unsupported and not rooted in sound financial analysis, serving as nothing more than a flagrant attempt to deter30 our journalists from doing their jobs."
"All you're reporting to the public is that somebody — in this case, the president of the United States — has made the allegation of voter fraud by Dominion," Dan Webb, Fox News' outside attorney on the case, tells NPR. "I don't know how anything could be more newsworthy than the president of the United States making the allegation, and his lawyers making the allegations in court, because that's so fundamental."
Dominion ties the rhetoric31 about the company on Fox to harassment32 targeting its employees, "from software engineers to its founder33 and chief executive officer." Several received death threats.
In its legal filings, the company says it suffered "enormous and irreparable economic harm." Dominion says it projects losing profits of more than $600 million over the next eight years. As examples, it cites instances in which lawmakers in numerous states are demanding a review of existing contracts with Dominion; the cancellation34 of a $10 million contract in Stark35 County, Ohio; and Louisiana's recent cancellation of a process that prevents Dominion from securing a $100 million contract in that state.
Besides Carlson and Hannity, the list of Fox figures already questioned under oath in the cases includes former stars (Shepard Smith) and fallen stars (Lou Dobbs and Ed Henry), as well as show producers and programming executives, court records show. Dobbs left the network in early 2021, the day after Smartmatic, the electronic voting company, filed a closely related $2.7 billion defamation suit against Fox over similarly false claims about that firm made on Fox's airwaves.
In conducting the first interview of Trump after the election, Fox Business anchor Maria Bartiromo told Trump and her viewers, "This is disgusting, and we cannot allow America's election to be corrupted36." In mid-December, Bartiromo announced that "an intel source" told her that Trump had won the election. She never followed up with any further material to substantiate37 that reporting. She is due to be deposed38 under oath on Thursday.
Asked by NPR whether Fox still considers Bartiromo a news anchor, and thus part of Fox's news and reporting division, rather than its opinion side, a network spokeswoman declined to comment. It is the first time Fox has not identified Bartiromo as a news-side journalist when directly asked by NPR.
Dominion "exploring" whether Fox staffers knew statements were false
In December 2020, while still a Fox Business host, Dobbs said opponents of President Trump throughout the government had committed "treason," and later suggested that any Republican who upheld President-elect Joe Biden's victory in the Electoral College may be "criminal."
The wide nets cast by Dominion in seeking depositions39 suggests, University of Georgia media law professor Jonathan Peters says, that the company's attorneys are "exploring the extent to which Fox personnel published false statements with knowledge of their falsity or with a 'high degree of awareness40 of their probable falsity,' (the relevant fault standards)."
"This usually takes into account such factors as what the personnel knew at the time they published, whether the sources were reliable, whether the defendant41 ignored clear signs that the statements were wrong, whether the defendant investigated the facts, and what motives42 shaped the statements," Peters writes in an email to NPR.
That assessment43 suggests that material uncovered by Dominion such as the producer's warning about Pirro could provide fuel for the voting machine company's case. While Pirro's weekend show did not air on Nov. 7, 2020, just after the elections, she returned to the air repeatedly. In January, Pirro was elevated to become a full host of The Five, Fox's popular weekday evening political chat show.
Dominion seeks links to Fox News executives and the Murdochs
Dominion has technically44 filed two cases — one against Fox News and the other against Fox Corp, its corporate45 parent. The second Dominion suit is bearing down on Rupert Murdoch and his son Lachlan, who together run the family's vast media holdings, which include the Wall Street Journal, the New York Post, and other newspapers and television properties in Australia and the United Kingdom.
Reporters for Fox and the Wall Street Journal repeatedly knocked down spurious allegations of voter fraud, demonstrating that such facts were known within the Murdoch media empire.
Together, the twin suits could theoretically reach multiple billions of dollars, with punitive46 damages along with financial damages. And of course, the cases carry great significance for the nation more broadly, as it captures the incendiary period between the heated claims of fraud about the November 2020 presidential elections and the ensuing bloody siege of the U.S. Capitol by Trump supporters two months later.
Defamation cases are generally hard to win in the U.S. and Peters says this one is no slam dunk. But given what's already known, he says, he'd rather be on Dominion's legal team than Fox's.
Dominion's attorneys have obtained emails, texts, WhatsApp messages and more, documenting how the network's executives and journalists behaved and acted behind the scenes, as well as determining what they actually knew about the claims, according to three people with knowledge of the litigation. Witnesses have been pressed about the degree to which the Murdochs and Fox News CEO Suzanne Scott were involved in making editorial decisions or kept in the loop.
Such decisions can be crucial: Fox's projection47 on election night 2020 that Biden would win Arizona, first of any major media outlet48, conferred great credibility on the Democratic nominee's imminent49 victory. It also enraged50 Trump and his advisers51, who unsuccessfully pressured the Murdochs to reverse the Fox decision desk's projection, according to three people with direct knowledge. The public call additionally alienated52 Trump's fans — many of whom were Fox's core viewers. For a time, they abandoned the network. The much smaller rival right-wing network Newsmax zoomed53 up from nowhere in the ratings.
In the weeks that followed, key network stars' embrace and validation54 of the Trump camp's lies about the existence of election fraud contradicted some of their Fox colleagues' reporting that disproved it. Top leadership passively acquiesced55 in the star hosts' rhetoric, and took no meaningful steps to stop it, according to seven current and former journalists there. And the audience started to return.
Asked for comment by NPR, a Fox News spokesperson strongly denied this was the case. She emphasized that the talent involved "were covering the most newsworthy story of that period — the president of the United States claiming election fraud."
Fox: Nothing more newsworthy than a president's allegations of election fraud
The network's spokesperson has also pointed56 to periodic segments, mostly from its news reporters and hosts, challenging or even contradicting such claims from Trump allies.
The network and its parent company appear to be girding for a full court trial. In June, Fox hired Webb, who is the co-executive chairman of the powerhouse Chicago-based law firm, Winston & Strawn.
"This case is a relatively57 simple case," Webb tells NPR in an interview.
"The question there is whether or not Fox correctly reported the allegation [of election fraud], and they did," Webb adds. "I don't think there's any question that Fox accurately58 reported an incredibly newsworthy allegation made by the president himself."
Dominion wants Fox to apologize, but that risks offending Trump's fans
A comprehensive settlement, which outside legal observers initially59 suggested would be a possible outcome of the cases, does not currently appear likely, according to several people with knowledge of the litigation.
In theory, it would almost certainly require a payment by Fox of hundreds of millions dollars and an expansive apology — the latter being something that Fox News and Rupert Murdoch have, historically, been loath60 to do.
In 2020, Fox News reached a confidential61, multimillion-dollar settlement with the family of the late Seth Rich, who was baselessly accused on Fox of having leaked thousands of emails from the Democratic National Committee before his killing62 in 2016. Such claims were groundless. Fox retracted63 in 2017 a story making that claim after a week, but never offered a public apology. The network's chief media critic covered the settlement in a minute-long segment on his Sunday show.
Murdoch expressed public contrition64 after it was revealed that people working on behalf of his British tabloid65, News of the World, had hacked66 into the voicemails of a murdered schoolgirl — among hundreds of others of people. At the time, Murdoch was trying to salvage67 a $14 billion deal to take full control of a major British satellite television company. The deal was ultimately scuttled68 by U.K. regulators.
Election lies fueled the deadly Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol
Many observers have tied the lies about election fraud to the overheated rhetoric that fueled the siege of the U.S. Capitol building on Jan. 6, 2021, an effort to block the certification of Biden's victory. Lachlan Murdoch has sued the Australian political news site Crikey over drawing just that connection to Fox and the Murdochs. Press freedoms in that country are not as robust69 as they are here; defamation claims have historically proven far easier to prove there. Crikey's top editor says he welcomes the suit as a way to test Australia's defamation laws.
Former Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull argues that Rupert Murdoch, through Fox News, has done more to undermine American democracy than any other individual alive today.
"The biggest challenge to the United States is not Xi Jinping or Vladimir Putin. It's the animosity, the division, the anti-democratic movements within the United States itself," Turnbull told NPR's Ari Shapiro on All Things Considered. "Fox News is not the only source of this madness, but it is by far the single most influential70 one."
In reply, Fox Corp. spokesman Brian Nick points to Fox News's dominant71 ratings among cable news channels, and the network's strong appeal to Democrats and independent voters, as well as Republicans.
收听单词发音 |
1
dominion
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| n.统治，管辖，支配权；领土，版图 | |
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defamation
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| n.诽谤；中伤 | |
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transcript
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| n.抄本，誊本，副本，肄业证书 | |
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anguished
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| adj.极其痛苦的v.使极度痛苦(anguish的过去式) | |
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flare
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| v.闪耀，闪烁；n.潮红；突发 | |
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conspiracy
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| n.阴谋，密谋，共谋 | |
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justify
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| vt.证明…正当(或有理)，为…辩护 | |
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trump
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| n.王牌，法宝；v.打出王牌，吹喇叭 | |
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commentators
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| n.评论员( commentator的名词复数 )；时事评论员；注释者；实况广播员 | |
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alleged
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| a.被指控的，嫌疑的 | |
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alleges
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| 断言，宣称，辩解( allege的第三人称单数 ) | |
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remains
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| n.剩余物，残留物；遗体，遗迹 | |
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scrutiny
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| n.详细检查，仔细观察 | |
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condemned
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| adj. 被责难的, 被宣告有罪的 动词condemn的过去式和过去分词 | |
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belligerent
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| adj.好战的，挑起战争的；n.交战国，交战者 | |
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clinched
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| v.（尤指两人）互相紧紧抱[扭]住( clinch的过去式和过去分词 )；解决（争端、交易），达成（协议） | |
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ballots
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| n.投票表决( ballot的名词复数 )；选举；选票；投票总数v.（使）投票表决( ballot的第三人称单数 ) | |
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tallied
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| v.计算，清点( tally的过去式和过去分词 )；加标签（或标记）于；（使）符合；（使）吻合 | |
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flipping
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| 讨厌之极的 | |
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gathering
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| n.集会，聚会，聚集 | |
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bloody
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| adj.非常的的；流血的；残忍的；adv.很；vt.血染 | |
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evasion
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| n.逃避，偷漏(税) | |
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grilled
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| adj. 烤的, 炙过的, 有格子的 动词grill的过去式和过去分词形式 | |
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journalism
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| n.新闻工作，报业 | |
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tangible
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| adj.有形的，可触摸的，确凿的，实际的 | |
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repudiated
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| v.（正式地）否认( repudiate的过去式和过去分词 )；拒绝接受；拒绝与…往来；拒不履行（法律义务） | |
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democrats
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| n.民主主义者，民主人士( democrat的名词复数 ) | |
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substantive
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| adj.表示实在的；本质的、实质性的；独立的；n.实词，实名词；独立存在的实体 | |
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outrageous
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| adj.无理的，令人不能容忍的 | |
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deter
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| vt.阻止，使不敢，吓住 | |
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rhetoric
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| n.修辞学，浮夸之言语 | |
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harassment
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| n.骚扰，扰乱，烦恼，烦乱 | |
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Founder
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| n.创始者，缔造者 | |
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cancellation
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| n.删除，取消 | |
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stark
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| adj.荒凉的；严酷的；完全的；adv.完全地 | |
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corrupted
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| （使）败坏( corrupt的过去式和过去分词 )； （使）腐化； 引起（计算机文件等的）错误； 破坏 | |
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substantiate
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| v.证实；证明...有根据 | |
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deposed
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| v.罢免( depose的过去式和过去分词 )；（在法庭上）宣誓作证 | |
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depositions
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| 沉积（物）( deposition的名词复数 )； （在法庭上的）宣誓作证； 处置； 罢免 | |
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awareness
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| n.意识，觉悟，懂事，明智 | |
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defendant
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| n.被告；adj.处于被告地位的 | |
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motives
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| n.动机，目的( motive的名词复数 ) | |
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assessment
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| n.评价；评估；对财产的估价，被估定的金额 | |
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technically
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| adv.专门地，技术上地 | |
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corporate
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| adj.共同的，全体的；公司的，企业的 | |
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punitive
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| adj.惩罚的，刑罚的 | |
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projection
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| n.发射，计划，突出部分 | |
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outlet
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| n.出口/路；销路；批发商店；通风口；发泄 | |
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imminent
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| adj.即将发生的，临近的，逼近的 | |
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enraged
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| 使暴怒( enrage的过去式和过去分词 )； 歜； 激愤 | |
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advisers
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| 顾问，劝告者( adviser的名词复数 )； （指导大学新生学科问题等的）指导教授 | |
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52
alienated
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| adj.感到孤独的，不合群的v.使疏远( alienate的过去式和过去分词 )；使不友好；转让；让渡（财产等） | |
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53
zoomed
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| v.（飞机、汽车等）急速移动( zoom的过去式 )；（价格、费用等）急升，猛涨 | |
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validation
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| n.确认 | |
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acquiesced
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| v.默认，默许( acquiesce的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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pointed
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| adj.尖的，直截了当的 | |
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relatively
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| adv.比较...地，相对地 | |
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accurately
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| adv.准确地，精确地 | |
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initially
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| adv.最初，开始 | |
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loath
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| adj.不愿意的；勉强的 | |
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confidential
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| adj.秘（机）密的，表示信任的，担任机密工作的 | |
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killing
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| n.巨额利润；突然赚大钱，发大财 | |
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retracted
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| v.撤回或撤消( retract的过去式和过去分词 )；拒绝执行或遵守；缩回；拉回 | |
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contrition
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| n.悔罪，痛悔 | |
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tabloid
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| adj.轰动性的，庸俗的；n.小报，文摘 | |
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hacked
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| 生气 | |
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salvage
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| v.救助，营救，援救；n.救助，营救 | |
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scuttled
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| v.使船沉没( scuttle的过去式和过去分词 )；快跑，急走 | |
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robust
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| adj.强壮的，强健的，粗野的，需要体力的，浓的 | |
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influential
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| adj.有影响的，有权势的 | |
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dominant
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| adj.支配的，统治的；占优势的；显性的；n.主因，要素，主要的人(或物)；显性基因 | |
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