CNN 美国有线新闻 2014-09-19

 Fridays are awesome¹. I'm Carl Azuz. Welcome to CNN student news. First up, should Scotland be an independent country from the United Kingdom? Scottish voters will decide next week in a simple Yes-No vote. Scotland has been a division of the UK for 307 years. But its Independence Movement said those days should be over, in part because it believes Scots, not the central UK government, should be able to determine Scotland's future. Also Scotland has a lot of oil. The Independence Movement says if it separated from the UK, Scotland would be one of the riches countries in the world. The UK says Scotland has only 1/10 of the oil that the Independence Movement thinks it has. And Britain's government has been begging Scotland to stay part of the Union, which Britain calls one of the world's most successful unions. There are a lot of unanswered questions. How would this affect Sotland's economy? What currency would it have? Would it stay part of the European Union? All of these will need answers if Scots choose independence. Polls indicate the vote will be very close. 

 

In West Africa, this year's outbreak of Ebola virus is merciless. That's the word from the United Nations. Liberia has been hit the hardest. The hemorrhagic fever has killed at least 1200 people there. Liberia's Finance Minister says his nation is at war with an enemy it can't see. The nation's healthcare system can't handle it. Efforts to stop the virus from spreading aren't working. 

 

Here is the way it's supposed to work. For every Ebola patient, healthcare worker are supposed to keep track of every single person who has had close contact with them. If one of these contacts gets sick, he's supposed to be isolated². Then all of his contacts are followed until there are no more sick patients. It's called Contact Tracing. It's pretty simple but it's powerful and helped put a stop to SARS and to Small Pox. But in many parts of West Africa, Contact Tracing is breaking down. These slums are a big reason why. In many parts of West Africa, streets have no name; people have no addresses; there may not be maps. That means some contacts never get found. Here is why that's such a problem. A missed contact can spread Ebola to other contacts and they'll be missed too. That's why the CDC says even one missed contact can keep the outbreak going. By now in West Africa, they're entire chains of transmission that are invisible. The computers databases that keep track of all these cases and contacts often are not in good shape. One disease detective from CDC working in Sierra Leone, she says their computer database there is in shambles³. The CDC has designed special software to keep track of these cases and these contacts and they tried to implement⁴ it in West Africa but even that hasn't gone smoothly⁵. All of this is starting to add up and it has the World Health Organization really concerned.

 

1 awesome   

adj.令人惊叹的，难得吓人的，很好的

参考例句：

• The church in Ireland has always exercised an awesome power.爱尔兰的教堂一直掌握着令人敬畏的权力。
• That new white convertible is totally awesome.那辆新的白色折篷汽车简直棒极了.

2 isolated   

adj.与世隔绝的

参考例句：

• His bad behaviour was just an isolated incident. 他的不良行为只是个别事件。
• Patients with the disease should be isolated. 这种病的患者应予以隔离。

3 shambles   

n.混乱之处；废墟

参考例句：

• My room is a shambles.我房间里乱七八糟。
• The fighting reduced the city to a shambles.这场战斗使这座城市成了一片废墟。

4 implement   

n.(pl.)工具，器具；vt.实行，实施，执行

参考例句：

• Don't undertake a project unless you can implement it.不要承担一项计划，除非你能完成这项计划。
• The best implement for digging a garden is a spade.在花园里挖土的最好工具是铁锹。

5 smoothly   

adv.平滑地，顺利地，流利地，流畅地

参考例句：

• The workmen are very cooperative,so the work goes on smoothly.工人们十分合作，所以工作进展顺利。
• Just change one or two words and the sentence will read smoothly.这句话只要动一两个字就顺了。