NPR美国国家公共电台 2013-07-22

　　From NPR News in Washington, I'm Nora Raum.

 

　　Detroit officials say they are looking to the federal government for help for their city which filed for bankruptcy¹ last week. Mayor Dave Bing was asked about a federal bailout this morning on ABC's This Week.

 

　　Not yet, you know, I know the president has a lot on his plate. This is going to add tremendous rate to that. And I want to say we are not the only city that's going to struggle through what we are going through. There are over 100 major urban cities that are having the same problems that we are having.

 

　　Detroit Emergency Manager Kevin Orr was asked the same question on FOX News Sunday.

 

　　We operate on the assumption that we have to cure this process, this problem on our own. We are not expecting the cavalry² to come charging in. We are out here on outpost and we have to fix it because we dug this hole.

 

　　Orr said the city had no choice but to file for bankruptcy protection. He said he believes the city will be able to rehabilitate³ itself and investors⁴ will eventually have confidence in Detroit.

 

　　Violence continues in Afghanistan. Militants⁵ attacked the compound of a district governor eastern Afghanistan today, killing⁶ his brother and several guards. NPR's Sean Carberry reports a female police officer was assassinated⁷ in a separate attack.

 

　　A government spokesman says the officer, her husband and other family members were  walking home from visiting in laws when gunmen approached and killed her. The rest of her family was unharmed and assailants escaped. Another female police officer was assassinated outside her home in southern Afghanistan earlier this month. Women make up about 1% of the national police force and many in this conservative country don't condole⁸ women joining the police or military. According to the organization Human Rights Watch, female police officers are frequently the victims of sexual assault by their male colleagues. Sean Carberry, NPR News, Kabul.

 

　　The U.S. navy says it's trying to figure out what went wrong during a training exercise in Australia last week. Two U.S. fighter jets dropped four unarmed bombs on the Great Barrier Reef Marine⁹ Park. None of the bombs exploded. But that doesn't make Senator Larissa Waters of the Australian Greens party  feel any better about it.

 

　　We are letting the U.S. military drop bombs  on the World Heritage Great Barrier Reef. I mean, have we gone completely mad. Is this how we look after our World Heritage areas now? Letting a foreign pilot drop bombs on it?

 

　　Waters was interviewed by the Australian broadcast corporation. The Great Barrier Reef is the world's largest network of coral structures. It stretches more than 1,800 miles along the Australian northeast coast.

 

　　In Japan, the party of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe won a decisive victory in an upper house election today, giving in control of both chambers¹⁰ for the first time in six years. This appears to give Abe a mandate¹¹ to pursue difficult legislative¹² reforms designed to improve the economy.

 

　　This is NPR News.

 

　　Belgium has a new king. Seventy-nine year old King Albert abdicated¹³ today to allow his son to become the country's new monarch¹⁴. King Philippe is 53. He was sworn into the ceremony in Brussels. He took his oath in Belgium's three official languages, Dutch, French and German. He is the seventh king in Belgium, a largely ceremonial position. The prime minister holds political power.

 

　　Fans and scholars of Ernest Hemingway can now study the early life of the Nobel and Pulitzer Prize winner. NPR's Renee Montagne has more.

 

　　The John F. Kennedy Presidential Library digitally uploaded five scrapbooks Sunday on Hemingway's birthday. In them , his mother dutifully chronicled the minutia¹⁵ of his life from birth to age 18. Hemingway grew up in Oak Park, Illinois, a suburb of Chicago  that Frank Lloyd Wright once described as having so many churches for so many good people to go to. In addition to the many church pamphlets, his mother also saved spelling tests, water color paintings of boats and clippings from his high school newspaper. There are also photos of the youngsters with guns and fishing rods. Evidence of the many summers he spent at his family's vacation home in Michigan. And here, perhaps a sign of his future, under one photo, his mother wrote, Can cock my own gun. Renee Montagne NPR News, Washington.

 

　　House Speaker John Boehner was asked in an interview aired this morning why the Congress is passing so few laws these days. He said Congress are to be judged on how many laws it repeals¹⁶. The Ohio Republican told CBS's Face the Nation the U.S. already has more laws than the administration could ever enforce.

 

　　I'm Nora Raum, NPR News, in Washington.
 

1 bankruptcy   

n.破产；无偿付能力

参考例句：

• You will have to pull in if you want to escape bankruptcy.如果你想避免破产，就必须节省开支。
• His firm is just on thin ice of bankruptcy.他的商号正面临破产的危险。

2 cavalry   

n.骑兵；轻装甲部队

参考例句：

• We were taken in flank by a troop of cavalry. 我们翼侧受到一队骑兵的袭击。
• The enemy cavalry rode our men down. 敌人的骑兵撞倒了我们的人。

3 rehabilitate   

vt.改造(罪犯)，修复；vi.复兴，(罪犯)经受改造

参考例句：

• There was no money to rehabilitate the tower.没有资金修复那座塔。
• He used exercise programmes to rehabilitate the patients.他采用体育锻炼疗法使患者恢复健康。

4 investors   

n.投资者，出资者( investor的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• a con man who bilked investors out of millions of dollars 诈取投资者几百万元的骗子
• a cash bonanza for investors 投资者的赚钱机会

5 militants   

激进分子，好斗分子( militant的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• The militants have been sporadically fighting the government for years. 几年来，反叛分子一直对政府实施零星的战斗。
• Despite the onslaught, Palestinian militants managed to fire off rockets. 尽管如此，巴勒斯坦的激进分子仍然发射导弹。

6 killing   

n.巨额利润；突然赚大钱，发大财

参考例句：

• Investors are set to make a killing from the sell-off.投资者准备清仓以便大赚一笔。
• Last week my brother made a killing on Wall Street.上个周我兄弟在华尔街赚了一大笔。

7 assassinated   

v.暗杀( assassinate的过去式和过去分词 )；中伤；诋毁；破坏

参考例句：

• The prime minister was assassinated by extremists. 首相遭极端分子暗杀。
• Then, just two days later, President Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas. 跟着在两天以后，肯尼迪总统在达拉斯被人暗杀。 来自辞典例句

8 condole   

v.同情；慰问

参考例句：

• We condole with him on his loss.我们对他的损失深表同情。
• I condole with you.We have lost a most dear and valuable relation.我向你表示唁慰，我们失去了一位最可爱的、最可贵的亲人。

9 marine   

adj.海的；海生的；航海的；海事的；n.水兵

参考例句：

• Marine creatures are those which live in the sea. 海洋生物是生存在海里的生物。
• When the war broke out,he volunteered for the Marine Corps.战争爆发时，他自愿参加了海军陆战队。

10 chambers   

n.房间( chamber的名词复数 )；（议会的）议院；卧室；会议厅

参考例句：

• The body will be removed into one of the cold storage chambers. 尸体将被移到一个冷冻间里。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• Mr Chambers's readable book concentrates on the middle passage: the time Ransome spent in Russia. Chambers先生的这本值得一看的书重点在中间：Ransome在俄国的那几年。 来自互联网

11 mandate   

n.托管地；命令，指示

参考例句：

• The President had a clear mandate to end the war.总统得到明确的授权结束那场战争。
• The General Election gave him no such mandate.大选并未授予他这种权力。

12 legislative   

n.立法机构，立法权；adj.立法的，有立法权的

参考例句：

• Congress is the legislative branch of the U.S. government.国会是美国政府的立法部门。
• Today's hearing was just the first step in the legislative process.今天的听证会只是展开立法程序的第一步。

13 abdicated   

放弃（职责、权力等）( abdicate的过去式和过去分词 )； 退位，逊位

参考例句：

• He abdicated in favour of his son. 他把王位让给了儿子。
• King Edward Ⅷ abdicated in 1936 to marry a commoner. 国王爱德华八世于1936年退位与一个平民结婚。

14 monarch   

n.帝王，君主，最高统治者

参考例句：

• The monarch's role is purely ceremonial.君主纯粹是个礼仪职位。
• I think myself happier now than the greatest monarch upon earth.我觉得这个时候比世界上什么帝王都快乐。

15 minutia   

n.微枝末节，细节

参考例句：

• They are take great pains for the every minutia.他们为每个细节煞费苦心。
• Much of his early work is concerned with the minutiae of rural life.他早期的许多作品关注的是农村生活中一些鸡毛蒜皮的琐事。

16 repeals   

撤销，废除( repeal的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• The measure repeals a previous law that prevented local governments from targeting specific breeds for sterilization. 这项法令的出台将废止之前一项限制地方政府针对某种犬类采用绝育措施的法律。