英国新闻听力 124

The disgraced American financier Bernard Madoff has admitted swindling investors¹ out of tens of billions of dollars in what has been called the biggest ever fraud of its kind. He pleaded guilty in New York to 11 charges, including money laundering² and theft. He is still awaiting sentencing. Here is our North America business correspondent Greg Wood.

For 20 years, Bernard Madoff misappropriated billions of dollars from clients pretending to invest it, but in fact recycling it through an elaborate system of fund companies in the U. S. and London while taking a big cut for himself. He hired numerous employees, many of whom had no relevant experience to transfer money and gave the impression that he was running a legitimate³ investment business. At the same time, a carefully tended aura of exclusivity and philanthropic work created the respectable image which allowed him to go undetected for so long.

A U. S. official has said that Mexican drug gangs are the biggest organized crime threat facing the United States. Roger Rufe of the Department of Homeland Security said there were plans to send troops of the National Guard and the Department of Defense⁴ or DOD to the border if other agencies became overwhelmed. He told a congressional panel that the US did not want to militarize the border with Mexico, but would do so if necessary.

"Our contingency⁵ plan is designed to address escalating⁶ levels of violence, should that happen. The way that the plan is set up is that we would exhaust all the resources the federal government short of DOD and National Guard troops, before we would reach that tipping point, and we are working very close in a planning process right now with our brethren in the National Guard and the Department of Defense to make sure we are ready when the time comes."

The medical charity, Médecins Sans Frontières, is pulling the bulk of its workers out of the Darfur region of Sudan where they have been helping⁷ hundreds of thousands of displaced people. The decision follows the abduction of three MSF workers on Wednesday night. Last week, Sudan expelled more than a dozen aid groups after an International indictment⁸ was issued against President Omar al-Bashir for alleged⁹ war crimes in Darfur. Karen Allen reports.

The three people kidnapped included a Canadian nurse, an Italian doctor and a French coordinator¹⁰. They were snatched at gunpoint from their offices in Saraf Umra 230 kilometers west of El Fasher in North Darfur on Wednesday night. The Sudanese government source said that based on information from the guards it released, it was an unknown group that had seized the foreigners. Banditry is common right across the Darfur region, but given the current tensions between aid agencies and the Sudanese government, questions have been asked as to whether the kidnapping was politically inspired.

The crew of the International Space Station have briefly¹¹ taken refuge in their Soyuz capsule because it appeared there might be an impact with a cloud of debris¹². The American space agency said the debris later passed the space station without any impact.

A British economist¹³ Nicolas Stern has warned leading climate scientists that the potential future impact from global warming has been grossly underestimated and that some governments have still not grasped the dire¹⁴ consequences for humanity if they don't act quickly. Lord Stern, who produced an influential¹⁵ report on the threat of climate change in 2006, was speaking at an international meeting of scientists in Copenhagen. He said that without rapid action to cut carbon, temperatures would increase by five degrees Celsius¹⁶ and many areas would be made uninhabitable by rising sea levels.

"You'd see hundreds of millions of people, probably billions of people, who would have to move, and we know that that would cause conflicts, so we would see as it were a very extended period of conflict around the world decades or centuries as hundreds of millions of people move. So I think it's very important that we understand the magnitude of the risk we are running."

A court in Belgrade has handed down the maximum 20-year jail sentence to seven former Serb soldiers involved in one of the worst massacres¹⁷ of Croatia's War of Independence, the summary execution of some 200 Croatian prisoners of war. The victims were taken from hospital to a farm near the eastern Croatian City of Vukovar in November 1991 and shot dead. The case was seen as a test of the Serbian judiciary's readiness to punish Serbs guilty of atrocities¹⁸.

Scientists in the United States say they've developed a coating material that heals its own scratches when exposed to sunlight. Writing in the journal Science, the researchers say the material could be used for scratch-free cars, furniture or even bio-medical products. They say the material comes from a substance called chitosan, found in the shells of crabs¹⁹. Sunlight allows the substance to draw molecules²⁰ back together after they've been ruptured²¹, smoothing the scratches out, sometimes in less than an hour.

1 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

2 laundering   

n.洗涤（衣等），洗烫（衣等）；洗（钱）v.洗（衣服等），洗烫（衣服等）( launder的现在分词 )；洗（黑钱）（把非法收入改头换面，变为貌似合法的收入）

参考例句：

• Separate the white clothes from the dark clothes before laundering. 洗衣前应当把浅色衣服和深色衣服分开。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• He was charged with laundering money. 他被指控洗钱。 来自《简明英汉词典》

3 legitimate   

adj.合法的，合理的，合乎逻辑的；v.使合法

参考例句：

• Sickness is a legitimate reason for asking for leave.生病是请假的一个正当的理由。
• That's a perfectly legitimate fear.怀有这种恐惧完全在情理之中。

4 defense   

n.防御，保卫；[pl.]防务工事；辩护，答辩

参考例句：

• The accused has the right to defense.被告人有权获得辩护。
• The war has impacted the area with military and defense workers.战争使那个地区挤满了军队和防御工程人员。

5 contingency   

n.意外事件，可能性

参考例句：

• We should be prepared for any contingency.我们应该对任何应急情况有所准备。
• A fire in our warehouse was a contingency that we had not expected.库房的一场大火是我们始料未及的。

6 escalating   

v.（使）逐步升级( escalate的现在分词 )；（使）逐步扩大；（使）更高；（使）更大

参考例句：

• The cost of living is escalating. 生活费用在迅速上涨。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• The cost of living is escalating in the country. 这个国家的生活费用在上涨。 来自辞典例句

7 helping   

n.食物的一份&adj.帮助人的，辅助的

参考例句：

• The poor children regularly pony up for a second helping of my hamburger. 那些可怜的孩子们总是要求我把我的汉堡包再给他们一份。
• By doing this, they may at times be helping to restore competition. 这样一来, 他在某些时候,有助于竞争的加强。

8 indictment   

n.起诉；诉状

参考例句：

• He handed up the indictment to the supreme court.他把起诉书送交最高法院。
• They issued an indictment against them.他们起诉了他们。

9 alleged   

a.被指控的，嫌疑的

参考例句：

• It was alleged that he had taken bribes while in office. 他被指称在任时收受贿赂。
• alleged irregularities in the election campaign 被指称竞选运动中的不正当行为

10 coordinator   

n.协调人

参考例句：

• The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, headed by the Emergency Relief Coordinator, coordinates all UN emergency relief. 联合国人道主义事务协调厅在紧急救济协调员领导下，负责协调联合国的所有紧急救济工作。
• How am I supposed to find the client-relations coordinator? 我怎么才能找到客户关系协调员的办公室？

11 briefly   

adv.简单地，简短地

参考例句：

• I want to touch briefly on another aspect of the problem.我想简单地谈一下这个问题的另一方面。
• He was kidnapped and briefly detained by a terrorist group.他被一个恐怖组织绑架并短暂拘禁。

12 debris   

n.瓦砾堆，废墟，碎片

参考例句：

• After the bombing there was a lot of debris everywhere.轰炸之后到处瓦砾成堆。
• Bacteria sticks to food debris in the teeth,causing decay.细菌附着在牙缝中的食物残渣上，导致蛀牙。

13 economist   

n.经济学家，经济专家，节俭的人

参考例句：

• He cast a professional economist's eyes on the problem.他以经济学行家的眼光审视这个问题。
• He's an economist who thinks he knows all the answers.他是个经济学家，自以为什么都懂。

14 dire   

adj.可怕的，悲惨的，阴惨的，极端的

参考例句：

• There were dire warnings about the dangers of watching too much TV.曾经有人就看电视太多的危害性提出严重警告。
• We were indeed in dire straits.But we pulled through.那时我们的困难真是大极了，但是我们渡过了困难。

15 influential   

adj.有影响的，有权势的

参考例句：

• He always tries to get in with the most influential people.他总是试图巴结最有影响的人物。
• He is a very influential man in the government.他在政府中是个很有影响的人物。

16 Celsius   

adj.摄氏温度计的，摄氏的

参考例句：

• The temperature tonight will fall to seven degrees Celsius.今晚气温将下降到七摄氏度。
• The maximum temperature in July may be 36 degrees Celsius.七月份最高温度可能达到36摄氏度。

17 massacres   

大屠杀( massacre的名词复数 )； 惨败

参考例句：

• The time is past for guns and killings and massacres. 动不动就用枪、动不动就杀、大规模屠杀的时代已经过去了。 来自教父部分
• Numberless recent massacres were still vivid in their recollection. 近来那些不可胜数的屠杀，在他们的头脑中记忆犹新。

18 atrocities   

n.邪恶，暴行( atrocity的名词复数 )；滔天大罪

参考例句：

• They were guilty of the most barbarous and inhuman atrocities. 他们犯有最野蛮、最灭绝人性的残暴罪行。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• The enemy's atrocities made one boil with anger. 敌人的暴行令人发指。 来自《现代汉英综合大词典》

19 crabs   

n.蟹( crab的名词复数 )；阴虱寄生病；蟹肉v.捕蟹( crab的第三人称单数 )

参考例句：

• As we walked along the seashore we saw lots of tiny crabs. 我们在海岸上散步时看到很多小蟹。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• The fish and crabs scavenge for decaying tissue. 鱼和蟹搜寻腐烂的组织为食。 来自《简明英汉词典》

20 molecules   

分子( molecule的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• The structure of molecules can be seen under an electron microscope. 分子的结构可在电子显微镜下观察到。
• Inside the reactor the large molecules are cracked into smaller molecules. 在反应堆里，大分子裂变为小分子。

21 ruptured   

v.（使）破裂( rupture的过去式和过去分词 )；（使体内组织等）断裂；使（友好关系）破裂；使绝交

参考例句：

• They reported that the pipeline had ruptured. 他们报告说管道已经破裂了。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• The wall through Berlin was finally ruptured, prefiguring the reunification of Germany. 柏林墙终于倒塌了，预示着德国的重新统一。 来自辞典例句