1. A new audiotape supposedly from Osama bin Laden, and Al-Jazeera has aired it. A voice identified as bin Laden says Al Qaeda is making preparations for attacks in the US, but offers a truce to build Iraq and Afghanistan.
2. Islamic Jihad has phoned the Associated Press to claim responsibility for today's suicide bombing in Tel Aviv's central bus station. A police commander says the blast wounded 15 people. Witnesses say the bomber pretended to be a peddler in a crowded mall.
3. More videotape of US reporter Jill Carroll was aired by Al-Jazeera television today. The 28 year-old was kidnapped in Iraq. Her captors threaten to kill her tomorrow, if all female Iraqis in U.S. military custody aren’t freed.
4. A fiery train collision in Alabama kept hundreds of people away from their homes overnight. About five hundred people were evacuated after a train carrying sodium cyanide caught fire when it rear-ended another train. The huge cloud of billowing black smoke could be seen forty miles away.
WORDS IN THE NEWS
1. peddler : noun [C] one who travels about selling wares for a living; a hawker
2. captor : noun [C] someone who is keeping another person prisoner e.g. He managed to escape from his captors.
3. sodium cyanide : a poisonous white crystalline compound, NaCN, used in extracting gold and silver from ores and in dye manufacture 氰化钠
4. rear-end : verb to hit the back of one car with another in an accident: e.g. My new car was rear-ended while it was parked outside the station.
5. billowing : adj. (Dictionary.com) moving in surges and billows and rolls: e.g. billowing smoke from burning houses
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