VOA新闻100篇
VOA News Item 1 经济：印度及东南亚国家签署了自由贸易协定
Indian Commerce Minister Anand Sharma and his counterparts from the Association of Southeast Asian Nations aled the agreement in Bangkok Thursday. They met on the sidelines of the annual ASEAN Economic Ministers Meeting.
The agreement creates one of Asia’s biggest trading areas and integrates India’s fast growing economy with 10 of its neighbors.
Trade between India and ASEAN amounts to $40 billion each year. Under the pact, India and ASEAN will eliminate tariffs on various goods by 2016.
VOA News Item 2 政治：英国政党领袖进行电视辩论第二轮角逐
swear it againBritain’s political life has been dominated for the past three decades by two parties —the Conrvatives, now led by David Cameron, and Labor headed by current Prime Minister Gordon Brown.
But a third party, the Liberal Democrats, are turning this election into a three-hor race.
Their campaign was given a major boost by Britain’s first ever televid debate last week; Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg emerged as the clear winner.
Viewer polls taken after this cond debate, which focud on foreign policy, showed there was no runaway victor.
The last time Britain had a hung parliament was in 1974. A final televid debate is to take place next Thursday, followed by the election on May 6.
VOA News Item 3 政治：参议院就索托马约尔就任最高法院大法官进行了讨论On the cond day of debate all signs continued to point toward an easy confirmation win for Sotomayor, the 55-year-old federal court judge nominated by President Barack Obama earlier this year.
Although most of the 40 Senate Republicans are likely to vote against her, the decision Wednesday
of Missouri Senator Kit Bond added to the number of Republicans who have committed to voting for her.
Senator Bond, who is one of veral Republicans retiring from the Senate next year, said while he respects and agrees with the legal reasoning others in his party ud to oppo Sotomayor, lawmakers have an obligation to show deference to a president’s choice of a nominee.
VOA News Item 4 政治：南部非洲的部长们准备报告区域危机
Foreign ministers of the Southern African Development Community met in Maputo to prepare a report on the region’s political cris. It is to be prented to African leaders at their upcoming summit in Ethiopia.
SADC’s Political and Diplomatic Committee has been mediating three major cris in the region.
SADC officials said the ministers are plead the various parties to the unity government in Zimbabwe resumed negotiations on implementing their power-sharing agreement. They said they
believed Zimbabwe was on the right path.
The officials said the ministers also believe that progress is being made toward easing the conflict in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo and that reconciliation efforts between the government and various rebel groups were on the right track.
But the officials said they were less optimistic about the political crisis in Madagascar. It erupted in March after Andry Rajoelina, backed by the military, ized power following the ouster of then-President Marc Ravalomanana.
SADC and the African Union do not recognize the Rajoelina government and have suspended Madagascar from their organizations.
VOA News Item 5 政治：以色列国防部长遭到恐吓
Security has been tightened around Israeli Defen Minister Ehud Barak after he received dozens of death threats. Security sources say the threats were made by Jewish militants who oppo the government’s partial freeze on ttlement construction in the West Bank. The freeze was impod in November under pressure from the United States, which es the ttlements as an obstacle to peace.
The death threats are being taken riously. In 1995, Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin was assassinated by an Orthodox Jew oppod to his policy of trading land for peace with the Palestinians.
ef英语培训VOA News Item 6 政治：泰国军警围捕红衫军领袖行动失败
Government officials say they will investigate just how three leaders of the anti-government protests managed to escape when police tried to surround their hotel Friday.
One of the leaders climbed down three floors using a rope, and was rushed away by supporters thronging the building.
Officials earlier Friday said the government is preparing to arrest people linked to clashes with curity forces last Saturday that left 24 soldiers and protesters dead.
The government says armed men infiltrated protester ranks and fired on troops trying to disper a rally.
The anti-government movement, led by the United Democratic Front against Dictatorship or UDD, demands that the Government call fresh elections. UDD supporters have held protests in Bangkok fo
r more than a month.
Thailand is facing its most vere political crisis in almost 20 years. Some parties in the governing coalition want to t a clear time frame for elections to ea tensions. But the government says it will only call elections once the political situation has cooled.
cmbcVOA News Item 7 政治：吉尔吉斯斯坦政变威胁美军基地未来
Kyrgyzstan’s five-day-old provisional government is vowing to u the country’s military to launch a special operation to neutralize President Kurmanbek Bakiyev if he does not resign.
Interim Kyrgyz leader Roza Otunbayeva says her government is willing to negotiate his departure from the country and wants to resolve the standoff without any more harm to innocent civilians.
The president was effectively ousted after last Wednesday’s clashes between government forces and protesters. Authorities say about 80 people have died and more than 1,600 were wounded.
VOA News Item 8 政治：内塔尼亚胡称以色列只能依靠自己
blueskyOn the eve of Israel’s 62nd Independence Day, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the nation must not rely on the help of foreigners.
Commentators say it is a clear reference to Israeli ties with the United States, which have plummeted over Jewish construction in disputed in East Jerusalem. The U.S. backs Palestinian demands that East Jerusalem should be the capital of a future Palestinian state.
But Israel es all of Jerusalem as its eternal capital, and Mr. Netanyahu, who heads a right-wing government, has rejected U.S. demands to stop building there. As a result, the Palestinians have refud to return to U.S.-sponsored peace talks, and the diplomatic process has been deadlocked for 15 months.
Defen Minister Ehud Barak took a softer approach. Barak said Israel would not make any compromis when it comes to the curity of the state. But he said it would show courage in the struggle for peace with the Palestinians bad on the two-state solution.
VOA News Item 9 经济：非洲农民种植有机作物供应欧洲市场lute
Nearly 5,000 farmers in Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Ghana, Senegal, and Sierra Leone are exporting organically-grown produce to Europe, after gaining organic and fair-trade certification with help from the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).
The program focus on all stages of production from planting and harvesting to packaging and promotion, increasing the profitability of farmers who previously struggled to afford costly chemical fertilizers.
30 small-scale pineapple farmers in Ghana saw sales grow from 26 tons to more than 115 tons after gaining their organic certification.
shine your way 歌词Pascal Liu is an economist with the FAO’s trade and markets division. Liu says the United Nations expects demand for organic foods will grow by between five and 15 percent during the next five years. And African farmers are well positioned to benefit from more people eating healthier food.
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VOA News Item 10 经济：债务危机扩展到希腊以外
refresherThe heads of the International Monetary Fund and the European Central Bank were in Berlin Wednesday for talks with Chancellor Angela Merkel and other nior officials. The aim: to get agreement on a bailout package for Greece.
Greece has been in negotiations with EU member countries and the IMF to cure a bailout —money that would allow it to pay debts coming due in time to avoid having to default.
In return Greece is under pressure to restructure its economy and implement austerity measures.
Disgruntled public-ctor workers went on strike in Greece Wednesday to protest against the cutbacks. A daylong general strike has been called for next week.
Opinion polls show the majority of Greeks are against an IMF-EU bailout, eing it as foreign interference.
Worries about the Greek economy’s potential meltdown have nt jitters through world markets. And help is imperative becau the Greek crisis could spread.
A joint EU-IMF package for Greece is put at $60 billion, but some European officials said Wednesday the full cost could be much higher, reaching about $160 billion over three years.
VOA News Item 11 经济：奥巴马致华尔街：别抵制金融改革
Aiming his appeal directly at the financial industry and skeptics within it, and at Republican critics in Congress, the president warned of the danger of a repeat of economic collap.
Calling the financial crisis the outcome of a failure of responsibility from Wall Street to Washington, he said the time has come to ize the moment to make fundamental changes in the rules of the financial road.
With many, but not all, of the most prominent executives of Wall Street firms prent, the president outlined key aspects of legislation the U.S. Senate will debate in coming days.
The include steps to impo new oversight and controls on hedge funds and complex financial instruments known as derivatives, and protections for consumers of financial products.
Of particular importance would be a system to ensure that troubled financial companies could be dismantled in an orderly way without posing the kind of systemic risk they did in 2008.
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Calling the Senate bill and one the Hou of Reprentatives approved last year a significant improvement over flawed rules now in place, he said changes would be advantageous for the industr
y and the country.
VOA News Item 12 经济：亚洲航空遭受冰岛火山喷发影响
The International Air Transport Association says global carriers are losing an estimated $200 million a day in revenue as a result of airline groundings related to the Iceland volcano. Albert Tjoeng, a Singapore-bad spokesman for the association, says that is just part of the problem.
Travelers waiting around here are missing out on income becau they cannot return to work.
The flight cancellations are expected to have additional repercussions for smaller Southeast Asia countries, where travel and tourism is a major share of the economy.
VOA News Item 13 经济：WFP对尼日尔粮食援助加倍
The World Food Program is now expecting to feed more than 1.5 million people in next month’s general food distribution, along with specialized therapeutic feeding for 500,000 children under the age of six.
That is becau poor rains last year have brought forward the time when people no longer have enough to eat.
WFP is trying to rai $182 million to scale up its operations in Niger.
蛐蟮The U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization is also stepping in to aid cattle herders in Niger and Chad. Livestock pastures are dry, so herders are lling their animals at lower prices to buy food for their families.
Eight FAO projects in Niger worth more than $12 million are aimed at helping two million
people.
VOA News Item 14 经济：立法者、反对者和媒体齐聚2010底特律车展
Cobo Center is home to the 2010 North American Auto Show in downtown Detroit. For the event, the Center has been transformed into an expan of flashy displays and trendy marketing displays, featuring the latest in automotive engineering.
Known as the Detroit Auto Show, the annual event is one of the industry’s biggest. It helps generate publicity for some models, like the newly-redesigned Ford Focus, and it helps promote new technology, like the electric battery in the Chevrolet Volt.
But in the wake of one of the worst years for U.S. automobile sales, this year’s show has a different feel.
General Motors and Chrysler —two of the Detroit “Big Three” automakers, which also include Ford —went bankrupt last year and received billions of dollars in federal aid. Although some of that money has been paid back, the U.S. government is still a major shareholder in both companies.
VOA News Item 15 经济：世博会在上海开幕
China celebrated the opening of the 2010 World Expo in Shanghai with an evening of fireworks and fanfare. Dubbed the “Economic Olympics,” by Chine officials, some 190 nations and 50 international organizations are participating in the multi-billion dollar event.
Similar to how 2008 Beijing Olympic Games put the Chine capital in the international spotlight, Shanghai’s hosting of the World Expo has given the city of 20 some million people and China a chance to showca its emergence as a global economic power.
The theme for the Shanghai World Expo is “Better City, Better Life” and features major exhibitions that look at modern and future urban life, and consider issues such as sustainable development and the interaction between cities and the environment.
The Shanghai 2010 World Expo runs until the end of October.
VOA News Item 16 经济：经济衰退已过，债务危机依旧
First the good news: after contracting slightly in 2009, global economic output is expected to grow more than 4 percent this year, according to the International Monetary Fund. With a fledgling recovery gaining strength, it is easy to forget how clo major industrialized nations came to economic collap less than two years ago, an outcome that almost surely would have triggered a worldwide depression rivaling the Great Depression of the 1930s.
In short, the pain, havoc, and economic devastation could have been far wor, according to the head of the U.S. Federal Rerve Bank of Dallas, Texas, Richard Fisher. Addressing central bankers from Europe and elwhere, Fisher said central banks and national governments averted catastrophe through aggressive intervention.
VOA News Item 17 军事：以色列成功试射导弹防御系统
Rocket alarms have terrified Israeli border communities near the Gaza Strip for years. But now Israel has a high-tech answer to the thousands of low-tech rockets that Palestinian militants have
