英语新闻听力教程unit3
Unit 3
UN Activities
SectionA
Warming Up
1. A summit-level meeting of the UN Security Council has formally urged
all member nations to outlaw incitement to terrorism.
2. The United Nations is setting up a special fund to help it deal with some of the biggest natural or man-made disasters as soon as possible after they happen.
3. Senior diplomats from the permanent members of the United Nations Security Council plus Germany gathered in New York today to map out a strategy to deal with Iran' s suspected nuclear weapons program.
4. The UN Security Council is expected to hold closed-door consultations today on a British-U.S. peacekeeping plan for Sudan' s Darfur region.
5. Hollywood movie star and United Nations Goodwill Ambassador Angelina Jolie is appealing for international help in repatriating millions of Afghan refugees now living in Pakistan.
6. Meanwhile the United Nations Security Council is to hold an urgent meeting at the request of Lebanon today on the crisis.
7. (The) United Nations General Assembly has opened in New York with forceful calls for action in the Sudanese region of Darfur.
8. The United Nations is reporting signs of some progress in meeting global antipoverty goals
set in 2000.
9. The United Nations Human Rights Committee has called on the American government to immediately close all secret detention facilities and grant access to the Red Cross to anybody detained in connection with an armed conflict. 10. U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said the United Nations' resolutions against North Korea leave Pyongyang no choice but to return to the negotiating table.
Section B
Tapescript
1. (The) United Nations has released new data showing that rich countries have made little overall progress in reducing the output of the gases blamed for climate change.
2. Qatar has become the first Arab country to pledge troops for a UN peacekeeping mission in Lebanon, offering to send up to 300 troops to monitor the ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah.
3. In a speech to the 191-member General Assembly, Mr. Annan urged an enlargement of the Security Council by adding six new members.
4. World leaders speaking on the second day of the United Nations World Summit have called for reform of the international body and have urged it to play a key role in the fight against terrorism.
5. The United Nations has launched its biggest annual appeal for humanitarian assistance, asking for 4.7 billion dollars to help the victims of war, famine and natural disasters around the world.
Section C
Item 1
Tapescript
The United Nations children' s agency UNICEF is beginning a huge campaign in Pakistan today to immunize 800,000 children affected by the earthquake last month. The agency is sending 600 health teams into towns and mountain villages to vaccinate children against measles, polio, diphtheria and tetanus. UNICEF staff say it would be a race against time to reach children scattered in remote mountain com
munities before winter snows arrive. The agency has already vaccinated 300,000 children.
Item 2
Tapescript
The United Nations relief agency says an attack on a displaced persons' camp in Sudan's western Darfur region has reportedly left 29 people dead and 10 seriously injured. A spokeswoman for the UN High Commissioner for Refugees told VGA it' s the first time that a displaced persons' camp has been attacked in more than two years of civil war. The spokesman says up to 300 armed Arab men on horses and camels attacked the camp on Wednesday.
Item 3
Tapescript
The United Nations World Food Program has appealed urgently for donations of more than 150 million dollars to prevent a food crisis in southern Africa. It warned that almost 10 million people across six countries—Zambia, Zimbabwe, Malawi, Mozambique, Lesotho and Swaziland— urgently needed food aid. The shortages are blamed on drought and the effects of HIV/AIDS and chronic poverty. A BBC correspondent in southern Africa says that in Zimbabwe, children in rural areas have already started to show signs of malnutrition. She says some eat only once a day.
Section D
Item 1
Tapescript
The South Korean Foreign Minister Ban Ki-Moon has won the support of all five permanent members of the UN Security Council in his bid to become the next Secretary General of the UN. Mr. Ban had been the favorite to succeed Kofi Annan in the post, and had come first in three previous informal ballots held by members of the Security Council. However, until this latest vote it had not been known whether his candidacy might be vetoed by one of the five permanent members, the United States, China, Russia, France or Britain. It's expected that a formal vote will be held next week. The U.S. ambassador to the U.N. John Bolton said new candidates could come forward, but that was unlikely.
Item 2
Tapescript
Despite U.S. objections, the United Nations General Assembly today overwhelmingly voted to create a new human rights council to improve the UN's ability to deal with human rights offenders. The council replaces the discredited UN Human Rights Commission based in Geneva. U.S. ambassador to the UN John Bolton told the Assembly today that UN made some improvements but they are not enough. Bolton told the Assembly that rules for the new council are too weak to prevent human rights violators from obtaining seats. Under the resolution adopted today, the old commission will be abolished June 16th, and the new council will convene three days later.
Item 3
Tapescript
The United Nations has welcomed new pledges by donor countries of nearly 600 million dollars to fund relief efforts after the South Asian earthquake. But the UN's chief relief coordinator Jan Egeland said it was not clear how much was for immediate emergency relief and how much for longer-term work. Pakistan says 79,000 people have died and Mr. Egeland had early warned that hundreds of thousands more could die without an immediate big
boost in funds. Winter snow is expected in the earthquake zone within weeks. A top Pakistani relief official, General Farooq Ahmed, told the BBC that an extra 30,000 troops were in the area to help.
Listening Strategy
News Elements and Vocabulary Expansion
News reports in the current unit normally concern one of the following topics:
? UN efforts to handle man-made disasters (peacekeeping, mediation);
? UN efforts to handle natural disasters (humanitarian relief efforts);
? UN reforms. ;: -v*L ? Eioo-xfixnilo-lnsniq
Occasionally there are also reports about UN efforts to address health, education, human rights
and environment issues. Since the UN is the world's largest and most influential international body, coverage of UN activities is of great newsworthiness. Most of UN's funds and energy are devoted to handling man-made or natural disasters. To facilitate comprehension, it is necessary for us to have a general idea of major UN agencies and a good command of basic terms such as plead, pledge, donor, commissioner, relief, humanitarian, resolution, appeal, campaign, initiative, refuge, crisis, to name just a few. It is also imperative that we familiarize ourselves with the pattern of reports covering UN response to emergencies, which is listed in Table I. For more related words and expressions, please refer to Table II, which presents the less frequent, yet equally important words in alphabetic order.
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Listening Tips—The Inverted-Pyramid Structure
Unlike regular narrative pieces, which usually follow the "pyramid" pattern of introduction-development-climax-conclusion, news stories usually begin with the most interesting piece of information or a summary of the highlights, and then work their way down to the least interesting facts. We should be very familiar with the inverted pyramid structure, since we' 11 likely use it every day. For example, when we call a friend to tell him or her about a big date, we would begin by telling the most interesting and important things first. The least important information is saved for the end of the conversation, and depending on how much time we have to talk, that information may not get into the conversation.
The basis of the so-called "inverted pyramid" style of news presentation is arranging information and facts in descending order of importance. In the usual three components of a news story, namely, the lead, the middle and the tag line, the information presented declines in terms of importance.
? Lead sentence
Most significant aspect of the story and essential information such as the what, when, and who.
? Middle
Develop story with more information explaining the why and how. Direct or partial quotes are often adopted.
? Tag line
Least essential information, such as background information on the people or institutions involved.
Take the following news item for example.
Interfax News Agency reports Moldovan authorities will deport about 100 Russians who identified themselv
es as poll observers arriving to monitor Sunday's election in Moldova. The agency quotes one Moldovan official as saying there are reports some Russians are seeking to destabilize Moldova ahead of the vote. Voters in Moldova go to polls Sunday to choose a new parliament.
The lead supplies answers to such key questions as "what" and "who" (deportation; Russian poll observers); it also manages to incorporate some other "W" information in the long sentence (when: Sunday; where: Moldova). In what follows, to further listeners' understanding of the event, details about the source of information, the reason for deportation and the election are presented.
Exercise: The Arrangement of Main Facts
Tapescript
1. Sri Lankan officials say government forces have killed at least 40 Tamil Tigers and wounded 70 during a rebel attack on strategic areas in the country's northeast. Military officials say five government troops were also killed in the fighting early today around the port of Trincomalee. The rebels say they overran four military outposts, but authorities in Colombo say the rebels have made no territorial gains. Rebels also fired mortar shells into a civilian area in Muthur near Trincomalee, killing at least two civilians.
2. Hundreds of thousands of people are still without electricity in western New York after a major snowstorm this week. It hit Thursday night and dropped as much as two feet of snow by the time it ended yesterday morning. It was the snowiest two days in October in Buffalo since the National Weather Service began keeping track 137 years ago. Authorities say three people died of weather-related causes.
3. The American space agency NASA has awarded a multi-billion-dollar contract to a group led by Lockheed Martin to design and build the next generation of manned spacecraft. The craft called the Orion is intended to replace the aging fleet of space shuttles. Orion' s shape resem?bles the command modules of the Apollo spaceships from the sixties and seventies. Unlike the shuttle, it has no wings and will parachute back to earth at the end of each mission.
Home Listening
Item 1
The United Nations says Somali gunmen who hijacked a UN chartered vessel carrying food aid for tsunami victims have released the ship after holding it for more than two months. A spokesman for the UN World Food Program says the vessel, including its 10-person crew, is on its way to a Somali port.
Item 2
The United Nations has airlifted several hundred troops of the Democratic Republic of Congo to a remote corner of the country to try to defuse a diplomatic crisis with neighboring Uganda.
The Ugandan government has threatened to send its soldiers across the Congolese border to deal with the force of up to 300 rebels of the Lord's Resistance Army, which has been engaged in a longstanding campaign against the Ugandan military. Uganda wants the rebels disarmed and says it will intervene directly if necessary. Congo, for its part, has warned that s
uch a move would pose a threat to international peace and security.
Item 3
The head of the United Nations World Food Program James Morris says hunger is on the increase, killing more people than AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis combined. In comments to mark World Food Day, he said that after decades of progress in tackling the problem, the numbers facing chronic hunger were increasing. An estimated 6.25 million people have died as a result of hunger and related diseases so far this year. The World Food Program says feeding the estimated a hundred million hungry children worldwide who currently receive no help would cost less each year than rich countries currently spend each week on agricultural subsidies.
Item 4
The head of the United Nations nuclear agency Mohamed ElBaradei says an internationally-backed nuclear fuel bank could be a way to resolve the crisis surrounding Iran's nuclear activities. Speaking in Washington Dr. ElBaradei said that while there was still uncertainty over Iran's nuclear intentions, it might be time to explore the idea of establishing a central global stock of nuclear fuel, from which countries including Iran could draw.
Item 5
The United Nations General Assembly and Security Council have approved resolutions to establish a new peace-building commission aimed at stopping countries recovering from conflict from slipping back into violence. The idea was among a package of reforms originally agreed by world leaders at the UN summit in September. An emergency fund was created last week. The UN Secretary General Kofi Annan said the initiative was another important step towards renewing the organization.
Item 6
The United Nations Security Council has decided to withdraw more than 150 western peacekeepers in Eritrea where they have been monitoring the tense border zone with Ethiopia. Last week Eritrea threatened to expel the UN officials by Friday. And the UN says it' s unsafe for them to stay as they are unarmed. The peacekeepers are civilian personnel and military observers from the U.S., Canada, Europe and Russia.
Item 7
The American ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton has issued a stinging response to comments made by the UN Deputy Secretary General Mark Malloch Brown about Washington' s attitude towards the UN. Mr. Malloch Brown said the United States uses the UN as a diplomatic tool while failing to stand up for it against its domestic critics.
Directions: Listen to the following news items once and circle the correct letter for each answer.