VOA新闻10篇VOA News Item1科技：转基因作物在美国获得好评（Special English）American farmers first planted genetically engineered crops in nineteen ninety-six.Today eighty percent of the cropland for soybeans,maize and cotton in the United States is transgenic. Genetic engineering adds or changes genes in a plant to produce desired qualities.The United States is one of twenty-five countries where farmers planted genetically engineered crops in two thousand nine.An agricultural biotechnology group says planting decreased in Europe.But the amount of cropland planted with the crops rose by an estimated seven percent worldwide.The National Research Council,part of the National Academies in Washington,recently published a study.The study examined how genetically engineered crops have affected farming in the United States.It found that many farmers have better harvests,better weed control and fewer losses from insect damage compared to traditional crops.LaReesa Wolfenbarger is a University of Nebraska biology professor and a member of the committee that wrote the report.She says they found that genetically engineered crops can be better for the environment.For example,she noted that crops designed to resist damage by glyphosate need fewer pesticides that are more toxic to the soil.Glyphosate is a chemical used in Round-Up and other weed killing products.But some farmers have used so much glyphosate that a number of kinds of weeds can now resist it.David Ervin of Portland State University in Oregon led the committee that wrote the report.Professor Ervin says this means that some farmers are again using the more toxic herbicides to control weeds.He says the problem needs immediate attention.VOA News Item2人物：多萝西·海特，美国民权之星陨落（Special English）Dorothy Height died Tuesday at the age of ninety-eight.She witnessed more civil rights history than any other African-American leader of her time.She said the greatest change she witnessed was the ending of racial segregation laws in the United States.She was the longtime chairwoman of the National Council of Negro Women.She was an activist,humanitarian and adviser to presidents including Barack Obama.He remembered her as “the godmother of the Civil Rights Movement.”Dorothy Height grew up in Pennsylvania.She won a four-year college scholarship,the top prize nationally in a public speaking contest on the Constitution.She arrived at school in New York City—only to learn that an unwritten limit of“two Negro students per year”had already been met.Dorothy Height went on to earn bachelor and master’s degrees in four years at New York University.She worked with Martin Luther King Junior in the push for civil rights for blacks in the nineteen fifties and sixties.Yet she had to push to make herself heard as a woman among mostly male civil rights leaders. She was the only woman standing nearby as Martin Luther King gave his“I Have a Dream”speech in Washington.Dorothy Height received the Presidential Medal of Freedom and the Congressional Gold Medal for her work for racial and gender equality.VOA News Item3教育：美国新法律终止私营借贷者提供学生贷款（Special English）Foreign students who need financial aid generally have to seek it from the school itself or their own government or employer.If you follow the news,then you know that President Obama recently signed health care reform legislation.But one of the two bills he signed into law also made unrelated changes in the federal student loan program.These changes will require new loans to come directly from the Department of Education. The department already makes these federally guaranteed loans for American citizens and permanent legal residents.But since nineteen ninety-three it has also paid private lenders to provide them.Now,as of July first,all new loans will go though the direct loan program only.Officials say the new law will save the government sixty-one billion dollars over ten years. The plan is to use more than half the savings to provide more federal Pell Grants to needy students.A few billion will also go to schools that traditionally serve minorities and to help two-year community colleges.The new law will reduce the most that borrowers must repay each year from fifteen percent of their income to ten percent.And the longest repayment period will be shortened from twenty-five years.Any remaining debt will be forgiven after twenty years or ten if borrowers enter public service.Supporters in higher education said the final bill did not go far enough.Republican opponents called it an unnecessary government takeover of a private industry.Another criticism was that the financial services industry could lose about thirty thousand jobs.The Department of Education reported last year that about two-thirds of graduates from four-year colleges had student loan debt.The average was about twenty-three thousand dollars.VOA News Item4自然：红树林面临灭绝的危险（Special English）Mangroves are unusual looking trees.They have roots that stand in saltwater and look like cables or ropes laid one on top of another.Mangroves are not just pretty—they help the environment.But now the first worldwide study warns that one in six of the many different kinds of mangroves could disappear.As a result of the study,eleven species of mangrove have been placed on the Red List of Threatened Species.The list is kept by the International Union for Conservation of Nature.The researchers looked at seventy species of mangrove.They found that all mangrove forests on coastlines are under threat from development,logging or other dangers.But the areas in worst danger are on the Atlantic and Pacific coasts of Central America.The study says mangrove trees provide more than one and a half billion dollars worth of services to ecological systems worldwide.For example,areas with mangrove forests were not damaged as badly by the Indian Ocean tsunami in two thousand four.Mangrove forests protect land against erosion from wind,water and storms.They capture andstore carbon dioxide,so experts say they can help fight climate change.And they serve as nurseries for shrimp and other saltwater organisms.One of the rarest species of mangrove tree grows in just a few places in East Asia and India. There are estimates that only about two hundred fifty mature trees of that species remain.The study appeared in the Public Library of Science journal PLoS ONE.Lead author Beth Polidoro says they may disappear within the next ten years unless action is taken to protect them.She says the good news in the study is that some species of mangrove can be reforested relatively easily.But others are much more difficult to restart.VOA News Item5经济：世界银行发展目标取得进展（Special English）The World Bank says most developing countries have made important progress toward the United Nations’Millennium Development Goals.Last week the international lender released its yearly World Development Indicators. Hundreds of indicators are used to measure progress in areas such as education,health,poverty, the environment and trade.One of the Millennium Development Goals is to reduce by half the number of people living in extreme poverty by twenty fifteen.Out of eighty-seven countries with data available,forty-nine seem likely to reach that goal.“Extreme poverty”is defined as earning less than one dollar a day.Another goal is to make education available to all young children.The report shows that in two thousand seven,seven out of ten children lived in developing countries that had met or were close to meeting that goal.Also,thirty-nine countries have achieved or are likely to achieve the goal of reducing child death rates.The target is a two-thirds reduction by twenty fifteen.And the report from the World Bank shows the first reduction in AIDS-related deaths.But even with all the progress,there is still a long way to go to reach all eight goals approved by world leaders ten years ago.This is especially true in sub-Saharan Africa,which falls behind on all of the goals.Last week the World Bank also launched a new“open data initiative.”The bank will make its data on living conditions around the world publicly available.Officials say this will make it easier to measure the effects of policies and develop new solutions to help the world’s poor.VOA News Item6经济：英新内阁举行首次会议应对赤字（Standard English）Britain’s new cabinet agreed to cut the pay of all ministers by five percent,the first step in what is to be a major effort to cut Britain’s national deficit.Analyst Kerry Brown,of the London-based research group Chatham House,compared Britain’s deficit to that of Greece,where financial problems have led to massive cuts in spending and deep social unrest.“The ernment has got to make some pretty savage cuts because its public debt is so high.I think it is over12percent of GDP.When you think Greece is,what,13and a half percent of GDP,it is a big deficit to be carrying,a big,big deficit.”Britain’s deficit stands at almost$250billion.The new government has promised anemergency budget within50days and has already said it will cut spending by nearly$10billion this financial year.New Prime Minister David Cameron says savings can be achieved by getting rid of inefficiencies.Christian Schweiger from Britain’s Durham University says Mr.Cameron also talks about devolving power to the people.“The idea of rolling back the state is really at the heart of the Cameron agenda.What it means,if you look at what they are really advocating,is basically withdrawing state funding from public services such as schools and police forces,and really just asking people to do more by themselves.”He says that plan is in line with traditional Conservative economic policy and at odds with the ideas of its predecessor,the Labor Party.Former prime minister Gordon Brown invested heavily in the public sector and believed the government had to keep spending in order to get Britain out of the recession.VOA News Item7人物：英雄人物对家乡小孩的影响（Standard English）Even in the middle of the day,Main Street in the small north woods town is pretty quiet. There are no traffic jams,not even any traffic lights.The population of344people triples in the summer,when tourists flock to the area for what’s considered some of the best walleye and muskie fishing in the region.Realtor Bob Biller has lived here his entire69years.He says Winter is a special place surrounded by farms,pine trees and lakes.It’s got a bank,a post office,and a co-op store.“We call it Winter’s Wal-Mart.They have a variety of just about anything you want there.”Winter also has one thing most towns,big or small,don’t have:its own astronaut.Colonel Jeffrey Williams has logged more days in space than all but three other American astronauts.He just returned from his second stay onboard the International Space Station.He was Expedition22commander for half of the six-month-long mission.And everyone at Winter School,from grades1through12,knows him.Nick Stengel was Williams’technology teacher back then.He tells today’s students,who come from Winter and the surrounding communities,that no matter how humble their upbringing may be,their expectations should be limitless.“When I’ve got kids who say to me,‘Hey,I come from Winter.I can’t do this,I can’t do that. We’re such a small school.’I say hey,there are people who come out of this school,I give Jeff as an example.They’ve been very successful and you can do the same.”Like the other336students at Winter School,11th grader Keela Strouf is proud that an astronaut attended her school.“It makes me want to work harder and get something really good out of everything that you do because the fact that we had an astronaut come from our little school just makes me want to go harder and reach all my goals.”The really cool thing,as she puts it,is that she and other students got to ask Williams questions during a NASA International Space Station downlink in January as he orbited the planet.VOA News Item8教育：几内亚儿童上学条件恶劣（Standard English）Adama Sow shares her two-person desk with three other girls at Dixin Elementary school inConakry.There are80students in her class,typical for this urban school.The classroom is hot,Adama says.With four of us in a desk,it is too cramped to write.She says there are too many students,and the classroom is small.Teacher,Fatimata Camara,said the tight quarters make it difficult for students to concentrate.She says it is difficult to teach85children at once and make sure they each understand the lesson.But these are important years,she says,when children are learning to read and write. Correcting the homework of so many students is also overwhelming,and she says30would be a more manageable class size.Once Camara’s morning shift of students goes home at lunch time,as many as85more students will come for afternoon classes.There is an average of150students to each teacher at Dixin Elementary.But U.N.Children’s Fund’s representative to Guinea Julien Harneis says UNICEF is just as concerned about the growing numbers of children who are not in these crowded classrooms.“There has been a lack of investment in the education sector in this country for several years now,and so as a result,the percentage of children who go to school has dropped over the last two years,which is very unusual for anywhere in the world and is particularly disappointing for this country,which has had rising education for the last20years.”He said the political crisis that has racked Guinea since2008has blocked funding and stalled much-needed reform to the education sector.“It is not that the children do not want to come.It is not that the parents do not want to send their children to school.It is(that)there is not enough classrooms.There is not enough classrooms, there is not enough benches for kids to sit on.There is not enough teachers to train them.”At Dixin Elementary,three classrooms sit empty.Their roof blew off in a storm in2006and has yet to be replaced.There are no desks and chairs for another classroom so it sits unused as well.There are no bathrooms,cafeteria or clean drinking water for students.But there are signs of st week in Washington,D.C.,the Catalytic Fund of the international Fast Track Initiative“Education for All”campaign,managed by the World Bank, approved the disbursement of$64million to Guinea.$24million of that money will be managed by UNICEF,over a two-year period,to build as many as1,000classrooms,train teachers and improve curriculum in Guinea.News Item9研究：家禽养殖使用抗生素的利弊（Standard English）In the late1980s,doctors in Europe were finding that vancomycin,one of the most potent antibiotics in the medicine cabinet,was not working as well as it used to.Certain bacteria had developed resistance to it,even though doctors were not using very much of this drug of last resort.A drug similar to vancomycin was widely used in livestock at the time.Animals in many large livestock-raising operations around the world get a small but steady dose of certain antibiotics in their feed.It keeps the animals healthy,and that promotes their growth.But when bacteria are steadily exposed to an antibiotic,they will eventually develop resistance.Denmark banned the drug’s use as a growth promoter in1996,and levels of resistant bacteriafound in animals and meat declined.The European Union has since banned the use of several other antibiotics as growth promoters.But over-use in animal husbandry is not the only source of antibiotic resistance.And the overall rates of resistant infections in people have not declined since the ban,says Rich Carnevale with the U.S.industry-sponsored Animal Health Institute.He says Denmark may have over-reacted.“They saw resistance.They said,‘Well,it could be due to use of drugs in animals.And certainly some of that resistance was.But the real question is,was it harming humans?And to this day,they have not been able to really conclude that it’s actually harming humans.”Meanwhile,Carnevale says,animals get sick more often than they did before the ban,which means Danish farmers have to use more antibiotics to treat them than they used to.“They actually increased their overall uses of antibiotics quite a bit.And I don’t think they got,in all cases,the change in resistance they were looking for.”A2003report from the World Health Organization supports Denmark’s decision to ban antibiotic growth promoters.It says reducing antibiotic resistance overall is a good thing.Bacteria that become resistant can spread that trait to other bacteria.But the report notes that more data is needed about the impact on people.While researchers continue to study the issue,the debate goes on.News Item10社会：巴勒斯坦劳动者进退两难（Standard English）It is six in the morning and the sun is starting to rise at a checkpoint in the West Bank next to the Israeli settlement of Modi’in Illit.Lining up at a fence surrounding the settlement are hundreds of Palestinian men,including40-year-old Younis Salah from the West Bank town of El-Khader, near Bethlehem.Salah lines up here every morning,waiting to cross into the settlement to work his shift as a construction foreman.His reason for working on the settlement is simple.He says he works on a settlement because he needs to feed his children.Salah is one of an estimated21,000Palestinian workers whose hands are building new homes in places like Modi’in Illit—Jewish settlements that Palestinian leaders claim are encroaching on West Bank lands,impeding the creation of a Palestinian state,and creating a major sticking point in the Middle East peace process.The Palestinian leadership has banned working on settlements,saying that any Palestinian who participates in the building of settlements is helping the enemy.Salah,the construction worker,says that morning after morning,he lives a paradox.He says the Israelis—in his words-took the land of Palestinians like himself,and he is working on their settlements.He says that even if he wanted to look for work in Arab countries, Israeli travel restrictions would prevent him from going there.He says he has no choice but to work on a settlement.It is the larger earnings and steady work—which are hard to find in the West Bank—that drive Palestinians like Salah to work on the settlements.Salah estimates his earnings are double what they would be in the West Bank,if he even found a job there.His earnings at the settlement enable him to provide his family with a comfortable life.Their home in El-Khader is spacious,clean,and well-furnished.The family has just welcomed their latest addition,a newborn daughter.They also have a five-year-old daughter who is disabled and gets no benefits from the Palestinian Authority.Salah is able to pay the full cost of expensive therapy for her.Salah’s wife,Ahlam,says she dreams of a Palestinian state free of Israeli occupation.But she says she must also face reality.。