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2017-07-03 Special English
This is Special English. I'm Mark Griffiths in Beijing. Here is the news.
Chinese scientists have announced that they have realized the real-time transmission of deep-sea data for more than 190 straight days, setting a new world record.
During an expedition to the west Pacific at the end of last year, researchers with the Institute of Oceanology under the Chinese Academy of Sciences realized the real-time transmission of deep-sea data after improving the subsurface buoy observation network.
They put a floating body on the sea, which was connected to a submersible buoy. The submersible buoy transmits data to the floating body, which then sends it to a satellite. Researchers then receive the data through the satellite.
The real-time deep-sea data includes the condition of the subsurface buoy, the flow speed, direction and pressure of seawater.
Real-time transmission of deep-sea data provides important technical support for research on the ocean environment and global climate. The data could enhance the precision in ocean climate and environment forecasts.
The previous world record for the real-time transmission of deep water data was around 90 days.
This is Special English.
China's supercomputers remain the world's fastest and second fastest machines, but America's Titan was squeezed into fourth place by an upgraded Swiss system.
The latest edition of the semiannual T0P500 list of supercomputers was released recently. China's supercomputer Sunway TaihuLight has been described by the T0P500 list as "far and away the most powerful number-cruncher on the planet. It maintained the lead since last June, when it dethroned Tianhe-2, the former champion for the previous three consecutive years.
This means that a Chinese supercomputer has topped the rankings maintained by researchers in the United States and Germany nine times in a row.
What's more, the Sunway TaihuLight was built entirely using processors designed and produced in China.
Officials say it highlights China's ability to conduct independent research in the supercomputing field. 
In the latest rankings, the new number three supercomputer is the upgraded Piz Daint, a system installed at the Swiss National Supercomputing Center.
Its current performance pushed Titan, a machine installed at the U.S. Oak Ridge National Laboratory, into fourth place. Titan's performance of 17.6 petaflops has remained constant since it was installed in 2012.
You're listening to Special English. I'm Mark Griffiths in Beijing.
The European Union has reaffirmed its support for Paris agreement on climate change when its Foreign Affairs Council convened in Luxembourg.
The Council said in a statement that the Paris Agreement is fit for purpose and cannot be renegotiated.
U.S. President Donald Trump said on June 1 that he has decided to pull the United States out of the Paris Agreement, a landmark global pact to fight climate change.
The Council said it deeply regretted the unilateral decision by the United States administration to withdraw from the Paris Agreement, while it welcomed the statements of commitment to the Agreement from other countries.
The Council said the EU will lead in the global fight against climate change through its climate policies and through continued support to those which are particularly vulnerable.
Besides this, the EU is strengthening its existing global partnerships and will continue to seek new alliances, from the world's largest economies to the most vulnerable island states.
The Paris Agreement was agreed on by almost every country in the world in 2015. It aims to tackle climate change by cutting greenhouse gas emissions and sets a global target of keeping the rise in the average temperature no higher than 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels.
This is Special English.
It's possible for the European Union and Britain to strike a fair Brexit deal which is "far better than no deal". 
EU chief negotiator Michel Barnier told reporters that for both the EU and the UK, a fair deal is possible, and far better than no deal. He made the remarks at a joint press conference with his British counterpart David Davis, after wrapping up the opening salvo of the Brexit talks in Brussels.
His remarks obviously alluded to British Prime Minister Theresa May's catchphrase "no deal is better than a bad deal".
Barnier said the first session was "important, open and useful indeed to start off on the right foot as the clock is ticking".
He outlined a two-step negotiation, saying they agreed on dates, organization, and priorities for the negotiation.
You're listening to Special English. I'm Mark Griffiths in Beijing.
China is achieving landmarks in science and technology at breakneck speed.
The country's Tianzhou-1 cargo spacecraft completed its second docking with the Tiangong-2 space lab recently. Chinese scientists have announced that they have realized the satellite-based distribution of entangled photon pairs over a record distance of more than 1,200 kilometers, a major breakthrough that could be used to deliver secure messages. China has successfully launched its first X-ray space telescope to study black holes, pulsars and gamma-ray bursts, receiving its first package of data.
Officials say such a string of achievements shows China's innovation-driven development strategy is paying off.
The latest Global Innovation Index showed that China rose three spots to 22nd place on the list of the world's most innovative nations this year, becoming the only middle-income country to join the top 25 innovative economies.
However, China stepping closer to becoming an innovative power has aroused skepticism, with some arguing that its progress poses a threat to other countries.
Chinese observers refuted the claim, saying China's science and technology innovation has injected fresh energy to the world's sluggish economy and brought a new opportunity to global industrial restructuring and sustainable development.
This is Special English.
Chinese bicycle-sharing giant Mobike says it has 100 million users worldwide.
Mobike started its business in Shanghai in April last year, before expanding into major Chinese cities and branching out abroad. Users access a Mobike account and unlock the bicycles by scanning a QR code on the bicycles.
It has over 5 million bicycles in 100 cities worldwide. 
Average daily orders top 25 million.
The company says it is trying to expand its business in the European and Asian markets.
Since April last year, Mobike users have logged 2.5 billion kilometers, equivalent to cutting the emissions of 170,000 cars for a whole year.
Mobike's chief competitor is Ofo bike.
According to the China E-Commerce Research Center, there were almost 19 million users of shared bicycles nationwide at the end of last year. The number is expected to hit 50 million by the end of this year.
You're listening to Special English. I'm Mark Griffiths in Beijing. You can access the program by logging on to crienglish.com. You can also find us on our Apple Podcast. Now the news continues.
Five British secondary school students have won a free trip to Hong Kong to attend university summer courses after topping a design competition.
The competition was organized earlier this year by the Hong Kong Economic and Trade Office in London. It invited British students to design a 48-hour travel itinerary for youth travelers visiting Hong Kong, with the aim of showing how the city is unique and attractive to youth travelers. The contestants were also expected to compare travel experiences between Hong Kong and a British city.
The organizers say many British students presented their submissions through a variety of means, including an essay, a video clip on Youtube, a blog post, from which five best entries were selected.
Carmen Truong was the winner from the Royal Latin School who impressed the judges with a beautiful scratch book. She will spend two weeks at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, learning Chinese and engineering.
As a Chinese girl born in London, Truong says she likes to collect information and pictures about Hong Kong; and this competition was a good chance for her to explore more about her background.
The annual competition is now in its sixth year. It seeks to encourage British students to consider going to universities in Hong Kong, a special administrative region of China. 
This is Special English.
A "Chinese Ambassador Scholarship" has been launched at the Chinese Embassy in Romania.
The Chinese Ambassador to Romania says the main goal of the scholarship is to encourage Romanian students to learn Chinese. It also aims to welcome as many young people as possible to jointly push forward Sino-Romanian friendly relations.
The ambassador says learning Chinese enjoys great popularity in Romania, where over 8,000 people are studying Chinese in Confucius institutes, Confucius classrooms and other places.
At the scholarship launching ceremony, around 20 students and four teachers were awarded with mobile phones and cash prizes to honor their efforts in learning and teaching Chinese.
Romania is one of the countries along the ancient Silk Road. It is part of the Belt and Road initiative for common development. The official says this will bring about increasing demand for talents in Romania, including Romanians can speak Chinese.
The ambassador says he hopes that more and more young people in Romania can play an active role in various fields including economic and trade cooperation and cultural exchanges between the two countries.
You're listening to Special English. I'm Mark Griffiths in Beijing.
The National Museum of China has opened an exhibition featuring the work of Dutch painter Rembrandt and other famous artists of the 17th century.
The show includes more than 70 paintings, and is the largest exhibit featuring the prime age of Dutch painting ever staged in China.
The items on display include 11 paintings by Rembrandt including Minerva in Her Study and The Unconscious Patient. The exhibition also features works by Vermeer and Rembrandt's students.
The exhibition will last until September. It is organized jointly by the National Museum of China and the Leiden Collection.
The Leiden Collection was founded in 2003 by American collector Thomas Kaplan and his wife. It has the largest collection of 17th century Dutch paintings in the world.
This is Special English.
The influential Committee for Melbourne has called for a "mega-region" to be formed along Australia's eastern coast.
The chief of the committee Martine Letts said a rapid transport link between Melbourne and Sydney could see the "mega-region" become reality within a decade.
She said the region can also include other regional centers, and it could rival others in the world including the San Francisco-Los Angeles area in the United States.
The proposal by Letts came after the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology University announced that it believed a hyper loop could provide the link between Melbourne and Sydney.
The hyper loop works by propelling a pod-like vehicle through a reduced-pressure tube at the speed of sound.
A local company in Melbourne says the technology already exists to make hyper loop a reality, and it just needed to be supported by the governments. It says a hyper loop project will take three to five years to complete.
This is Special English.
A 12th century castle which played a part in seeing the first female queen gain the throne of England has re-opened after a 1.6-million-U.S.-dollar conservation project.
Framlington Castle in the southern county of Suffolk was used over centuries as the center of a vast network of power and influence to a 17th century home for the poor.
It has reopened its doors, giving visitors a chance to explore its rich history spanning 900 years.
（全文见周六微信。）

【专题】慢速英语（英音）2017-07-03

【专题】慢速英语（英音）2017-06-26

【专题】慢速英语（英音）2017-06-19

2017-06-20 Special English
This is Special English. I'm Ryan Price in Beijing. Here is the news.
A Chinese envoy to the United Nations has called on the international community to adapt to the new trends and features of terrorist groups and enhance cooperation in fighting terrorism.
Recently, multiple terrorist attacks occurred in Egypt, Afghanistan, Britain, France, Iran and other places, causing severe casualties and property losses. Chinese's deputy permanent representative to the United Nations made the remarks at a Security Council meeting which focused on the threats to international peace and security caused by terrorist acts.
He stressed that terrorism is the common enemy of mankind and its impact goes beyond borders; and no country can address terrorism by itself or keep itself from terrorism.
The Chinese envoy called for measures to reach international consensus, deal with the root causes of terrorism, stem the transnational movement of terrorists, cut off their financing channels and fight against their propaganda.
He said the international community should put solving regional hot-spot issues as a top priority, and work to promote political dialogues to address regional conflicts and maintain regional peace, stability and development, so as to eradicate the root cause of terrorism.
This is Special English.
China is working on reusable launch vehicles and has achieved progress in some key areas.
A carrier rocket official says the processes under development include parachute-landing and propulsion-landing. 
Reusable lift-body launchers will be developed in three stages, namely, rocket-engine partial reusable vehicle, rocket-engine full reusable vehicle and combined cycle-engine reusable vehicle.
The official said the Long March carrier rockets still have room for improvement, adding that China is developing a heavy-lift launch vehicle with a payload of 140 tonnes to low Earth orbit and 50 tonnes to lunar transfer orbit.
The heavy-lift carrier rocket is currently called the Long March-9, and it should be sent into space by 2030.
A low-cost commercial medium launch vehicle, the Long March-8, is under development, and based on the Long March-8, a new high-orbit medium launch vehicle should be designed to improve the Long March series and enhance competitiveness.
You're listening to Special English. I'm Ryan Price in Beijing. 
China's Food and Drug Administration has approved a new-generation of heart valve replacement product, which greatly reduces surgery time and increases survival rate.
The developers announced recently that the J-Valve has passed clinical tests and will be put into use across China.
Traditional solutions require doctors to make a big incision on the patients' chests and open their hearts to put the prosthetic valve inside manually. The process takes about four hours and poses risks of wrong positioning of the valve and loss of blood.
The J-Valve system features minimally invasive surgery. It is easier to implant and provides automatic positioning of the valve. Doctors only watch an electronic screen and operate outside the patients' bodies. The whole procedure lasts about 10 minutes.
This is Special English.
The World Health Organization has started a "smoke-free generation" media campaign in Beijing targeting young people in China.
A World Health Organization representative says China is in the grip of a national tobacco epidemic, and children are most susceptible with cigarettes portrayed as fashionable and alluring in popular culture.
According to World Health Organization, over half of Chinese adult men smoke, two thirds of whom started as young adults. By 2014, 73 percent Chinese students had been exposed to secondhand smoke.
The official says there is nothing cool about smoking, but there is something empowering about choosing to live a healthy, smoke-free life.
Since China ratified the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control in 2005, the country has made a number of tobacco control efforts, including banning tobacco advertisements, increasing tobacco taxes and putting forward regional smoking bans.
As of 2016, 18 cities, including Beijing and Shanghai, had implemented regional smoking bans.
China has set a target to reduce the smoking rate among people aged 15 and older to 20 percent by 2030 from the current 28 percent. That's according to the "Healthy China 2030" blueprint issued by the central authorities last October. 
You're listening to Special English. I'm Ryan Price in Beijing. 
One in 20 pregnant women in the U.S. territories with confirmed Zika virus infection had a baby or fetus with Zika virus-associated birth defects. 
Among the women with confirmed Zika infection during the first trimester, eight percent, or nearly one in 12, had a baby or fetus with Zika virus-associated birth defects.
A government report, the first from the U.S. territories, represents the largest number of completed pregnancies with laboratory confirmation of Zika virus infection to date.
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says as these latest findings illustrate, Zika virus poses a serious threat to pregnant women and their babies, regardless of when the infection occurs during the pregnancy.
It says women in the U.S. territories and elsewhere who have continued exposure to mosquitoes carrying Zika are at risk of infection. The government must remain vigilant and committed to preventing new Zika infections.
The new analysis reviewed the cases of 2,550 women with possible Zika virus infections who completed their pregnancies, of which 1,508 had confirmed Zika virus infections.
In this report, more than 120 pregnancies resulted in Zika-associated birth defects.
This is Special English.
Researchers at the University of California in San Francisco have found that older people with persistent pain show quicker declines in memory as they age and are more likely to have dementia years later.
Findings from their study, which appears to be the first to make this association, indicate that chronic pain could somehow be related to changes in the brain that contribute to dementia.
The researchers analyzed data from 10,000 participants aged 60 and up over a 12-year period.
The participants who said they were persistently troubled by moderate or severe pain in both years 1998 and 2000 declined 9 percent faster in tests of memory function over the next 10 years than those who said they were not troubled by pain.
Those who complained about persistent pain also had a small but significantly increased likelihood of developing dementia overall.
Researchers say the findings point toward new ways of thinking about how to protect older people from the cognitive insults of aging.
Elderly people need to maintain their cognition to stay independent. Up to one in three older people suffer from chronic pain, so understanding the relationship between pain and cognitive decline is an important first step toward finding ways to help this population.
You're listening to Special English. I'm Ryan Price in Beijing. You can access the program by logging on to crienglish.com. You can also find us on our Apple Podcast. Now the news continues.
U.S. researchers studying autism say they were now able to use brain scans to detect functional changes in high-risk babies as young as six months of age and then predict who would be diagnosed with the condition at age two.
Autism affects roughly one out of every 68 children in the United States. Siblings of children diagnosed with autism are at higher risk of developing the disorder.
Although early diagnosis and intervention can help improve outcomes for children with autism, there currently is no method to diagnose the disease before children show symptoms.
The current study is conducted by a research team led by investigators at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. The study focused on the brain's functional connectivity, or how regions of the brain work together during different tasks and during rest.
Using an imaging technique called functional connectivity magnetic resonance imaging, the researchers have scanned 59 high-risk, six-month-old infants while they slept naturally.
The children were deemed high-risk because they have older siblings with autism. At the age of two, 11 of the 59 infants in this group were diagnosed with autism, and nine of the 11 infants would go on to have autism.
This is Special English.
The Australian State of New South Wales' health department has announced that it will ban sugary soft drinks in all hospitals and care facilities by the end of this year, in order to combat the growing problem of obesity.
The move comes as part of its "Make Healthy Normal" campaign, which aims to achieve a five percent reduction in overweight and obesity rates in adults by 2020.
Chief health officer Kerry Chant said there's no better way to start than right here on our own doorstep. He said it is important that NSW Health provides healthy food and drink choices for all the staff and visitors.
Chant said that by establishing this model, they hope it shows how a workable strategy can be successfully implemented across any organization to assist healthier choices in any staffing environment.
According to the NSW Heart Foundation, a health advocacy and charity group, "one in two adults and more than one in five children in NSW are overweight or obese. It dramatically heightens the risk of a wide range of chronic health conditions including "type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease, stroke and some cancers.
You're listening to Special English. I'm Ryan Price in Beijing. 
A new study by University of Washington transportation engineers indicates that delivering packages with drones can reduce carbon dioxide emissions in certain circumstances as compared to truck deliveries.
The study suggests that drones tend to have carbon dioxide emissions advantages over trucks when the drones don't have to fly very far to their destinations or when a delivery route has few recipients; and they compete especially well for small, light packages, such as a bottle of medicine or a kid's bathing suit.
However, the carbon benefits erode as the weight of a package increases, since unmanned aerial vehicles have to use additional energy to stay aloft with a heavy load.
The study compares carbon dioxide emissions and vehicle miles traveled from drone and truck deliveries in 10 different, real-world scenarios in Los Angeles, Southern California. 
The study noted that it's unlikely that drones will be used for all delivery applications but that there are some contexts in which they appear to make sense, such as shorter trips in less densely developed communities, or in controlled places like a military base or campus.
This is Special English.
"Wonder Woman" of Warner Bros. topped the box office in North America with an estimated 100 million U.S. dollars on its debut weekend, making the Patty Jenkins-directed superhero film the biggest ever opening weekend for a female director.
The latest DC Comics superhero movie is the first big-budget superhero movie with a female lead to be directed by a woman. The previous record-holder for top opening for a female director was Sam Taylor-Johnson's "Fifty Shades of Grey" which debuted with an 85 million U.S. dollars on its debut weekend in 2015.
And overseas, "Wonder Woman" also won the weekend with 122.5 million U.S. dollars from 55 markets for a global sum of 223 million U.S. dollars.
Film analysts say the movie helps to get a lackluster summer so far heading in the right direction. A perfectly cast Gal Gadot in the lead role coupled with a great release date, killer marketing campaign and above all a great movie that has both critics and audiences buzzing on social media, contributed to this better than expected result.
（全文见周日微信。）

【专题】慢速英语（美音）2017-06-20

【专题】慢速英语（英音）2017-06-12

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全国政协十二届五次会议开幕式：英语同传，直播音频

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