BBC新闻100.doc

BBC 新闻100 篇 BBC News Item 1 政治：英国首相确定大选时间 The BBC has learned that the British Prime Minister Gordon Brown has decided that the British general election will take place on May 6th. Mr. Brown will go to Buckingham Palace tomorrow Tuesday to ask Queen Elizabeth to dissolve parliament, and then make a formal announcement of the election date. That will start the official election campaign, which, a BBC correspondent says, will be dominated by issues of taxation and spending in the wake of the global recession. BBC News Item 2 政治：大选在即，布朗遭遇挑战 Less than six months before a general election in Britain, the governing Labour Party is embroiled again in internal strife. Two former cabinet ministers have called for secret ballot of members to decide whether the Prime Minister Gordon Brown should continue as party leader. Mr. Brown has called a general election by June this year. Our political correspondent Rob Watson reports. The two former cabinet ministers Geoff Hoon and Patricia Hewitt had stunned everyone at Westminster with their last-minute efforts to challenge Gordon Browns leadership. But Downing Street and Labour Party officials have moved quickly to quash any revolts. Most importantly, current cabinet ministers have come out and backed the prime minister, orbiting some cases with little apparent enthusiasm. So the latest challenge looks likely to be short lift. Although many within the Labour Party doubt Mr. Browns leadership qualities, they also seem to think it would only make things worse to get rid of him before the general election. BBC News Item 3 军事：英国核缩减计划 The British Prime Minister Gordon Brown is offering to scale back Britains nuclear deterrence if an international agreement is reached to cut the worlds nuclear arsenals. Mr. Brown is expected to tell a special session of the United Nations Security Council on Thursday that hell be willing to give up one of four royal navy submarines that carry Trident nuclear missiles. Officials are insisting that cost isnt a factor here. Heres our defence correspondent Nick Childs. Gordon Brown is saying hell be ready to throw part of the trident force into the port in the context of a much bigger global disarmament deal. He said so in general terms before. This offer though is more concrete. There is a growing sense that to avoid what some fear could be a sudden cascade of new nuclear states, the established nuclear powers need to do more in terms of disarmament to keep the proliferation regime intact. The Prime Minister will hope his move will be seen as an important gesture. But the key to the process will be the actions of the big players, the United States and Russia. BBC News Item 4 军事：英国派军阿富汗 The British Prime Minister Gordon Brown is expected to confirm that he is sending hundreds more troops to Afghanistan, bringing the total number of British troops there to about 9,500. Britain has the second largest NATO contingent in Afghanistan after the United States. Our defense correspondent Caroline Wyatt reports. In his statement on Afghanistan, its believed Mr. Brown will say hes agreed in principle to send around 500 extra British troops to Helmand. The military advice says that extra forces are needed to help maintain progress and dominate the ground more effectively to keep the Taliban out of key areas. However, there will be caveats. The Prime Minister will want assurances from military chiefs that the extra troops will be properly equipped. But hell also expect Britains NATO partners to follow suit by offering more forces themselves. NATO defense ministers are likely to discuss troop levels on a meeting formally in Bratislava next week. BBC News Item 5 经济：欧美股市大跌 Stock markets in Europe and the United States have fallen sharply in response to further signs that the debt crisis in Greece is intensifying and could spread to other countries. Share prices in New York, London, Frankfurt and Paris fell by more than 2% after a major international credit rating agency Standard & Poors downgraded Greek debt to a level known informally as junk. Nils Blythe has more. Standard & Poors downgraded its assessment of Greek bonds to the so-called junk status because of the growing danger that the bond holders will not be paid back in full. Many big investment funds have rules that forbid them from holding junk bonds, says the move is likely to trigger a further round of selling. Share markets have taken fright, fearing that if Greece does default on its debts, it would hit many European banks which hold Greek bonds and could trigger a wider financial crisis. Already pressure is mounting on Portugal which has also seen its credit rating downgraded today, although it remains above junk status. BBC News Item 6 经济：IMF 要求各国进一步稳定全球金融体系 The International Monetary Fund has told governments across the world that further action is needed to help return the global financial system to stability. In a fresh estimate of the scale of the problem, the IMF says global losses on toxic assets could total four trillion dollars. Andrew Walker reports. This report does identify what it calls some early signs of stabilization in financial systems, but there are not many of them. And the IMF says further action will be needed if theyre to be sustained. In two key areas, it says that progress by governments has been piecemeal and reactive, dealing with the problem assets held by financial institutions and how to handle banks that need extra capital. For that problem the report says temporary government ownership may sometime be necessary. BBC News Item 7 经济：德国给予希腊财政援助 Officials in Germany say the total financial aid package for Greece could be more than double, the 60 billion dollars that is previously expected. The head of the International Monetary Fund Dominique Strauss-Kahn is in Berlin trying to persuade Germany to agree to the financial rescue plan. He said the deal needed to be implemented quickly as the situation was getting worse every day and could affect other European countries. But the German Chancellor Angola Merkel said Berlin needed to be searching that Greece was serious about spending cuts. BBC News Item 8 经济：IMF 正努力帮助希腊解决债务问题 The head of the International Monetary Fund says Greece has nothing to fear from the organization. At a news conference in Washington, Dominique Strauss-Kahn said the IMF was trying to provide Greece with the advice and resources necessary to help with its debt problem. Andrew Walker reports from Washington. Mr. Strauss-Kahn was responding to a Greek journalist who said the Greek public are demonizing the IMF that they fear things will be worse with IMF involvement. The agency has a reputation for requiring borrowing countries to make deep cuts in popular government spending programs. Mr. Strauss-Kahn said the Greek people should think of the IMF as a cooperative organization where the countries of the world work together to help those in trouble by providing resources and advice on behalf of the international community. BBC News Item 9 经济：G20 财政部长达成协议 Finance ministers of the worlds leading industrialized and developing countries, the G20, have agreed to continue supporting the global economic recovery. In a statement released after their meeting in Scotland, the ministers said conditions had improved, but economic and financial recovery was uneven and unemployment a worry. Andrew Walker reports. The communiqué avoids complacency. Although economic and financial conditions have improved, they decided they still need to keep up the initiatives intended to restore growth. The meeting was, however, rather overshadowed by a statement from the British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, suggesting a tax on financial transactions as one of a number of options for making banks pay for the crisis. His calls have been received politely by the finance ministers but several made remarks which suggest that other ways of tackling the problem are rather more likely to be adopted. BBC News Item 10 经济：欧盟达成协议，终止了香蕉贸易争端 The European Union has initialed an agreement to end one of the worlds longest-running trade disputes over bananas. The EU, the worlds biggest importer of bananas, is to cut the duty it imposes on Latin American producers of the fruit, while bananas grows in former European colonies will gradually lose the preferential terms theyve enjoyed. Andrew Walker reports. The deal signed in Geneva commits the European Union to gradually lowering the tariffs it imposes on bananas imported mainly from Latin America. The cut will be over a third by 2017. That will reduce the competitive advantage of a group of countries, mainly former colonies of EU states in Africa and Caribbean, which enjoyed tariff-free access. The EU plans to provide those countries with some compensation, in a shape of nearly 300,000 dollars in additional aid. BBC News Item 11 科技：太阳能飞机 The long-awaited take-off of the Solar Impulse was greeted with delight by those who have spent the last seven years working on it. The solar-powered plane has the wing-span of a jumbo jet, but weighs less than a family car. It doesnt use a single drop of aviation fuel, instead its giant wings are covered with solar cells. The project is the brainchild of Swiss adventurer Bertrand Piccard he sees the Solar Impulse as a sign of things to come. BBC News Item 12 教育：英国学校开设学普通话课程 Its the worlds fastest growing economy and shows no sign of slowing down, so striking deals with Chinese businesses is now the top priority for every British company that wants to stay ahead in global trade. Now schools in the United Kingdom want to give their students a head start by teaching them Mandarin and they are making it compulsory. Brighton College is a fee paying private school on the south coast of Britain and already teaches Latin, Spanish and French to its 1,200 pupils. Students can choose between these languages, but from the autumn, which is the beginning of the new academic year in British schools, every student must study Mandarin whether they like it or not. BBC News Item 13 娱乐：奥斯卡大赢家英国 The cast and crew of British movies will no longer be hailed as the underdogs at awards ceremonies. At the recent 81st Oscars ceremony, British actors and movies won no less than 11 awards. The list of Oscar winners is usually dominated by American films and actors but 2009 has seen a more international flavour to the ceremony. British actors and actresses have long awaited such global recognition. Kate Winslet was nominated six times for an Oscar before she eventually won the Best Actress award at this years ceremony. Slumdog Millionaire lived up to its status as a global success and movie phenomenon. The low-budget movie swept the board winning eight Oscars, including Best Director and Best Picture. The movie, which documents the life of a young Indian boy after he wins a TV game show, has definitely helped to raise the profile of the British film industry. Summarising the national feeling, British Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, issued a statement saying “Britain is showing it has the talent to lead the world”. BBC News Item 14 人物：英女王也是网民 It might seem like an unlikely match an ancient institution getting to grips with cutting edge technology but the British royal family has been active online for more than a decade. They launched their own website in 1997. The Queens Christmas message is available as a podcast, and a year ago the official Royal Channel was launched on YouTube, showing videos of the family at work. Royal watchers describe the 82 year old Queen as a silver surfer someone whos enthusiastic about the internet and who keeps in touch with younger members of her family by email. BBC News Item 15 体育：伦敦马拉松 This weekend, around 35,000 runners filled the streets of London, running the 26th annual London Marathon. The course is 26.2 miles long (42 km), and goes past many of Londons landmarks, such as the Tower of London, the famous 19th century ship Cutty Sark, the Houses of Parliament and Buckingham Palace. The runners actually run over Tower Bridge. BBC News Item 16 体育：牛津剑桥划船赛 Oxford and Cambridge are the oldest and most famous universities in Britain, and there has always been a great rivalry between the two institutions. But the most public competition between the two is the annual Boat Race. The 2006 Boat Race will take place on 2nd April, and will be the 152nd race of its kind. Both universities are located near rivers, and rowing is a popular and prestigious sport. The very first race took place in 1829, when a Cambridge student challenged a school-friend studying at Oxford. Ever since, the defeated team from the previous year challenges the opposition to a rematch. The only times when no Boat Races took place were during the First and Second World Wars. BBC News Item 17 政治：美国民主党得到参议院60 个席位 President Obamas Democratic Party has secured the critical 60 seat majority in the US Senate that can help it override any Republican obstructions on Capitol Hill. This happened when the Democrats won the last undecided senate seat from Novembers election after the Supreme Court in the state of Minnesota declared the Democratic candidate Al Franken the winner. Richard Lister reports from Washington. For almost eight months the two candidates had been locked in a bitter fight in the Minnesota Courts over the result of Novembers Senate election. Just a few hundred votes separated them after the 2.8 million cast. The initial count favoured the Republican Norm Coleman but the recount gave the majority to his Democratic Party rival Al Franken. And the State Supreme Court is now upheld that verdict. His victory gives the Democrats 60 votes in the senate and the potential to overturn Republican efforts to block legi