介绍:
2017-04-03 Special English
This is Special English. I&`&m Mark Griffiths in Beijing. Here is the news.
China says the international community must step up efforts to combat human trafficking and slavery in regions of conflict.
China&`&s permanent representative to the United Nations made the appeal at a Security Council debate on human trafficking.
The envoy said the international community should support countries concerned in combating such criminal activities by providing them with targeted assistance in law enforcement, border control and financial regulation.
The envoy said the international community should uphold unified counter-terrorism standards and take coordinated and concerted action to fight against crimes of human trafficking and enslavement.
He added that the world need to take an integrated approach with political and economic means to stem the financial flow to terrorist organizations from human trafficking and enslavement so as to dismantle their criminal networks.
Human trafficking thrives in regions where conflict prevails and the rule of law is weak. Extremist groups have been capturing and trading enslaved women and children to obtain funding for their terrorist activities.
This is Special English.
The World Intellectual Property Organization, WIPO, Director General Francis Gurry has lauded China&`&s strong performance in international patent and trademark filing.
Gurry told the press that China&`&s performance has been quite extraordinary. In terms of international patent applications, the number of applications from China rose by 44 percent in one year.
The WIPO revealed that China filed 43,000 applications under the organization&`&s patent cooperation treaty last year, up from 30,000 two years ago.
This compares to the 56,600 and 45,000 applications filed by the United States and Japan respectively.
China&`&s trademark and industrial designs filings, which are handled by WIPO&`&s Madrid and Hague systems, also showed strong growth last year, with China ranking fourth in terms of the number of global trademark applications made in 2016.
Gurry explained that China-based filers are behind much of the growth in international patent and trademark filings, making great strides in internationalizing their businesses as the country continues its journey from "Made in China" to "Created in China".
While the United States and Japan continue to lead the way in terms of the number of patent applications, growth in China has been sluggish, with the United States posting a 1 percent drop in the number of international patents filed last year.
You&`&re listening to Special English. I&`&m Mark Griffiths in Beijing.
A United Nations official says China&`&s aid to the education sector in Africa is helping to boost teacher training, a key component in skilling the population to fast track development.
UNESCO&`&s Regional Office for Eastern Africa recognized China&`&s contribution to Africa&`&s education sector over the years.
The director of the office said they value the initiative in teacher training in Uganda and other countries in Africa. This will revitalize the teaching profession.
Through UNESCO, China donated equipment to three teacher training institutions in Uganda in March. More than 100 tutors were trained and 270 pieces of Information Communication and Technology and studio equipment were donated.
The director said tutors were skilled on how to integrate technology with traditional methods of training.
China is funding an 8-million-U.S.-dollar project through UNESCO. The project aims at narrowing the educational quality gap on the continent.
The project is called "Enhancing Teacher Education for Bridging the Education Quality Gap in Africa". It aims to accelerate progress towards the achievement of Education for All and the Sustainable Development Goal 4, which is quality education.
The four-year project that started in 2012 focuses on providing a sufficient number of qualified teachers in Africa through training programs.
This is Special English.
The AG600 amphibious aircraft is expected to make its maiden flight over land in the first half of this year and on water in the second half of 2017.
Its developer AVIC said similar in size to the Boeing 737, the AG600 will be the world&`&s largest amphibious aircraft.
The state aircraft maker, the Aviation Industry Corporation of China, said the the 37-meter AG600 has a wingspan of 40 meters and a maximum take-off weight of 54 tonnes.
The aircraft has already received 17 orders due to its multiple uses in fighting forest fires and marine rescue.
The first AG600 was completed in the southern city of Zhuhai in July last year, and shown to the public at the 2016 China Airshow.
According to a chief designer, the AG600 is like a ship that can fly, due to its advanced gas-water dynamic engineering and underwater corrosion resistance technology.
With four China-made turboprop engines, the AG600 has been described as having a "ship&`&s body" with high mounted single-cantilever wing.
It can collect 12 tonnes of water in 20 seconds, and transport up to 370 tonnes of water on a single tank of fuel.
With excellent maneuverability and a relatively wide range of search scope, the AG600 is very useful in marine resource exploitation, marine environmental monitoring, resource detection and transportation.
You&`&re listening to Special English. I&`&m Mark Griffiths in Beijing.
China&`&s domestic underwater glider reached a depth of 6,300 meters during a mission in the Mariana Trench, breaking the previous record of 6,000 meters held by a U.S. vessel.
Codenamed Haiyi, which means sea wings in Chinese, the underwater glider was developed by the Shenyang Institute of Automation under the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and is used to monitor the deep-sea environment in vast areas.
The Haiyi is carried by deep-sea submarine support ship Tansuo-1. It dived down 12 times and traveled over 130 kilometers during its four-day mission, collecting high-resolution data for scientific research.
This is Special English.
China aims to build 136 new airports by 2025. That&`&s according to a plan by the National Development and Reform Commission and the Civil Aviation Administration of China.
The facilities could become a world-class airport complex of international and regional transport hubs.
China began an airport construction boom in 2008 when the government began spending on infrastructure to offset the global financial crisis.
Service improved remarkably, but current airports are far from adequate and are unevenly located throughout the country.
By the end of 2015, China had 207 civil airports and is expected to have around 260 by 2020.
In 2015, China&`&s airports handled 910 million passengers and are expected to deal with 1.5 billion passengers in 2020 and 2.2 billion by 2025.
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.
HarperCollins Publishers will translate mathematics textbooks from Chinese schools and publish them in Britain.
Under an agreement signed at the London Book Fair, some primary schools in Britain will use 36 books, including math textbooks, supplementary textbooks and teacher&`&s textbooks from Shanghai primary schools starting in September.
The textbooks will be translated from Chinese into English to deliver a complete math program for primary school students.
Apart from publishing textbooks, Britain will also spread the Shanghai Teaching for Mastery Program in the country. It is a four-year program backed by 41 million British pounds in funding announced by the British Department for Education in July 2016.
Colin Hughes, Managing Director of Collins Learning, said the collaboration can make a significant contribution to raising young people&`&s mathematics performance, which is essential to their future success in learning and in life.
Shanghai students achieved good performances in reading, math and sciences in the Program for International Student Assessment in 2009 and 2012, drawing global attention to education in the Chinese city.
A Shanghai-England teacher exchange started in 2014. In September 2014, 73 teachers and educational administrators from 45 English primary schools and relevant departments visited schools in Shanghai. Between November 2014 and March 2015, 61 mathematics teachers and researchers from Shanghai visited 48 English primary schools and performed teaching demonstrations.
This is Special English.
China is topping the list of students studying the Myanmar language at the University of Foreign Languages in Yangon which attracts many international students.
The university said the attraction for the Myanmar language study is due to the fact that Myanmar has good business opportunities in Southeast Asia.
The number of overseas students, who take Myanmar language courses for the current academic year at the university reached 250. Chinese students top the list with 112, followed by South Korean, Japanese and Thai students.
Meanwhile, almost 400 students are attending the Chinese language course, with 440 others studying English and 600 for Japanese.
You&`&re listening to Special English. I&`&m Mark Griffiths in Beijing.
China&`&s tsunami warning center in the South China Sea is expected to start trial operations this year.
The work teams of UNESCO&`&S Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission, have held a meeting in Shanghai to discuss tsunami alerts in the region.
The meeting suggested that this year&`&s session should approve the testing of the center before the end of the year.
The meeting also called for collaboration between the new warning center and another two in the Pacific Ocean.
An official from China&`&s National Marine Environmental Forecasting Center said issuing tsunami alerts to the international community is an important move for China to boost regional marine cooperation and participate in global ocean governance.
The meeting also called for improving data sharing by establishing a monitoring network for earthquakes and tsunamis in the South China Sea region.
The meeting was attended by representatives of the UNESCO Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission, the U.S. National Weather Service and the Japanese Meteorological Agency.
This is Special English.
A total of 1,400 people died as a result of infectious diseases on the Chinese mainland in February.
According to the National Health and Family Planning Commission, there were 486,000 cases of infectious diseases reported on the mainland in February.
Almost 280,000 cases were classified as Class B infectious diseases under China&`&s Law on the Prevention and Treatment of Infectious Diseases, and they resulted in 1,400 deaths.
Viral hepatitis, tuberculosis and syphilis accounted for 96 percent of cases in this category.
Category C diseases were responsible for more than 207,000 cases and 12 deaths. Infectious diarrhea, foot and mouth disease and influenza were the most prevalent in this category, accounting for 94 percent of cases.
This is Special English.
Hong Kong-based airline Cathay Pacific has announced its first full-year loss since 2008.
The group reported an attributable loss of 575 million HK dollars, roughly 74 million U.S. dollars, for last year.
The loss per share was 15 HK cents compared to earnings per share of 153 HK cents in the previous year.
The total revenue last year dropped 9 percent to 93 billion HK dollars. The group&`&s passenger revenue last year was 67 billion HK dollars, a decrease of 8 percent from 2015.
The group&`&s cargo revenue last year was 26 billion HK dollars, a decrease of 13 percent compared to the previous year.
Total fuel costs for Cathay Pacific and Cathay Dragon, before the effect of fuel hedging, decreased by 5 billion HK dollars compared with 2015.
（全文见周六微信。）
大家还在听
