2015-0825 川普大叔在加州
Trump that: candidates in the Golden State
Tonight the second debate among Republican presidential contenders takes place in California. Now that there is a clear front-runner-Donald Trump- the others know whom to attack. This could make compelling viewing: Mr Trump is prone to saying offensive things when riled. But the participants should remember where they are: since 1988, when a Republican presidential candidate last won the Golden State, the party has been all but wiped out there. No republican holds statewide office and Democrats have a lock on its 55 electoral-college votes. The reason is simple: Republicans offended non-white Californians in the 1990s with their hostility to immigrants. That doesn’t bother Mr Trump: he promises to build a wall along the southern border and to get the Mexican government to pay for it. How strange, though, that tonight some of his rivals may try to match him.
trump that：俗语，你可以做的更好，还有更多杀手锏可以使用。trump up one's ace：出某人的王牌。
Golden State: 加州的别称，因加州曾出产黄金。（附：夏威夷州Aloha State，爱荷华州Hawkeye State，德克萨斯州 Lone Star State……）
contender：竞争者，对手。front-runner：领先者。
compelling：引人注目的、有紧迫感的。
be prone to doing sth：有做某事的倾向。
rile：激怒。wipe out：抹去、铲除。
electoral college：美国选举人团。低调而势力强大的团体，决定着美国总统的最终人选。
hold office：任职。hostility：敌意。
2015-0922 女王创执政记录
Marathon ma’am: the queen’s record reign
Royalists and commemorative-china merchants will rejoice as Elizabeth II notches up her 23336th day on the throne today, overtaking her great-great-grandmother, Victoria. Republicans are as heavily outnumbered as in 1952, when the 25-year-old queen began her reign. But much else about Britain is unrecognizable. It has been transformed from the world’s factory into its factotum, with manufacturing jobs replaced by those in financial, legal and business services. Immigration has creased the non-white population from 75,000 to around 8m. Gays can marry, while fewer straights bother: nearly half children are born out of wedlock, against 6% at the start of Elizabeth’s reign (unwed couples are no longer barred from her annual garden party). Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland have devolved governments, and English cities’ powers are growing. Calls for independence from London and from the EU are louder. Happier, if less glorious, Elizabeth’s has become a more divided kingdom
immigration：→immigrant n. →emigrant
migrate v. →migrant n./migrant worker/bird
2015-0922/0807朝鲜大选
And the winner is: North Korea’s elections
On Sunday North Koreans go to the polls to select mayors, provincial governors and county assemblies. These local elections take place every four years, and will be the first under Kim Jong Un, the country’s dictator since 2011. Citizens will be presented with a single candidate for each position in their district, chosen by the Democratic Front for the reunification of the Fatherland, the governing coalition. Propaganda posters that have gone up around and country exhort them to vote “yes”. Ballots are cast under the watchful gaze of an official –and of the ubiquitous Kim portraits, to which voters must first bow. Choosing “no”, by marking the slip with a red pen, is considered treason, as is abstaining Indeed elections are a way for the totalitarian regime to keep tabs on its subjects through a census turnout figures are typically just short of 100%.
assemblies : 与会者们。/abstaining：弃权、缺席。
ballot：选票。/census： 人口普查。/coalition: 联合。
dictator：独裁者。/exhort：鼓励，忠告。/figures:：数字。
poll： 民意测验，投票票数。portrait： 画像。propaganda ： 宣传。
regime 政体、政权制度。/slip：纸条。
keep tab of something：监视关注某人的行为或者某事的发展。
treason：叛国罪。/totalitarian：集权。
ubiquitous ：无处不在。
reunification of the fatherland：祖国统一
2015-0922/0824 时间与存在
Temporal power: North Korea turns back the clock
Tomorrow the people of North Korea already stuck in the past and ruled over by an ancestor-worshipping hereditary dictatorship, will travel back in time. All clocks will be turned back 30 minutes, taking the hermit kingdom into its own time zone and reversing the imposition of Tokyo hours by “wicked Japanese imperialists” in 1912. It’s the latest example of a long tradition of rulers expressing political power through temporal tyranny. What better way to illustrate one’s might than control over time itself? It also lets a country emphasis its independence and non-conformity: in 2007 Venezuela moved to its own time zone, unsullied by imperialist America. It doesn’t always work: the French Revolutionary ten-hour day and the Soviet Union’s six-day week failed to stand the test of time. But for regimes that want to remind their people who is in charge, the urge to fiddle with clocks and calendars is timeless.
Temporal power: 世俗的权力/Hereditary：世袭的
Hermit：隐士/Imposition: 强加
Non-conformity：与众不同/Unsullied：未受玷污的/Regime：政权/Fiddle：拨弄
2015-0823 守不住地承诺
Promises, promises: Greece goes to the polls
Syriza, Greece’s former governing party ends the general-election campaign today with a rally in central Athens. Its leader, Alexis Tsipras, will appeal to wavering left-wingers: the voters who will decide whether Sunday’s ballot returns him to power or cedes it to the centre-right New Democracy party. Opinion polls (no great oracles) show the parties with near-equal support. Syriza’s radical reputation is in tatters: many young voters who believed Mr Tsipra’s creditor-defying campaign pledge in January feel betrayed by his acceptance in July of yet more austerity and painful reforms the price of an $86Billion ($97 billion) European Union bail-out. Both parties say they will implement that deal, but the election is unlikely to give a decisive result: New Democracy says it would like a coalition with Syriza; Mr. Tsipras has ruled it out. But few would rule out another somersault.
referendum n. 公投/left-winger 左翼人士
waver: v. 犹豫不决。wavering adj. 犹豫不决的。
ballot n. 投票表决。Secret ballot 无记名投票
cede vt. 放弃/This island was ceded to Britain.
oracle n. 1. 祭司 2.专家
in tatters衣服破烂不堪的。受损的（主要指名誉）
After the scandal, his reputation／ career was in tatters.
defy vt. 对抗，违抗/defy the teacher/tradition
defy description／belief (无法用语言描述／ 超乎人的想象)
creditor n. 债主，债权国
pledge n. 承诺（正式的，如商业和政治性承诺）
The candidate has made the pledge not to raise taxes if he is elected.
austerity n. 艰苦的条件/economic austerity
The wartime austerity prepared him for all types of hardships in his life.
bailout n. 紧急财政援助（救助处于困境的企业或者国家）bailout package 一揽子经济救援计划
coalition n. 政治联盟 （不同政党组建政府）
somersault n/vi. 翻跟头
2015-0823/0604 Man in the middle: David Cameron’s agenda
Britain’s House of Commons convenes today for the first time since the general election. Having won an unexpected ( if modest) majority on May 7th, in the new parliament David Cameron and his Conservative lieutenants are launching and audacious bid for the political centre ground: over the past week the Tories have unveiled plans to increase parents’ free child-care allowance, devolve power to the northern English cities and raise standards in schools. Further details of the Queen’s Speech (the government’s legislative programme, which will be formally presented by the monarch on May 27th) will emerge over the course of this week. With both the opposition Labour Party and the right-wing United Kingdom Independence Party mired in post-election squabbling and leadership tussles, the Tories are seizing the chance to consolidate and extend their support. As Mr Cameron told his MPs at a triumphant meeting last week: “Your re-election starts now.”
2015-0824 可口可乐新装Coca-Cola drops the script
Coca-Cola has erased its famous script from its new cans. Gone, puff, vanished, leaving behind a naked white ribbon, fluttering against Coke’s theater-curtain-red backdrop.
McCann-Erickson’s advertising agency branch in Dubai, rolled out a limited-edition run of the new package design in Middle Eastern countries for the month of Ramadan, as part of Coca-Cola’s umbrella campaign to fight prejudice, ”Let’s take an extra second.” The message behind the stripped down cans: don’t label other people.
Rhetoric aside, the new cans say a lot about today’s branding landscape, without saying anything at all. Corporate logos are evolving to become simpler and flatter, and doing is faster. Consider Twitter: the site once used a fully-fledged cartoon as its mascot. Today, it’s a flat white bird with very little plumage. Facebook, too, just unveiled a vanilla update to its logo mark. Coca-Cola’s enduring look can go simpler without sacrificing design identity; the ribbon is enough to let us know what’s in store.
2015-0824/0525 莫斯科胜利日
War stories: Victory Day in Moscow
The 70th anniversary of the end of Second World War in Europe, known in Russia as the Great Patriotic War, should be an occasion for the somber commemoration of joint sacrifice. Instead the parade in Moscow tomorrow (at Stalin’s insistence Russia celebrates the victory a day after its allies) has become the focus of diplomatic rancour. Most Western leaders, including Barack Obama, have declined their invitations because of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine-though in a delicate diplomatic manoeuvre, Angela Merkel, Germany’s chancellor, will lay a wreath in Moscow on Sunday. The Kremlin itself relentlessly links the Ukrainian conflict to the cataclysmic war: its propaganda portrays the opponents of Russian-backed separatists as latter day fascists, and relates Russia’s current ostracisation to its wartime encirclement. But Xi Jinping, China’s president, will attend the macho parade of hardware in Red Square-a mark of Russia’s eastward turn under Vladimir Putin’s bellicose statesmanship.
2015-0828 不作死就会死
Crash: VW counts the cost of cheating
The steam billowing from under Volkswagen’s bonnet has turned to flames. The German carmaker’s shares have plummeted by 35% in two trading days since it admitted cheating in American tests for nitrogen-oxide emissions. Yesterday VW said that 11m cars worldwide were equipped with similar test-fooling software and that it was setting aside Eur 6.5 billion ($7.3 billion) for the costs of the scandal. But VW’s behavior is not unique. Though other carmakers may not have duped American examiners, most routinely fiddle Europe’s looser regime for both emissions and fuel economy. Software that detects when cars are being tested is said to be common. Other permitted measures, such as using specially prepared cars in ideal conditions, are rife, so that claims about pollution and consumption bear little resemblance to real-world driving. Europe’s regulators, unlike America’s, have no authority to punish deceivers. But investors and car-buyers may do it themselves./Billow冒烟/Bonnet:: 引擎盖/Plummet: 下挫/Nitrogen oxide: 氮氧化物/Set aside: 拨用/Scandal：丑闻/Dupe：欺骗
Fiddle：篡改/Rife：猖獗的/Bear resemblance to: 与…相似/Deceiver: 骗子
2015-0928/0731 A bird? A plane? A tale of two bosses
Today provides two case studies in managing a chief executive’s succession: one in how to do it, one in how not to. Boeing’s boss, James McNerney, is handing over to his chief operating officer, Dennis Muilenburg, who arrived at the aircraft-maker as an intern 30 years ago. Twitter’s chief executive, Dick Costolo, is departing under pressure from activist investors. Jack Dorsey, who co-found the microblogging site in 2006 and ran it until he was ousted in 2008, will be interim chief. A worrying number of companies are more like Twitter than Boeing. The National Association of Corporate Directors calculates that 44% of American companies have no succession plan. Even big firms trip up: Bank of America was left rudderless when Ken Lewis resigned in 2009. Such crises are expensive and disruptive. They often force companies to hire outsiders-who cost a lot and are likelier(likely) to fail. When they do, the cycle starts again.
succession：继任/predecessor：前人
microblog：微型博客/oust：逐出
trip up：绊倒/disruptive：引起混乱的
Boeing：波音公司/Twitter：推特
under pressure：在某种压力下
2015-0930大众的毒药
VW’s toxic technology: is diesel doomed?
Martin Winterkorn will not be the only casualty of Volkswagen’s emissions scandal. VW’s of chief executive, who quit yesterday, had seemed doomed since the carmaker admitted cheating in American nitrogen-oxide pollution tests. No one knows how many people have suffered ill health and worse because VW’s diesels produce more noxious gas than claimed. Another victim may be the diesel engine itself. Diesel powers half the cars sold in Europe (though it is uncommon elsewhere). Stricter enforcement of emissions levels, a likely consequence of the myriad impending regulatory and criminal investigations, may make meeting the required standards(as opposed to fiddling them) unacceptably costly. Several European cities, worried about dirty air, are already hostile to diesel. A technology at the heart of the car industry’s efforts to meet European emissions targets may be forced off the road. It may take the continent’s green credentials with it.
credential 一般复数credentials/n. 资质、资格证书
Trump that: candidates in the Golden State
Tonight the second debate among Republican presidential contenders takes place in California. Now that there is a clear front-runner-Donald Trump- the others know whom to attack. This could make compelling viewing: Mr Trump is prone to saying offensive things when riled. But the participants should remember where they are: since 1988, when a Republican presidential candidate last won the Golden State, the party has been all but wiped out there. No republican holds statewide office and Democrats have a lock on its 55 electoral-college votes. The reason is simple: Republicans offended non-white Californians in the 1990s with their hostility to immigrants. That doesn’t bother Mr Trump: he promises to build a wall along the southern border and to get the Mexican government to pay for it. How strange, though, that tonight some of his rivals may try to match him.
trump that：俗语，你可以做的更好，还有更多杀手锏可以使用。trump up one's ace：出某人的王牌。
Golden State: 加州的别称，因加州曾出产黄金。（附：夏威夷州Aloha State，爱荷华州Hawkeye State，德克萨斯州 Lone Star State……）
contender：竞争者，对手。front-runner：领先者。
compelling：引人注目的、有紧迫感的。
be prone to doing sth：有做某事的倾向。
rile：激怒。wipe out：抹去、铲除。
electoral college：美国选举人团。低调而势力强大的团体，决定着美国总统的最终人选。
hold office：任职。hostility：敌意。