美联社新闻一分钟 2006-01-20

（单词翻译）

1. A new audiotape supposedly from Osama bin¹ Laden², and Al-Jazeera has aired it. A voice identified as bin Laden says Al Qaeda is making preparations for attacks in the US, but offers a truce³ to build Iraq and Afghanistan.

2. Islamic Jihad has phoned the Associated Press to claim responsibility for today's suicide bombing in Tel Aviv's central bus station. A police commander says the blast wounded 15 people. Witnesses say the bomber⁴ pretended to be a peddler in a crowded mall.

3. More videotape of US reporter Jill Carroll was aired by Al-Jazeera television today. The 28 year-old was kidnapped in Iraq. Her captors threaten to kill her tomorrow, if all female Iraqis in U.S. military custody⁵ aren’t freed.

4. A fiery⁶ train collision in Alabama kept hundreds of people away from their homes overnight. About five hundred people were evacuated⁷ after a train carrying sodium⁸ cyanide caught fire when it rear-ended another train. The huge cloud of billowing black smoke could be seen forty miles away.

WORDS IN THE NEWS

1. peddler : noun [C]
one who travels about selling wares⁹ for a living; a hawker

2. captor : noun [C]
someone who is keeping another person prisoner
e.g. He managed to escape from his captors.

3. sodium cyanide :
a poisonous white crystalline compound, NaCN, used in extracting gold and silver from ores and in dye manufacture 氰化钠

4. rear-end : verb
to hit the back of one car with another in an accident:
e.g. My new car was rear-ended while it was parked outside the station.

5. billowing : adj. (Dictionary.com)
moving in surges and billows and rolls:
e.g. billowing smoke from burning houses