美联社新闻一分钟 2006-02-11

（单词翻译）

1. American journalist Jill Carroll's captors are threatening to kill her on Feb. 26th, if the US military doesn’t release all Iraqi women from prison. Carroll, a freelance reporter for the Christian¹ Science Monitor, was kidnapped in Baghdad Jan. 7th.

2. Former FEMA chief Michael Brown blames the Department of Homeland Security for the government’s slow response to Hurricane Katrina. Brown says officials were warned that New Orleans' levees were breach²ed on the day that Hurricane Katrina roared ashore⁴.

3. In a surprise move, Lewis Libby admits he leaked the name of a CIA operative. But he says he was following orders by his superiors. The former top aide to Vice⁵ President Dick Cheney also told the federal grand jury the classified material was used by the Bush administration to justify⁶ invading Iraq.

4. This California woman who's 3 feet tall and weighed 37 pounds before she got pregnant has given birth to her first child, a healthy boy. The new mom suffers from a rare disorder⁷ that makes her bones soft and brittle⁸

WORDS IN THE NEWS

1. freelance : adjective, adverb
doing particular pieces of work for different organizations, rather than working all the time for a single organization:
e.g. Most of the journalists I know are/work freelance.

2. breach : verb
to break a hole in a wall that is intended to protect a place:
e.g. The storm had breached³ the sea wall in two places.

3. superior : noun [C], adjective
(a person or group of people who are) higher in rank or social position than others:
e.g. I will pass your complaint on to my superiors.

4. brittle : adjective
delicate and easily broken:
e.g. As you get older your bones become increasingly brittle.