美联社新闻一分钟 2006-10-03

（单词翻译）

1. A tragic¹ day in Pennsylvania Amish country. Police say a gunman killed at least 3 young girls in a schoolhouse. The suspect who police say killed himself reportedly told his wife he was seeking revenge for something that happened 20 years ago.

2. House Speaker Dennis Hastert says the Republican leadership did not know about lurid² instant messages between former Congressman³ Mark Foley and House pages from 2003. Hastert says he's disgusted and outraged⁴.

3. Iraq's government has extended its state of emergency in response to unrelenting violence. More than 19 people die today in bombings and shootings. Fifty bodies were found in just 24 hours. Gunmen kidnap 14 workers from computer shops near Baghdad's Technical University.

4. Two Americans have won the Nobel Prize for medicine. Craig Mello and Andrew Fire were recognized for discovering a way to turn off the effects of specific genes⁵. This could potentially give scientist a way to fight diseases from cancer to AIDS.

WORDS IN THE NEWS


1. schoolhouse : n
A building used as a school.

2. lurid : adj
Marked by sensationalism: a lurid account of the crime.

3. instant messaging : n
The transmission of an electronic message over a computer network using software that immediately displays the message in a window on the screen of the recipient⁶.

4. unrelenting : adj
Not diminishing in intensity⁷, pace, or effort.