NPR美国国家公共电台 NPR 2015-08-23(在线收听

 From NPR News in Washington, I’m Lakshmi Singh. The sell-out in major markets around the world is playing out on Wall Street. In late trading, the Dow plunged more than 400 points; it’s now down more than 500 points, or more than three percent. The S&P 500 was down by as much, while the Nasdaq slipped more than three percent of 1 point. The volatility is the result of multiple factors. Investors are worried about a slow-down in the world’s second economy—China. Beijing is reporting unexpectedly weak manufacturing data, also wondering about what the Fed will do about raising interest rates. Also it’s August; a lot of people are on vacation. So the result of world trading may be more pronounced. NPR’s James Roly discusses the broader impact on the market. Well, this has been a bad week for the stock market. It’s basically wiped out all of the gains the market has had this year. The S&P 500 has actually fallen below 2,000. It is just one of the sort of important measure psychologically that investors look to. This really has happened everywhere. All over the world, it happened in Japan, it happened in London, Frankfort and Hong Kong. NPR’s James Roly reporting. Preliminary tests indicate that the self-proclaimed Islamic State used chemical weapon during an attack in northern Iraq earlier this month. NPR’s Tom Boben reports a senior military official says more testing needs to be done before any solid conclusions can be reached. The attack occurred on August 11 not far from the northern Iraqi city of Mosul. Mortar rounds fired by ISIS landed near Kurdish forces. After the attack, some of those Kurdish troops said their skin started blistering. Others had trouble breathing and suspected the rounds included chemicals. The US collected some of the mortar fragments and conducted a field test. Here’s Brigadier General Kevin Killea. “They show the presence of HD, or what’s known as sulfur mustard. That is, a class one chemical agent.”

Still Killea said more detail test will be needed to determine the exact nature of the chemical and where it came from. Tom Boben, NPR News, Washington. The White House reports that Fadhil Ahmad al-Hayali, the second in command of ISIS has been killed in a US military airstrike. The administration says the operation was carried out this week near Mozul, Iraq. Cries erupted from a crowd of thousands of migrants as Macedonian special police forces fired stun grenades to disperse them. Large influx of migrants who were heading north to the European Union were stuck on the border with Greece after police sealed off the crossing. This hour Macedonia is again allowing migrants through but in controlled numbers as local authorities say they will be able to handle. Before close, the Dow was down 531 points, more than three percent of its 16,460. All major markets ended down more than three percent. This is NPR. Britain has just released its historic top secret files on the working of its domestic intelligence service MI5. Several well-known people were under suspicion for alleged subversive activity that included Nobel Prize winning author Doris Lessing, who was monitored more than 20 years. Larry Miller reports. MI5 considered Doris Lessing a person of high interest as a result of her openly communist politics and what it is described as her fanatic opposition to racial separation in southern Africa. Surveillance began in 1943 even before she left for Rhodesia, now Zimbabwe, from London, and well before she began writing. Intelligence followed her, bugged her phone, letter and mail, and ran through her luggage. Lessing’s neighbors were informants. Her writings were analyzed for being subversive. Even after Lessing left Britain’s communist party in 1956, she was still considered to be a risk. MI5 stopped tracking her in 1964 by which time she had become a successful writer. Lessing died two years ago. For NPR News, I’m Larry Miller in London. Federal safety regulators in the US are investigating reports of defective airbags on some older Honda Accords that may not inflate during a collision. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration says it is looking into more than 380,000 vehicles from the 2008 model year. The agency is acting on 19 consumer complaints of failure with certain Honda airbags. In a separate case, the agency is rejecting a request by an electrical engineer to investigate low-speed unintended acceleration to Toyota and Lexus cars. This is NPR.
  原文地址:http://www.tingroom.com/lesson/npr2015/8/322292.html