Download:  http://download.putclub.com/update/sest/200711/23/20071123apnews.mp3

Reference:

1. President Bush says it's the least he can do this Thanksgiving Day: calling members of the armed forces overseas. The White House says Bush called troops stationed in remote locations worldwide to wish them a happy holiday and thank them for their service.

2. Iran is expecting the UN Security Council to close the file on the country's nuclear activities after its investigation into past atomic programs wraps up. An Iranian diplomat says there will be no "legal and technological justification" for continued Security Council involvement after the probe.

3. The father of missing American teenager Natalee Holloway will re-launch a search for her body in waters off Aruba. His announcement comes after police rearrested three suspects in her 2005 disappearance.

4. A plague of starlings in Tamworth Australia has driven desperate locals to try an unusual scare tactic. Council workers have unpacked a hundred rubber snakes and strapped them in strategic locations on trees in hopes of scaring the birds away.


WORDS IN THE NEWS

1. starlings : noun.欧椋鸟, 桥墩尖端
a common bird with dark shiny feathers and a noisy call




[ 本帖最后由 vanbryan 于 2007-11-23  22:41 编辑 ]

Boyz II Men are back with a new album of Motown hits



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Reference:

Grammy winning group is considered one of the most successful R&B groups of all time, selling an estimated, get this, 60 million records. They’ve dominated the charts with their classic Motown hits. And now, the boyz are back. We’re so thrilled to be joined by Boys II Men today as they unveil their brand new album “Motown, A Journey through / Hitsville USA”. Thanks so much for being here.

Hello... Good to be here. Pleasure to be here. Yes, it is. Yes, it is.

So the album is, it sounds fantastic, tell me about it coz it’s the classic? Why did you guys decide to do that?

Well, it was an idea that came to our management by actually a group of guys, who were thinking about doing something like, there's Dave Salmonia, and a couple of other people. They actually came to management and said“you know what would the guy be interested in ?’ When they came to us with the idea, we were like “Oh, it sounds like something that will be very very interesting to do, kind of nostalgic, because we started / off on Motown”. So, you know, now being back on Universal / after taking a , behind hades from record labels for a minute, and being independent. We came back to Universal, and now we’re doing / Motown songs. So it’s like a full-circle-type thing.

It’s great that you guys coz you all have been here for two decades in the business. So you have the ability to say, no, it's not the time. We should wait. (yeah, yeah, that's it) And have you guys, you know, stay together, and you, they seem to get along, but do you really behind the scenes?

Absolutely we get along, I mean just like any brotherhood or any family tie-oriented situation, you know. We have our ups and downs, we have our problems you know, a little, you know, and there're secrecies that we, you know kind of like showing off, oh, this guy is just bugging right now. But you know in actuality, you know we love each other, we’re brothers. And the beautiful thing about it is / music made us love each other. And as long as the music is here, as long as we’re gonna be here with each other.

Yes, it's based on real thing, it is not about, we weren't a contrived group, we weren't a group that was made by some manager guy that sort of putting together, a bunch of dudes to sing harmony. We put ourselves together. And it’s just like Wanya say it’s the music, and the love with music that we mutually have, and that’s the tide of bonds.

Alright. And I have to ask coz you’re working with Randy Jackson, American idol fame, who's also a Grammy winning producer. Tell me, how, what was that like?

Well it was a great experience for all of us. I mean we’ve known Randy for years, but we never really had a chance to work with him, in this type of fashion. And when we came up with the idea for the album, we weren't sure how we were gonna produce the actual music side of it. But we came up with an idea to produce it all-live. All-live instruments which was a great thing for us. And the list of producers that we had , kind of got narrowed down when we went that direction. And Randy was the one who seemed to best fit the bill for what we were trying to do. And he is just a great guy, man, I mean, he is a good dude, he's very insightful, he is very honest, and he is one of those guys just you can bounce a lot of ideas off, he's gonna give you some honest opinion/. It was just a, it was just a great relaxed atmosphere, there was nothing rush, for we didn’t have to, you know we didn’t have our backs up against the wall for time or whatever. / / we just went in, tried to follow into the characters of the songs that we were singing. And it was just a great atmosphere altogether.

Alright, and it comes throughout the album. You know I can’t let you go without asking for a little sample. Can you sing me a little focus, ok?

We’re gonna give you a little sample, we actually re-did one of our own songs on the album, “End of the Road”. We did / an a cappella with our good friend Brian Mcknight, he helped this out on the production on that part. So we are gonna give you just a little, littele sneak peek. Ok

(All singing…)

Oh, fantastic, that is / ballad right there. Thank you guys so much, it's such a fun to have you here. Thank you so much.

Definitely...

johnson, fantastic job you've done.



[ 本帖最后由 vanbryan 于 2007-11-23  22:47 编辑 ]

貌似近来这个板块比较缺少人气,大家学英语的热情不够高啊

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我是来顶楼主的

Today's Highlight in History:
On November 23rd, 1903, singer Enrico Caruso made his American debut at the Metropolitan Opera House in New York, appearing in "Rigoletto."

On this date:

In 1765, Frederick County, Maryland, repudiated the British Stamp Act.

In 1804, the 14th president of the United States, Franklin Pierce, was born in Hillsboro, New Hampshire.

In 1889, the first jukebox made its debut in San Francisco, at the Palais Royale Saloon.

In 1936, "Life," the magazine created by Henry R. Luce, was first published.

In 1943, during World War Two, US forces seized control of Tarawa and Makin atolls from the Japanese.

In 1945, most US wartime rationing of foods, including meat and butter, ended.

In 1959, the musical "Fiorello!," with music by Jerry Bock and lyrics by Sheldon Harnick, opened on Broadway.

In 1971, the People's Republic of China was seated in the UN Security Council.

In 1980, some 4800 people were killed by a series of earthquakes that devastated southern Italy.

In 1996, a hijacked Ethiopian Airlines Boeing 767 crashed into the waves off Comoros Islands, killing 125 of the 175 people on board.
Ten years ago: President Bush conferred separately with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak in Cairo and Syrian President Hafez Assad in Geneva, seeking Arab support for his drive to expel Iraqi troops from Kuwait.

Five years ago: Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic grudgingly accepted the US-backed peace plan for the former Yugoslavia after meeting with Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic. Movie director Louis Malle died in Beverly Hills, California, at age 63.

One year ago: In a plea met with scant applause and silent stares, President Clinton told ethnic Albanians in Kosovo that "you must try" to forgive Serb neighbors and stop punishing them for the terror campaign of Slobodan Milosevic. Defense Secretary William Cohen called for a military-wide review of conduct after a Pentagon study said up to 75 percent of blacks and other ethnic minorities reported experiencing racially offensive behavior.

每日格言：

"I'm a realist and so I think regretting is a useless occupation. You help no one with it. But you can't live without illusions even if you must fight for them, such as `love conquers all.' It isn't true, but I would like it to be."

-- Marlene Dietrich, German-born actress (1901-1992).

Download:  http://download.putclub.com/update/sest/200711/24/20071124apnews.mp3

Reference:

1.Shoppers get an early start this morning as they filled stores before dawn, hunting for deep discounts. Retailers are hoping this shopping enthusiasm will hold through the entire holiday season. But analysts start predicting this will be the weakest shopping season in years.

2.A judge in Aruba is ordering two brothers held in the disappearance of Natalee Holloway to stay behind bars. He wants them to remain in jail for at least another eight days while prosecutors continue the investigation.

3.Tensions are rising in Lebanon where the president has announced the state of emergency and ordered the army to take over security powers. This comes just hours before he was supposed to step down. The prime minister is rejecting the move.

4.The man who created the five-category hurricane system has died. Herbert Saffir came up with his scale as a way to lay out what kind of damage an approaching storm would do. Before storms we are just labeled as major or minor. Herbert Saffir was 90 years old.

[ 本帖最后由 vanbryan 于 2007-11-24  19:34 编辑 ]

Search For Adam-11



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Mp3 download

There is a man who can give a face to Adam even without his skull. Frank Bender calls himself the re-composer of the decomposed. He’s a forensic artist, a specialist at bringing the dead to life. Bender works regularly for police departments around the world, giving faces to human remains, even when the skulls are almost missing. Adam’s skull is missing, but Bender will base his reconstruction on the closest skull he can find. And that brings him to the American Museum of Natural History in New York City.

Garry Sawyer is an expert on reconstructing prehistoric faces. He believes this skull found at a site called Kavza is a good basis for Adam. Because he combines modern features with still some archaic features and a lower forehead and frontal and good size brow ridges. The Kavza’s skull is about 100,000 years old. Adam’s skull would be much more modern.

Bender will have to estimate what thousands of years of evolution would have done to Kavzamen’s appearance. First, he uses his forensic skills to figure out what Kavzamen look like. “Wow! That came out! It must prove perfect!” Bender can determine his features from the structure of the skull: the shape of the cheekbones, the line of the jaw, the width of the nose, the size of the chin. Kavzaman is 100,000 years old. To construct a face for Adam, Bender has to update this portrait by 40,000 years.

As humans evolved, the shape of our skulls changed. Brow ridges shrank. The forehead became more vertical. The chin more prominent. Adam should be almost halfway between this ancient man and humans like us. Bender needs to find that midpoint. He needs a modern face to compare to the ancient skull. But not just any face. He wants someone whose lineage traces most directly back to Adam.

Wells knows where to look. In east Africa is a little known tribe called the Haczabe. “Spencer. Downward. ” Their DNA links them almost straight back to Adam. They give us a glimpse into his world.

[ 本帖最后由 vanbryan 于 2007-11-24  19:38 编辑 ]

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Today's Highlight in History:

On November 25th, 1963, the body of President Kennedy was laid to rest at Arlington National Cemetery. (Pictured right: Caroline, Jacqueline and John Kennedy, Jr.)

On this date:

In 1758, in the French and Indian War, the British captured Fort Duquesne in present-day Pittsburgh.

In 1783, the British evacuated New York, their last military position in the United States during the Revolutionary War.

In 1835, American industrialist Andrew Carnegie was born in Dunfermline, Scotland.

In 1920, radio station WTAW of College Station, Texas, broadcast the first play-by-play description of a football game, between the University of Texas and Texas A&M.

In 1957, President Eisenhower suffered a slight stroke.

In 1973, Greek President George Papadopoulos was ousted in a bloodless military coup.

In 1974, former UN Secretary-General U Thant died in New York at age 65.

In 1980, Sugar Ray Leonard regained the World Boxing Council welterweight championship when Roberto Duran abruptly quit in the eighth round at the Louisiana Superdome.

In 1986, the Iran-Contra affair erupted as President Reagan and Attorney General Edwin Meese revealed that profits from secret arms sales to Iran had been diverted to Nicaraguan rebels.

In 1987, Harold Washington, the first black mayor of Chicago, died in office at age 65.

Ten years ago: Poland held its first popular presidential election. (Solidarity founder Lech Walesa, who received a plurality of votes, won a runoff the following month.)

Five years ago: In his weekly radio address, President Clinton appealed to America's values and interests as he pleaded for support for the Bosnia peace agreement. Serbs in the Bosnian capital Sarajevo took to the streets by the thousands to protest the peace plan, vowing to fight to the death.

One year ago: Five-year-old Elian Gonzalez was rescued by a pair of sport fishermen off the coast of Florida. Elian was one of three survivors from a boat carrying 14 Cubans that had sunk two days earlier in the Atlantic Ocean; his rescue set off an international custody battle between relatives in Miami and Elian's father in Cuba.

每日格言：

"Youth condemns; maturity condones."

-- Amy Lowell, American poet, critic (1874-1925).