去听写专区一展身手
英语学习论坛的“听力练习区”正式与大家见面啦。欢迎大家来这里练习听力,交流经验,共同进步。
本练习区的音频文件选自英语点津的“听中国日报”、“VOA常速”、“流行金曲”及“名人演讲”等栏目,题材丰富,难度各异,适合不同阶段的英语学习者。
英语点津会定期发布音频材料,大家可以在跟帖中贴出自己听写出的音频文字稿。每个音频材料的标准文字稿会在帖子发布两天后公布。
进入该文章的听写练习页面
This is the VOA Special English Development Report.
Last week, the United Nations held a World Summit on Food Security. But the three-day meeting in Rome produced only limited measures to fight rising hunger. The U.N. World Food Program says more than a billion people -- one in six worldwide -- do not get enough food to be healthy.
The troubled world economy is not the only cause of recent increases. The poorest countries continue to face high food prices, which have fallen elsewhere. The U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization says more than 30 nations continue to need emergency food assistance.
Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said the food crisis has forced millions of families into poverty and hunger. He said six million children die of hunger every year. And he warned that food security is closely connected to the issue of climate change.
BAN KI-MOON: "At a time when the global population is growing, our global climate is changing. By 2050 we will need to grow 70 percent more food. Yet weather is becoming more extreme and unpredictable."
The delegates in Rome promised to continue efforts to reduce by half the number of hungry people by 2015. But critics pointed out that world leaders made a similar promise more than ten years ago.
Several countries promised to increase aid for agriculture, to help developing nations become more independent.
Still, critics deplored a lack of greater action. Leaders from more than 60 countries were in Rome. But Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi was the only leader from a major industrial nation in the Group of Eight. An official from Kenya, Adam Barre Duale, said it showed a lack of unity in the fight against hunger.
ADAM BARRE DUALE: "We need both the developed world and the developing countries to come together and to give and support a global initiative in the war against hunger."
The Food and Agriculture Organization says more than 40 billion dollars a year needs to be invested in agriculture to defeat world hunger. The growing problem has affected developing countries, but also industrialized nations.
The government estimates that 49 million people in the United States were "food insecure" last year. That means their households, at some time during the year, had difficulty providing enough food for all members because of a lack of resources. Almost 15 percent of all households were in that situation. And the Agriculture Department says the numbers may be even higher this year.
And that's the VOA Special English Development Report, written by June Simms. I'm Steve Ember.
(来源:VOA 编辑:陈丹妮)