What Now for al-Qaida After Death of bin Laden- - English Listening Lessons.mp3 What Now for al-Qaida After Death of bin Laden? Posted by admin on May 28th, 2011 at 08:51am This is IN THE NEWS in VOA Special English. Al-Qaida on Friday confirmed the death of its leader, Osama bin Laden. The SITE Intelligence group said al-Qaida released a statement on militant websites. The statement threatened more attacks on Americans and their allies. Al-Qaida also urged Pakistanis to rebel against their government. It urged them to “cleanse the shame that has been attached to them” by the death in Pakistan. American special-forces killed Osama bin Laden early Monday during a raid on a house where he had been living. BARACK OBAMA: “Today, at my direction, the United States launched a targeted operation against that compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan.” President Obama announced the news late Sunday night in Washington. Abbottabad is a two- hour drive from Islamabad, the Pakistani capital, and has a large military presence. But Pakistani officials say they had no idea the al-Qaida leader was there. Mr. Obama said his death does not mark the end of the threat. BARACK OBAMA: “There’s no doubt that al-Qaida will continue to pursue attacks against us. We must –- and we will — remain vigilant at home and abroad. As we do, we must also reaffirm that the United States is not –- and never will be -– at war with Islam.” Mr. Obama also had a message for families who lost loved ones to al-Qaida’s terror. BARACK OBAMA: “Justice has been done.” This year is the tenth anniversary of the attacks against the United States on September eleventh, two thousand one. Almost three thousand people were killed. So now who, if anyone, will take control of al-Qaida? Osama Bin Laden’s second-in-command, Ayman al-Zawahri, is considered a likely choice. (SOUND) That was Ayman al-Zawahri in a message released in February. Mohamed Salah is editor of the al Hayat newspaper in London. He says Ayman al-Zawahri — a surgeon — is the real founder of al-Qaida. He says his experience organizing Islamists in Egypt is at least as important as the ideas and financing that Osama bin Laden provided. The two men met during the fight against Soviet troops in Afghanistan. Now, American officials are studying documents and computers seized during the raid in Abbottabad. American officials said immediately after the raid that Osama bin Laden had been armed; they later said he was not armed. President Obama has rejected the release of photographs of the body, saying the images could incite violence. Officials say the body was buried at sea from a Navy ship. On Friday, two United Nations investigators urged the United States to provide more details about the death. They say whether or not American forces met international human rights standards when they killed Osama bin Laden depends on the facts. And those facts, they said, need to be brought out into the open. The American-based group Human Rights Watch agrees. Reed Brody from Human Rights Watch explains why his group has joined the debate. REED BRODY: “I think it would be very important for the US to give more information, both to show its justification for the legality and also frankly to prevent a lot of other countries from hunting down their opponents either at home or abroad and using this as justification.” And that’s IN THE NEWS in VOA Special English. For more on this story, go to voaspecialenglish.com. I’m Steve Ember. Nuclear Crisis in Japan Raises Worries About Radiation Risks - English Listening Lessons.mp3 Nuclear Crisis in Japan Raises Worries About Radiation Risks Posted by admin on May 26th, 2011 at 08:48am This is the VOA Special English Health Report. The crisis at the damaged Fukushima Dai-Ichi Nuclear Power Station in northern Japan has raised worries about radiation risks. We spoke Tuesday with Jonathan Links, an expert in radiation health sciences. He is a professor at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Maryland. Professor Links says workers within the nuclear plant are the only people at risk of extremely high doses of radiation. JONATHAN LINKS: “Of course, we don’t know what doses they’ve received, but the only persons at risk of acute radiation effects are the workers.” For other people, he says, there may be a long-term worry. People can get cancer from low doses of ionizing radiation, the kind released in a nuclear accident. Professor Links says scientists can use computers to quickly model where radioactive material has blown and settled. Then they measure how large an area is contaminated. He says if the situation is serious enough, officials could take steps like telling people not to eat locally grown food or drink the water. JONATHAN LINKS: “But that would only be the case if there was a significant release and, because of wind direction, the radioactive material was blown over the area, and then settled out of the air into and onto water, plants, fruits and vegetables.” The reactors at Fukushima are on the Pacific coast. But Professor Links says people should not worry about any radioactive material leaking into the ocean. JONATHAN LINKS: “Even in a worst-case scenario accident, the sea provides a very high degree of dilution. So the concentration of radioactivity in the seawater would still be quite low.” Japan is the only country to have had atomic bombs dropped on it. That memory from World War Two would create a stronger “psychological sensitivity” to radiation exposure, Professors Links says. Next month is the twenty-fifth anniversary of the explosion and fire that destroyed a reactor at Chernobyl in Ukraine. The nineteen eighty-six event was the world’s worst accident in the nuclear power industry. A new United Nations report says more than six thousand cases of thyroid cancer have been found. These are in people who were children in affected areas of Belarus, Russia and Ukraine. The report says that by two thousand five the cancers had resulted in fifteen deaths. The cancers were largely caused by drinking contaminated milk. The milk came from cows that ate grass where radioactive material had fallen. And that’s the VOA Special English Health Report, written by Caty Weaver. To get the latest updates, go to voaspecialenglish.com. I’m Steve Ember. Kids in Britain + Online Tutors in India _ Divided Opinions - English Listening Lessons.mp3 Kids in Britain + Online Tutors in India = Divided Opinions Posted by admin on May 24th, 2011 at 08:47am This is the VOA Special English Education Report. India was once a colony in the British Empire. But now Indian tutors are helping to teach math to some British children over high-speed Internet connections. Early results suggest that online tutoring may improve student performance. But not everyone is happy at this so-called outsourcing of tutors. (SOUND) It’s three-thirty in the afternoon at Raynham Primary School in London. Students are gathering for their after-school math lesson. Five time zones and thousands of kilometers away, their math tutors are also arriving for class. (SOUND) Each pupil gets an individual online tutor. The students work with activities on their computer screen and wear a headset and microphone to talk to their tutor. Their classroom teacher, Altus Basson, says he has seen an improvement in results. ALTUS BASSON: ” Children who struggle to focus in class focus a lot better on the laptops.” Nine-year-old Samia Abdul-Kadir says she enjoys the online lessons. SAMIA ABDUL-KADIR: “It helps me because sometimes when we’re doing it in class, I don’t hear the teacher very much and I don’t understand, but online is better.” Her friend, Abdul-Fadil Badori, agrees. ABDUL-FADIL BADORI: “Online, you can hear it, it’s not shared by everyone, everyone has different topics they’re learning.” Tom Hooper started the company that provides the online tutoring. The company is called BrightSpark Education. TOM HOOPER: “Children today feel very confident online, they feel very engaged, they feel very in control. And that’s half the battle with education. Give them control, make them feel confident and enjoy their learning and you’ll see them start to improve and embrace it.” Online tutoring costs between twenty and twenty-five dollars an hour. An online tutor is about half the cost of traditional face-to-face coaching. But some people say an Internet connection is not enough of a connection for teaching and learning. Kevin Courtney is deputy general secretary of Britain’s National Union of Teachers. KEVIN COURTNEY: “We think there’s something that’s a really important emotional connection between a teacher and a child, whether it’s a whole class or whether it’s one-to-one. You need that immediacy of feedback, and we’re not convinced that that can happen across an Internet connection. In one of the wealthiest countries in the world, we think that we can afford to have teachers with the genuine emotional connection there with the children.” BrightSpark Education says the online tutoring is used only as an addition to supplement regular teaching. The company says its service does not represent a threat to teachers’ jobs in Britain. Some parents say they are satisfied with the results. And what about the children? CHILDREN: “I love it!” “I love it!” “I hate maths!” So math — or, as the British call it, maths — is still not everyone’s favorite subject even with the latest technology to teach it. A Push to Get More Indonesians to Study in US - English Listening Lessons.mp3 A Push to Get More Indonesians to Study in US Posted by admin on May 18th, 2011 at 08:23am This is the VOA Special English Education Report. The Obama administration wants to double the number of Indonesians studying in the United States. More than fifty American universities recently attended an education fair in Jakarta as part of a visit by a top American trade official. The United States is reaching out to fast-growing economies like Indonesia and Vietnam as new markets for American goods and services. International students put an estimated nineteen billion dollars into the American economy last year. Last June, the Obama administration set a five-year goal to increase university partnerships and student exchanges with Indonesia. The subjects include agriculture, business and information technology. Micro-scholarships will support intensive language training programs for Indonesians, and for more Americans to study there. Ambassador Scot Marciel says student exchanges create a personal basis for better relations. But he says the United States has to work harder to get more Indonesians to study in America. SCOT MARCIEL: “We have to do a much better job of A) marketing our universities, which are the best in the world; and B) changing this terrible perception that you can’t get a student visa. So I’m literally almost out on the streets grabbing people as they walk by saying, Hey, we’ll give you a visa if you go study in America.” Ambassador Marciel says more than ninety percent of Indonesians who request a visa to study in the United States are approved. Still, the number coming to the United States has been falling since the Asian financial crisis in nineteen ninety-eight. Last year, there were fewer than seven thousand. That was a loss of about eight percent from two thousand nine. More Indonesians have been choosing to study in Australia, Singapore and Malaysia. But the United States still has many of the world’s top universities and research centers. English remains a favorite subject among students from Indonesia. However, many are also choosing business and science. Education Minister Mohammad Nur says increased cultural diplomacy will help develop Indonesia and its friendships. (SOUND) There is a lot of history behind Indonesia’s relationship with America, he says. That is why it needs to be strengthened. But the world’s largest Muslim-majority nation also wants to strengthen ties with other countries and Europe. Some Indonesian students at the education fair said they are less concerned about where they study than about having enough money to pay for it. Japan’s Disaster Could Hurt Plans for Nuclear Energy Industry - English Listening Lessons.mp3 Japan’s Disaster Could Hurt Plans for Nuclear Energy Industry Posted by admin on May 16th, 2011 at 08:22am This is the VOA Special English Economics Report. The crisis at Japan’s Fukushima Dai-Ichi nuclear energy center has raised questions about the future of the nuclear energy industry. Arjun Makhijani is president of the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research in the United States. He says the disaster in Japan is historic. ARJUN MAKHIJANI: “We are witnessing a completely unprecedented nuclear accident in that there have never been three reactors in the same place at the same time that have had a severe accident.” This week, the chairman of America’s nuclear agency said there is little chance that harmful radiation from Japan could reach the United States. Nuclear Regulatory Commission Chairman Gregory Jaczko also said America has a strong program in place to deal with earthquake threats. No new nuclear power centers have been built in the United States since nineteen seventy-nine. That was when America’s worst nuclear accident happened at the Three Mile Island center in Pennsylvania. The accident began to turn public opinion against nuclear energy. To support more clean energy production, the Obama administration has been seeking billions of dollars in government loan guarantees to build new centers. Currently, about twenty percent of electricity in the United States comes from nuclear energy. But critics say nuclear power is too costly and dangerous to be worth further expansion. German Chancellor Angela Merkel said Germany would temporarily close seven nuclear power centers while energy policy is reconsidered. The European Union is planning to test all centers in its twenty-seven member nations. Developing nations are less willing to slow nuclear expansion. China said it will continue with plans to build about twenty-five new nuclear reactors. And India, under a cooperation agreement with the United States, plans to spend billions on new centers in the coming years. Japan has made nuclear energy a national priority since the nineteen seventies. Unlike many major economies, Japan imports eighty percent of its energy. The Nuclear Energy Institute says twenty-nine percent of Japan’s electricity came from nuclear sources in two thousand nine.The government planned to increase that to forty percent by twenty seventeen. Nuclear reactors supply fourteen percent of global electricity. Nuclear energy is a clean resource, producing no carbon gases. But radioactive waste is a serious unresolved issue. So is the presence of nuclear power centers in earthquake areas like the one near Bushehr, Iran. How Egypt’s Present Is Affecting Studies of Its Ancient Past - English Listening Lessons.mp3 How Egypt’s Present Is Affecting Studies of Its Ancient Past Posted by admin on May 14th, 2011 at 08:20am FAITH LAPIDUS: This is SCIENCE IN THE NEWS in VOA Special English. I’m Faith Lapidus. BOB DOUGHTY: And I’m Bob Doughty. This week, we tell about a new report about alcohol abuse. And we tell how the recent political unrest in Egypt has affected American archeologists who are working there. (MUSIC) FAITH LAPIDUS: The World Health Organization says alcohol abuse is the third leading cause of death and disability in the world. WHO officials say the misuse of alcohol kills two million five hundred thousand people a year. And, the officials are calling for action to reduce the problem. The WHO released the “Global Status Report on Alcohol and Health 2011” last month. The report shows young people at risk. It says three hundred twenty thousand people between the ages of fifteen and twenty-nine die each year from alcohol-related causes. That is nine percent of all deaths in that age group. BOB DOUGHTY: Shekhar Saxena is director of the Department of Mental Health and Substance Abuse at the WHO. He says alcohol is responsible for one-third of the deaths among young people in some parts of the world. SHEHAR SAXENA: “Consumption and harmful effects of alcohol are increasing in developing countries, particularly in Africa and Asia, which have less powerful regulations and which have less health services available.” The World Health Organization report finds that six percent of all male deaths worldwide are linked to alcohol. This is true in only one percent of female deaths. The report says one in five men die from alcohol-related causes in the Russian Federation and neighboring countries. FAITH LAPIDUS: There are four main causes of alcohol related death. Injury, from car accidents or violence, is one. The others are diseases like cirrhosis of the liver, cancer, heart and blood system diseases. The WHO report says alcohol abuse also adds to the development of two hundred other diseases. Dr. Saxena says people who are dependent on alcohol live ten years less on average that those who do not have the problem. The WHO has a plan to reduce the misuse of alcohol. It includes raising taxes on alcohol, reducing the number of businesses selling alcohol and raising the drinking age. Officials say other measures include better drunk driving laws and banning some alcohol advertising. (MUSIC) BOB DOUGHTY: Archeologists from several American universities left Egypt during the events leading up to the resignation of President Hosni Mubarak. But some archeologists and students are still working in Egypt, or they left but plan to return. At least ten American organizations provide educational programs with a specialty in studies of ancient Egypt. Their students are among hundreds of people involved in current and recent Egyptian archeological projects. AP Zahi Hawass, center, standing near a damaged coffin at the Egyptian Museum in Cairo. He has announced plans to resign as head of the Ministry of State for Antiquities. FAITH LAPIDUS: Laurel Bestock is with Brown University in Rhode Island. Professor Bestock led five graduate students on a recent excavation at Abydos, in southern Egypt. They worked there as part of a program with Yale University, the University of Pennsylvania and New York University. The group left Egypt five days before the anti-government protests began. Professor Bestock says their return to the United States was not linked to the ouster of President Mubarak. Abydos was one of the most important ancient cities in Upper Egypt. Archeologists have been working there for more than a century. But the area continues to give up secrets from thousands of years ago. The Brown University group plans another visit to Egypt in December. Professor Bestock says, “There is no reason to believe that we will not return.” BOB DOUGHTY: Archeologist Suzanne Onstine started her work in Egypt in January. She is working with two graduate students from the University of Memphis, in Tennessee. The three continued their project through the anti-Mubarak protests and his resignation. They are currently working at an excavation at Theban Tomb Sixteen. This is a burial place of an important official who served a king. It is on the west bank of the Nile River, opposite Luxor. FAITH LAPIDUS: Some travel guides have described Luxor as the world’s largest “open-air museum.” The area covers and surrounds the place where the city of Thebes once stood. Luxor is about six hundred forty four kilometers south of Cairo. Lorelei Corcoran directs the Institute of Art and Archeology at the University of Memphis. She heard reports of objects being destroyed in the Luxor area as her team worked there. Professor Corcoran says the school community was tense and worried about their people during the anti-government unrest. Archeologists from the University of Chicago also remained at work in Luxor during the unrest. BOB DOUGHTY: Jay Van Rensselaer was also at Luxor when the protests began. Mr. Van Rensselaer works as a photographer, taking pictures of artifacts for Johns Hopkins University in Maryland. He was with Johns Hopkins students and group leader Betsy Bryan at the time of the protests. They were working in the Temple of Mut Precinct. The photographer says he left the dig on January twenty-eighth for Cairo. He waited at the city’s crowded airport, where he was able to get a flight to the United States. Several others remained at Luxor for a few days. Then they returned to Maryland. Mr. Van Ransselaer says he is hopeful about the future of foreign archeology there. He believes the new government will welcome foreign research teams. (MUSIC) FAITH LAPIDUS: All archeology programs operating in Egypt need permission from the government to work in the country. Scientist Zahi Hawass had led the Supreme Council of Antiquities for years when the government changed. Last week, Mr. Hawass announced plans to resign from his position as head of the Ministry of State for Antiquities Affairs. He also expressed deep sadness about criminal attacks on the country’s archeological treasures. On his blog, he identified more than twenty areas that have been robbed or suffered damage after huge protests began. His comments came after the appointment of a new prime minister, Essam Sharaf. Egypt’s military rulers asked Mr. Sharaf to lead the government. BOB DOUGHTY: Zahi Hawass was appointed to his cabinet-level position in January, shortly before the protests forced President Hosni Mubarak to resign. For almost ten years before that, the archeologist had served as chief antiquities official. Mr. Hawass is often described as a colorful leader who has brought Egypt’s long-ago past to the attention of the world. He has appeared in many television programs that tell about his nation’s monuments and mummified remains. Mr. Hawass has made many discoveries. He sent artifacts from young King Tutankhamen and his family to a number of foreign museums. Some observers say that through his efforts, foreigners have brought billions of dollars into his nation. Mr. Hawass also has fought for return of art objects that he says belong in Egypt, where they were found. A good example is the Rosetta Stone. It is now at the British Museum in London. Writing in three ancient languages on the stone contains a declaration made for King Ptolemy the Fifth. Mr. Hawass has promised to make life unpleasant for museums that he believes have unlawfully kept Egyptian art objects. FAITH LAPIDUS: But Mr. Hawass has recently come under criticism. During the anti-government protests, a small demonstration took place near Mr. Hawass’ office. About one hundred fifty Egyptian archeology students and workers demanded that he resign. They accused him of corruption and treating employees unfairly. They said that not enough jobs are available in archeology in Egypt. Critics of Zahi Hawass also noted how he reacted to attacks on the Egyptian Museum in Cairo. The museum sits on Tahrir Square, where the large demonstrations took place. At first, he said no objects were stolen from the museum during the unrest. But he later said that a number of objects were missing or broken. Other experts defend Mr. Hawass. Peter Lacovara is Egypt, Nubia and the Near East curator for the Michael C. Carlos Museum of Emory University in Georgia. He says it would have taken some time to discover losses and damage in the Egyptian Museum. Mr. Lacovara also praises Zahi Hawass for improving the administration of archeology of Egypt. And he says Mr. Hawass has brought the study of the ancient world into the twenty-first century. (MUSIC) BOB DOUGHTY: This SCIENCE IN THE NEWS was written by Jerilyn Watson and Caty Weaver. Our producer was June Simms. I’m Bob Doughty. . What Now for al-Qaida After Death of bin Laden- - English Listening Lessons.mp3 What Now for al-Qaida After Death of bin Laden? Posted by admin on May 28th,. to a number of foreign museums. Some observers say that through his efforts, foreigners have brought billions of dollars into his nation. Mr. Hawass also has fought for return of art objects. cabinet-level position in January, shortly before the protests forced President Hosni Mubarak to resign. For almost ten years before that, the archeologist had served as chief antiquities official. Mr.