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【本期文稿】
This is Special English. I'm Mark Griffiths in Beijing. Here is the news.
China should continue to upgrade public toilets as part of its "toilet revolution" aimed at developing domestic tourism.
President Xi Jinping says the construction of clean toilets is an important part of pushing urban and rural civilization. He said more efforts should be made in both cities and rural areas to upgrade public toilets to improve people's quality of life.
President Xi made the remarks in a recent instruction on the achievement of the "toilet revolution" carried out in the tourism sector.
He said that along with the "toilet revolution", China should construct better public facilities and services to boost the tourism industry.
This is Special English.
U.S. billionaire, Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates has been elected to the Chinese Academy of Engineering, China's highest honor in the field of engineering.
Sixty-two-year-old Gates is one of 18 new foreign members. He is the only one who does not work at a university or research institute.
Gates was nominated for his work at TerraPower, a nuclear reactor design company he helped establish in 2008.
In late 2015, the company signed a deal with the China National Nuclear Corporation to build a reactor unit in eastern China. The project is scheduled to start next year and be completed in 2025.
The Chinese Academy of Engineering currently has 66 foreign academics.
You're listening to Special English. I'm Mark Griffiths in Beijing.
China will step up protection of property rights to provide sustained impetus for economic development.
The authorities say businesses will enjoy better protection of their operational and property rights; and private businesses will enjoy equal protection for their property rights as companies in the public sector.
Cases of economic crimes will be handled in compliance with relevant procedures. The protection for residents' property rights will also be enhanced.
Economic reforms must focus on improving the property rights system and ensuring the market-oriented allocation of factors of production.
This year's government work report said that protecting property rights meant protecting labor, invention and innovation, and protecting and developing productive forces.
China's Property Rights Law was promulgated in 2007, widely seen as a landmark for better protection of property rights in the country. The authorities issued a guideline on improving property rights protection in November 2016, which is an overall plan for the development of the property rights protection system in China.
This is Special English.
Two Chinese companies have signed a cooperation agreement with the city of Kiev on building a fourth metro line in the Ukrainian capital.
Under a cooperation agreement, the Chinese companies will build the 20-kilometer-metro line linking a major residential district with the central business district of Kiev.
Consisting of 13 stations, the line is set to reduce traffic jams by helping around 500,000 residents, or 17 percent of the city's population, with their daily transport.
The deal was agreed by the two sides during the Belt and Road Forum for International Cooperation held earlier in Beijing.
Worth around 2 billion U.S. dollars, the project is expected to start at the end of 2018 and finish within four years.
Kiev currently has three subway lines with a total length of 70 kilometers, which provide services for around 1.3 million passengers per day.
You're listening to Special English. I'm Mark Griffiths in Beijing.
Every kindergarten in Beijing will be staffed with an educational inspector to oversee their operation.
The move came after allegations of child abuse at a kindergarten under the New York-listed RYB Education stirred nationwide outrage.
All districts in Beijing are asked to staff each of their kindergartens with an educational inspector, and establish a database recording the kindergartens' facilities, safety, sanitation, faculty and management.
Large-scale safety checks on the city's kindergartens are underway.
Immediate improvements will be ordered if inadequacies are found in facilities of fire control, surveillance and dining.
The districts are also required to help kindergartens to strengthen communication with parents and communities, and establish an emergency mechanism.
This is Special English.
Beijing's latest citywide campaign to eliminate safety hazards in crowded apartments and warehouses must be carried out to prevent tragedies.
The city's work safety commission says officials should explain things well as they communicate with residents who are required to move out of danger.
On Nov 18, a fire occurred in an apartment building with more than 400 residents in the southern part of the city, killing 19 people.
Local officials say the building has been found to have a severe fire risk. The place has been emptied after the fire.
The municipal government has launched a 40-day citywide campaign to eliminate fire and other safety hazards in crowded apartment buildings and warehouses that function as storage areas, workshops or residences for workers.
This is Special English.
A second-generation HPV vaccine has been approved by the China Food and Drug Administration for clinical testing.
This is the world's second second-generation human papilloma virus, or HPV, vaccine to reach the clinical test stage, following one developed by Merck and Company, which also obtained permission for clinical testing in China.
The research is led by the National Institute of Diagnostics and Vaccine Development in Infectious Diseases, based in east China's Fujian Province. The vaccine will be produced in the province, if approved.
Compared with the first-generation vaccine, the new one can protect against five more high-risk types of HPV and two more low-risk types. It is estimated that it will be able to prevent around 90 percent of cervical cancers.
Developers say the vaccine uses more cost-effective coliform bacteria as the effective antigen, while foreign companies use yeast or insect cells, giving it an edge in the market.
The Chinese HPV vaccine is expected to enter the market in 2022 after four to five years of clinical testing.
You're listening to Special English. I'm Mark Griffiths in Beijing. You can access the program on our Apple Podcast. Now the news continues.
India says it will launch its first-ever mission to the Sun in the next two years.
India's top space official says the "Aditya-L1", India's maiden mission to the Sun, will be launched in 2019. The main aim of the mission will be to resolve some of the long-standing queries in solar physics.
The satellite will be launched into the halo orbit around the Lagrangian point-1, or L1, of the Sun-Earth system, which will enable the continuous viewing of the Sun without any occultation or eclipses.
India had earlier successfully launched its maiden mission to the Moon and Mars. And in February this year, India created history by successfully launching 104 satellites on a single mission, overtaking the previous record of 37 satellites launched by Russia in 2014.
Over the past two decades, India has become a key player in the lucrative commercial space market offering a low-cost alternative.
This is Special English.
British royal family has confirmed that Prince Harry has already been engaged with his girlfriend Meghan Markle in London.
The announcement was issued by Clarence House, the Prince of Wales and Duchess of Cornwall's official residence. It said the wedding will be held in the spring next year and details about the wedding day would be "announced in due course".
Prince Harry, the fifth in line to the British throne, said he has proposed to the American actress following a one year relationship and she's happily accepted.
The couple will live at Nottingham Cottage at Kensington Palace in London after they are married.
In a statement, Prince Charles said he was "delighted to announce" his son's news and that Harry had received the blessing of Markle's parents.
It's believed that Harry would have asked his grandmother The Queen's permission before popping the question.
Harry first confirmed his relationship with Markle in November 2016, in a statement from Kensington Palace attacking the media for subjecting her to a "wave of abuse and harassment". The two made their first public appearance as a couple in September this year.
Markle, who played Rachel Zane in U.S. TV drama Suits, was born in 1981 and grew up in Los Angeles but now lives in Toronto.
You're listening to Special English. I'm Mark Griffiths in Beijing.
Light pollution at night is on an alarming rise worldwide, despite a transition to energy-saving LED lights.
Satellite images showed that the artificially lit surface of the earth grew by 2 percent per year in both size and brightness from 2012 to 2016.
The findings were based on data from the first-ever calibrated satellite radiometer designed especially for nightlights, known as the Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer, which is mounted on a U.S. satellite that has been circling the planet since 2011.
Globally, the increase in light emissions closely corresponds to the increase of the Gross Domestic Product, with the fastest growth occurring in developing countries.
Still, researchers noted they may underestimate the problem of light pollution, because the instrument used in this study cannot "see" light at wavelengths below 500 nanometers, called "blue light", which humans can see.
A German researcher who led the study said the earth's night is getting brighter; and he actually didn't expect it to be so uniformly true that so many countries would be getting brighter.
The study found that lighting levels vary greatly by country, far exceeding the global rate in some cases, and with decreases in radiance in only a few countries, including war-torn Yemen and Syria.
This is Special English.
An Australian study has found that 40 percent of adolescents with food allergies experience frequent allergic reactions.
The study, undertaken by Melbourne's Murdoch Children's Research Institute, found that of 550 children aged between 10 and 14 surveyed, 44 percent had experienced at least one allergic reaction in the past year.
Almost 10 percent reported enduring a potentially fatal allergic reaction. Most reactions occurred at home, a finding lead author Vicki McWilliams said was surprising.
This is in contrast to the assumption that schools and restaurants pose higher risk for accidental allergen exposure and may reflect the compulsory training around food allergy that has been in place in the Victorian educational sector since 2008.
The study found that adolescents with allergies to two or more foods were twice as likely to experience an allergic reaction while those allergic to nuts went through the most severe reactions.
Those with asthma in addition to food allergies were not found to have an increased risk of severe allergic reactions. Teenagers and young adults were most at risk of dying from allergies but few studies had been done on them.
You're listening to Special English. I'm Mark Griffiths in Beijing.
Though aircraft have facilitated long-distance travel, there is a growing need to lower emissions from flights, which the European Commission claimed have become "one of the fastest-growing sources of greenhouse gas emissions".
Through constant innovation, researchers found that electric planes will be possible to commute in the sky in the future.
Peter Palensky from the Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands says it might be a reality in the not-so-distant future, as they have had lightweights, ultra-light aircraft and experimental ones from NASA.
In Germany, e-Genius, an electrically-powered two-seated aircraft, has been a pioneer in exploring the feasibility of clean-energy planes. Researchers at the University of Stuttgart described e-Genius as "high performance", as it has proved to be capable of traveling long distances.
Andreas Strohmayer from the university's Institute of Aircraft Design says the e-Genius is a full electric battery-powered airplane with a max take-off mass of 900 kilograms. He added that the aircraft could travel no more than 250 miles.
This is Special English.
U.S. researchers found that global warming and certain land use practices such as farming may increase greenhouse gas emissions released into the atmosphere.
A new study showed that tiny, scattered populations of bacteria living in soil, which are oxygen-starved, have an unaccounted effect on the amount of greenhouse gas released into the air.
It is generally known that around a third of the carbon dioxide released into the atmosphere annually is attributed to bacteria living in the soil, where they break down plants and animal matter for energy.
In a lab experiment, the team observed that when oxygen became scarce, the soil microbes shifted from aerobic to increasingly less efficient anaerobic respiration. As a result, fewer carbon-rich lipid and wax molecules were decomposed and the production of carbon dioxide fell by 90 percent.
The lab results matched the findings the researchers obtained from their field study in agricultural field sites in Oregon on the U.S. west coast.
They reached a scientific conclusion that unlike conventional belief, upland soils actually contain high volumes of anaerobic microsites that protect specific types of carbon molecules.
The findings will help model future carbon emissions by better predicting how much carbon dioxide might be released from the soil.
That is the end of this edition of Special English. To freshen up your memory, I'm going to read one of the news items again at normal speed. Please listen carefully.
An Australian study has found that 40 percent of adolescents with food allergies experience frequent allergic reactions.
The study, undertaken by Melbourne's Murdoch Children's Research Institute, found that of 550 children aged between 10 and 14 surveyed, 44 percent had experienced at least one allergic reaction in the past year.
Almost 10 percent reported enduring a potentially fatal allergic reaction. Most reactions occurred at home, a finding lead author Vicki McWilliams said was surprising.
This is in contrast to the assumption that schools and restaurants pose higher risk for accidental allergen exposure and may reflect the compulsory training around food allergy that has been in place in the Victorian educational sector since 2008.
The study found that adolescents with allergies to two or more foods were twice as likely to experience an allergic reaction while those allergic to nuts went through the most severe reactions.
Those with asthma in addition to food allergies were not found to have an increased risk of severe allergic reactions. Teenagers and young adults were most at risk of dying from allergies but few studies had been done on them.
That is the end of today's program. I'm Mark Griffiths in Beijing, and I hope you will join us every day, to learn English and learn about the world.
祝大家学习愉快，下期再见！
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