【772-774】为什么埃博拉病毒仍在刚果蔓延&教皇方济各历史性访问阿拉伯半岛&国家公园处理政府关闭后的损害
1): 邀你加入->【漂泊者乐园-英语学习群】
【每日一歌】
歌曲选自《最适合学习英语的英文歌曲80首》
提示：关注漂泊者乐园微信公众号公众号后， 回复 d2 可收听查看所有《As It Is 》文章。
《As It Is 》栏目在本号自2018年4月初开始全马力运行，已经推文 769篇，每日仍在不断增加中。
亲爱的朋友，如果您能能坚持跟着本号听读，相信不用多久，您的英语听力一定会有极大的提高！
漂泊者乐园微信公众号在线英语学习资料
美国之音特别英语节目：慢速英语听力
学英语的朋友，想提高听力的话，请听下面的音频。
有问题可在【漂泊者乐园-英语学习群】里一起交流，谢谢！
本音频包含不同内容的文章，对应的文本依次附在其后。
AS IT IS
Why Ebola Is Still Spreading in Congo
February 04, 2019
The Ebola outbreak in eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo is moving toward Goma, a city of 1 million people.
The United Nations says nearly 2,000 people are being prepared to deal with patients there. If Ebola virus disease reaches Goma, stopping it will become even more difficult.
The campaign against Ebola is already affected by other issues. People travel often and come in contact with strangers. Another concern is security. In eastern Congo, health workers face threats of attack from rebel groups.
Health workers also need to deal with the fears of local people. One woman spoke to the medical group Doctors Without Borders about her experience. Aline Kahindo Mukandala said she thought Ebola patients who went to medical centers were immediately put into body bags.
Another survivor told people that foreign health workers will not steal patients’ organs. The man is currently helping the International Committee of the Red Cross.
Still, some people remain afraid of treatment or prevention measures and try to flee the area. Millions of people have been tested for Ebola at border crossings with Rwanda and Uganda.
Congo’s health ministry has reported at least 700 confirmed Ebola cases, including more than 160 children. Over 400 people have already died from the disease.
And, new cases are still appearing without any known connection to a confirmed patient. This shows the difficulty of hunting down the virus in a crowded and worried population.
At the same time, the World Health Organization says some public health measures have been helping limit the virus in a few areas. These measures include training health workers and working closely with people who live in the area.
This Ebola outbreak has brought some medical advances. Health workers are trying experimental treatments for people who have the virus. They are also using a new Ebola vaccine to prevent people from getting the virus. But how well the vaccine works is not yet known. Some people who have received it have still become sick.
Some health experts warn that, even if medicine improves, Ebola could remain a threat in central Africa. It is easily spread through body fluids and can infect people helping with childbirth, giving malaria treatments or just living their usual lives.
I’m Kelly Jean Kelly.
The Associated Press reported this story. Kelly Jean Kelly adapted it for VOA Learning English. George Grow was the editor.
_______________________________________________________________
Words in This Story
outbreak - n. a sudden rise in the incidence of a disease
body bag - n. a large bag that a dead person's body is put in to be carried or moved to another place
advance - n.progress in development
AS IT IS
National Parks Deal with Damage After Government Shutdown
February 04, 2019
Many of America’s national parks remained open during the country’s longest-ever government shutdown. But few had enough National Park Service employees working to protect the areas and keep watch of visitors.
Those visitors did a lot of damage in 35 days. They walked over sensitive lands. They opened gates while no one was watching. One person even struck one of California’s famous Joshua Trees with a vehicle.
When park service employees returned to work last week, they began cleaning up and repairing what they could.
But environmental experts warn that the damage in some places could take years to recover. Even before the shutdown, national parks faced $12 billion in much-needed repair work. That number has only grown.
Many parks had no employees working during the shutdown. Others had skeleton crews.. Local governments and nonprofit organizations offered money and volunteers during the shutdown, which began on December 21 and ended on January 25.
National Park Service spokesman Mike Litterst told reporters that the damage was not widespread. He said most visitors took good care of the land.
But interviews with park officials and nonprofit groups that help keep parks running tell a different story.
Angie Richman is a spokeswoman at Arches National Park in Utah. She said visitors left human waste outside a bathroom, walked on trails within an area that was off-limits to visitors and damaged an entrance gate.
At Joshua Tree National Park, an off-road vehicle ran over one of the park’s special trees. Several other Joshua trees were damaged, including one that was spray-painted.
A former Joshua Tree National Park ranger told Smithsonian.com that it could take 200 to 300 years for the park to fully recover from the shutdown damage.
At Great Smoky Mountains National Park, visitors cut locks on some gates to closed roads and stole about $5,000 in repair tools, spokeswoman Dana Soehn said.
Employees at Death Valley National Park in California found human waste and toilet paper all across the desert. Park officials also found evidence of people kicking in locked bathroom doors. And a high-speed video on Death Valley’s Facebook page showed how it took staffers two hours to clean a bathroom overflowing with trash and covered with waste.
Workers at Death Valley National Park must replant in areas damaged by off-road vehicles. All of this delays much-needed repairs in other areas of the 1.3 million-hectare park.
David Blacker is chief of the Death Valley Natural History Association. He told the Associated Press, “It became pretty depressing the kinds of things people will do when they are unsupervised.”
At some parks, the lack of people meant animals moved in. A colony of elephant seals took over a Northern California beach in Point Reyes National Seashore. There were no workers there to prevent the animals from gathering in the popular tourist area. Park rangers and volunteers are now leading small groups of visitors to safely see the seals and their young.
The possibility of another shutdown remains. President Donald Trump and Congressional leaders agreed to a temporary spending bill that re-opened the government for three weeks. Trump has said another shutdown could start February 15 if he and Democratic leaders cannot agree on money for a U.S.-Mexico border wall.
I’m Ashley Thompson.
The Associated Press reported this story. Ashley Thompson adapted it for VOA Learning English, with additional materials from Smithsonian.com. Caty Weaver was the editor.
_____________________________________________________________
Words in This Story
interview - n. a meeting between a reporter and another person in order to get information for a news story
gate - n. a place in a wall or a fence that has a movable part which can be opened or closed like a door
tourist - n. a person who travels to a place for pleasure
AS IT IS
Pope Francis Makes Historic Visit to Arabian Peninsula
February 04, 2019
Pope Francis has become the first pope in history to visit the Arabian Peninsula, the birthplace of Islam.
Francis opened his official visit Monday in Abu Dhabi, the capital of the United Arab Emirates (UAE).
Top UAE officials welcomed the leader of the world’s 1.3 billion Roman Catholics at the presidential palace. The pope received a traditional military welcome that included a flyover by UAE military aircraft. The airplanes left smoke in yellow and white, the official colors of the Vatican flag.
Welcoming the pope were Abu Dhabi’s crown prince, Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, and the UAE’s vice president and prime minister, Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum.
In a message, Pope Francis thanked the crown prince for the warm welcome and said the UAE people were in his thoughts and prayers.
Sheikh Mohammed presented the pope with a document from 1963, in which the then-ruler of Abu Dhabi donated land to build the first Catholic church in the Emirates.
The UAE is home to about 1 million Roman Catholics. Many of them are workers from the Catholic-majority Philippines.
On social media, Sheikh Mohammed wrote about his meeting with the pope. He said they discussed increased cooperation in several areas. They also agreed to seek ways to “achieve peace, stability and development” for all people.
Pope Francis also attended a gathering of leaders from major world religions, including Christianity and Islam.
The pope told the meeting that religious leaders have a duty to reject war and seek to resolve conflict through negotiation. “God is with those who seek peace,” he said in the speech at Abu Dhabi’s Founder’s Memorial.
Pope Francis warned that unless people of different religions come together to seek “concrete paths of peace,” the future of humanity itself will be in danger.
Speaking in Italian, the pope noted conflicts in Yemen, Syria, Iraq and Libya. He called on the religious leaders to resist such “floods of violence.” He said that, as representatives of the world’s major religions, they have a “duty to reject every nuance of approval from the word ‘war.’”
The UAE is involved in the conflicts in Yemen, Syria and Libya.
The religious leaders also heard from Sheik Ashamed el-Tayeb, leader of Egypt's Al-Azhar, the 1,000-year-old seat of Sunni Islam. He called on Muslims in the Middle East to “embrace” and welcome local Christian communities.
“You are part of this nation... You are not minorities,” he said. The Islamic leader also called on Muslims in western nations to be involved in their communities and respect local laws.
I’m Jonathan Evans.
Bryan Lynn wrote this story for VOA Learning English. His story was based on reports from the Associated Press, Reuters and Agence France-Presse and VOA News. George Grow was the editor.
We want to hear from you. Write to us in the Comments section, and visit our Facebook page.
_____________________________________________________________
Words in This Story
church – n.a Christian religious center
stability – n.the quality of not being likely to change or move
concrete – adj.identifying something real or a group of things
nuance – n.small difference in meaning, appearance or sound
embrace – v.to accept new ideas, beliefs or methods
您好！既然漂到这里，就顺便把本文转到朋友圈吧！