【专题】慢速英语（美音）2016-08-16

英语环球 NEWSPlus Radio

This is Special English. I'm Ryan Price in Beijing. Here is the news.
The production center for an innovative bus appears deserted with no sign of construction, raising questions about the scheduled launch next year.
The bus is a sort of moving tunnel that straddles highway lanes to allow cars to pass beneath. The vehicle looks like a giant double-decker but is hollow on the ground level. Passengers can sit on the top floor while cars pass below.
In December, a Beijing-based company signed a contract with the local authorities in Zhoukou city in Henan province to produce the Transit Elevated Bus in its research and manufacturing center.
However, the Beijing Youth Daily reports that the site is now full of thick weeds; and farmers feed their sheep in the area.
A local farmer surnamed Yuan told journalists that a groundbreaking ceremony was held last month. Yuan said "They built a platform. People who stood on the platform were dressed up. It seemed like it was a big day, but there has been no activity since."
A local official said the project has been delayed. The environmental impact assessment of the project has not been approved yet, and many documents are still waiting to be signed.
The contract includes an investment of 10 billion yuan, roughly 1.5 billion U.S. dollars, and an annual production of 1,000 buses.
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An insurance product has become a hot topic around the Qixi, the Chinese Valentine's Day, which fell on August 9th this year. It costs 600 yuan, roughly 90 U.S. dollars, and guarantees a payout of 11,000 yuan if the applicant marries his or her current sweetheart in three to 10 years.
The applicants are required to submit non-marital status certificates for both prospective spouses when purchasing the product. If they marry within the specified time frame, they will get 11,000 yuan.
A staff member with the China Taiping Insurance said there have been numerous phone calls inquiring about the product, but she declined to say how many policies have been sold.
Some people saw the offer as smart marketing. They believe the insurance company set the bracket of years after painstaking calculations. Insurance companies cannot lose on the deal because the majority of sweethearts will break up.
Others say it also shows that more than 5 percent of the sweethearts will finally become husband and wife.
Relationships in big cities including Shanghai seem most fragile these days. Marriages are not long lasting. Almost 53,000 people divorced in Shanghai in 2014, second only to Beijing. Among them, 41,000 people were below the age of 40. The average age for marriage in Shanghai is 35 for men and 32 for women.
In related news, flower prices in China started to recover ahead of the Qixi festival, after overproduction, combined with natural disasters, dampened sales.
Last year, as many as 7 million flowers were sold during the festival at the Kunming International Flora Auction Trading Center.
Seeing the profit, flower growers nationwide boosted their expectations and supplied most of their flowers ahead of the festival, which resulted in a 30 percent increase in flower production.
However, disastrous flooding nationwide and unusually high temperatures since July have cut into demand. Torrential rains have caused massive outbreaks of diseases among flowers, damaging their quality and hurting business.
You're listening to Special English. I'm Ryan Price in Beijing.
A genome project for newborns has been launched in Shanghai to aid the early identification and treatment of hereditary diseases.
The project was jointly initiated by the Chinese Board of Genetic Counseling and the Children's Hospital of Fudan University in Shanghai. It will carry out genetic testing in 100,000 newborn babies over the coming five years.
The findings will be recorded in a database and a genetic testing standard for hereditary diseases will be developed, which will improve the identification and treatment of such conditions.
Experts say early identification can help doctors make better treatment strategies and improve the patients' quality of life.
In another development, the Chinese Board of Genetic Counseling and Reproductive Hospital, which is affiliated with Shandong University, jointly launched China's embryo genome project.
An embryo genome database will improve research and understanding of the development of embryos and improve diagnostic rates.
There are some 7,000 kinds of inherited diseases and China sees around 900,000 babies born with birth defects every year.
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Chinese scientists are working on a new type of aerospace vehicle that will allow passengers to travel in space without any pre-training and at a much lower cost.
China Central Television reports that scientists from the China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation have started to work on the new vehicle integrating different kinds of engine technology.
The vehicle will use different air-breathing engines, allowing it to operate as a normal plane in the atmosphere. The plane will take off and land at normal airports, instead of using any kind of special launch pads. The viehcle will be reusable, and greatly reduce the cost of space travel.
Scientist from the corporation said they expect to master key technology in around three to five years, and significantly improve the vehicle's capability during the application.
The vehicle is expected to be used for suborbital flight and orbital insertion by 2030. The expeditions will be between dozens to hundreds of kilometers from the earth.
Compared with the space shuttles and the partially recovered carrier rockets, by integrating different engines, the new vehicle has much more advantages in maintenance and application.
In early July, the corporation said several institutes of the corporation were coordinating efforts to study the new vehicle.
An engineer of the corporation said that in around 10 years, passengers will not need special training to travel to space on the vehicle.
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A Chinese firm FiberHome has developed a type of optic fiber that can transmit 400 terabytes of data per second, breaking the world record for the amount of data that can be transferred on optic fibers.
Such capacity can allow for simultaneous phone calls by almost 5 billion people and the transmission of 40,000 blue-ray high definition movies in one second.
The company is based in Wuhan, the capital of central China's Hubei Province.
The transmission of 400 terabytes of data is accomplished on multi-core mono-mode optic fibers, which can be simply understood as breaking down the fiber into multiple paths to enhance transmission capacity.
You're listening to Special English. I'm Ryan Price in Beijing. You can access the program by logging on to newsplusradio.cn. You can also find us on our Apple Podcast. If you have any comments or suggestions, please let us know by e-mailing us at [e-mail]. That's [e-mail]. Now the news continues.
A training course for senior foreign police officers on United Nations peacekeeping missions has started in Beijing.
It is the first time China's Ministry of Public Security and the United Nations have cooperated in this endeavor. The course focuses on passing on China's practical experience.
The trainees include 17 senior officers from countries including Angola, Kenya and Liberia. Four Chinese peacekeeping police representatives will also attend the course.
Chinese President Xi Jinping announced measures to back United Nations peacekeeping missions. Addressing a peacekeeping summit in the UN headquarters last year, President Xi declared that China will help train 2,000 foreign peacekeepers in the next five years.
Since 2000, China has dispatched more than 2,400 peacekeepers to nine areas. At present, 170 Chinese police officers are still in Liberia, South Sudan and Cyprus.
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A new Confucius Classroom has been inaugurated Mexico.
During the inauguration ceremony, Chinese Vice Premier Liu Yandong said Mexican students' fluent Chinese and great performances made her feel the charm of cultural exchange. She also sees the bright future of friendly ties between China and Mexico.
Bilateral relations were upgraded to a comprehensive strategic partnership during Chinese President Xi Jinping's visit to Mexico in 2013.
Liu said China hopes to work together with Mexico to deepen pragmatic cooperation in various fields and bring more benefits to people of the two countries.
Next year will mark the 45th anniversary of diplomatic relations between China and Mexico. Liu said that along with the deepened cooperation between China and Mexico, more and more young people in China are learning Spanish. More than 30 universities teach the Spanish language in China.
Meanwhile, she said, the Chinese language is also gaining increasing importance in Latin American countries.
Mexico has established five Confucius Institutes that together have 30,000 registered students, making an important contribution to cultural exchange between the two countries.
You're listening to Special English. I'm Ryan Price in Beijing.
Born in Harbin in northeast China, Maruyama Iwao was just 11 years old when he was repatriated to his native country Japan in 1946.
Now 81 years old, Iwao's story has been made into a documentary entitled "Travel with Me: A Journey of Gratitude over 70 Years", which is being screened in China.
The documentary tells the story of Iwao's recent bicycle trip, where he retraced the journey he made from Harbin to Huludao in Liaoning Province 70 year ago.
He said that along the way, he was touched by the helpfulness of the Chinese people he met, just like in the old days.
Tian Yuhong, vice head of China Radio International, which produced the documentary, said they would like the film to make people reflect on history, and enhance Sino-Japanese relations, and call for the respect of peace and life.
When the war ended in 1945, more than 35 million Chinese people were killed or injured. During the following three years, more than one million Japanese people were sent back home.
Iwao had the idea of retracing his journey in China in 2011 when he was working as a volunteer, following the massive earthquake in Japan. He met another man who planned to travel in China by bike and decided to join him.
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A survey has begun in the southwestern province of Sichuan to determine if wild giant pandas are at risk from epidemic diseases.
Researchers will collect samples of droppings and hair across ten nature reserves in the province.
The survey is the first of its kind in the province, and will be completed by the end of October.
Sichuan is home to 1,400 wild giant pandas, accounting for 74 percent of China's wild panda population.
The samples will be analyzed to identify the pathogens carried by the animals.
Wild giant pandas are known to be carriers of pathogens, but a more detailed survey is needed to define the exact condition.
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