Let's Get 7 in IELTS

As U.S. President George W. Bush prepares to leave the White House after eight years in office, he has once again revisited the sensitive issue of Washington's relationship with Taiwan.

During a meeting at the White House with Asian media reporters held on the eve of his last official trip to Asia, President Bush brought up the issue of Taiwan and his views about the current state of cross-strait relations.

Addressing what he termed the "Taiwan-Chinese relationship," President Bush said that following recent developments, "people who study this very closely will see that the issue is in a better place."

Russia and Georgia have signed a cease-fire accord over the weekend, ending a nine-day conflict. But Russian troops won't leave Georgia easily.

Fighting in Georgia (pop. 4.5 million), one of 12 states in the Caucasus, began last Friday when Tbilisi launched a military incursion into South Ossetia (pop. 70,000) to rout separatist rebels.

Russia, which supports the separatists as many of them carry Russian passports, responded swiftly, sending tanks across the border into S. Ossetia. Fighting quickly spread to Abkhazia (pop. 100,000), another breakaway region.

Patchy blockade
The trade embargo that sometimes bites

FOR almost half a century, the United States has imposed a trade embargo against Cuba. And yet it sometimes seems barely visible. Across the island, American brands are ubiquitous. Tourists can order a Coca-Cola (made in Mexico) in state-run hotels. Computers running Microsoft software have appeared in the capital’s few electronics stores. A fleet of Ford tankers refuel aeroplanes at Havana’s airport. Taking advantage of an exemption introduced in 2000, American farmers have become Cuba’s biggest source of food imports, a cash trade worth $600m a year. No wonder that some Cubans wonder whether the “blockade” which the government blames for nearly all of Cuba’s problems might be some sort of Orwellian trick. “Does it really exist?” asks a medical student in Havana. “I don’t know what to believe anymore.”

But plenty of companies that deal with Cuba have recently been reminded that the embargo is real. Last month, the United States’ Treasury’s Office of Foreign Asset Control, which is responsible for enforcing it, fined Minxia, a Maryland-based subsidiary of China’s MinMetals Corporation, $1.2m for dealing in Cuban metals. Gate Gourmet, a Swiss-American group, was ordered to pay $600,000 because it supplies in-flight meals to Cuba’s national airline.

Although the embargo has manifestly failed in its objective of removing Fidel Castro’s communist regime, in 1996 it was tightened by the Cuban Liberty and Democratic Solidarity Act (better known, after the legislators who sponsored it, as Helms-Burton). This attempts to apply the embargo to foreign companies and individuals. Its extraterritorial pretension riles even many of America’s closest allies. It has notably been invoked to ban the directors of Sherritt, a Canadian firm which runs Cuba’s nickel mines, from entering the United States. (They included a former editor of The Economist). But in deference to those allies, the Act’s draconian Title III, which gives Americans who owned property in Cuba before the revolution the right to sue foreigners who now invest there, has been waived every six months, first by Bill Clinton and then by George Bush.

Over the past week, two battles have been fought on the borders of Georgia and South Ossetia; a military campaign, and a fight for the airwaves. In both, the BBC has found itself in the middle. 

Last week, a BBC team was filming near the Georgian town of Gori when a Russian fighter jet opened fire on them. My colleagues were lucky - others have been less so. Five news staff - four journalists and a driver - have been killed since the fighting erupted. Others have been threatened and robbed at gunpoint by paramilitaries. War is a dangerous business.

The battle for public opinion has been just as intense. In the early hours of Tuesday morning, viewers to BBC World News - including those up late in the UK - were treated to the extraordinary sight of my colleague Nik Gowing conducting a live interview with Georgian President Saakashvili in his war room during World News America.

The President, "Dad's-Army" style, used a pen to point to a map detailing the latest Russian advance - and this at 3am in the morning in Tbilisi! It's one of around half a dozen interviews President Saakashvili has done with the BBC in the past seven days. For the BBC to have access to someone so influential, as a key moment, is of course vital to our storytelling. But that level of access also carries with it an inherent danger. We need to ensure balanced coverage. Fortunately, during the past week, the BBC has had interviews with the Foreign Minister, Sergei Lavrov, the deputy Prime Minister, Mr Ivanov and yesterday, viewers to BBC One were treated to a live interview with a Russian General speaking fluent English, sitting in our studio in Moscow. Another first.

We started a trial this week on the website of a different way of linking from within the body of news stories to related background material - our own and other people's.

The trial will last for about four weeks, for technical reasons is confined for now to the UK edition of the site (which you can select from the left hand side navigation) and is designed to gather your feedback and help us work out the editorial and practical implications of linking in this way from stories.

Linking to relevant background obviously isn't anything new on the site - we've always done it, mostly from the right-hand side of story pages, where we put our own related links, external ones and often a "Newstracker" box listing other news sources. We also do it regularly from textboxes within the main story.

As a rule though we haven't embedded links throughout the text, except for example when listing web sources or in diary-type pages, and of course we do it in our blogs. One of the reasons is we don't want to interrupt a news story by sending the reader off the page in the middle of a sentence.

A single injection of modified cells could halt the advance of rheumatoid arthritis, say UK scientists.

The Newcastle University team is about to start small-scale safety trials of the jab, which will hopefully stop the immune system attacking the joints. 

The Arthritis Research Campaign, which is funding the project, said if successful, the treatment would be "revolutionary". 

The classic Australian surf movie from the 1970’s, “Morning of the Earth” has become a massive theatre production.

Transcript

TAIPEI, Taiwan -- President Ma Ying-jeou has questioned his predecessor Chen Shui-bian's claims in the wake of the former head of state's confession that he had remitted undeclared campaign donations out of Taiwan.
Ma, commenting Thursday in Paraguay on a case widely alleged as money laundering by Chen, said it was not the suspect of a crime who could "determine the direction" of the investigation.

The president said involvement in alleged money laundering would make one a crime suspect, and the nature of the Chen's case would have to be determined by the judiciary.

紅色標示的字好像是特殊的藥名或化學專有名詞 不了解是什麼意思

A combination of two inexpensive existing drugs may offer a new way to treat breast cancer, according to UK and Finnish researchers.