篇一：In confirming the death of its leader,attacks against the United States keeps uper
In confirming the death of its leader, Osama bin Laden, the terrorist group al-Qaida is threatening more attacks against the United States and its allies. And top U.S. security officials say they are on alert for possible terrorist retaliation attacks. While the U.S. Department of Homeland Security has not issued specific terror warnings, law enforcement agencies have heightened security around the country to guard against attacks by al-Qaida-affiliated groups or by terrorists acting on their own.
Law enforcement agencies across the United States have stepped up patrols at travel hubs and government facilities, following warnings that Osama bin Laden's death might inspire home-grown extremists.
"You're not going to have 19 hijackers taking down aircraft, but kids trying to find AK-47s or buy handguns or buy hand grenades on the street and go do something at a commercial facility like a mall or a 7-11 [convenience store]," said Philip Mudd, a former CIA officer and FBI
counterterrorism agent.
Analysts say authorities have stopped 38 terrorism plots in the United States since September 11, 2001. And U.S. officials say documents seized from bin Laden's compound in Pakistan showed al-Qaida considered attacks against trains in the U.S. this coming September 11th. Al-Qaida-affiliated groups have been linked to rail transport attacks in Europe.
Just a year year ago, a Pakistani-born U.S. citizen - Faisal Shahzad - tried to set off a car bomb in New York's Times Square. And Najibullah Zazi, an Afghan who has been in the U.S. since 1999, attempted to bomb New York City's subway system in 2009.
James Carafano, a national security expert with The Heritage Foundation in Washington, says security officials are keeping a close eye on al-Qaida-affiliated groups.
"The U.S. has always been concerned about al-Shabab, that is a group based in Somalia," he said. "They have links to the Somali community in the United States. They are a declared enemy of the United States and a supporter of al-Qaida. We have also been very concerned about 'LeT' - Lashkar-e-Taiba - which is a group based in Pakistan, which launched the horrifying [2008] attacks in Mumbai."
Counterterrorism experts say a group based in Yemen, al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula, might try to stage an attack. The group is linked to radical cleric Anwar al-Alawki, an American believed to have ties to the failed 2009 Christmas Day plot to blow up a U.S.-bound jetliner, and a scheme to plant parcel bombs on U.S. cargo flights last November.
Tim Starks, who covers intelligence and homeland security issues for "Congressional Quarterly," says bin Laden's followers target transport facilities.
"They definitely have a tendency to go back to the targets that they know. those are targets that are easy to plot against in some ways. You don't have to have a lot of sophisticated efforts to go after them."
Analysts say the U.S. remains vulnerable to terrorist attacks, but the best way to protect the country is not adding more layers of security, it is stepping up intelligence efforts before terrorists can attack.
篇二：20110513BBC
BBC News with Fiona MacDonald
Pakistan's Prime Minister Yusuf Raza Gilani has rejected accusations that Pakistan was either complicit in helping to hide Osama Bin Laden or guilty of incompetence in failing to find him. Speaking to parliament, Mr Gilani said an investigation would be launched into how the al-Qaeda leader remained undetected in the Pakistani garrison city of Abbottabad until he was killed in an American raid a week ago. From Abbottabad, Aleem Maqbool reports.
Prime Minister Gilani spoke with passion as he talked of the sacrifices Pakistan had made in the so-called "war on terror". He mentioned the many thousands of civilian and military deaths here and said his country looked to no one for recognition. But what of the key question: how could Osama Bin Laden had been living here, a city with such a large military and intelligence presence, without the authorities knowing or even supporting him? He gave no new specifics about what he did know of Bin Laden's time here in Abbottabad, only saying an investigation would be launched. So many wanted to hear so much more.
The United Nations refugee agency says a ship carrying up to 600 migrants broke up and sank off the Libyan coast late last week and that many of those on board died. Duncan Kennedy reports from Rome.
The UN says the ship foundered off the coast of Libya late last week, but the witness accounts are only emerging now. It says the ship broke apart not far from the shore. One Somali woman said she swam to safety but her four-month-old baby drowned. The UN says as many as 600 people could have been on board, with other witnesses speaking of seeing bodies in the water. The Italian coastguard, which carries out numerous patrols of the Mediterranean, says it has no knowledge of the accident.
The European Union is imposing an arms embargo on Syria following weeks of uest there. A travel ban and asset freeze have also been issued against 13 Syrian officials. In the latest move to crush anti-government protests, tanks are reported to have entered a western suburb of Damascus.
The US Vice President Joe Biden and the Secretary of State Hillary Clinton have renewed American criticism of China over human rights. They were speaking during a bilateral summit in Washington. A senior Chinese official said China had made progress in many areas. Kim Ghattas reports from Washington.
Joe Biden and Hillary Clinton were unusually blunt in their criticism of China's human rights record, and they did it in the presence of top Chinese officials. The American vice president spoke of vigorous disagreement on the issue. The secretary of state talked about Washington's concern about lawyers and writers being detained or disappeared. With an eye on the uest in the Middle East, Mrs Clinton said the United States worried about the impact the Chinese crackdown would have not only on US domestic politics but also on the stability of China and the region.
World News from the BBC
The government of Cuba has for the first time announced plans to let its citizens leave the country as tourists. The Communist Party approved the preliminary measure about two weeks ago behind closed doors as part of a number of reforms. The BBC Havana correspondent says the planned travel reform took most observers by surprise. Under the current system, Cubans need to file an exit request that can be turned down.
At least 12 suspected members of a Mexican drugs cartel have been killed in a firefight with security forces near the border with the United States. A navy unit patrolling a river came across an encampment belonging to members of the Zetas drugs cartel. They were apparently trying to use speedboats to smuggle marijuana into the US.
A major credit rating agency, Standard & Poor's, has downgraded the status of Greek government debt. It took the action after saying it believed there was an increased likelihood that Greece would have to restructure its debts. Our economics correspondent Andrew Walker reports.
The Greek government's financial problems are getting worse. At the weekend, a senior euro area official acknowledged that Greece is likely to need further help. Without it, Greece would have to go back to the markets to borrow next year. It might be impossible, and even if there were willing lenders, the interest rates would be painfully high. In the markets, it is increasingly thought that Greece will in effect default on some of its debts at some stage. Agreeing further help for Greece will be very challenging. There's widespread public hostility to the bailout in other parts of the euro area.
A Belgian cyclist, Wouter Weylandt, has died after a crash during the Tour of Italy. Weylandt fell from his bike at high speed during a speed descent about 20km from Rapallo, where the tour's third stage ended. Medical staff gave him emergency treatment at the scene, but he was later pronounced dead. The Tour of Italy, or Giro d'Italia, is one of the three most important cycle races.
BBC News
篇三：翻译作业Osama bin Laden
Osama bin Laden
Osama bin Laden, the world’s most wanted terrorist, died on May 2nd, aged 54
WHEN he gave interviews to foreign journalists, which he did rarely, Osama bin Laden had a way of looking down at his hands. This, and his soft, slightly raspy voice, and his gentle eyes—as well as the fact that he allowed no instantaneous translation—helped conceal what he was saying: that it was the duty of all Muslims to kill unbelievers, especially Americans, and that when he had seen the bodies of the infidels flying “like dust motes” on September 11th 2001, his heart had filled with joy.
His mien was that of the sage, not the killer. He seldom shed blood himself, though his treasured Kalashnikov, which he carried everywhere, was said to have been wrested in single combat from a Russian soldier in Afghanistan. As a rule he observed from afar as “his boys” blew up the American base at Khobar in Saudi Arabia, or the USS Cole in Yemen (he wrote a poem about that, the little dinghy bobbing on the waves) or the American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, where in 1998 more than 200 died. Terrorism could be commendable or reprehensible, he smoothly agreed, but this was “blessed terror”, in defence of Islam. At first he denied any part in the 9/11 attacks, but at last pride got the better of him: yes, it was he who had guided his 19 brothers towards their “easy” targets.
How he really saw himself was as a construction engineer. Construction had made the bin Laden family fortune, $5 billion at least, from which he had inherited $25m-30m. (There had been much more, perhaps $250m, and a yearly stipend of $7m, until his native Saudi Arabia expelled him in 1991 and froze his assets; but Allah provided for his servant, and some of his several dozen half-brothers and sisters slipped him money.) In the 1980s he bought excavators, dump trucks and bulldozers, sometimes driving them himself, digging trenches for the mujahideen to fight along in Afghanistan against the Soviet invaders, blasting tunnels in the mountains for their arms dumps and field hospitals, until in 1989 the unbeliever-enemy withdrew in shame and disgrace.
He made roads in Sudan, too, when he was exiled there in the 1990s, including a new highway from Khartoum to Port Sudan. But he was mostly building his terror network, starting with the guesthouses and weapons he provided in Afghanistan through his maktab al-khidamat (“services office”), then creating al-Qaeda, “the base”. Much of this was done with Abdullah Azzam, his religious mentor; later, the terror-work was directed by Ayman al-Zawahiri and others; but it was he who first recorded, in hundreds of individual files, the details of each eager recruit, the date of arrival, what he had done for the cause. Keenly, he followed the media coverage of the atrocities he inspired, playing the world’s press like a violin when he chose. He
built the brand and turned it into a global franchise; his face advertised it, even as he disappeared. If just two fighters held up a piece of cloth with “al-Qaeda” on it, he said proudly, American generals would run to the place in swarms.
His mind and approach were those of a businessman. The same caution that characterised his fugitive existence in Afghanistan and Pakistan—avoiding phones, the internet, even watches, anything that might be used to track him, slipping from cave to safe house to compound—featured in his investments, which were profitable and practical. No political ideology guided him, though he might lie for hours at night thinking, or read for most of the day. The polite, pious rich boy, who had left university without a degree, became neither an intellectual nor a visionary.
Pure rage was all he needed, roused especially by the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982 and the arrival of American troops in Saudi Arabia, on the holy ground of the two mosques in Mecca and Medina, in 1990. Hatred of America had tormented him for as long as he could remember. To drive out the infidels, to establish Palestine and destroy Israel, to eject the “heretics” who ruled in Saudi Arabia, to purify Islam itself with Wahhabist fundamentalism, were his ambitions. If they boiled down to a doctrine, it was a violent form of jihad, the holy duty of all Muslims, to make God’s word victorious; or just what he called “reciprocity”, an eye for an eye.
Facing the assassins
Somewhere, according to one of his five wives, was a man who loved sunflowers, and eating yogurt with honey; who took his children to the beach, and let them sleep under the stars; who enjoyed the BBC World Service and would go hunting with friends each Friday, sometimes mounted, like the Prophet, on a white horse. He liked the comparison. Yet the best thing in his life, he said, was that his jihads had destroyed the myth of all-conquering superpowers.
The price set on his head for more than a decade never bothered him, for Allah determined every breath in his body, and could ensure that the bombs dropped on his hideout at Tora Bora, or on his convoy through the mountains, never touched him. His martyr’s time would come when it came. The difference between pure Muslims and Americans, he said, was that Americans loved life, whereas Muslims loved death. Whether or not he resisted when the Crusaders’ special forces arrived, their bullets could only exalt him.
《BBC,News:What,was,in,Osama,Bin,Laden's,tape,collection?》出自：百味书屋
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