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【速度1-9】 VOA Standard English<br /><br /><span style="color:#0162f4;">计时1<br /></span><br />Syrian Government Forces Continue Crackdown<br />June 25, 2011 <br /><br /><strong>Witnesses say that Syrian security forces moved into the Damascus suburb of Kaswah Saturday, a day after they surrounded the area and swooped down on protesters. A Syrian rights group says at least 20 people were killed Friday in confrontations around the country between anti-goverment protesters and security forces. The continuing clashes have sent large numbers of Syrians fleeing across the country's border with Lebanon. Up to 1,000 Syrians are believed to have entered Lebanon during the past two days near the border town of Wadi Khaled.</strong><br /><br />A video on Facebook shows young protesters fleeing through a narrow street in the Damascus suburb of Kaswa Saturday as security forces storm the area. Witnesses say government tanks surrounded much of Kaswa, blocking it off from other regions. Dozens of protesters were also reportedly arrested in both Kaswa and the Barzeh neighborhood of Damascus.<br /><br />Arab satellite channels showed video of thousands of mourners marching down a main avenue in Kaswa Saturday, carrying the coffins of three young men killed during Friday's protests.<br /><br />A woman dressed in black screamed and shouted insults at the government as she hovered over the dead body of her thirteen-year-old son. A video on Facebook says that he was shot and killed by security forces in Kaswa Friday.<br /><br />Syrian government TV claims that "armed gangs fired on security forces in Kaswa" Friday, wounding several. It added that 7 civilians and security forces were killed during the protests.<br /><br />Syrian TV repeated a list of charges against protesters, claiming they "attacked fire trucks, blocked roads, threw stones, and shot at security forces." A man in the town of Jisr al-Shaghour also claimed that "armed gangs were preventing refugees from returning home from Turkey."<br />（283 words）<br /><br /><span style="color:#0162f4;">计时2<br /></span><br />More than 12,000 Syrian refugees have fled to camps inside Turkey in the past several weeks.<br /><br />Hilal Khashan, who teaches political science at the American University of Beirut insisted that Syria is more worried about preventing the collapse of its regime, than about provoking a conflict with Turkey. He says that Syrian forces approached the border, despite agreements not to do so:<br /><br />"Syrian armored personnel carriers even reached the border," said Khashan. "They were maybe two meters away from the Turkish border station. The Syrians want it to be clear that they will not allow the Turks to establish a buffer zone, whereby the opposition can be stationed there. So, the Syrians don't really seem to care if the Turks were to initiate hostility against them. What counts most for them is the survival of the regime, and I don't think they will be deterred by any United Nations resolution, even though see it coming, or by sanctions."<br /><br />The French daily Le Figaro also reported Saturday that the militant group Hezbollah in Lebanon has been moving rockets and other arms from inside Syria to Lebanon. Hezbollah, according to the paper, is worried about the possible collapse of the Syrian regime.<br /><br />Hezbollah leader Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah claimed in a speech Friday that the fall of the Syrian regime would represent a "free gift to both Israel and the United States," allowing them to "impose their hegemony over the region." Hezbollah is on the U.S. State Department list of terrorist groups.<br />（249 words）<br /><br /><span style="color:#013add;">计时3<br /></span><br />Farm Ministers Call for Commodity Market Regulation<br />June 24, 2011 <br /><br /><strong>Wild swings<br /></strong><br />Woody Barth has been farming and raising cattle in North Dakota for about 30 years. He says he always looked to the commodity markets for stability. But that's changed in recent years. <br /><br />"We've seen a lot of wild swings in the market," says Barth. "I mean, a day of five cents up on the corn market, 10 cents up on the wheat market, up or down, was a big day five, seven years ago, 10 years ago. But that's a quiet day nowadays."<br /><br />Corn, or maize, has hit its 30-cent one-day trading limit 51 times so far this year on the major U.S. grain exchange. That's up from 36 times in all of last year. <br /><br />Avoiding these wild price swings is one reason why farmers and food makers are in the commodity markets to begin with. They can set prices today for crops that are still in the ground.<br /><strong><br />Transferred risk</strong><br /><br />That lowers the risk that weather or other factors beyond their control will push prices up or down come harvest time, says economist John Anderson with the American Farm Bureau Federation. <br /><br />"There are so many things we don't know. And so, the people who are involved in these markets face tremendous risk. And the whole point of these markets is to allow a way for that risk to be transferred."<br /><br />Transferred to someone who is willing to gamble on what the price of a commodity will be in the future. That is what speculators do - they take on that risk because where there is risk, there may be reward. <br /><br />So a certain amount of speculation is a good thing, says Michael Masters, head of the hedge fund Masters Capital Management. "You need enough liquidity from speculators to provide grease for the wheels, if you will."<br />（299 words）<br /><br /><span style="color:#013add;">计时4<br /></span><br /><strong>Flood of new money</strong><br /><br />But something changed in the mid-2000s. Pension funds, sovereign wealth funds and other large institutional investors began looking to commodity market speculation as a way to diversify their portfolios.<br />Masters says investments in commodity index funds rose from $13 billion in 2003 to about $400 billion today. He says the flood of new money is helping to push prices up. <br /><br />" rices move when new money comes into a market. So if you have a house, and one buyer shows up, you may sell it at one price. On the other hand, if you have a house and five buyers show up, you're going to sell it at another price."<br /><br />Masters adds that speculators used to make up about a third of the money in commodity markets. Now they dominate many of them. He says markets today are much more volatile because there is much more money reacting to good or bad news about crop supplies. <br /><br />"If there's a certain amount of speculative capital, it's going to move a certain price. But if there's 20 times that amount of speculative capital, then it's going to move much more."<br /><strong><br />ush for new regulations<br /></strong><br />France has used its position as current head of the G20 to speak out against excessive speculation. <br /><br />French agriculture minister Bruno Le Maire says high and unstable food prices affect the poor the most. "Nobody can accept to have speculation on the poorest countries in the world, on the people in the world."<br /><br />The French have been pushing for stricter regulations on commodity speculation in their role as head of the G20. But the negotiations faced stiff opposition -- for the simple reason that many are not convinced that speculators are to blame.<br />（288 words）<br /><br /><br /><span style="color:#013add;">计时5<br /><br /></span>"I don't think there's a very good case at all to be made for much of a speculative impact in our grain markets right now," says economist Scott Irwin at the University of Illinois, adding that most research on the subject does not show that the mere presence of more speculators pushes prices up. <br /><br />And the evidence that they are adding to volatility is not conclusive. <br /><br />"There's no smoking gun that clearly points towards the kind of volatility and manipulation problems," says Irwin. "If that's not there, why do you need the new regulations to begin with?"<br /><br />Irwin adds that new regulations may even push out the speculators the markets need to function smoothly.<br /><br />He says there is a much simpler explanation for why prices are so high and unpredictable today: supplies of many food commodities are extremely low and demand is extremely high. With such small margins of error, any little bump will send shudders through the market. And the market has taken a lot of bumps in the past year, from drought in Russia to floods in Canada to heat waves in the United States.<br /><br />"We just have had a really kind-of amazing string of just plain bad luck with weather. And it just keeps accumulating recently."<br /><br />Experts say it will take at least two years of good harvests to build enough stocks to buffer prices. <br /><br />In the meantime, the agreement the G20 agriculture ministers reached calls for "appropriate regulation and supervision" of commodity markets. It makes some suggestions, but provides few details. And it leaves the issue to the G20 finance ministers to work out what regulations are appropriate. A G20-appointed commission is expected to deliver its recommendations in the fall.<br />（285 words） |
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