又到了周末慢英时间啦，那些热爱英剧，喜欢英音和以后要去英联邦国家留学的小伙伴在哪里？你们的时间到喽~~~（点击阅读原文，听取完整文稿）
【本期文稿】
This is NEWS Plus Special English. I'm Mark Griffiths in Beijing. Here is the news.
A man who was executed 18 years ago for raping and murdering a woman in a public toilet in Hohhot in China's Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, has been found not guilty by the local Higher People's Court.
The higher court has apologized for the mistake made in sentencing Hugjiltu in 1996, and gave 30,000 yuan, roughly 4,500 US dollars, in compensation to his family, and pledged further compensation.
Hugjiltu, who was 18 at the time, was sentenced to death and executed in 1996.
However, an alleged serial rapist and killer, Zhao Zhihong, confessed to the murder after he was arrested in 2005.
Miao Li, the lawyer representing Hugjiltu's family, said that she had been sure that the case was wrongly judged and that by reviewing files, she found no evidence supporting the claim that Hugjiltu raped and murdered the woman.
The lawyer said that the process will begin to ask for State compensation once his client is announced innocent. She added that the family will also initiate the process of finding out the identity of the policemen, prosecutors and judges who were involved in the case.
This is NEWS Plus Special English.
China's tourism authorities have urged travel agencies to monitor tour groups and explore the use of personal credit reports to identify possible offenders in advance.
The move comes after four Chinese passengers pouring hot water on a Thai flight attendant and triggered public outrage online.
The National Tourism Administration released a statement asking all provincial tourism authorities and travel agencies to help regulate tourist behavior.
The statement says that the incident disrupted the flight schedule by forcing the plane to return to Bangkok; and the people involved were dealt with according to the law.
The administration also asked the provincial tourism authorities to record the incident in the personal credit reports of the four passengers.
Tourism experts say that stopping such behavior requires the help of travel agencies as well as tourists themselves. They urged tour guides to alert tourists about their behavior and the consequences of breaking local laws and rules during the trips to other countries.
Teachers at Shanghai Jiaotong University have called for an urgent introduction of personal credit reporting systems in the tourism industry; and the reports will to be shared with certain departments, including visa application centers.
This is NEWS Plus Special English.
The growth of ride-hailing companies such as Uber and Lyft has so far not been hindered by limits from government regulators and campaigns by taxi cab competitors. A bigger threat to the new industry's impressive start could come from customers though, if enough people stop using the services over fears that drivers aren't safe.
Not safe as in the drivers might get into an accident, but safe as in they won't attack passengers.
Uber operates in more than 250 cities in 50 countries, and was recently valued at 40 billion US dollars based on 1.2 billion dollars that investors poured into the company in its latest funding round. Lyft, meanwhile, operates in 70 markets in the United States, up from 30 at the start of the year.
So far, controversies have not seemed to impact the popularity of ride-hailing apps. They boast several advantages over taxis, including no-cash payments and an app that shows how far away a car is and whether the driver received positive reviews from prior riders. Uber ranks in 39th place in the Apple iTunes store among the most popular free apps, ahead of Gmail and the music streaming service Pandora. Lyft, which is much smaller, is not in the top 100.
But just last week, California prosecutors sued both, saying they misrepresent and exaggerate the rigor of their background checks. Police in India questioned an Uber executive about the company's background checks after a driver was accused of raping a passenger. And Uber removed a driver in Chicago after a customer reported that she was sexually assaulted during a ride in the city last month. The company said it is cooperating with police in what it called "an appalling and unacceptable incident".
You are listening to NEWS Plus Special English. I'm Mark Griffiths in Beijing.
Swiss researchers have suspended the testing of one of the leading Ebola vaccine candidates after some volunteers reported unexpected side effects.
The researchers at the Hospital of Geneva University say the trial has been suspended "as a precautionary measure". The study involving 59 people began in November.
Four cases of mild joint pain in the hands and feet were reported in people who received the shot 10 to 15 days earlier. Officials have stopped giving the vaccine to obtain more data and liaise with others who are testing the vaccine in the United States, Canada, Germany and Gabon.
The vaccine was developed by the Canadian government and is licensed to two U.S. companies.
The trial is scheduled to resume next month in Geneva.
This is NEWS Plus Special English.
British researchers have found new evidence that explains how some aspects of our personalities may affect our health and well-being, supporting long-observed associations between aspects of human character, physical health and longevity.
A team of researchers at the University of Nottingham in England carried out a study to examine the relationship between certain personality traits and the expression of genes that can affect people's health by controlling the activity of the immune systems.
A group of 120 ethnically diverse and healthy young adults were recruited. The participants completed a personality test which measures five major dimensions of personality, extroversion, neuroticism, openness, agreeableness and conscientiousness.
Blood samples were collected from each volunteer for gene expression analysis and their typical smoking, drinking and exercise behavior were also recorded for control purposes.
The study did not find any results to support a common theory that tendencies towards negative emotions such as depression or anxiety can lead to poor health. What was related to differences in immune cell gene expression were a person's degree of extroversion and conscientiousness.
The results indicated that extroversion was significantly associated with an increased expression of pro-inflammatory genes and that conscientiousness was linked to a reduced expression of pro-inflammatory genes.
Although the biological mechanisms of these associations need to be explored in future research, the new data may shed new light on the long-observed epidemiological associations between personality, physical health, and human longevity.
This is NEWS Plus Special English.
French president Francois Hollande wants to allow doctors to keep terminally ill patients sedated until death comes, amid a national debate about whether to legalize euthanasia.
Hollande stopped short of recommending lethal injections and avoided the terms euthanasia and assisted suicide, highly sensitive issues in this majority-Catholic country.
Instead, he called for a law that would give people "the right to deep, continuous sedation until death", at the patients' request, but only when their condition is life-threatening in the short term.
Doctors are divided about the idea. Hollande did not outline details of his proposal, but so-called terminal or palliative sedation can involve medicating patients until they die naturally of their illnesses, or until they starve.
The method doesn't actively kill patients. But some doctors say it can mean patients are sedated for weeks before they die, and that it may be more humane to euthanize.
The French proposal does not involve assisted suicide, in which doctors generally prescribe lethal medication that the patient administers.
Debate in France over end-of-life legislation resurfaced this year over the case of comatose Frenchman Vincent Lambert. His wife wants doctors to stop life support but his parents disagree. The case is pending at the European Court of Human Rights.
According to several recent polls, a large majority of French people are in favor of euthanasia under certain conditions.
Euthanasia is currently legal in the Netherlands, Belgium and Luxembourg.
You're listening to NEWS Plus Special English. I'm Mark Griffiths in Beijing. You can access the program by logging onto 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 mansuyingyu@cri.com.cn. That's mansuyingyu@cri.com.cn. Now the news continues.
A series of canals and pipelines stretching over 1,400 kilometers has begun diverting water from China's longest river, the Yangtze, directly to the country's arid northern regions, including the capital city Beijing.
The completion of the water scheme marked major progress in China's enormous south-to-north water diversion project, the largest of its kind in the world at an estimated cost of 500 billion yuan, roughly 80 billion U.S. dollars.
The project, which aims to alleviate water shortages in the north, is another engineering achievement by the Chinese. The Beijing-Hangzhou Grand Canal, the world's longest man-made river, was launched in the 13th century as a main waterway for grain transport between the south and north in ancient China.
The launch of the new waterway will see water continuously supplied through the middle route of the south-to-north water diversion project.
The middle route first-stage project begins in central China's Hubei Province and runs for 1,432 kilometers. It can supply almost 10 billion cubic meters of water per year on average for some 100 million people in the dry northern regions, including the cities of Beijing and Tianjin, as well as Henan and Hebei provinces.
This is NEWS Plus Special English.
The online payment transactions of Kuaidi, a major taxi application, reached almost 13 billion yuan, roughly 2 billion U.S. Dollars, this year.
Backed by China's e-commerce giant Alibaba Group, the company introduced Alipay Wallet, a mobile payment platform, last December. Almost 73 percent of the service's users now use Alipay Wallet to pay their fares, up significantly from less than 10 percent last December.
Four major Chinese cities including Shanghai and Beijing contributed almost half of the service's online payment volume.
There are currently more than 100 million users and almost 1 and a half million drivers using the service across 360 Chinese cities.
This is NEWS Plus Special English.
With big dreams of making it to Hollywood one day, a young Afghan man, who bears a striking resemblance to Kung Fu legend Bruce Lee, is hoping his high flying kicks will take him past mere Internet fame.
Videos and photos of 20-year-old Abbas Alizada, posted on the Facebook page "Bruce Hazara", show him performing back flips and striking Lee's famous poses. They blazed through Afghanistan's small Internet community recently, part of a publicity burst he hopes will catapult him to broader fame.
Abbas Alizada trains at Kabul's desolate Darulaman Palace twice a week, swirling nunchuks and sporting a Lee-like bowl haircut. Alizada also showed off his wiry physique, doing press-ups on his fingertips and sparring with a partner.
His roots are very humble, coming from a poor family of 10 children. Lacking the funds to enroll in a kung Fu academy, a trainer took him under his wing.
Alizada's recent success on the Internet and at a marital arts tournament in Kabul reflects changes taking place in the country, but there is still a long way to go.
Helped by the spread of television and the Internet, Afghanistan is witnessing a revival when it comes to sports and martial arts, practices that were once banned under the previous government.
You are listening to NEWS Plus Special English. I'm Mark Griffiths in Beijing.
Hundreds of Santa Claus look-alikes gathered in Vancouver over the weekend for a "flash mob" of merry-making in what will likely be the last day off for the old Saint Nicholas in before Christmas arrives very soon.
"Santa-Con", a gathering of Santa Claus look-alikes, first took place in 1994 in San Francisco, the United States, and has since spread around the world.
It now takes place in more than 40 countries and its goal is to just have a good time and celebrate the holidays.
Vancouver's Santas started off in the east end of the city at a popular pub. The day's festivities bring their cheer to several more pubs and public spaces around Vancouver today.
However, not everyone came out to spread Christmas joy. Lurking among the Santas was the infamous Grinch, the green and sinister nemesis of Stanta, whose life services only one pursue: sabotage Christmas.
But the Grinch was overwhelmed by the hundreds of Santas, who had a happier and more festive spirit, including one who told journalists that Santa had a very important message to all the children around the world:
"Be good, obey your parents, have fun and have a merry Christmas".
This is NEWS Plus Special English.
A rare weather phenomenon at the Grand Canyon in the United States had visitors looking out on a sea of thick clouds just below the rim.
The total cloud inversion hang inside the canyon throughout Thursday.
The U.S. National Weather Service says the weather event happens about once every few years, though the landmark was treated to one last year too.
The fog that has been shrouding parts of northern Arizona is courtesy of recent rain. The fog is able to stick around and built up in the Grand Canyon overnight when there was no wind.
With an inversion, the clouds are forced down by warm air and are unable to rise.
The Grand Canyon gradually cleared up over following days.
That is the end of this edition of NEWS Plus Special English. To freshen up your memory, I'm going to read one of the news items again at normal speed. Please listen carefully.
That is the end of today's program. I'm Mark Griffiths in Beijing. Hope you can join us every day at CRI NEWS Plus Radio, to learn English and learn about the world.
这就是今天的慢英啦，逐条学习可以登录喜马拉雅，关注我们的【慢速英语公开课】，每天一英音一美音，不学都不行滴哦~明天还有美音时间，请继续期待，不要停止学习哦！
点击阅读原文，听取完整文稿。
关注微信公众账号：英语环球 NEWSPlus
我们的官方网站：NEWSPlusRadio.cn
访问 lizhi.fm 荔枝 FM：搜索 英语环球
搜狐新闻客户端：搜索 英语环球广播
新浪微博：搜索 英语环球广播
点击阅读原文，开始今天的慢速英语（英音版）练习吧！
