在线英语听力室_免费在线英语听力学习网站

1. President Barack Obama's prime time address tonight is expected to include a pitch for his economic plan. A spokesman says Obama will offer a sober assessment¹ of how things stand. The spokesman also says Obama will tell the country that Americans have faced greater challenges before, and have always met those challenges.

2. Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke is steadying Wall Street by telling Congress the recession could end this year. Bernanke predicts the economy is likely to keep contracting in the first six months of 2009, but he also says there is a reasonable prospect² that the recession will end this year.

3. The pilots of the US Airways³ flight that landed in the Hudson River told Congress that experienced pilots are quitting because of deep cuts in their pay and benefits. Co-pilot Jeff Skiles said unless Federal laws are revised to improve labor-management relations, experienced crews in the cockpit will be a thing of the past.

4. The town of Olney in Buckinghamshire, England is flipping⁴ for pancakes. Tradition says that all fat, flour and eggs in a kitchen should be used to make a final meal ahead of Lent. Legend has it that on this day in 1445 a woman was late for church, ran to the service still holding a frying pan with a pancake. Since then, traditional races have been held each year.

WORDS IN THE NEWS

1. sober: adj.

serious, and thinking or making you think carefully about things

2. contract: vi

When something such as an economy or market contracts, it becomes smaller.

3. cockpit: n.

the area in a plane, small boat, or racing⁵ car where the pilot or driver sits

4. Lent: n.

the 40 days before Easter when some Christians eat less food or stop doing something that they enjoy