美国有线新闻 CNN 2012-12-28_在线英语听力室_免费在线英语听力学习网站

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Today is December 21st. It is the first official day of winter, but the weather was not looking at the calendar, the season’s first blizzard¹ hit the Midwestern U.S. Early this week, it was headed and expected to move into New England today. Tens of thousands of people lost power. This storm also made driving pretty dangerous, as you might expect in some areas. Nearly 100 accidents were reportedly by late Wednesday morning, including a 30-car pileup on one Iowa highway. An officer said the snow is blowing around so badly, the drivers could only see about five feet in front of their cars. Blizzard warnings were up yesterday in Iowa, also in parts of Nebraska, Missouri, Minnesota, Illinois and Wisconsin. Parts of Wisconsin had already seen up to seven inches of snow by yesterday morning. Predictions said another foot could be on the way.

And you’ve heard us talk a lot about the fiscal² cliff, it’s a serious of automatic government spending cuts and tax increases that’s scheduled to take place at the beginning of the year. Now, President Obama and Congress can avoid this cliff by coming up with a compromise, a plan to lower the country’s debt. The president and Republican³ leaders have both offered some proposals on how to do this, but when we made the show Thursday evening, there wasn’t a deal. The member of the House and Senate said they’d stay in Washington to keep working on it, the deadline for a deal is January 1st, so make sure to check out cnn.com over the break for all the latest details.

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1 blizzard
n.暴风雪
参考例句：
The blizzard struck while we were still on the mountain.我们还在山上的时候暴风雪就袭来了。 You'll have to stay here until the blizzard blows itself off.你得等暴风雪停了再走。

2 fiscal
adj.财政的，会计的，国库的，国库岁入的
参考例句：
The increase of taxation is an important fiscal policy.增税是一项重要的财政政策。 The government has two basic strategies of fiscal policy available.政府有两个可行的财政政策基本战略。

3 republican
n.拥护共和政体的人； adj.共和政体的，（Republican）共和党人，（Republican）共和党的
参考例句：
Some families have been republican for generations.有些家庭世代都支持共和党。 A third candidate has entered the contest for the Republican nomination.第三个候选人已经加入角逐共和党提名的行列。