奶油小生艾瑞克

Date: 16/09/2019

Note

Stock market

the price of oil

oil facility attack

no one hurt

cost 5% of world daily oil supply

Hoothy rebels admitted their crime

Saudi Arabia v.s Iran v.s American

American: Arms

Saudi Arabia: Oil

105 billion import of arms from American

even 911 attack doesn’t impact the relationship with Saudi Arabia

Trump assigned a contract with Saudi Arabia about 110 billion

Proxy war with Iran and Saudi Arabia

the bond between American and Saudi Arabia is continuing

Hong Kong

no signs for the problems go away

15th street protests march

hundreds of people are detained and arrested

many ordinary citizen view police as anemy

it’s hard the recover from the confrontation cycle

Automated robot

Transcript

CARL AZUZ, CNN 10 ANCHOR: Welcome to a new week and a new edition of CNN 10. I`m Carl Azuz, happy to see you this Monday. When international stock marks open on September 16th, one thing investors around the world are watching is the price of oil. It`s crucial for world economies because its their major source of energy and a country that`s a major supplier of oil saw its oil facilities attacked on Saturday. As many as 10 drones, unmanned aircraft hit oil plants in Saudi Arabia. The kingdom is the worlds largest exporter of oil and the attacks hit the worlds largest oil processing facility. Saudi Arabia says no one was hurt but half of its oil production was disrupted and that accounts for 5 percent of the worlds daily oil supply.

So as Saudi Arabia rushes to repair the damaged plants, investors want to see if and how this effects oil prices world wide. They`d been relatively low for months but could go up significantly because of this. So, who did it? Houthi rebels in neighboring Yemen say they did. They`ve been fighting for control of Yemen in that nation`s civil war but Saudi Arabia which supports Yemen`s government has been leading an international fight against the Houthi rebels. So the Houthis say they attacked Saudi Arabia`s oil facilities in response but not everyone`s convinced. The U.S. government blames Iran for planning the attack calling it an assault on the world`s energy supply.

Iran does support Yemen`s Houthi rebels but the country says it wasn`t involved in the Saudi oil attack and called the U.S. accusation meaningless. Tensions have been soaring between America and Iran since last year when the U.S. pulled out of a controversial nuclear deal with the Middle Eastern nation. So as investors watch oil prices Saudi Arabia works to repair its facilities and the U.S. and Iran bristle at each other, international politics are among the cast of tensions on the world stage.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The kingdom of Saudi Arabia and the United States are two unexpected allies. One`s an autocracy, the other a democracy. There are many differences between the two but one thing they have in common is that each country has what the other wants. Saudi Arabia has oil and the United States has arms. To understand how reciprocal the relationship is, we need to go back to how it started. Saudi Arabia as we know it was founded in 1932 by King Abdul-Aziz a few years later oil was struck and American companies sensing an opportunity moved in.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It was a relationship which was based on the company Standard Oil and in the name of the U.S. government trying to look for access to oil resources.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This picture shows where the relationship crystallized. This was Saudi Arabia`s founder King Abdulaziz meeting U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt on the USS Quincy on the Suez Canal in 1945.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The United States wanted to have a secure access to — — to the oil resources and at the same time they would provide the Saudi kingdom with access to arms and obviously provide protection.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: As the years passed, the relationship strengthened. Standard Oil founded ARAMCO, the Arabian -American Oil Company which controlled every oil well and barrel in the country, and as the oil flowed into the U.S., American made arms flowed into the kingdom. Between 1950 and 2017, Saudi Arabia bought more than $100 billion worth of arms from the U.S. making the kingdom the country`s biggest customer. It`s a relationship so strong that even when Saudi Arabia and the U.S. are on opposite sides of an issue, arms continue to flow.

For example in 1973 and the start of the Yom Kippur War, Egypt and Syria launched a surprise offensive against Israel. The U.S. responded supporting Israel which Saudi opposed. The kingdom and its OPEC allies responded by setting an oil embargo, reducing production and significantly impacting the U.S. economy but there was no slow down in arm sales.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: If we look at the actual figures of arms supplies to Saudi Arabia from the U.S., we do see that a — — that was around the time that we see a very significant increase in those arm supplies which then continued to over the decades. And probably this may also be related to the (inaudible), that really was the moment that oil prices really increased very rapidly.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Even 9/11 where 15 out of the 19 attackers were Saudi did little to rattle the arms relationship with the kingdom which has denied any involvement in the attacks.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Around 2005, the was a big volume of deliveries of weapons from the U.S. to Saudi Arabia which I think that didn`t necessarily have to do with 9/11. I think it had more to do with the fact that Saudi Arabia didn`t have the best financial conditions at that time and that it had already stocked up on a very large quantity of — — of advanced arms.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: And in 2017, U.S. President Donald Trump`s first foreign visit was to Saudi Arabia where he signed an arms deal said to be worth $110 billion.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: For a long time Saudi Arabia hasn`t been using its equipment very much but that (inaudible) started to change in 2015 we see the — — the full scale military intervention by Saudi Arabia.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The Yemen conflict has become the world`s worst humanitarian crisis with tens of thousands killed. It`s also widely seen as a proxy war between Iran and Saudi Arabia with Houthi rebels supported by Iran and pro-government forces supported by the Saudi led coalition.

The world has changed a lot since the relationship between Saudi Arabia and the USA began. Imports of oil from the kingdom to the U.S. have dropped by 47 percent since a high in 1991. Since that first accord in 1932, Saudi Arabia has had seven kings. The U.S. has had 14 presidents. But through it all, the bond between these two nations has remained unbreakable.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

AZUZ: 10 Second Trivia. Though Hong Kong isn`t independent from China, it is considered a what? Semi-autonomous republic, special administrative region, autonomous region or protectorate. Hong Kong is a special administrative region. Its people have more freedoms than those in mainland China.

Hong Kong`s government says its open to increasing communication with the public to solve the city`s problems. For the 15th weekend in a row, there were no signs those problems are going away. There was a large peaceful march on Sunday. There were also incidents of vandalism and attacks on police. Demonstrators want more democratic freedom for Hong Kong but if struggles continue between them and their local government it`s possible China could step in. It says it has ultimate control over the special administrative region.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

IVAN WATSON, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: This is the 15th straight weekend of confrontations and protests here in Hong Kong and this is a very typical site here. Large numbers of riot police deployed after demonstrators conducted a protest march which had not been authorized by the police through the downtown of Hong Kong Island. And then it was followed up with scenes of demonstrators coursing through the streets, tear gas, water cannons, it`s a scene that has repeated itself week after week. We witnessed on this evening a group of demonstrators beating a man quite badly on a street corner. We`re not sure why he was targeted but he left dazed and bloodied.

Now the fact is, is that hundreds of people have been detained thus far, arrested and this has taken a toll on the Hong Kong economy. Hotels have large numbers of vacancies. Airplane ticket sales are down. Retail sales are down as well and Hong Kong`s reputation has taken a beating. The Hong Kong government has taken some steps to try to meet some protestor demands but at this stage there seems to be no political settlement in sight and as you can hear, many ordinary citizens now view the police as targets of derision. Police commanders have told CNN it will take years to recover from the damage that their reputation has suffered through this cycle of confrontation. Ivan Watson, CNN, Hong Kong.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

AZUZ: At Indiana`s Purdue University there`s a new delivery team on campus. They don`t talk much but they do bring students something to chew on. Customers can order food and drinks using a smart phone app. The meals are plopped into the robots which then zip around and drop them off within minutes. They`re automated, though the people who monitor them can take control if needed and the company that provides the service hopes to expand it in the years ahead.

The question is will the meals on wheels be slow in the snow? Will they beat the heat with the food you eat? Or will they arrive at all if the leaves in Fall, mire the tires and cause impairments that need “repairments”? Guess the robots will have to learn the “Purdues” and “don`ts” of “drone livery”. I`m Carl Azuz delivering another edition of CNN.

END

Vocabulary

• autocracy: 獨裁統治；獨裁政體；獨裁；專制
• reciprocal: 相互的；互惠的；報答的
• be struck: 突然侵襲；使受折磨；使遭受重創
• crystallize: 裹糖的，糖水浸過的
• USS Quincy: 昆西號巡洋艦
• the Suez Canal: 蘇伊士運河；蘇伊士運河處於埃及西奈半島西側，橫跨在亞洲、非洲交界處的蘇伊士地峽，頭尾則在地中海側的塞德港和紅海蘇伊士灣側的蘇伊士兩座城市之間，全長約163公里，是全球少數具備大型商船通行能力的無船閘運河。 這條運河連結了歐洲與亞洲之間的南北雙向水運，船隻不必繞過非洲南端的好望角，大大節省航程。
• Yom Kippur War: 贖罪日戰爭發生於1973年10月6日至10月26日，起源於埃及與敘利亞分別攻擊六年前被以色列佔領的西奈半島和戈蘭高地。戰爭的頭一至兩日埃敘聯盟佔了上風，但此後戰況逆轉。至第二周，敘軍退出戈蘭高地。在西奈，以軍在兩軍之間攻擊，越過原來的停火線蘇伊士運河。直到聯合國停火令生效為止，已經殲滅了一隊埃及軍隊。
• embargo: （尤指暫時禁止貿易或提供消息的）禁令，禁運；限制
• rattle: 煩擾；使慌亂；使緊張
• humanitarian crisis
• coalition: （不同政黨或不同群體的人為特定目標而暫時形成的）聯盟，同盟，聯合體
• in a row
• vandalism: 恣意毀壞他人財產罪
• confrontation: 對抗；衝突；對峙；爭論
• riot: 暴亂；騷亂；聚衆鬧事
• course through: 奔流；奔湧；大量流動
• water cannons: （用於驅散人群的）高壓水炮
• detained: 使留下；拘留，扣押
• take its/a toll: 造成損失（或傷亡、破壞）
• The deepening recession
• rife: （指不良事物）盛行的；流行的；普遍的
• derision: 嘲笑，嘲諷，嘲弄
• chew on sth: to think about something
• be plopped into: to fall with a soft sound 咚地落下
• mire: 泥潭；沼澤；泥沼、困境