Politics
Jean-Claude Juncker, the president of the European Commission, proposed that the European Union pull back from some activities that could be better handled locally by members, such as social policy. He also called for tighter EU integration on key policies such as migration, defence and trade.
例：Israel would recognise a Palestinian state and pull back from another slice of the West Bank.
例：It is not too late to pull back from the brink of this slippery slope.
例：The level of pessimism continues to pull back from the 2011 high recorded two weeks ago.
Two German men were convicted of murder for staging an illegal drag race in the heart of Berlin’s central shopping district in February 2016, killing a 69-year-old pensioner. The judges ruled that the drag racers’ extraordinary carelessness was grounds for a verdict of murder rather than manslaughter.
谋杀vs. 过失杀人 murder vs. manslaughter
In Britain, two by-elections in seats held by the Labour Party highlighted its directionless leadership under Jeremy Corbyn. It lost Copeland, which it had held since 1935, handing the Conservatives the first gain at a by-election for a governing party since 1982. It also lost ground in the safer seat of Stoke. Labour is trailing behind the government in polls by nearly 20 points and Mr Corbyn’s personal ratings are on the floor.
例：Like many toddlers, Sara would run around their Westminster, Colorado, home, and Kirimoto would trail behind her, trying to catch up.
The British government suffered its first defeat in Parliament on the Brexit bill, which will allow it to trigger the legal means for leaving the EU. The House of Lords amended the bill in an effort to secure the rights of EU nationals living in Britain. Brexiteers point out that Brussels has failed to give similar guarantees for Britons living in the EU. The Lords told MPs to search “their consciences” as it voted 358 to 256 for the amendment, which is likely to be removed when the bill returns to the Commons.
Three people secured enough nominations to join the race for the post of chief executive of Hong Kong. The front-runner is Carrie Lam, who until recently was head of the territory’s civil service. Her main rival is expected to be John Tsang, a former financial secretary. Also running is Woo Kwok-hing, a former judge. The winner will be chosen on March 26th by a committee stacked with supporters of the government in Beijing
Carrie Lam
Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor, GBM, GBS, JP (Chinese: 林鄭月娥; born 13 May 1957) is the former Chief Secretary for Administration of Hong Kong SAR Government, the most senior rank of principal officials of Hong Kong.
After graduating from the University of Hong Kong, Lam joined the civil service in 1980 and has served in various bureaux and departments. She became a principal official in 2007 when she was appointed Secretary for Development. During her service, she earned the reputation as a "tough fighter" from her handling of the demolition of the Queen's Pier.
She became the Chief Secretary for Administration under Leung Chun-ying administration in 2012. She had headed the Task Force on Constitutional Development on the political reform from 2013 to 2015 and held talks with the student leaders during the large-scale occupation protests in 2014. She has announced her candidacy in the 2017 Chief Executive election after she resigned as Chief Secretary in January 2017.
林郑月娥，（Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor，1957年5月13日－），大紫荆勋章，毕业于嘉诺撒圣方济各书院，其后升读香港大学。1980年取得社会科学学士学位，同年加入政府成为政务主任，并于2006年9月晋升为首长级甲一级政务官。2007年由公务员转为问责官员，出任香港特别行政区政府新成立的发展局局长。2012年6月，国务院任命其为香港政务司司长。
2017年1月12日下午，香港特别行政区政务司司长林郑月娥宣布，已提请辞去政务司司长职务并已呈交中央人民政府，如果中央批准，即参加2017年特区行政长官选举。1月16日，国务院决定免去林郑月娥的政务司司长职务。3月1日，获提名为第五届香港特区行政长官选举候选人
John Tsang
John Tsang Chun-wah, GBM, JP (Chinese: 曾俊華; born 21 April 1951) is a Hong Kong senior civil servant and government official who was the longest-serving Financial Secretary in the SAR period.
Born in Hong Kong and raised and educated in the United States, Tsang worked in the Hong Kong government for more than thirty years. He was the private secretary to the last colonial governor Chris Patten and was promoted to Secretary for Commerce, Industry and Technology in 2003. He worked as director of the Office of the Chief Executive under Donald Tsang administration from 2006 to 2007.
In July 2007, he was appointed Financial Secretary by Donald Tsang. He proposed the Scheme $6,000 tax rebate to all Hong Kong residents in his 2011 Budget. He continued to serve in the Leung Chun-ying administration until January 2017, when he resigned in order to run in the 2017 Chief Executive election.
曾俊华, GBM, JP（John Tsang Chun-wah，1951年－），祖籍广东省台山市斗山镇。于1982年加入香港特区政府，历任多个高层职位。2007年6月曾俊华被任命为香港特区政府财政司司长，并在2012年6月获得连任。2016年12月12日，曾俊华请辞香港特区政府财政司司长职务 。
2017年1月16日，国务院决定免去曾俊华的香港特别行政区财政司司长职务。3月1日，获提名为第五届香港特区行政长官选举候选人。
Woo Kwok-hing
Woo Kwok-hing, GBS (Chinese: 胡國興; born 13 January 1946) is a retired Hong Kong judge. He was the vice-president of the Court of Appeal of the High Court and former chairman of the Electoral Affairs Commission (EAC) and commissioner on Interception of Communications and Surveillance. In October 2016, he became a candidate for Chief Executive of Hong Kong in the 2017 election.
胡国兴，GBS，CBE（英语：Woo Kwok-hing，1946年1月13日－），前截取通讯及监察事务专员，香港著名法官之一 。先后任香港特区高等法院和上诉庭法官及上诉庭副庭长，于2012年退任高等法院及上诉庭公职 。
2017年3月1日，获提名为第五届香港特区行政长官选举候选人。
太平绅士
太平绅士（Justice of the Peace，简称JP，也译作治安法官）是一种源于英国，由政府委任民间人士担任维持社区安宁、防止非法刑罚及处理一些较简单的法律程序的职衔。成为太平绅士无须任何学历或资格认证要求。现时英国的英格兰与威尔士、澳大利亚、新西兰、马来西亚、美国、新加坡等国家和我国的香港地区皆有太平绅士制度，但各地区对太平绅士的定义和要求皆有分别。
香港的太平绅士分为官守太平绅士、非官守太平绅士、新界太平绅士三种，三者只是在产生程序和条件上有差异，与职能及地位上没有分别；而上述三种头衔一直使用直至回归前最后一次授勋。回归后为了反映与殖民地时代的区别及不同，在回归后进行第一次授勋前夕宣布作出变革。并在原先的三种头衔基础上进行了细微的分类，以确保凸显授勋者所接受头衔的先后次序及重要性。改革后授勋头衔次序如下：
(01)大紫荆勋章（GBM）太平绅士——此勋衔获得者需为对香港做出重大贡献的人，由担任特区最高行政机构首长职位（即特首。回归前为港督或英女皇及其委任之人士负责授勋）负责颁授。得此勋衔者之人士大多数均为对香港地区有举足轻重影响力的社会知名人士（不论是民生还是经济及其他界别都有作出突出贡献）。PS：由于早期获颁授者当中大部分人在回归前并无要求殖民地政府授勋或未曾接受勋衔，所以回归后第一批受勋者当中真正拥有殖民地时代太平绅士头衔者共有20人（其中3人为后期追加）；分别为：安子介、利国伟、查济民、钟士元、罗德丞、沙里士、黄保欣、陈方安生、杨铁梁、高登、列显伦、沈澄、方心让、李嘉诚、曾荫权、梁爱诗、钟逸杰、刘皇发、李业广、李东海（最后三人为追加者）
(02)金紫荆星章（GBS）太平绅士
(03)金英勇勋章（MBG）太平绅士
(04)银紫荆星章（SBS）太平绅士
(05)银英勇勋章（MBS）太平绅士
(06)各部队卓越奖章：
职责
香港的太平绅士主要职责为巡视如监狱等羁押院所，接受被扣留者的投诉，避免惩教当局对扣留人士施行法院判决以外的刑罚。太平绅士同时可监理和接受市民的宣誓和声明，使该宣誓或声明具有法律效力，此范畴的工作中最为人所熟知的是于每次六合彩开彩搅珠时联同香港赛马会受助机构代表负责监理开彩结果。
补充
如同其他香港政府或前港英政府授予的勋衔一样，获委任为太平绅士的人可在其名字后加上“JP”字样，作为个人正式衔头之一部份。在香港一般人视成为太平绅士为一种身份象征，因此有不少社区人士皆踊跃捐款或担任公职，以期获委任为太平绅士。
在过往，香港的太平绅士亦一如其他英联邦国家一样，需要审理案件；但现时其职能已被具有法律资历的全职裁判官所取代。
Business
The proposed merger of the London Stock Exchange and Deutsche Börse seemed headed for collapse. The final nail in the coffin was said to be the LSE’s rejection of an ultimatum from European antitrust regulators for it to sell its stake in a bond-trading platform in Italy. The LSE reportedly rejected the demand without consulting its intended German partner. The British and German exchanges announced their intention to merge a year ago, before Britain voted to leave the EU.
例：It is driving one more nail in the coffin of the traditional corporate pension.
例：The last nail in the coffin for television as we know it will be local news.
例：And the Apple iPad is now putting the nail in the coffin of expensive rear-entertainment systems.
Noble Group reported a small profit of $8.7m for last year. Noble was once Asia’s biggest commodities-trading firm, until it was hit by a double whammy of plunging commodity prices and questions about its accounts (until a review found they conformed to industry standards).
N-SING Whammy is used in expressions such as double whammy and triple whammy to indicate that two or three unpleasant or difficult situations occur at the same time, or occur one after the other. (困难或打击)同时到来; 相继发生 [journalism] [adj N]
例：We have a double whammy: inflation coupled with recession.
Following the double whammy on discount airlines, some passengers are starting to rethink their priorities.
Spending time outside his particular talent threatens to create a double whammy for Carlos.
The economic meltdown that began in 2008 dealt a double whammy to retirement savings.
Stockmarkets reached new record highs, buoyed in part by a positive reaction to Donald Trump’s speech to Congress. The Dow Jones Industrial Average index closed above the 21,000 mark, a little over a month after it breached 20,000. The S&P 500 and NASDAQ indices also scaled new heights.
Travis Kalanick issued a mea culpa. The chief executive of Uber admitted that “I need leadership help” after video footage emerged of him launching a verbal tirade at an Uber driver who had criticised the ride-hailing app’s business model. It is another dent in Uber’s image; it also faces allegations of sexual harassment from a former employee.
mea culpa: an acknowledgment of guilt 由于我的过失; 认罪
N-COUNT A tirade is a long angry speech in which someone criticizes a person or thing. 愤怒申讨
例：She launched into a tirade against the policies that ruined her business. 她针对毁掉她生意的那些政策发起了一番愤怒声讨。
例：The ban follows the England under-19 captain's foul-mouthed tirade on Twitter against manager John Abrahams.
例：And there is something else that Representative Gingrey forgot to mention during his tirade.
例：Playing a fed-up version of himself, he unleashes an expletive-laced tirade on the E!
Elon Musk, the founder of SpaceX, said he intends to fly people around the Moon by the end of next year. Two wealthy space tourists have apparently volunteered for the return flight, which would take a week and be controlled by autopilot. But the brave adventurers may not want to pack just yet. The Falcon Heavy rocket needed to launch the Moon capsule 登月舱 has not yet come into operation.
Leaders
THE FRENCH PRESIDENCY
France’s next revolution
Why the French presidential election will have consequences far beyond its borders
IT HAS been many years since France last had a revolution, or even a serious attempt at reform. Stagnation, both political and economic, has been the hallmark of a country where little has changed for decades, even as power has rotated between the established parties of left and right.
权利在A、B之间来回交替 power has rotated between A and B
Until now. This year’s presidential election, the most exciting in living memory, promises an upheaval. The Socialist and Republican parties, which have held power since the founding of the Fifth Republic in 1958, could be eliminated in the first round of a presidential ballot on April 23rd. French voters may face a choice between two insurgent candidates: Marine Le Pen, the charismatic leader of the National Front, and Emmanuel Macron, the upstart leader of a liberal movement, En Marche! (On the Move!), which he founded only last year.
The implications of these insurgencies are hard to exaggerate. They are the clearest example yet of a global trend: that the old divide between left and right is growing less important than a new one between open and closed. The resulting realignment will have reverberations far beyond France’s borders. It could revitalise the European Union, or wreck it.
结果是，重新洗牌造成的影响范围之大，将远远超出法国边境 The resulting realignment will have reverberations far beyond France’s borders.
Les misérables
The revolution’s proximate cause is voters’ fury at the uselessness and self-dealing 假公济私 of their ruling class. The Socialist president, François Hollande, is so unpopular that he is not running for re-election. The established opposition, the centre-right Republican party, saw its chances sink on March 1st when its standard-bearer, François Fillon, revealed that he was being formally investigated for paying his wife and children nearly €1m ($1.05m) of public money for allegedly fake jobs. Mr Fillon did not withdraw from the race, despite having promised to do so. But his chances of winning are dramatically weakened.
Further fuelling voters’ anger is their anguish at the state of France. One poll last year found that French people are the most pessimistic on Earth, with 81% grumbling that the world is getting worse and only 3% saying that it is getting better. Much of that gloom is economic. France’s economy has long been sluggish; its vast state, which absorbs 57% of GDP, has sapped the country’s vitality. A quarter of French youths are unemployed. Of those who have jobs, few can find permanent ones of the sort their parents enjoyed. In the face of high taxes and heavy regulations those with entrepreneurial vim have long headed abroad, often to London. But the malaise goes well beyond stagnant living standards. Repeated terrorist attacks have jangled nerves, forced citizens to live under a state of emergency and exposed deep cultural rifts 裂痕、不和 in the country with Europe’s largest Muslim community.
失去机会 chances sink
消耗了法国的活力 sapped the country’s vitality
standard-bearer
N-COUNTIf you describe someone as the standard-bearer of a group, you mean that they act as the leader or public representative of a group of people who have the same aims or interests. 领袖; 代表[usu with supp]
例：He was a standard-bearer for the causes of African-Americans. 他是一位美国黑人运动领袖。
rift
例：The interview reflected a growing rift between the president and Congress.
例：The army's sense of vulnerability has been heightened by a deepening rift with America over Iraq.
例：Efforts to heal the rift and hold elections in both territories have repeatedly failed.
例：Maradona also hit back at reports of a rift between him and team manager Carlos Bilardo.
Many of these problems have built up over decades, but neither the left nor the right has been able to get to grips with 认真处理（碰到的难题） them. France’s last serious attempt at ambitious economic reform, an overhaul of pensions and social security, was in the mid-1990s under President Jacques Chirac. It collapsed in the face of massive strikes. Since then, few have even tried. Nicolas Sarkozy talked a big game, but his reform agenda was felled by the financial crisis of 2007-08. Mr. Hollande had a disastrous start, introducing a 75% top tax rate. He was then too unpopular to get much done. After decades of stasis, it is hardly surprising that French voters want to throw the bums out.
The literal meaning of bum is a lazy or worthless person. However, in this idiom, it's used metaphorically to refer to members of some group that are not performing up to expectations; it's often used to refer to ineffective politicians, or members of a sports team on a losing streak. Thus, we wish to get rid of those worthless members, and replace them with new ones (who we hope will do better).
If you google the phrase, you'll find lots of web pages referring to the dysfunctional US Congress. It's also used as a rallying cry by some alternative political parties.
Both Mr. Macron and Ms. Le Pen tap into that frustration. But they offer radically different diagnoses of what ails France and radically different remedies. Ms. Le Pen blames outside forces and promises to protect voters with a combination of more barriers and greater social welfare. She has effectively distanced herself from her party’s anti-Semitic past (even evicting her father from the party he founded), but she appeals to those who want to shut out the rest of the world. She decries globalisation as a threat to French jobs and Islamists as fomenters煽动者，挑拨者 of terror who make it perilous to wear a short skirt in public. The EU is “an anti-democratic monster”. She vows to close radical mosques, stanch the flow of immigrants to a trickle 细流、慢慢动, obstruct foreign trade, swap the euro for a resurrected French franc and call a referendum on leaving the EU.
stanch
V to stem the flow of (a liquid, esp blood) or (of a liquid) to stop flowing 止住(液体，尤指血液)
Rivers, frantically strapping tourniquets onto the remains of his legs to try to stanch the bleeding.
To stanch the bleeding, some cable companies have begun to quietly offer stripped-down plans to retain viewers.
Capital controls and even travel restrictions would be needed to stanch the bleeding of money from the economy.
Mr. Macron’s instincts are the opposite. He thinks that more openness would make France stronger. He is staunchly pro-trade, pro-competition, pro-immigration and pro-EU. He embraces cultural change and technological disruption. He thinks the way to get more French people working is to reduce cumbersome labour protections, not add to them. Though he has long been short on precise policies (he was due to publish a manifesto as The Economist went to press), Mr. Macron is pitching himself as the pro-globalisation revolutionary.
V-T If someone pitches an idea for something such as a new product, they try to persuade people to accept the idea. 力荐(某主张)
例：My agent has pitched the idea to my editor in New York. 我的代理人已向我在纽约的编辑力荐这个想法。
PHRASEIf someone makes a pitch for something, they try to persuade people to do or buy it. 游说
例：The president speaks in New York today, making another pitch for his economic programme. 总统今天在纽约发表讲话，再一次游说他的经济计划。
V-TIf someone is pitched into a new situation, they are suddenly forced into it. 迫使进入 (一种新的处境)
例：They were being pitched into a new adventure in which they would have to fight the whole world. 他们当时正被胁迫参与到一次不得不与整个世界抗衡的新冒险中。
Look carefully, and neither insurgent is a convincing outsider. Ms. Le Pen has spent her life in politics; her success has been to make a hitherto extremist party socially acceptable. Mr. Macron was Mr. Hollande’s economy minister. His liberalising programme will probably be less bold than that of the beleaguered Mr. Fillon, who has promised to trim the state payroll by 500,000 workers and slash the labour code. Both revolutionaries would have difficulty enacting their agendas. Even if she were to prevail, Ms. Le Pen’s party would not win a majority in the national assembly. Mr. Macron barely has a party.
La France ouverte ou la France forteresse?
Nonetheless, they represent a repudiation of the status quo. A victory for Mr. Macron would be evidence that liberalism still appeals to Europeans. A victory for Ms. Le Pen would make France poorer, more insular and nastier. If she pulls France out of the euro, it would trigger a financial crisis and doom a union that, for all its flaws, has promoted peace and prosperity in Europe for six decades. Vladimir Putin would love that. It is perhaps no coincidence that Ms. Le Pen’s party has received a hefty loan from a Russian bank and Mr. Macron’s organisation has suffered more than 4,000 hacking attacks.
With just over two months to go, it seems Ms. Le Pen is unlikely to clinch the presidency. Polls show her winning the first round but losing the run-off. But in this extraordinary election, anything could happen. France has shaken the world before. It could do so again.
V-T If you clinch something you are trying to achieve, such as a business deal or victory in a contest, you succeed in obtaining it. 赢得
例： Her second-place finish in the final race was enough to clinch the overall victory. 她决赛中第二名的成绩足以能让她赢得整体的胜利。
V-T The thing that clinches an uncertain matter settles it or provides a definite answer. 解决
例：Evidently this information clinched the matter. 显然这一信息解决了这个问题。