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The war in Yemen ground on. An air strike on a school bus that killed scores of children was just one incident in which civilians were caught up. The un warned that the country was on the brink of a famine, with up to 14m people at risk of starvation.
也門戰爭仍在繼續。一輛校車遭遇空襲，造成數十名兒童死亡，這只是平民被殃及的事件之一。聯合國警告稱，該國正處于饑荒邊緣，多達1400萬人面臨饑餓的危險。
Gun violence in America hit the headlines again. A former pupil went on a rampage at his high school in Florida on St Valentine’s Day, murdering 17 people. Eleven Jews were murdered by a gunman at a synagogue in Pittsburgh, America’s worst-ever anti-Semitic attack. Over one weekend in Chicago 75 people were shot in separate incidents, 13 of them fatally.
美國的槍支暴力再次成為頭條新聞。情人節當天，一名離校學生在佛羅里達州的高中開槍射擊，殺害了17人。11名猶太人在匹茲堡一間猶太教堂被槍殺，這是美國有史以來最嚴重的反猶太襲擊案件。在一個周末，芝加哥市有75人分別在不同的事件中受到槍擊，其中13人死亡。
Trump grump
特朗普發火
Jerome Powell continued gradually raising interest rates in his first year as chairman of the Federal Reserve. Mr Trump said he wasn’t “even a little bit happy” with him. The political pressure Mr Powell endured was nothing compared with Turkey’s central bank. Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Turkey’s president, described high interest rates as “the mother of all evil” and claimed that they cause inflation. Most economists think they curb it. After a run on the lira, the central bank eventually raised rates regardless.
杰羅姆·鮑威爾（Jerome Powell）在擔任美聯儲主席的第一年里繼續逐步提高利率。特朗普表示，他對此“一點都開心不起來”。與土耳其央行相比，鮑威爾所承受的政治壓力可以說微不足道。土耳其總統埃爾多安稱，高利率是“萬惡之源”，并聲稱高利率會引發通貨膨脹。大多數經濟學家認為，他們抑制了這一趨勢。在發生里拉擠兌后，央行最終還是提高了利率。
After a run on the peso, Argentina had to call in the IMF (again). Mauricio Macri, the president, introduced an austerity plan and new taxes on exports.
在發生比索擠兌后，阿根廷不得不（再次）向國際貨幣基金組織求助。阿根廷總統毛里西奧·馬克里(Mauricio Macri)推出了一項緊縮計劃，并對出口征收新稅。
Stockmarkets appeared to be heading for their worst year since the financial crisis. Many leading indices, including the s&p 500, the Dow Jones Industrial Average and the ftse 100 are set to end the year below the level at which they started. There was a broad sell-off in technology stocks. Apple, which had earlier become the first company worth $1trn, tumbled. Google was slapped with a record 4.3bn euros ($5bn) fine by the European Commission. The bitcoin bubble burst.
股市似乎即將迎來金融危機以來最糟糕的一年。包括標準普爾500指數(s&p 500)、道瓊斯工業股票平均價格指數(Dow Jones Industrial Average)和富時100指數(ftse 100)在內的許多領先指數今年年底都將低于開始時的水平。科技股普遍出現拋售。早些時候成為第一家市值破1萬億美元的公司的蘋果股價暴跌。谷歌被歐洲委員會處以創紀錄的43億歐元(50億美元)的罰款。比特幣泡沫破裂。
The consolidation of media and telecommunications companies produced some of the year’s blockbuster mergers, including a deal between T-Mobile and Sprint that valued the combined entity at $146bn. Rupert Murdoch’s association with Sky, a British subscription-TV broadcaster that Mr Murdoch’s company founded in 1989, ended after it was bought by Comcast.
媒體和電信公司的整合促成了今年一些轟動的并購交易，包括T-Mobile和Sprint之間的一筆交易，該交易將合并后的公司估值為1460億美元。魯珀特·默多克(Rupert Murdoch)與英國付費電視廣播公司天空廣播公司(Sky)的合作在被康卡斯特(Comcast)收購后終止。天空廣播公司是默多克的公司于1989年創建的。
Germany’s government lost two state elections in which the far right gained. Angela Merkel, chancellor since 2005 and a stabilising force in Europe, said she would step down in 2021. Germany’s consternation was compounded by its football team being knocked out in the early stage of the World Cup for the first time since 1938. France won the tournament.
德國政府輸掉了兩場州選舉，極右黨派在選舉中勝出。德國總理安格拉·默克爾(Angela Merkel)表示，她將于2021年卸任。默克爾自2005年以來一直擔任德國總理，成為維持歐洲穩定的一股力量。德國足球隊自1938年以來首次在世界杯小組淘汰出局，這更加劇了德國人的恐慌。法國隊贏得了2018年世界杯。
One of the most bizarre stories of 2018 was the faked assassination of Arkady Babchenko, a Russian journalist and critic of the Kremlin, by Ukraine’s intelligence services. Mr Babchenko’s body was smeared with pig’s blood and taken to a morgue while his “murder” was deplored by the world’s media. His sudden appearance, alive, at a press conference dumbfounded his grieving friends and colleagues. Wisely, he had kept his wife in the loop, but he still apologised to her publicly.
2018年最離奇的故事之一是烏克蘭情報機構偽造暗殺俄羅斯記者、克里姆林宮批評者阿爾卡季·巴布琴科(Arkady Babchenko)一事。巴布琴科的尸體上沾滿了豬血，隨后被送往太平間，而他的“偽造謀殺”遭到了全球媒體的譴責。他突然活著現身新聞發布會，這讓陷入哀痛的朋友和同事們目瞪口呆。機智如他，甚至讓妻子也蒙在鼓里，不過他還是公開地向妻子道歉。
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