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2019-10-31来源:和谐英语

BBC News. Hello, I'm Jerry Smit.

Millions of Californians face having their power cut as the emergency services continue to battle two rapidly spreading wildfires in the US state. The local power company Pacific Gas and Electric says it intends to cut electricity supplies to about two million people after one of its transmission towers developed a fault near one of the fires. Clary Gallegos and her family were forced to flee their home in Santa Clarita, north of Los Angeles. Within like ten minutes, we started to see the fire and the smoke getting darker by our house. And we started packing everything cause we saw our neighbors doing it as well. And then that's when our brothers started shouting out to me to get in the car and we got the dogs in the car. And the fire was literally on our backyard.

A document leaked to the Financial Times newspaper in London suggests that the British government is prepared to erode workers' rights and environmental standards after it leaves the European Union. EU officials are finalizing how long an extension they will grant Britain beyond the current departure date in six days. Here's our Europe regional editor Mike Saunders. The British Prime Minister Boris Johnson insisted this week that Britain is committed to the highest possible standards for workers and the environment when it leaves the EU. That pledge helped persuade nineteen opposition Labor Party MPs to back his Brexit deal in principle. But the draft document prepared at the Department for Exiting the EU suggests the level playing field rules will be open to interpretation and Britain's will be different to the EU's. Labor's Jenny Chapman said the leak confirmed their worst fears about a deregulated economy. A government minister said it would be completely mad to dilute workers' rights.

Iraqi security forces are patrolling the streets in four southern provinces to enforce a curfew following a day of deadly protests on Friday. At least forty people were killed and two thousand were injured. The protests were against corruption, a lack of jobs and economic hardship. Our correspondent Aleem Maqbool is in the Iraqi city of Erbil. The Prime Minister Adil Abdul-Mahdi has said he is not going to step down. He said that would cause chaos. He's talked about a limited sort of government reshuffle next week. He's talked about some reforms, but his problem is that the issue for many of these demonstrators is not necessarily him personally or his party, but the system under which there living here in Iraq. They'd have so many promises of course, after Saddam Hussein was toppled then two years ago after the victory that was declared against the Islamic State group that they are still not seeing their conditions improve.

The undercover Russian lobbyist Maria Butina has arrived in Moscow after she was deported from the United States. On arrival, she was greeted by her father and some Russian journalists. Miss Butina was released on Friday after serving most of her eighteen-month sentence for conspiring to influence conservative political groups. BBC News.