МОСКОВСКИЙ ГОСУДАРСТВЕННЫЙ ИНСТИТУТМЕЖДУНАРОДНЫХ ОТНОШЕНИЙ (УНИВЕРСИТЕТ) МИД РОССИИ

Кафедра английского языка № 1

Осетрова Е.Е.

Пособие по общественно-политическому переводу

ELECTIONS

Москва, 2012

Аннотация

Настоящее пособие является базовым пособием для студентов III курса факультета МО, изучающих аспект общественно-политический перевод. Цель пособия – введение и закрепление общественно-политической лексики по теме «Выборы», одной из наиболее актуальных тем современной политики, а также совершенствование переводческих навыков, умения выявлять «переводческие трудности». Тексты пособия основаны на материале англо-американской прессы и отражают важнейшие избирательные кампании последнего времени в России, США, Украине, Великобритании, Японии, Германии и других странах.Автор выражает благодарность Леви Ю.Э. за помощь в составлении переводческих комментариев.

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§1. RUN-UP TO THE ELECTION. SEEKING NOMINATION

I. А. Read and translate the articles with the help of the Active Vocabulary list.

В. Pay special attention the word order and the -ing forms, identify them.

1. EX-DICTATOR TO RUN FOR PRESIDENTA former dictator who is facing charges of genocide will be running for president

of Guatemala this year1. This week, a court in Guatemala City ruled that retired general Efrain Rios Montt, accused of responsibility for tens of thousands of deaths during the 1980s civil war, was entitled to stand for office.

The leader of a military coup in 1982, Gen Rios Montt ruled Guatemala with an iron fist. A born-again evangelical Christian, he held power for 16 months before being ousted. It was during this period that many of the worst atrocities in Guatemala's 36-year civil war were committed. His "civil defence" patrols conscripted indigenous Indians and killed those who resisted. Whole villages were slaughtered if they were thought to be hostile or to have assisted leftwing guerrillas.

Although he has long since returned to politics as president of the congress, until this week Gen Rios Montt, 77, had been excluded from standing2 for the presidency, and the constitutional court had upheld that ban. But two new members of the court, both close to the current president, Alfonso Portillo, have reversed that stance in a 4-3 vote, opening3

the way for him to run on November 9.Gen Rios Montt said on television this week that the decision was "an expression of

the professional spirit, character and dignity of independent justices". He already has his campaign slogan, "I am Guatemala".

The ruling has angered his opponents who have been hanging black ribbons "in mourning for democracy". Human rights groups have expressed outrage.

"Guatemala's government appears condemned to repeat the mistakes of the past," said Amnesty International yesterday.

This week the US embassy in Guatemala and the state department indicated that the election of Gen Rios Montt would create "difficulties" for the US. He also faces charges of genocide in Spain because a number of Spanish citizens were killed during his time in power.

Polls show Gen Rios Montt third in the race. He enjoys some support from people worried about street crime. But there is also opposition: when he appeared in the town of Rabinal last month, he was stoned by protesters, including Mayan Indians whose relatives had been massacred during his rule.

1 См.: Гуськова Т. И., Зиборова Г.М. Трудности перевода. – М., 2000. Неопределенный артикль, п.3, стр.86. Неопределенный артикль выполняет функцию маркера центра высказывания (информации), что влечет за собой изменение порядка слов, так как в русской письменной речи центр высказывания обычно находится в конце предложения.См.: Бреус Е.В. Теория и практика перевода с английского языка на русский. – М., 2001. - 2.2. Переводческие преобразования, обусловленные сменой отправной точки при описании предметной ситуации, стр.23-27. Тема – рематические особенности русских и английских текстов. В английском языке «новая» информация, рема, как правило, расположена в начале высказывания, тогда как в русском языке, наоборот, в начале высказывания располагается «старая» информация, тема, а рема – в конце. Поэтому при переводе рекомендуется использовать обратный порядок слов, при котором подлежащее занимает конечную позицию после глагола.2 См.: Гуськова Т. И., Зиборова Г.М. Трудности перевода. – М., 2000. Герундий в различных функциях, стр. 25; Жебелев Б.А. и др. Учебное пособие по переводу. – М., 1993. Комментарий 1, стр.40.3 См.: Гуськова Т. И., Зиборова Г.М. Трудности перевода. – М., 2000. Форма на -ing, стр.54.

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2. ANTI-PUTIN PARTIES FAIL TO NOMINATE CANDIDATERussia's leading liberal parties have failed to nominate a joint candidate for the

country's presidential elections next year in the wake of their defeat in the parliamentary elections earlier this month.

Grigory Yavlinsky, a veteran of the country's democratic movement and the leader of the liberal Yabloko party, said his party would not take part in the presidential poll on March 14 on the grounds that elections in Russia were "neither free nor fair".

Mr Yavlinsky's decision not to run for the presidency follows suggestions from the Communist party that it might also boycott the presidential elections after coming under heavy fire from the state-owned television channels in the run-up to the parliamentary polls.

Vladimir Putin, who enjoys a popularity rating of almost 80 per cent, appears certain to be re-elected for a second term next year, but the boycotting of the election by the leading political parties could overshadow his victory.

The Union of Right Forces, led by Anatoly Chubais, the architect of Russian privatisation, and Boris Nemtsov, a former deputy prime minister, will decide next month whether to take part in the presidential election. Both Yabloko and the Union of Right Forces failed to get past a 5 per cent threshold to get into parliament.

3. KERRY LOOKS FOR SWEEP ON SUPER TUESDAYAtlanta – John Kerry refrained Tuesday from predicting a sweep of 10 states that

could drive rival John Edwards from the race for the Democratic nomination. However, he told transportation workers in Georgia he expects to return to the state for the fall campaign against U.S. President George W. Bush.

Both senators campaigned in Atlanta at the beginning "Super Tuesday", the primaries and caucuses in California, New York, Ohio, Georgia, Minnesota, Connecticut, Maryland, Massachusetts, Rhode Island and Vermont that provide more than half the 2,162 delegates needed to win the nomination.

Kerry has won the bulk of delegates having won 18 of the first 20 contests. Edwards has won only one state, South Carolina, and that was nearly a month ago. Delegates will pick an eventual candidate at the party's June convention to run against Bush in November.

Edwards, a U.S. senator from North Carolina, pledged to stay in the race "until I'm nominated", but said in Ohio on Monday that he recognized that, "At some point, I've got to start getting more delegates or I'm not going to be the nominee".

A failure by Edwards to win any Tuesday races would bring enormous pressure to bear on him from Democratic leaders to step aside. Kerry hoped to finish Edwards off on Tuesday so he could turn his full attention to Bush and the general election.

4. 'SERIAL FLIP-FLOPPER' WINS THE RIGHTJohn Edwards ended his presidential bid yesterday looking far from a loser, having

transformed himself during a 13-month campaign into a political star who many Democrats believe will make a powerful running-mate for John Kerry.

Despite denying for months that he harbours ambitions for the vice-presidency, Mr Edwards's formal4 decision to quit the Democratic primary race only fuelled speculation that his Southern roots, charismatic populism and clear ability to appeal to moderates makes him hard for Mr Kerry to ignore.

4 См.: Гуськова Т. И., Зиборова Г.М. Трудности перевода. – М., 2000. «Ложные друзья» переводчика, стр.155

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Last night, at the school attended by his late 16-year-old son, Wade, killed in a car accident in 1996, Mr Edwards prepared to announce formally his withdrawal. Aides said yesterday, after he had been heavily defeated by Mr Kerry in Tuesday's ten-state Super Tuesday series of primaries, that the campaign was over.

Mr Edwards, 50, a first-term North Carolina senator, bows out of one of the Democrats' most successful primary seasons. Despite winning only one state, South Carolina, he played a key role in making the contest relatively bloodless and optimistic, ensuring that the rival candidates concentrated most of their fire on President Bush rather than each other.

On the stump, before and after Iowa, Mr Edwards was relentlessly upbeat and optimistic, refusing to attack his rivals. Instead, in speeches that fused an economic message with an often electrifying popular eloquence, he denounced the "two Americas" that Democrats claim exist under Mr Bush, and played up his Southern appeal.

Mr Edwards's influence on the race after Iowa became so powerful that the Democratic rivals hardly dared to attack each other again. This has left the perception of an unusually united party and a nominee, Mr Kerry, relatively unscathed to challenge Mr Bush.

Mr Edwards also appealed strongly to independents and moderate Republicans, a key voter group seen as one of Mr Kerry's vulnerabilities. Mr Edwards, the son of a mill-worker, has also consistently done better than any other Democrat in appealing to voters who believe "he cares about people like me".

These factors have left many Democrats believing that a Kerry-Edwards ticket is irresistible, particularly among those who contend that the party must compete in the South – "my backyard", as Mr Edwards calls it – to retake the White House.

Optional texts

5. Republican and Democrat strategists believe that energising their grassroots support and getting "the base to the polls is the key to victory, more than targeting swing voters, the fabled "soccer mums" so sought after during the Clinton years. This is because pollsters report that America is still bitterly and evenly split along party lines after the 2000 election, with a "swing" element of only about 10 per cent.

To fight the election, Mr Bush will have the largest election war chest in history. He has already raised $105 million (£60 million), has set a target of $170 million and could potentially have more than $200 million to spend against his opponent. Unlike his Democrat rival, who will need enormous political and financial capital to beat the challenges of eight rivals, Mr Bush is running without any serious challenge from within his own party.

Not only does this enhance his already massive financial advantage, it also gives him an historical edge. All recent incumbent presidents who ran for re-election without a primary challenger, including Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton, easily won re-election. Conversely, every incumbent except Richard Nixon who ran for re-election after a primary challenge from within the party were defeated. Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter and George Bush Sr faced challenges from within their party and subsequently lost the election. Lyndon Johnson was so damaged after the early primary votes in 1968 that he quit the race.

6. POLITICS OF TRADITION IN LAND OF THE RISING SONS

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For the first time in ten years, Junichiro Koizumi's ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) faces a credible challenger, the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) in the general election tomorrow.

For the first time, too, the parties have presented Western-style election campaigns. Yet, beneath the slick exterior, there is much about Japanese politics that is deeply old-fashioned.

For all their talk of national policies, Mr Koizumi and the DPJ leader, Naoto Kan, will win or lose in hundreds of local constituency battles, fought on mundanely local issues. And a large proportion of their candidates have been selected not on the basis of their political skills or popular appeal, but because they are the sons and daughters of other professional politicians.

From Tony and Hilary Benn to George Bush Sr and Jr, parent-and-child politicians are found all over the world. But in few places is politics as much of a family business as in Japan.

"It's as if the L in LDP stands for 'legacy'," the left-leaning Asahi Shimbun newspaper complained in a recent editorial. "Politics should not be like some traditional performing art that is conveniently passed from parent to child."

Of 323 candidates running for the LDP, 116 are in areas once represented by an older relative. In the previous parliament, two out of five MPs were hereditary, including some of Japan's most powerful and popular leaders.

Three out of the past four Japanese Prime Ministers inherited their seats. Both Mr Koizumi, the present leader, and his chief sidekick, Shinzo Abe, are third-generation MPs who succeeded their fathers and grandfathers. Kenji Kosaka, a 57-year-old LDP member, is one of a select group of fourth-generation MPs – his great-grandfather was elected to his constituency in Japan's first ever Imperial Diet, in 1890.

The uncomfortable truth is that, from a party's point of view, the sons, daughters, nephews, nieces and children-in-law of hereditary candidates are often the ones most likely to win. Successful candidates rely on highly organised support groups that canvass on their behalf and help voters to the polls on election day.

The child of a retiring MP has a ready-made support group, while political newcomers have to create them from scratch.

Active Vocabulary

1. to run for president/the presidency (Am E) – syn. to stand for (Br E)

баллотироваться, выдвигать свою кандидатуру на пост президента

n. runner – кандидат, претендент на к-л постto qualify to run – получить право, быть допущенным к

участию в выборахto be entitled to do sth. – иметь право сделать ч-лoffice – должность, постa term of office – срок пребывания в должностиto take office – занять должностьto be in office – занимать пост, находиться в должностиto leave office – покинуть постmilitary coup/coup d’etat – военный переворот/государственный

переворотto oust smb. – сместить к-л с поста

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syn. to remove from office, to deposeto be excluded from standing – не иметь права баллотироватьсяsyn. to be barred from standingcurrent presidentsyn. incumbent/sitting president

нынешний, занимающий пост в данное время, находящийся у власти президент

election campaign – предвыборная кампания, борьба, агитация

v. to campaign (for sb) – проводить предвыборную кампанию; агитировать, выступать за к-л

to launch a campaign – начать предвыборную кампаниюon the campaign trail – во время предвыборной кампании election(s)/poll(s) – выборыv. to elect sb. – избирать к.-л.to call election – объявить, назначить выборыdirect/indirect elections – прямые/непрямые выборыto hold election – проводить выборыto cancel election – отменить выборыby election – дополнительные выборыmid-term election – промежуточные выборыearly election – досрочные выборыsnap election – внеочередные выборыpoll/opinion poll – опрос общественного мненияrace – предвыборная гонка, борьбаto enjoy support – пользоваться поддержкой

2. to nominate a candidate – выставлять, выдвигать кандидатаn. nomination – выдвижение кандидатаto seek nomination – добиваться выдвиженияto secure nomination – добиться выдвиженияn. nominee – кандидат на выборахpresidential elections/poll – президентские выборыpresidential candidate – кандидат на пост президентаsyn. presidential hopefuldefeat – поражениеheavy defeat – серьезное поражениеv. to defeat sb. – нанести поражение к-лfree and fair elections – свободные и демократические выборыtransparent elections – прозрачные (транспарентные) выборыto boycott the elections – бойкотировать выборыrun-up to the election – период подготовки к выборамsyn. lead up/build up to the election parliamentary polls – парламентские выборыpopularity rating/approval rating – рейтинг популярностиto be re-elected for a second term – переизбираться на второй срокto overshadow sb’s victory – бросить тень на, омрачать победуdeputy prime minister – вице-премьерto get past a 5 per cent threshold – преодолеть пятипроцентный барьер

3. sweep – полная победаv. to sweep the election – одержать полную победу на выборах

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Super Tuesday – в год президентских выборов первый вторник марта, в который проводятся первичные президентские выборы (primaries) во многих штатах

rival – соперничающий, конкурирующийn. rival– соперникsyn. opponent, challenger, contender, competitor, contestantprimary – первичные выборы, голосование

сторонников к-л партии с целью выявить предпочтительных кандидатов для выдвижения их в кандидаты в президенты и вице-президенты на национальной конвенции данной партии

caucus – закрытое собрание партийных лидеров для обсуждения политических вопросов (для подбора кандидатов, определения политического курса и т.п.)

contest – соревнование, борьбаv. to contest sth. – оспаривать, бороться за, соревноватьсяn. contestant – противник, соперник, конкурентconvention – съезд партииto run against sb. – syn. to stand against sb.

выставлять свою кандидатуру против к.-л.

general election – всеобщие выборы

4. presidential bid – заявка на участие в президентских выборах, попытка занять пост президента

to declare one’s presidential bid – заявить о своем участии в президентских выборах

running mate – кандидат на пост вице-президентаto quit the race – syn. to withdraw from the race; to pull out of the race, to bow out of the race

выбыть из гонки, отозвать свою кандидатуру

tight/close race – плотная гонка, ожесточенная борьбаto announce one’s withdrawal – заявить о выходе из борьбыstump – агитационная поездка по странеon the stump – во время предвыборных выступленийv. to stump – совершать поездки, выступая с речами;

агитироватьstump speech – предвыборная речьto challenge sb. – бросать вызов к-л, соперничать с к-лn. challenger – претендентticket – (амер.) список кандидатов на выборах, зд.

командаto compete – соревноваться, конкурироватьn. competition – конкуренция, соревнованиеn. competitor – конкурент, соперник

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5. election strategists – политтехнологиsyn. campaign/election managers, spindoctorsspin – политтехнологииgrassroots support – поддержка рядовых избирателейswing voters – syn. undecided/floating/non-core votersant. loyal/core voters

не определившиеся, колеблющиеся избиратели

swing states – syn. battle ground states/toss-up statesant. safe states

колеблющиеся, спорные, не определившиеся штаты

pollsters – социологи, проводящие опрос общественного мнения

to be split – быть расколотымn. split – расколelection warchest – средства на проведение предвыборной

кампании, бюджет предвыборной кампании

6. constituency (Br E)/district избирательный округto succeed sb. – syn. to take over

сменять к-л на посту, быть преемником

to take over as … from sb – сменять к-л на посту…n. successor – преемникant. predecessor – предшественникto canvass – агитировать за кандидата (путем бесед с

избирателями); выявлять число сторонников путем опроса.

II. Translate the sentences paying attention to the underlined words and the words in italics.

A.1. Both Medvedev and Ivanov have been seen as potential presidential candidates in

2008, when Putin is constitutionally barred from seeking a third term .2. George W. Bush's formidable re-election machine lost no time in training its sights

on the putative Democratic nominee John Kerry yesterday, unveiling television ads in key battle ground states.

3. Iran's powerful Guardian Council said yesterday that it stood by a decision to disqualify thousands of reformist candidates from standing in next month's parliamentary elections.

4. Bush won the Delaware Republican presidential primary, but McCain grabbed a quarter of the votes without campaigning in the state. Steve Forbes pulled out of the Republican race after grabbing only 20% of ballots.

5. The arrest warrant came as Gen Wiranto prepared to announce formally today that he has recruited the deputy chairman of Indonesia’s human rights commission to be his running mate, in what is seen as an effort to clean up a tainted human rights record.

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6. Back in Moscow after campaigning for Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych, two prominent Kremlin – connected spindoctors sought to deflect criticism of their role by turning on Yanukovych, saying his criminal past had made their job very difficult.

7. The latest Democrat to declare his bid for the White House attacked President George W. Bush's failings as a wartime leader, indicating a shift in the way the Democratic party is seeking to unseat the president.

8. But Kerry can no longer count on the automatic platform provided by contested primaries to keep his name in the headlines. Bush now has a single, big target in Kerry, and can focus on him in the long months leading up to the Democratic National Convention in Boston in July.

9. Mr Kerry must look to Super Tuesday on March 2 to seal his bid, which means a month of testing, far-flung and expensive campaigning.

10. Yuschenko, a liberal reformer interested in pushing the country closer to Europe, was expected to mount a strong challenge to Yanukovych, who has cultivated closer ties with the Kremlin, in what has proved to be a bitterly fought campaign.

11. Intransigent but nervous abroad; cautious and circumscribed at home. This was a confident opening to Bush's re-election campaign. But the belligerence, the myopia and the long list of things that he did not say show that he is not secure on every flank.

12. The build-up to the election including the barring of candidates and a boycott by two reformist parties – has exposed increasingly bitter divisions in Iran's political class.

13. The Bush campaign announced the start of what is expected to be the most expensive advertising campaign in presidential history, with commercials devised to erase months of Democratic criticism by portraying President George W. Bush as a plain-spoken leader who steadied the nation after the 2001 terrorist attacks.

14. John Kerry fired the opening shots of an eight-month presidential campaign yesterday, branding President Bush "the great divider" and vowing to remake America into a beacon for the rest of the world.

15. Mr Bush's strategists, who consider the Massachussetts senator a serial flip-flopper, sent an e-mail to six million voters nationwide portraying him as too liberal and out of touch for middle America.

16. Suddenly, instead of seizing the Democratic presidential nomination in record time, Dr Dean is struggling to survive. The New Hampshire primary next Thursday has become a contest that the former Vermont Governor simply has to win.

17. John Kerry began the process of choosing a running-mate yesterday, opening the season of jostling by vice-presidential hopefuls and intense media speculation which is known as the “veepstakes”.

18. Ivan Rybkin, the most vocal challenger to Vladimir Putin in next week’s elections, who injected a moment of drama into the presidential race when he disappeared for six days, yesterday withdrew his candidacy, saying that the contest was a “farce” and he had been subject to “illegal” pressure. The move leaves next Sunday’s presidential election with only three of the five original challengers to Mr Putin.

19. Many Democrats are still angry that Mr Nader’s Green Party candidacy four years ago stole votes from Mr Gore. They have urged supporters to email Mr Nader begging him not to run.

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20. Bob Phillis, chief executive of the Guardian Media Group and author of the report, will recommend that more ministers brief the press and not leave the business of delivering the Government’s message to spindoctors.

21. Mr Edwards, the most accomplished stump performer of the Democrat challengers, is viewed as the most viable rival to Mr Kerry.

22. President Bush's State of the Union speech marked the start of his campaign for re-election.

В.1. No date has yet been announced, and no one is officially running. But politicians

from the Labour and Conservative parties are already behaving like bona fide candidates in a vicious campaign that, once again, has Prime Minister Tony Blair at its center.

2. The challengers returned to Berlin yesterday for their end-of-campaign rallies after exhausting nationwide tours. Their voices were hoarse and the soft evening lighting could not conceal their fatigue. The Chancellor in particular resembled an exhausted boxer. He has completed more than 100 rallies during the summer, compared to 60 in the longer election campaign of 2002.

3. Forsa estimates some 25 per cent of voters are still undecided, far more than at this point in the 2002 election. Many of the undecided are disgruntled Social Democrats. If the chancellor can change their minds before 6pm on Sunday he could save face: he could look forward not to power but at least to an honourable retirement.

4. The prime minister's gamble to call a snap election over opposition to privatisation of the post office has paid off.

5. When the Forum went out on the campaign trail it drew big crowds in the north, the West Nile region and in the west, which is Mr Museveni's base.

6. Some analysts speculated that the president had acted to cut short the ambitions of his charismatic prime minister, who has long threatened to mutate into a powerful rival.

7. Herr Schröder went on the stump as if he were still Chancellor with a record to defend and a new term ahead. He certainly did not look like a man voted out of power in the September 18 general election. By contrast, Frau Merkel is a winner so timid that she manages to appear like a loser.

8. The death of a Liberal Democrat candidate five days before the election means that the first by-election of the new Parliament will be announced within days of its sitting.

9. Jaafari, the man poised to succeed Ayad Allawi and become Iraq's first elected prime minister since the collapse of Saddam Hussein's regime in April 2003, is a popular politician who heads the country's oldest Shiite party, Dawa.

10. A source from the rival Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq confirmed that its candidate, Finance Minister Adel Abdel Mahdi, had dropped out of the race.

11. The exchanges mean that a sharply divided America faces one of its longest presidential campaigns. The accelerated primary process has produced a Democrat nominee earlier in the year than usual and Mr Bush has a record warchest.

12. Mr Kerry's primary victory owed much to his claim that as a decorated Vietnam veteran he could credibly fight Mr Bush on national security.

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13. Many Democrats would like to see Mr Edwards on the ticket as Mr Kerry’s vice-presidential candidate, but Mr Kerry has left that open.

14. Mr Gephardt returned home to Missouri overnight, his run for the presidency over, and his political career at an end after 33 years in Congress.

15. While the bulk of Mr Kerry's attacks were directed at Mr Bush, as well as the "arrogance" of Donald Rumsfeld, the defence secretary, and Paul Wolfowitz, his deputy, he also sought to set himself apart from the other eight candidates for the Democratic nomination.

16. The North Carolina senator, who is seeking to make his southern twang into an electoral asset, reminds voters at each stop in his stump speech: "The South is not George Bush's backyard. It is my backyard. And I will beat George Bush in my backyard."

17. Iowa is considered a make-or-break state for Mr Gephardt, who has a strong organisation in the state and won the caucus there in 1988 when he last sought the nomination.

18. Every forecast predicts that it will be an exceptionally close race, yet both the candidates and the news media are focusing exclusively on just the small number of toss-up states – no more than 12 and perhaps as few as six – that either President George W. Bush or John Kerry, the Democratic senator, could very well carry.

19. This is mixed news for the Tories. Although their core vote is loyal, the Tory party at present appeals least to non-core or floating voters.

20. In El Valle, voters keen to vote Mr Chavez out of office made their opinion heard.21. Hours after Mr Kerry's virtual coronation as Democratic nominee, the re-election

campaign for Mr Bush and the vice-president, Dick Cheney, slipped into a higher gear.

22. India's finance ministry yesterday relaunched a multi-million dollar publicity campaign to promote economic reforms which had been suspended by India's Election Commission in the run-up to this week's assembly polls.

23. The Iowa caucus on January 19 will be the first big chance for voters to express their preferences for the Democratic presidential nomination. It will be followed eight days later by voting in New Hampshire -a pivotal state no candidate would dare to bypass.

24. In recent times running mates have generally been chosen more for their ability to balance or enhance the overall appeal of the party ticket than for their geographical attributes.

С.1. Mr Bush is said to talk to his father every day. Their conversations are private. But

according to at least one person who knows the former president, the elder Mr Bush is in a "high state of anxiety" about the situation in Iraq and the possibility that his son could follow in his footsteps and lose his bid for re-election.

2. Mr Bush suffered another embarrassment yesterday when an ousted member of his cabinet claimed that his former boss had planned to remove Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq from the moment that he took office and long before the September 11 terrorist attacks on New York and Washington.

3. The nation's veterans make up roughly 13 per cent of the electorate – a potentially enormous slice in such a closely contested race.

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4. Jorg Haider, the far-right nationalist and xenophobe whose presence in the government prompted the European Union to impose sanctions on Austria five years ago, has been campaigning hard lately in what many analysts have been predicting will be his political swan song, the end of his career as the European provocateur of the moment.

5. He is the only leader of a parliamentary group who is standing, which allows him to be a candidate without seeking signatures. He has decided to run independently like Mr Putin, but without the administrative support the Russian president can command.

6. Earlier, Kerry left the campaign trail and returned to the Senate to cast an unshrinking vote in favor of extending a 10-year ban on assault weapons that expires this year, and to accuse Bush of “walking away” from his 2000 campaign pledge to support its extension.

7. John Kerry, the Massachusetts senator, yesterday won a key endorsement in New Hampshire, giving a much-needed boost to his bid for the Democratic presidential nomination in the early battleground state.

8. Kerry said national security is a key campaign issue, but that Bush has misled the country on everything from weapons of mass destruction to the deteriorating situation in Iraq.

9. While policy issues have been largely absent from a low-key campaign, negative attacks on rivals – what Russians call “black PR” – have been widespread.

10. Conventional wisdom has Mr Edwards handily placed on Mr Kerry’s shoulder to become his running mate.

11. The greatest compliment Mr Kerry has so far paid Mr Edwards is to pilfer the most successful parts of his stump speech.

12. His prime-time address on the last night of the Republican Convention in New York offered an excellent opportunity to build on the momentum of the past month when Mr Kerry’s bid has faltered amid ferocious attacks on his character and record.

13. But with her economic reforms blocked by Congress, she has made scant progress on the economy since taking power in 2001 and she broke a promise not to stand in yesterday’s election.

14. Under the current constitution power would be transferred to the winner of a presidential election next October, and Mr Kuchma, who has already served two terms, is barred from running.

15. The move is yet another blow for democracy in the former Soviet Union, coming days after President Lukashenko, the autocratic leader of Belarus, signalled his intention to change the Constitution in order to run for a third term.

16. Reformers struggled to work together after Mr Milosevic was ousted.17. Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez would be barred from running in new elections if

he were to lose a recall referendum that opponents want to hold later this year, according to a Supreme Court ruling released yesterday. The ruling boosts Venezuela's opposition which has been unable to agree on a candidate to run against Mr Chavez.

18. So a question is in the air: Can Kerry, who spent 20 years in the Senate, and Edwards, who has been a senator for five, generate the kind of chemistry – that certain intangible something – that makes a presidential ticket click?

19. Mr Haider’s latest triumph was the result of his personal charisma and a well-run campaign against weak opponents.

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20. But Mr Dean’s rivals say a presidential campaign is a marathon and, they add, a sprint start is not necessarily the best way to win.

21. For Mr Kerry the decision of who to choose as a running mate is a mixture of political calculus and personal chemistry. He has hinted that the traditional “Southern strategy” for Democrats is outdated and that a running mate from the South and the need to win some southern states – with the exception of Florida – is not vital.

22. The White House believes that its success in getting grassroots support to the polls was the key to victory in mid-term elections last year, when Republicans increased their majority in the House of Representatives and regained control of the Senate.

23. A clear majority of all voters, including Labour, continue to believe that Blair relies too much on spin and public relations.

III. Fill in the blanks with suitable words in the necessary form from the list given below:

a) to run for, race, caucuses, term, rivals, the presidency, to bow out, defeat, withdrawal from the race

GEPHARDT: TEARS AS HE (...)

The decision by Richard Gephardt to throw in the towel yesterday marked the end of a 28-year career packed with drama and bitter (...).

The Missouri congressman's departure followed a resounding failure to win the Democrat vote at the Iowa (...) whiсh he had to win to sustain his second shot at (...).

Analysts had portrayed Iowa as a two-horse (...) between Mr Gephardt and Howard Dean, but Mr Gephardt's negative targeting of his (...) seems to have backfired. He came an unexpected fourth behind the former Governor of Vermont on 11 per cent.

He returned home to St Louis yesterday, where he was due formally to announce his (...).

Mr Gephardt, who is in his fourteenth (...) in Congress, has announced that he will not (...) his seat again.

b) campaign, to stand (2), to boycott, four-year term, parliamentary elections, to win re-election, nomination, to stand for re-election

ELECTORATE'S BACKING FOR KREMLIN SPURS PUTIN (...) AGAIN

Vladimir Putin, Russian president, yesterday capitalised on the strong success of pro-Kremlin parties in the country's recent (...) to announce that he would (...) next March.

In comments during his annual televised question-and-answer session to the nation, Mr Putin kicked off his (...) with calls for further market-oriented

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economic reform combined with more effective government and a resurgent international role for Russia.

During more than 2 hours responding to a selection of more than 1.5m questions put by telephone, television and internet, Mr Putin reiterated his opposition to changing the constitution approved in 1993, which would limit him to one more (...).

Mr Putin stressed after his broadcast that he would not seek (...) as a presidential candidate on behalf of any parliamentary party, but would use the other option in the constitution of (...) by a signature campaign across the country.

His comments came as Yabloko and the Union of Right Forces, two liberal democratic opposition parties that failed (...) to parliament, and the Communist party, which suffered a sharp set-back, said they might (...) the presidential elections.

c) competition, running mate, primary and caucus contests, nomination (2), to seek re-election, ticket, bid

EDWARDS IS SUSPENDING HIS (...) FOR PRESIDENCY

Senator John Edwards said Wednesday that he was suspending his campaign for the Democratic presidential (...) after winning just one of 30 (...) this year. His exit leaves Senator John Kerry, who won 27 of the 30 primaries and caucuses this year, with no major (...) for the Democratic Party's (...).

Edwards, a former trial lawyer who was elected to the Senate in 1998, has said he will not (...) this year. He would probably agree to be Kerry's (...) if asked to join the Democratic presidential (...), a campaign aide said.

IV. Replace the words in brackets with their English equivalents in the necessary form:

a) TYRANTS SONS (СОРЕВНУЮТСЯ)

IN CONGO (ВЫБОРЫ)

The sons of two of Africa's most feared and corrupt despots are (выставлять свою кандидатуру против) each other (на президентских выборах) in the Democratic Republic of Congo, (обещая) to put an end to (зверства) and plunder committed by their fathers.

Manda Mobutu, eldest son of Mobutu Sese Seko, the despised former dictator of Congo, has returned home after six years in exile, hoping to take part in (президентские выборы, намеченные на) 2005.

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They are likely to pit Mr Mobutu against Joseph Kabila in a democratic (борьба, соревнование) intended to haul the mineral-rich country out of decades of war and misrule. It is the first to take place in the republic since independence from Belgium in 1960.

Mr Mobutu, 43, who (покинул) Kinshasa as (повстанцы) stormed the capital in 1997, is unlikely (вести предвыборную кампанию) on his father's record of 32 years in power, which saw some of the worst (зверства) and plunder of state resources in post-colonial Africa. Mr Mobutu said: "If the people choose to have another Mobutu lead them, it won't be a photocopy of the last one. There is no cloning in politics."

His father died in exile in Morocco of cancer four months after being overthrown by Laurent Kabila, the rebel turned autocrat. Kabila (сменил на посту его сын) after being assassinated in 2001.

Denying allegations that he had been supporting rebels trying (сместить) Mr Kabila, Mr Mobutu said that he felt obliged to come back and do something for his country. "Faced with all the suffering endured by our people, we can no longer stand by and watch our people starve to death," he added.

Mr Mobutu was greeted on his return to Kinshasa airport by 200 family members and supporters.

Last year in a gesture of (примирение), Mr Kabila offered to assist the Mobutu family in repatriating the former dictator's remains, so that he could be buried in the land of his ancestors, sparing him the shame of being buried in a foreign country "like a dog."

b) AFGHAN (КАНДИДАТЫ НА ПРЕЗИДЕНТСКИХ

ВЫБОРАХ) NAMED

A total of 18 candidates, including one woman and a handful of warlords, (получили право) yesterday (бороться за пост президента Афганистана), in elections that will end a three-year transition to democracy following the fall of the Taliban regime.

Zakim Shah, head of the electoral commission, told candidates and journalists gathered in the auditorium of Kabul's state TV station that 18 out of 23 prospective candidates (получили право баллотироваться) in the October 9 poll. Authorities disqualified three (кандидата на пост президента) because they did not fulfil technical requirements, while two others (отозвали свою кандидуру), he said.

The list published yesterday leaves the most prominent (соперники) to President Hamid Karzai's (попытка переизбрания) in the race: Yunis

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Qanooni, a sharp politician and a leader of the mainly ethnic Tajik Northern (Cоюз), which holds powerful seats in the cabinet; Mohammad Mohaqiq, who is expected to garner strong support among the minority Hazara population; and Abdul Rashid Dostum, a northern commander who leads the ethnic Uzbek Junbish party.

Masooda Jalal, a politician who was a candidate at the loya jirga, or grand council that elected Mr Karzai to lead the transitional administration, is one of two women on the ballot. The other, Shafiqa Habibi (баллотируется на пост вице-президента) on General Dostum' (список кандидатов).

Mr Shah said members of the public had filed dozens of objections to the candidacies of Mr Mohaqiq and Gen Dostum, as well as that of Karim Khalili, one of Mr Karzai's vice-presidential candidates.

Members of military groups are banned by law from (баллотироваться на к-л пост, выборную должность). The objections were waived, he said, after all three promised to appoint new leaders to their military units.

Speculation lingered yesterday on whether Mr Qanooni would stay in (гонка).

Talks continued among the Northern Tadjik leaders, who are potentially divided between support for Mr Qanooni and Ahmed Zia Masood, Mr Karzai’s (кандидат на пост вице-президента) and brother of the assassinated resistance leader, Ahmed Shah Masood.

V. Translate the headlines:

A.

1. ASYLUM FOR OUSTED PRESIDENT2. GERMANY HEADS FOR EARLY ELECTION3. RAFSANJANI AGREES TO STAND IN POLL4. SPIN WARS WHIP UP UK ELECTION FEVER5. KERRY LAUNCHES BID FOR DEMOCRATIC PRESIDENCY6. FORMER HOSTAGE TO RUN FOR OHIO SENATE7. INCUMBENTS ARE FAVOURED IN ELECTIONS8. PARLIAMENT ENDORSES PUTIN’S NOMINEE9. CANDIDATES SEEK US WAR VETERANS’ HEARTS AND VOTES10. THE INVISIBLE CHALLENGERS11. ZAMBIAN CONTEST12. BRAZILIAN LEADER SET TO SEEK SECOND TERM

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B.

1. MUGABE VOWS TO “DEMOLISH” SPINDOCTOR TURNED RIVAL 2. BLAIR EXPECTED TO CALL UK ELECTION3. SHIITES PICK CANDIDATE TO SUCCEED ALLAWI4. PUTIN RULES OUT STANDING FOR THIRD TERM5. OPPOSITION LEADER GIVEN CLEAR RUN FOR PRESIDENCY6. BUSH CAMPAIGN OPENS TV AD BLITZ7. KERRY CRUSHES OPPONENTS TO SECURE NOMINATION8. LEBANON TO VOTE ON A FURTHER TERM FOR PRESIDENT9. DISCORD ON GERMAN PRESIDENTIAL BID10. VIOLENCE SLOWS IRAQ’S RUN-UP TO ELECTIONS11. CURB SPINDOCTORS AND LIFT VEIL WHITEHALL SECRECY,

SAYS REPORT12. TWO REPUBLICANS LEFT IN ELECTION RACE

C.

1. BUSH SET TO CONFIRM WHITE HOUSE BID2. NOMINEE APPROVED3. KERRY: FOR BUSH RIVAL, REAL TEST BEGINS4. VANISHING PUTIN RIVAL QUITS ELECTION5. AFGAN PRESIDENT IN NO HURRY TO LAUNCH HIS ELECTION

CAMPAIGN6. DEMOCRAT DISMAY AS NADER ENTERS RACE TO BEAT BUSH7. DEAN CREDIBILITY DOUBTS GIVE IMPETUS TO KERRY

CAMPAIGN8. KERRY GRASPS A NEW DAWN IN PRESIDENTIAL RACE9. SPIN DOCTORS BLAME YANUKOVYCH10. KASHMIR OUSTING11. KERRY TAKES AIM AT BUSH AS PRIMARIES VICTORY LOOMS12. MUGABE TO BE RE-ELECTED AS RIVALS PULL OUT13. KERRY AND EDWARDS TAKE GLOVES OFF

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VI. Comment on the cartoons.

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§ 2. OPINION POLLS

I. A. Read and translate the articles with the help of the Active Vocabulary list.B. Pay special attention to the Infinitive forms and constructions.

1. 'NEW CLINTON' EMERGES TO TAKE ELECTION BY STORMThe buzz is about John Edwards. All right, it's about John Kerry, too, the

Massachusetts senator who has salvaged a flagging campaign to grab5 a tiny lead at the top of the polls for today's caucuses in Iowa – but it is the sudden success of Edwards, the youthful, one-term senator from South Carolina, who has set some Democratic campaigners wondering if they have finally stumbled on "a new Clinton" who could rescue the party, either this year or in 2008.

Even those who find that far-fetched are questioning the assumption that Howard Dean, the former Vermont Governor, is the inevitable front-runner to challenge6 President Bush in November.

Polls yesterday showed7 the upset that has the country riveted. Dean, who was riding high at 45 per cent just weeks ago when he was endorsed by Al Gore, the former Vice-President, now musters just under 20 per cent, according to the survey by the Des Moines Register8. That puts him third.

Kerry has 26 per cent, and Edwards, long seen as the underdog, is in second with 23 per cent. Dick Gephardt, the Missouri congressman and a senior figure in the House of Representatives, who was seen as Dean's fiercest rival in Iowa, has slumped to fourth place with just 18 per cent.

2. OPPOSITION MAKES THE RUNNING IN TAIWAN CAMPAIGNLien Chan, Taiwan's opposition presidential candidate, is gaining ground in the

island's fiercely fought election campaign. Mr Lien this week regained his lead over Chen Shui-bian, the incumbent, aides from both campaigns and political observers said yesterday.

If Mr Lien wins Saturday's election, tensions with China, which claims sovereignty over the self-ruled island and has attacked Mr Chen for trying to sneak towards formal independence, are expected to recede9.

No opinion polls may be published in the last 10 days before the election under Taiwanese law. The last legally available polls, early last week, showed Mr Chen and Mr Lien tied or a slight lead for Mr Chen.

"We had great momentum after February 28," said a legislator of Mr Chen's Democratic Progressive Party, referring to a huge rally organised late last month. DPP 5 См.: Гуськова Т. И., Зиборова Г.М. Трудности перевода. – М., 2000. Инфинитив в функции обстоятельства результата, следствия и сопутствующего обстоятельства, п.3, примечание, стр.86 См.: Гуськова Т. И., Зиборова Г.М. Трудности перевода. – М., 2000. Инфинитив в функции определения, стр.6-77 См.: Бреус Е.В. Теория и практика перевода с английского языка на русский. – М., 2001, - 2.2. Переводческие преобразования, обусловленные сменой отправной точки при описании предметной ситуации. Подлежащее – фактическое обстоятельство результата, цели или образа действия, стр.30 (прим.: в результате…).8 См.: Жебелев Б.А. и др. Учебное пособие по переводу. – М., 1993. Комментарий 7, стр.15 В английской прессе источник информации, как правило, встречается после самого сообщения, в русском варианте источник указывается, как правило, в начале сообщения.9 См.: Гуськова Т. И., Зиборова Г.М. Трудности перевода. – М., 2000. Субъектно-предикативный инфинитивный оборот, стр.15

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supporters formed a human chain the length of the island to protest 10against the military threat from China. "But we peaked too early," he said.

Senior cadres at the opposition Nationalists said they believed Mr Lien could win by a margin of up to seven percentage points.

The opposition owes its regained lead to the huge rallies it held last weekend, repeated allegations of corruption against the ruling party, and evidence of financial irregularities against Wu Sue-jen, the First Lady, said Tim Ting, who owns 50 per cent of Gallup Market Research Corp Taiwan.

3. KERRY STUMBLES IN KEY STATES AS BUSH WIDENS LEAD IN POLL

John Kerry has fallen behind in the three biggest swing states – Florida, Pennsylvania and Ohio – which pollsters from both parties believe will be the key to the US presidential election, it emerged yesterday.

Polling figures suggest that George Bush's surge in support after the Republican convention has settled into a significant lead, confronting John Kerry with difficult tactical choices as he battles to regain the initiative.

A poll by Time magazine showed the president on 52%, with the Democratic challenger on 41%. This is as wide a lead as Mr Bush enjoyed in the immediate aftermath of the New York convention. Newsweek magazine, however, found the Bush margin had diminished to six percentage points in the past week.

To some extent, the varying results reflect differing polling methods. Time based its results on likely voters, identified by a number of questions on their voting background and intentions. The Newsweek survey looked at all registered voters.

But the common theme is that the president's advantage has outlasted the hoopla of the Republican rally. The trend is also moving against Mr Kerry in the most closely-contested swing states.

The conventional wisdom among pollsters in both camps has been that whoever wins two out of the three biggest swing states – Florida, Pennsylvania and Ohio – will win the election. Mr Kerry is currently behind in all three: Ohio by eight percentage points, Florida by four points, and Pennsylvania by one point.

"It's clear this is more than a 'bounce'," said Andrew Kohut, the head of the Pew Research Centre, an independent polling organisation in Washington.

"Kerry has clearly underperformed. He's lost the first round, but the question becomes, how stable is the Bush lead – and we don't know that yet. There are still a lot of variables, like what happens in Iraq and the candidates' performance in the debates, so there are still opportunities for Kerry".

However, over the past two weeks, there has been a shift in voters' perceptions of both candidates. More than half of the US electorate now has a favourable opinion of Mr Bush, according to the Newsweek survey. Meanwhile, Mr Kerry's favourable ratings, at 48%, have yet to recover from the battering he suffered from Republican speakers at the convention.

The polling results have also shown that the Republican convention "reset" the election agenda, at least for now. Terrorism has become the top issue for voters, displacing concerns about the economy and healthcare, which took precedence until August.

The nationwide shift in public opinion has been reflected in the roughly 20 swing states where the daily battle is being fought.

10 См.: Гуськова Т. И., Зиборова Г.М. Трудности перевода. – М., 2000. Инфинитив в функции обстоятельства цели, стр.8

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States like Virginia, Arizona and Missouri, where Mr Kerry believed he had a serious chance a month ago, now appear to be solidly behind the president, potentially gaining Mr Bush crucial votes in the 538-seat electoral college that formally picks the president after the election.

4. PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATES STRUGGLE TO WIN OVER TAIWAN'S BORED YOUTH

Young voters could make the difference in a neck-to-neck race between Mr Lien and President Chen Shui-bian in the election to be held11on March 30. About 1.5 m Taiwanese aged 20-23 can vote for the first time this year. And because they are less firmly affiliated to either the ruling Democratic Progressive party or the opposition Nationalists than either their parents or grandparents, they are one of the most unpredictable sub-sets of a large pool of swing voters.

Mr Chen enjoys a lead of 6 to 10 percentage points over Mr Lien among first-time voters, says Chen Lu-hui, a researcher with the Election Study Center at National Chengchi University.

Being 14 years younger than Mr Lien, Mr Chen, 53, brought a younger generation of politicians to his party's decision-making centre when he took over four years ago. In contrast, Nationalist younger politicians such as popular Taipei mayor Ma Ying-jeou are forced to wait in the wings by Mr Lien's insistence on another presidential bid.

Mr Chen has a stronger appeal to very young voters also because he pledges to strengthen their voice in politics: he has proposed lowering the voting age from 20 to 18 years and lowering the threshold for passive voting rights from 23 years.

Most importantly, the DPP's strong stance on a Taiwanese rather than Chinese identity seems closer to younger people's hearts. According to a survey by TVBS, a domestic television channel, as much as 60 per cent of 13-22-year-olds see themselves as Taiwanese only, whereas only 6 per cent feel they are Chinese, and 34 per cent define themselves as both.

Optional texts

5. TWO-HORSE RACE TO BEAT DEMOCRAT FRONT-RUNNERThe battle for the Democratic presidential nomination has split into two distinct

races as Richard Gephardt and Wesley Clark fight in different states to become the recognised alternative to Howard Dean, the controversial front-runner.

Polls in New Hampshire show that General Clark, the retired Nato commander, has moved into second place, overtaking John Kerry, the Massachussets senator. He is still as much as 15 points behind Dr Dean, but gaining by the day.

Polls in Iowa put Dr Dean a few percentage points ahead of Mr Gephardt. But his lead is within the margin of error and the pair are in a statistical dead heat. Polls suggest that up to 40 per cent of voters could yet change their mind.

Dr Dean won the priceless endorsement on Friday оf Tom Harkin, an Iowa senator who won the state in a 1992 presidential run and who boasts unrivalled influence there. Al Gore, the former Vice-President and Democratic presidential candidate in 2000, also campaigned for Dr Dean But Mr Gephardt won the 1988 Iowa caucuses and has a loyal following and strong local support for a contest that rewards organisation.

11 См.: Гуськова Т. И., Зиборова Г.М. Трудности перевода. – М., 2000. Инфинитив в функции определения, п. 3, стр. 7

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If Mr Gephardt fails to win12 Iowa, his campaign is over, but if he beats Dr Dean by however little, he could claim the mantle of the ABD – the Anyone But Dean – candidate.

Dr Dean, a former doctor and star performer of the race in terms of fundraising, crowd pleasing and polling, seemed to be running away with the race a month ago. But a series of gaffes over Iraq and the War on Terror, and U-turns over trade and health policy, has raised fears among some Democrats that he would be easy meat for Mr Bush.

Even if Dr Dean wins Iowa, General Clark's surge in New Hampshire poses another serious threat. General Clark entered the race four months ago, long after the rest of the field, but raised $10 million (£5.4 million) in the last quarter of 2003, more than anyone but Dr Dean.

Dr Dean has had a double digit lead in New Hampshire for months, but General Clark could claim a victory of sorts with even a good second place, and gain vital momentum for the next round of voting, which includes South Carolina, Oklahoma, Arizona and New Mexico – states where his Southern roots and military background could help him significantly.

6. KELLY AFFAIR IS POLL BLOW TO LABOURCharles Kennedy and the Liberal Democrats are the main beneficiaries from a

collapse in trust for Tony Blair and a fall in Labour's rating to its lowest for 16 years, according to a Populus poll for The Times.

The poll, undertaken between Friday and Sunday, shows the damage to Labour and Mr Blair of continued controversy over his handling of the Iraq war and recriminations over the death of the government scientist Dr David Kelly.

The poll shows a close link between attitudes to the Iraq war and trust in Mr Blair. Three fifths of those who still believe that the war was "the right thing to do" trust Mr Blair "to be honest with the British people about important and controversial issues".

A mere third of those who think the war was wrong trust Mr Blair. But the Tories have not benefited. The Liberal Democrats have jumped four points since last month, up to 25 per cent, back near their highest levels of the late winter when they opposed the war. Their support has fluctuated since the end of the war but they have been above 20 per cent for well over a year, benefiting from growing disillusionment with Labour and lack of enthusiasm for the Tories. These poll figures will boost Lib Dem morale as the party seeks to challenge13 both Labour and the Tories rival parties in the forthcoming parliamentary by-election (for which no date has yet been set).

Charles Kennedy is also both the highest-rated leader, with 5 out of 10 on the Populus leader index, and the most trusted of the three main leaders.

Jain Duncan Smith is still third on the leader index, at 4.35, the same as in recent months.

The Tory leader also lags bebehind Mr Kennedy on trust.Half the public (52 per cent) trusts him a great deal or a bit, while two fifths (42 per

cent) trust him very little or not at all.These findings point to a marked polarisation in public attitudes, between Labour

supporters who still trust Mr Blair and others, both Tories and Lib Dems, who hardly trust

12 См.: Гуськова Т. И., Зиборова Г.М. Трудности перевода. – М., 2000. Инфинитив в сочетании с глаголом to fail. Примечание 1, стр. 913 См.: Гуськова Т. И., Зиборова Г.М. Трудности перевода. – М., 2000. Инфинитив в функции дополнения, стр. 7

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him at all. There are parallels to the sharp divergence in the American attitudes towards President Clinton in the mid-1990s.

The latest poll shows "others" again on 9 per cent, a high figure by past comparisons. The others are split between nationalists, Greens and various fringe parties. Like the Lib Dems, they, too, have benefited from a "plague on both your houses" attitude to Labour and the Tories.

Taken together, support for the Lib Dems and others together is now running at about a third.

This implies that the Lib Dems and the others could do well in the European Parliamentary and Greater London elections which will be held next June which will be held under proportional representation systems of election.

But the rise in support for the others may limit the success of the Lib Dems under the first-past-the-post system used in parliamentary and council elections.

7. KERRY WINS ВIG, EDWARDS TO END BIDWashington – John Kerry captured the Democratic nomination to challenge U.S.

President George W. Bush in November, scoring a string of coast-to-coast wins on Tuesday that knocked rival John Edwards out of the race.

The Massachusetts senator continued his domination of the Democratic race on its biggest night of voting, scoring wins in nine states including victories in Georgia, Minnesota and Ohio, which had been targeted by Edwards.

The wins capped a spectacular political resurrection for Kerry, whose campaign was considered dead just two months ago but charged back to life as Democrats began to evaluate which candidate stood the best chance to beat Bush in November.

Kerry and Bush now embark on what promises to be a hard-fought, eight-month general election campaign. Bush, who trails Kerry in some opinion polls, launches his first television ads in 17 battleground states on Thursday as he starts to spend a more than $100 million campaign war chest.

Edwards had hoped to slow Kerry's march to the nomination, but narrowly lost Georgia and was swamped by Kerry in most of the other states voting on "Super Tuesday".

Former presidential contender Howard Dean, who dropped out of the race two weeks ago without a single win, triumphed in his home state of Vermont to spoil Kerry's bid for a perfect sweep.

In addition to Georgia, Minnesota and Ohio, Kerry won in California, Connecticut, Maryland, New York, Rhode Island and his home state оf Massachusetts, giving him 27 wins in the first 30 Democratic contests.

At stake on Tuesday was a total оf 1,151 delegates to July's nominating convention – more than half of the 2,162 delegates needed to win and the campaign's biggest one-day haul.

The wins did not give Kerry, a decorated Vietnam War veteran, enough delegates to clinch the nomination, but made it almost mathematically impossible for Edwards, his last major rival, to catch him.

Active Vocabulary

1. opinion poll/survey – опрос общественного мненияlead – преимущество, отрыв кандидата, первенствоwide/narrow lead – значительное/ незначительное преимущество

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to enjoy a lead of… points over sb. – иметь преимущество в … пунктов над к-лfront-runner – syn. favourite

кандидат, лидирующий по опросам общественного мнения; наиболее вероятная кандидатура на к-л пост

to ride high – лидировать по опросам общественного мненияunderdog – слабый кандидат, не имеющий шансов на

победу2. to gain ground/to gain – завоевывать популярность

ant. to lose groundto be tied – иметь равное количество голосовn. tie – «ничья», равное число голосов избирателейmargin – перевес голосов

3. to fall behind – syn. to lag behind, to trail (behind)

отставать по опросам общественного мнения

surge/rise in support – рост поддержкиregistered voters – зарегистрированные избирателиpolling organization – социологическая службаpolling results/findings – результаты опроса общественного мненияelectorate – электорат, избирателиelectoral college – коллегия выборщиков (в США)electoral vote – голоса выборщиков в отличие от popular vote

(голоса избирателей)4. neck-to-neck race плотная гонка

syn. head-to-head raceto run neck-and-neck – syn. to run even/to be level pegging/to be tied

идти вровень, иметь равное количество голосов

to lower voting age – снизить возрастной ценз

5. to overtake sb. – обогнать к-лwithin the margin of error – в пределах статистической погрешностиgaffe – ошибка, оплошность, допущенная во время

публичных выступленийto gain momentum –ant. to lose momentum –to keep momentum –

набирать силу, позициитерять позиции, инициативусохранить позиции, инициативу

round of voting – тур голосования

6. fringe party – радикальная, экстремистская партияproportional representation system (PR) – система пропорционального представительстваfirst-past-the-post system – мажоритарная система относительного

большинства7. to knock sb out of the race – заставить к.-л. выбыть из борьбы, вытеснить к.-л.

to lose/win narrowly – потерпеть поражение/победить с незначительным отрывом

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II. Translate the sentences paying attention to the underlined words and the words and constructions in italics.A.a)1. As well as having the most extreme haircut, the most unlikely taste in music and the

highest approval ratings, Junichiro Koizumi appears to be the Japanese Prime Minister least shy about exposing himself to the public gaze.

2. A leader of sporadic ambition and unfulfilled promise, German Chancellor Gerhard Schroöder appears to be on his way to a political afterlife of memoir writing and high-priced speeches.

3. The prime minister's Labour Party is likely to remain in power despite widespread dissatisfaction with the war in Iraq.

4. Mr Tsang is expected to be confirmed as Chief Executive this summer by the 800 members of the Hong Kong electoral college, which Beijing controls.

5. President Meles, 50, who was a key member of Tony Blair's Commission for Africa, which sought ways to lift the continent out of poverty, is widely expected to win a third term.

6. Allawi said Tuesday that he expected the country's next government to be Islamic14

but hoped that more liberal voices would be heard in the shaping of Iraq's future. 7. The Conservatives appear to be failing at a familiar mission: to paint such an

unpleasant picture of the prime minister and his Labour government that the electorate will turn against them at the polls.

8. Mr Tung's fate appeared to have been sealed when Hu Jintao, the Chinese President, gave him a very public rap on the knuckles for his poor performance last year.

9. If Signor Berlusconi fails to hold the coalition together, Italy is likely to face an early election in the summer.

10. The voters' roll is thought to list large numbers of dead people, and the names of many ZANU supporters are thought to appear more than once.

11. Germany’s hard-fought general election appeared to end in a virtual dead heat - probably the worst result possible for the country and for the cause of reform.

12. She is still likely to become Germany’s chancellor next week, but her initial lead in the polls started to ebb away.

13. Most experts instead expect the SPD to enter a “grand coalition” with Mrs Merkel.14. The African Union (AU) and the United nations seem to have come down on Mr

Gbagbo’s side.15. British prime minister Tony Blair is expected Tuesday to call a national election that

will determine whether his government, badly shaken by the Iraq war, wins a third term in office.

16. Western diplomats expected Mr Mubarak to cruise to an easy victory with perhaps 75 per cent of the vote.

17. But the conduct of the election, never expected to be perfect, seemed to satisfy diplomats from western countries that have been pressing for political reform.

18. Less than one month ago John Kerry’s presidential campaign appeared to be on the verge of extinction. The Massachusets senator and Vietnam War hero’s poll figures were plunging, campaign donors were deserting him and the pundits were circling like vultures.

14 См.: Гуськова Т. И., Зиборова Г.М. Трудности перевода. – М., 2000. – Объектно-предикативный инфинитивный оборот, с. 16 п. 2.

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19. United Russia is polling about 34 per cent of the vote, with the Communists on 14 per cent. The only other serious opposition parties are the Union of Right Forces, led by Boris Nemtsov, a young, westernised ex-governor, and Yabloko, headed by Grigory Yavlinksy, the veteran liberal. Neither is expected to win more than 10 per cent.

20. It is a side of Dean that contributed to his defeat. The shifts in the last week of the Iowa campaign, and close analysis by pollsters, showed that voters were nervous of his record of wild gaffes and sceptical of the value of being an “outsider” to Washington, as he often boasted. Above all, they seem to have been repelled by his anger, the hallmark of his stump speeches.

b)1. Several opinion polls published Tuesday showed Labour giving ground15 slightly to

the Conservatives, although still with leads of between 2 and 5 percentage points. Given16 the margin of error, the parties were virtually neck and neck. Analysts say, however, that the Conservatives would need a lead of several points to win the election, due to an uneven spread of constituencies across Britain's electoral map.

2. Senator John Kerry fought his way through a tough and expensive Democratic primary season only to find himself with relatively little cash and struggling to compete against an advertising onslaught by President George Bush, whose campaign has roughly 10 times more money.

3. Eight years later, Schröder and the Social Democrats defeated Chancellor Helmut Kohl to lead the country of 82 million.

4. Israel inched closer to early elections Thursday after a fiery Moroccan-born union leader edged out elder statesman Shimon Peres to become Labor Party leader, shaking up Israeli politics and breaking through a long-standing ethnic barrier.

5. That same magic nearly worked in September, when Schröder trailed again by double digits to come to within 1 percentage point of the Christian Democrats.

6. Nobody did more for the left than Pedro Santana Lopes, the former mayor of Lisbon who took over as prime minister last July, when Jose Manuel Barroso stepped down to become European Commission president.

7. Mrs Merkel had a huge opinion poll lead, only to end up with 35,2% of the vote, one of the worst results in the party’s history.

8. He was the first chancellor to bring Germany to the world stage as a normal country able to define its own interests without being considered nationalistic.

9. More than 90 per cent of the country's 26 million registered voters were expected to cast their ballots in only the second election since the advent of multiparty politics and the first to be watched by foreign observers.

10. Mr Dean, the former Vermont governor, is the only candidate to have generated momentum in the polls and buzz in the media.

11. Schröder is set to leave office this month after seven years of leadership that failed to reinvent the welfare state but restored Germans' confidence in their country's handling of world affairs, most notably through his vigorous opposition to the Iraq war.

12. He was widely seen as a discredited figure after his first spell as president, from 1989 to 1997, and failed to win election to the parliament in 2000.

15 См.: Гуськова Т. И., Зиборова Г.М. Трудности перевода. – М., 2000. – Объектный причастный оборот. С. 41.16 См.: Гуськова Т. И., Зиборова Г.М. Трудности перевода. – М., 2000. – Причастия в функции союзов и предлогов. С. 51.

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13. The decision establishes him as an immediate front-runner among election hopefuls including six hardliners and two reformers.

14. The 50-year-old first-term senator from North Carolina is trailing John Kerry in all ten states, in which about six million voters will choose which of them is best able to beat President Bush.

15. The carefully orchestrated announcement, coming the morning after Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts effectively seized the Democratic nomination, was clearly timed to signal that the White House was eager to move swiftly and aggressively into the general election phase after months of being hammered by the Democratic candidates and watching the president's poll ratings drop.

16. Having won 18 of the first 20 primaries, Senator Kerry has accumulated a lead of 688 delegates against 207 delegates pledged to support Senator Edwards, who has only won one primary. To close that gap, the Southerner would not only have to start winning primaries but winning them by large margins.

17. Analysts say he faces an almost impossible task to catch up with the frontrunner , John Kerry.

18. ACNielsen and Newpoll surveys conducted at the weekend show a surge in support for Labour, putting it several points ahead of John Howard’s centre-right coalition, just months away from a federal election.

19. No attempt to abolish the electoral college and replace it with direct popular election of the president has ever made significant headway.

20. He is one of 10 candidates preparing to run in what, even by Russian standards, is turning into the strangest election in recent years. None of the political "heavy-weights" of the 1990s is participating. And most of those who are standing play down the idea that they are opposing Mr Putin, who stands to win 80 per cent of the votes, according to the latest poll by the VTsIOM institute.

B.1. He says the elder Mr Bush was in better shape in the polls than his son at this time in

the election cycle. The father's ratings hit 85 per cent in March 1991, levelled off at about 71 per cent that summer, but fell to 31 per cent by mid-1992. Mr Bush's approval rating, according to a Gallup poll last week, is at 59 per cent.

2. Most notably the SPD again overtook the CDU in North Rhine-Westphalia. It was the SPD's crushing defeat there in the spring that led Mr Schroder to seek early national elections.

3. Even days before last Sunday's vote, pollsters said the CDU would top 40% and that Angela Merkel, the party's boss, would at least be unchallenged to head a big left-right coalition.

4. Early results showed that. As in the nationwide vote two weeks ago, the Christian Democrats (CDU) and Social Democrats (SPD) were neck and neck, with the CDU narrowly ahead.

5. After a stumbling campaign marked by gaffes and a wooden timidity, Angela Merkel threw away the early huge lead of her opposition Christian Democrats (CDU) and limped a couple of points ahead of Gerhard Schröder.

6. Mr Dean, once the frontrunner in both contests, has been losing ground to Mr Clark in New Hamphire’s opinion polls.

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7. The Kerry camp insists that the battle is far from over. Much bigger leads have been overturned in the last 50 days of a campaign, and the debates can be decisive in a tight race.

8. Half of the public (51 per cent) believes that the war in Iraq was the right thing to do, while two fifth (41 per cent) disagree. This is a slightly bigger margin than the 47 to 45 per cent balance a month ago.

9. President Vladimir Putin’s supporters Friday delivered 2.5 million signatures required for him to register as a candidate for re-election, while his potential rivals lagged behind.

10. Bush and Kerry are vying for 270 electoral college votes in Tuesday's election. Each state is awarded a certain number of electoral votes related to its population, and in all but two states, whoever wins the most votes captures all of that state's electoral votes. The top three prizes among battleground states are Florida, with 27 electoral votes, Pennsylvania, with 21, and Ohio, with 20.

11. Under the system of mixed member proportional representation, which replaces first past the post, the number of MPs is decided both by electorate votes and the overall share of the poll each party secures.

12. In the light of all the latest state polls, the bloc of states backing the president accounted for 168 electoral college votes and the states solidly behind Mr Kerry carried 146, with 224 votes up for grabs – from states that were either tied or where the margin between the candidates was less than the margin of error. A total of 270 votes is required to win.

13. “In order to truly level the playing field, every single presidential candidate should pledge to stay within the public financing system”, said Dick Gephardt, the Missouri congressman who is running neck-and-neck with Mr Dean in Iowa.

14. After a trouble-free three days, strategists now share the optimism of the jubilant grassroots that Mr Bush has turned a corner in the race that polls suggest has been neck-and-neck all summer.

15. Senators John Kerry and John Edwards are gaining ground in the nation's most populous state, where voters are "surprisingly engaged" in the presidential election process, according to a poll from the Public Policy Institute of California.

16. The Democratic team is favoured by 54 per cent of likely voters in preference to President George W. Bush and Vice-President Dick Cheney, and has opened a 16-point lead over the incumbents, up from 11 points last month.

C.1. Late polls showed Oscar Berger, former Guatemala City mayor, virtually tied with

Alvaro Colom, a respected leftist now heading a centre-right coalition.2. It is still possible that enough Iowa voters will still support Mr Clark, for example, if

he continues to lead the national polls showing him running first in the Democratic race, despite the fact he has chosen not to campaign actively there.

3. New Zealand’s first election under proportional representation is proving difficult for voters, commentators and politicians alike.

4. In the latest polls in Iowa and new Hampshire, Mr Dean is in the lead – only by a margin of error in Iowa, but by 21 points over Mr Kerry in New Hampshire.

5. The key to understanding the SPD’s falling popularity – it lagged 23 percentage point behind the conservative CDU/CSU parties in an opinion poll published on September

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13 and has been losing ground since July – could lie in a revealing study published last week.

6. Mr Karamanlis, leader of the right-of-centre New Democracy, has maintained a small lead in the polls by pushing family values and performing well in debates.

7. Edwards, in particular, was more aggressive than usual, perhaps in part due to his desire to cut into what many Democrats see as Kerry’s powerful lead. In contrast to his usual sunny disposition on the campaign trail, Edwards, went after Kerry for what he called “the same old Washington talk that people have been listening to for decades”.

8. She (Hillary Clinton) is not taking part in this year’s primary contest, but is already seen as the party’s frontrunner in 2008, if President Bush wins re-election.

9. Mr Lula da Silva's approval rating jumped 8.8 percentage-points between June and August, to 38.2 per cent, according to a poll conducted by the Sensus institute on behalf of the National Transport Confederation (CNT).

10. Other polls echo that trend. Gallup had Mr Kerry leading Mr Bush among women by 51 per cent to 46 before the Republican convention, a gap that narrowed to 49–48 afterwards.

11. Despite gaining in polls in Iowa in the last ten days, few foresaw the scale of Mr Kerry’s victory.

12. His domination of the Iowa caucuses cements this reputation as a survivor: of the Vietnam war, prostate cancer, and now political humiliation. Two weeks ago Mr Kerry's bid for the Democratic nomination was being written off as a joke. He was a dozen points behind Howard Dean in New Hampshire, virtually Mr Kerry's backyard.

13. He gave most prominence to his "War on Terror" – and with good reason. Two sets of respected polls just before the speech showed that Americans still rate him highly on the fight against terrorism, if slightly less so on Iraq. That, more than any domestic policy, underpins his popularity.

14. A year ago many of the serious presidential contenders calculated that they had no option but to back Mr Bush. At the time his approval ratings, especially for his handling of the war on terrorism, were high, and his opponents feared that voting against the war would risk them appearing weak in the eyes of voters.

15. But with the war a concern, he begins his new term with the lowest approval rating at that point of any recent two-term president – 49 percent in an Associated Press poll this month. Many around the world are nervous about the intentions of a leader they regard as cocky, shallow and dangerous.

III. Fill in the blanks with suitable words in the necessary form from the list given below:

a) incumbent, race (2), primaries and caucuses, running mate, nomina-tion (2), to oust, front-runner, to trail, nominee, to knock out, to run, primary competitions, rival.

DEMOCRATS DIG DEEP TO FIND CAMPAIGN CASH

John Kerry will start the (...) for the US presidency (...) Mr Bush by $100 million (£54.7 million) in the fund-raising stakes.

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Even Mr Kerry's personal wealth – he is married to a Heinz heiress – will do little to help him because of campaign spending rules. He will have to rely on outside support to restock his coffers after mortgaging his Boston mansion to set himself up as the Democrat (...).

The most recent statement by his campaign showed that he had $2.1 million in the bank on February 1, and debts of $7.2 million. After two dozen (…) since then, his debts are likely to have risen significantly.

Mr Bush, who (…) unopposed for the Republican (...) and benefits from free daily advertising as the White House (...), had $104 million on February 1 and no debt. He raised another $800,000 in California on Wednesday, a state he lost to Al Gore four years ago.

Mr Kerry's campaign says it can count on several of the Democrats he (...) during the race for the party's (...) to contribute donor lists to the effort (...) Mr Bush. Dick Gephardt and Wesley Clark are apparently already on board. John Edwards, his closest (…) and a possible (...) has also promised to help. Howard Dean, the former (...) is ideologically closer to Mr Edwards and has yet to promise official backing.

Mr Kerry has pulled in $1.2 million over the internet in less than 24 hours after sweeping his closest rival out of (...) this week in the "Super Tuesday" (...). But that still leaves a big financial gap to bridge.

b) frontrunner (2), contest, minority candidates, presidential race, to pull out of the race, to boost, contenders, boost, caucusus, run-up to, to withdraw.

BACK MARKER'S WITHDRAWAL GIVES (...) EXTRA SPRING

Carol Moseley Braun, the former senator and the only woman in the Democratic (...), withdrew from (...) yesterday and threw her support behind Howard Dean, (...).

The endorsement by Ms Braun, one of two black (...) in the race, gave a timely (…) to Mr Dean's candidacy in (...) next Monday's Iowa (...).

Ms Braun had not made much of an impact on the race, languishing near the back of the nine-person field. But her decision is expected (...) Mr Dean among black voters and help dispel questions, raised recently in a particularly sharp exchange between Mr Dean and Al Sharpton, the other black candidate, about the former Vermont governor's record on race relations and a lack of (...) in his Vermont cabinet.

Ms Braun remained mostly above the fray of the nasty attacks. Her oft-repeated message was that it was time to "take the 'men only' sign off the White House door". Ms Braun is the second Democratic presidential contender (...). Bob Graham, the Florida senator, (...) last October.

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Appearing with Mr Dean in Iowa, she praised him as "a Democrat we can all be proud to support" and as the best choice to "renew our country and restore our privacy, our liberty and our economic security". She also said that Mr Dean "has the energy to inspire the American people" and offers the best alternative to "President Bush and his entourage from the extreme right wing".

c) opinion poll (2), approval rating, primaries and caucuses, challenger, a head-to-head race, contests, survey, incumbency, to secure the nomination, registered voters, to beat, momentum.

Mr Kerry has won 15 of the 17 Democrat (...) so far and is the clear leader in fundraising and (…). He has a good chance of (...) on March 2 when ten states, including New York, California, Georgia and Ohio hold (...)

John Edwards, his main (...) cannot be ruled out entirely. For the first time, (...) last week showed both he and Mr Kerry would (...) Mr Bush in (...).

The news from Mr Nader's campaign followed a fresh (...) that showed the challenge Mr Bush faces to stay in the White House despite the many advantages of (...).

(...) in Newsweek magazine suggested that 52 per cent of (...) do not want him re-elected while 43 per cent do. His (...) also stayed below the 50 per cent level, with 48 per cent of Americans disapproving of his leadership.

IV. Replace the words in brackets with their English equivalents in the necessary form:

a) (ОПРОС ОБЩЕСТВЕННОГО МНЕНИЯ) BOOSTS

HOPES OF WAR HEROJohn Kerry, the Democrat senator and Vietnam war hero whose

(президентская кампания) had appeared all but dead in recent weeks, was staging a remarkable comeback yesterday after opening up (отрыв, преимущество по опросам) three days before the Iowa (закрытые партийные собрания).

Mr Kerry, (отстававший от своих соперников) badly for months, (обогнал) the long-term Iowa (лидирующие по опросам кандидаты) Howard Dean and Dick Gephardt to take a five-point (отрыв) after a relentless ten days of (предвыборная агитация) that has attracted (неопределившиеся избиратели) and raised fresh doubts about Dr Dean's electability.

Although the Iowa result is still highly (непредсказуемые), it was clear last night that the state is witnessing the closest and most hard-fought (гонка) in its caucus history.

Just behind Mr Kerry, on 24 per cent, are Dr Dean and Mr Gephardt on 19 per cent, with John Edwards, the North Carolina senator, on 17 per cent.

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Mr Kerry's late (рост популярности) has been largely at the expense of Dr Dean, the former Vermont Governor, who only one week ago was on 29 per cent, leading Mr Gephardt, the former Democrat leader in the House of Representatives (на четыре пункта) and Mr Kerry (на 11 пунктов).

Dr Dean, who has seen his support drop in both Iowa and New Hampshire, has suffered after being attacked for alleged verbal (оплошности), alleged dishonesty and fears over his electability – a worrying trend for his campaign as (гонка) heads to more states in coming weeks.

He received one boost on Thursday when Carol Moseley Braun, once the first black woman senator, (отозвала свою кандидатуру) to endorse him.

Mr Gephardt is also in danger of being eclipsed by Mr Kerry and Dr Dean.

Some analysts believe, however, that the four-way result may be so close that Iowa will leave all four campaigns alive as they head to New Hampshire (первичные выборы) on January 27.

b)BUSH ENJOYS RATINGS REVIVAL

President Bush received a sharp and immediate (рост популярности по опросам общественного мнения) after the capture of Saddam Hussein. His (рейтинг популярности) leapt six points to 58 per cent in the 24 hours after the news broke.

Mr Bush has moved into a comfortable (преимущество над) his Democrat (соперники), who had been steadily gaining on him over the past six months.

(Результаты) of the Wall Street Journal/NBC poll show that Saddam's capture has transformed next year's (борьба за президентское кресло), at least in the short term.

(Лидирующие по опросам общественного мнения кандидаты от Демократической партии на пост президента) have been forced to rewrite their campaign scripts to take account of the changed landscape in Iraq. Even while the fallen dictator remained a fugitive, some Democrats feared that Howard Dean, the former Vermont Governor whose anti-war rhetoric has fuelled his remarkable (рост популярности) to the front of the field, would be trounced by Mr Bush.

Some of Dr Dean's (соперники) have formed a semi-official "stop Dean" coalition, a sentiment which has found some support in the party despite Dr Dean's huge (поддержка рядовых избирателей).

Dr Dean insists that Saddam's capture had not made the US safer. It did not alter the fact that Mr Bush had started the war "in the wrong way, at the wrong time, with inadequate planning, insufficient help, and at the extraordinary cost, so far, of $166 billion (£94.6 billion)", he said.

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But Joe Lieberman, (кандидат на пост президента от Демократической партии) and Al Gore's (кандидат на пост вице-президента) in 2000, said that Dr Dean had "put himself in his own spider-hole of denial".

In the poll, 62 per cent of those questioned said that the war in Iraq had made the US more secure, a figure up from 52 per cent in September.c)

EDWARDS: STICKS TO HIS GUNS

For months John Edwards has steadfastly refused to attack his Democrat (соперники), sticking instead to a relentlessly uplifting message aimed at improving the lot of America's blue-collar workers and poor.

For months, the one-term North Carolina senator remained stuck at the bottom of the Democrat pack, his fresh face and lack of political experience perceived as electoral liabilities in the new age of terrorism.

His strong second place in Iowa from virtually nowhere – he (сильно отставал) two weeks ago – is a remarkable turnaround for the Southerner, who now turns his sights to the key (голосования на первичных выборах) in South Carolina on February 3. Many Iowans, worried about the loss of industrial jobs and farm closures, began to respond to Mr Edwards days before (закрытые партийные собрания), not only because of his message but also because of a series of (предвыборные выступления) that were suddenly sharper and at times electrifying.

If Mr Edwards, a (придерживающийся умеренных взглядов) who voted for the Iraq war, wins South Carolina, he believes that his focus on jobs and Mr Bush's "war on work" will prove to have been the right campaign. Americans are now saying that (экономика), not terrorism, is their overwhelming concern.

Mr Edwards, a mill worker's son who made millions as a trial lawyer, often defending working-class clients against giant corporations, was only in single digits in Iowa as recently as November. But he refused to change tack.

Recently turned 50 but youthful and handsome, he stuck to his (обещание, обязательство) to address inequalities in the job market, health system and education and was remorseless in his criticism of President Bush. He also played up his Southern roots, persuading many Iowans that he was uniquely qualified (чтобы бросить вызов) Mr Bush for votes in the South. He said: "Cynics didn't build America. Optimists built America."

During the final week of (предвыборная агитация), Mr Edwards found his optimism and message resonating among (неопределившиеся избиратели). Now he must win South Carolina (чтобы сохранить свои позиции), but he is heavily outfinanced by his (соперники).

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V. Translate the headlines:

A.

1. OPINION POLL BOOST FOR NZ OPPOSITION2. SPAIN’S RULING PARTY SLIPS IN POLLS3. MACAPAGAL AND POE NECK AND NECK AS POLLS CLOSE4. FRONT RUNNERS AND DARK HORSES JOCKEY FOR POSITION5. TORY UNEASE AS LEAD SLIPS AWAY6. POLLS SHOW STRONG EARLY SUPPORT FOR CLARK7. FRONTRUNNER EXPECTED TO SEAL UNBEATABLE

DEMOCRATIC LEAD8. KERRY SEES HIS LEAD WIDEN IN CALIFORNIA9. IRAQ ROW SLASH LABOUR’S POLL LEAD

B.

1. UNDECIDED VOTERS SWING AWAY FROM CONSERVATIVES2. AUSTRALIAN OPPOSITION GAINS GROUND3. BUSH PROMISES A SAFER WORLD AS POLLS GIVE HIM VITAL BOOST4. BUSH HAS SLIM LEAD5. FRONTRUNNER KERRY LOOKS TO SEAL BID ON SUPER TUESDAY6. GREEK PARTIES NECK AND NECK7. FROM FRONTRUNNER TO DISTANT THIRD, DEAN’S FIRE FAILS

TO IGNITE8. EXIT POLL SHOWS YUSHCHENKO IN LEAD

VI. Render into English:

a) Таких предвыборных марафонов в Польше еще не было.

Первоначально разрыв между претендентами Дональдом Туском и Лехом Качиньским достигал 12 процентов в пользу первого. Но к воскресенью, согласно социологическим опросам, рейтинги кандидатов практически сравнялись – соответственно 50,9 и 49,1 процента.

b)АМЕРИКА ВЫБИРАЕТ ПРЕЗИДЕНТА

Итог голосования не может предсказать никто

Во вторник в США начинаются президентские выборы. Почти по всем опросам общественного мнения, проведенным в последние три дня

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перед голосованием, у Джорджа Буша и Джона Керри – равные рейтинги. Наиболее престижная из всех служб – Reuters/Zogby (ее руководитель Джон Зогби четыре года назад был единственным экспертом, кто предсказал многодневный пересчет голосов во Флориде) дает Бушу и Керри по 48 процентов каждому.

Однако судьба выборов в Америке определяется не общим числом голосов, поданных за того или иного кандидата, а голосами выборщиков от штатов. Их в общей сложности 538 человек. Чтобы победить, кандидату в президенты необходимо набрать 270 голосов выборщиков.

На выборах 2000 года кандидат от демократов Эл Гор получил на 500 тысяч голосов избирателей больше, чем Джордж Буш, но проиграл выборы из-за Флориды. Там Буш его опередил всего на 537 голосов, и в результате этот штат стал той самой гирей, которая перетянула чашу весов лидера республиканцев – он получил в коллегии выборщиков 271 голос.

Вот почему внимание нации приковано к так называемым не определившимся штатам. Всего их 10, но главные –по количеству избирателей – Огайо, Пенсильвания и Флорида. В Огайо по последним опросам лидирует Буш. Пенсильвания поддерживает Керри. Симпатии Флориды поделены ровно пополам. В штатах Среднего Запада – Айове, Мичигане, Миннесоте и Висконсине – вроде бы лидирует Керри. Зато Буш ненамного опережает соперника в штатах Нью-Мексико, Невада, Колорадо.

Именно в эти не определившиеся штаты и совершили поездки в последние дни оба кандидата. Часто их пути пересекались, а предвыборные митинги проходили в нескольких километрах друг от друга.

c) Во Франции на выборах в Национальное собрание действует мажоритарная система абсолютного большинства. Депутаты Национального собрания избираются раз в пять лет в одномандатных мажоритарных округах абсолютным большинством голосов. Если никто из кандидатов не набирает такого большинства в первом туре, проводится второй тур, в котором участвуют кандидаты, набравшие в первом круге не менее 12,5 процента голосов.

В Германии избирательная система пропорциональная, с элементами мажоритарной. В Италии исключительно пропорциональную недавно сменила мажоритарная с сильным пропорциональным акцентом. В США свои странности: президента там выбирает коллегия выборщиков, в результате чего хозяином Белого дома

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можно стать, набрав меньше голосов рядовых граждан, нежели соперник, – именно так и произошло в состязании Буша и Гора.

d)РАСКОЛОТАЯ АМЕРИКА

У Буша и Керри равные шансы на победу

Вчера Reuters опубликовало данные последнего опроса, проведенного по его заказу Zogby International, демонстрирующие, что общенациональные рейтинги кандидатов находятся в пределах статистической погрешности. За Буша высказались 48%, а за Керри – 47%. По данным Zogby International на середину вчерашнего дня, Буш лидировал в 28 штатах, совокупно имеющих 247 голосов в коллегии выборщиков, а Керри – в Колумбии и 21 штате, дающих 264 голоса. Разница рейтингов кандидатов во Флориде (27 выборщиков) минимальна, что cоздает вероятность повторения ситуации 2000 г.

VII. Comment on the cartoon.

37

§ 3. ROUNDS OF VOTING. CASTING YOUR BALLOT

I. A. Translate the articles with the help of the Active Vocabulary list.B. Pay special attention to the functions of the participles and link-words.

1. YUSHCHENKO SEEKS VOTING BREAKDOWNViktor Yushchenko, the Ukrainian opposition leader, will demand a detailed

verification of last weekend's presidential vote at each of the country's 32,000 polling stations after officials delayed release of final results that could show him with a first-round lead.

The demand stops short of a full recount but will require that the government publish results from all of the polling stations rather than making public only the larger tallies of the country's 225 districts.

The request comes as17 the government's Central Election Commission yesterday counted only 3.5 per cent of the vote after having tabulated 94.2 per cent on Monday. The latest results showed Viktor Yanukovich, the prime minister supported18 by Russia and outgoing president Leonid Kuchma, with a narrow lead of 39.9 per cent to Mr Yushchenko's 39.2 per cent.

Most of the uncounted votes, however, are in regions considered strongholds for Mr Yushchenko.

Victory in the first round is symbolic as the presidency will go to the winner of a run-off on November 21 between the two front-runners of the first round.

The US and European Union both criticised the Ukrainian government yesterday for19 its conduct in the first round of elections, while20 the Russian-led Commonwealth of Independent States said the violations of campaign rules its observers had seen were minor and did not affect the results.

The sharply differing evaluations are likely to fuel a growing split between the US and the newly expanded European Union on the one side and the Russian-led CIS on the other.

2. CLOSE RACE ROUSES AMERICAAmericans turned out to vote in record numbers in swing states and safe states alike

yesterday, standing in long queues across the country to have their say in a close, polarised race that has galvanised the nation after decades of creeping apathy.

As reports came in of overwhelming numbers at polling stations, election-watchers predicted the turnout could well21 be higher than 120 million – well above the 2000's 106 million – or 60% of the electorate.

The high turnout was an encouraging sign for John Kerry, and his campaign was also buoyed by early exit polls by the television networks which gave him a tiny lead in two of the most closely contested states, Florida and Ohio.

17 См.: Гуськова Т. И., Зиборова Г.М. Трудности перевода. – М., 2000. Служебные слова, грамматический омоним as, стр.11418 См.: Гуськова Т.И.., Зиборова Г. М. Трудности перевода. – М., 2000. Причастие в различных функциях, стр. 39.19 См.: Гуськова Т. И., Зиборова Г.М. Трудности перевода. – М., 2000. Служебные слова, грамматический омоним for , стр.11420 См.: Гуськова Т. И., Зиборова Г.М. Трудности перевода. – М., 2000. Служебные слова, многозначный союз while, стр.11321 См.: Гуськова Т. И., Зиборова Г.М. Трудности перевода. – М., 2000. Служебные слова, слово well с различными частями речи, стр.116

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The Democratic party's own early exit polls gave Senator Kerry strong leads in most of the battleground states, but a party official warned that those leads could be overturned if there was very high Republican turnout in the evening.

"What happened in 2000 in Florida is that Democrats voted early and the Republicans caught up in the afternoon," the official said. "We're hoping that the margins are big enough this time to hold off any Republican onslaught in the afternoon."

Pollsters were cautioning last night that the race was far too close to call. "This is going to be a nail-biter. Neither candidate will go gently into that good night. In fact there may be many nights of less than gentle politics," Frank Luntz, a Washington pollster said.

However, by mid-afternoon, there were only sporadic reports of voting problems, contrary to earlier predictions of a meltdown under the pressure of voters and the deployment of lawyers and operatives from both sides to promote their cause at the polling stations.

Republicans in Ohio won an 11th-hour court decision allowing them to post more than 3,000 observers in polling stations across the state, to challenge voter credentials.

3. ROMANIA'S GOVERNMENT won approval in a weekend referendum for constitutional amendments, but government methods used to get voters to the polls have provoked criticism from independent watchdogs and in the local press.

Preliminary results showed 87 per cent of voters approved the package of amendments that, among other steps, guarantees the right to private property, provides new legal rights for ethnic minorities and trims the powers of the executive branch of government.

Yet only 55 per cent of Romania's 18m eligible voters cast ballots – just above the 50 per cent required for a referendum to be binding.

Yesterday the local press reported a number of voting irregularities, including the alleged misuse of mobile polling stations intended to allow the elderly and disabled to vote from home. Reports also indicated widespread efforts to woo voters with food, drink and in some cases lotteries.

Election officials rejected suggestions the vote was not conducted correctly.In the lead-up to the referendum, government officials clearly feared a low turnout.

Originally scheduled only for Sunday, polling was extended – a week before the vote – to include Saturday.

Yesterday, EU officials declined to comment on the referendum's results before they were made official.

Optional texts

4. ROMANIAN ELECTION JUDGED TO BE VALIDRomanian election officials yesterday projected that enough voters had turned out to

validate referendum on bringing the constitution in line with European Union law, despite cries of foul play from opposition parties.

Statistical projections showed 54.46 per cent of voters cast ballots in the weekend referendum, touted by the ruling ex-communist party as backing for joining the EU and as a vote of confidence in the government. Romania hopes to join the EU in 2007 with Bulgaria.

Election officials said final figures would not be available until tomorrow.

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5. VENEZUELANS FLOCK TO DELIVER THEIR VERDICT ON CHAVEZMillions of Venezuelans turned out to vote yesterday, waiting patiently for hours to

take part in a referendum on the rule of President Hugo Chavez, in numbers far exceeding expectations.

Jimmy Carter, the former US president who is heading an observer mission, described the turnout as "the biggest I have ever seen" in more than 50 elections he and his pro-democracy foundation had observed.

As dusk fell over the world's fifth-largest oil exporter long queues wound around the schools and public buildings being used as voting stations from before dawn.

The electoral authorities extended the closing time for polling centres by four hours to 8 pm, after voters complained of delays in being able to cast their vote as untested finger-printing machines intended to prevent double-voting, caused bottlenecks in many areas.

Official results looked unlikely to be released at least until early today, and if Mr Chavez's mandate, which runs until late 2006, is revoked, fresh elections will have to be held within 30 days.

It is unclear whether Mr Chavez would be able to run in such a contest or who would be his opponents. Opposition parties have still to decide 22whether they would run primary elections to select a candidate.

Active Vocabulary

1. to demand verification of vote – требовать проверки подсчета голосовto release results –syn. to disclose results

оглашать результаты

polling/voting station – избирательный участокpolling booth – кабина для голосованияpolling/voting – голосованиеelection results/returns - результаты выборовoutcome of elections – исход выборовfirst round of election/voting – первый тур голосованияrun-off – последний, решающий тур выборов с

участием двух ведущих кандидатов (не получивших абсолютного большинства)

to count votes – подсчитывать голосаn. count, tally – подсчет, счетrecount of votes – пересчет голосовCentral Election Commission – ЦИКto tabulate – обрабатыватьoutgoing president – уходящий в отставку , слагающий

свои полномочия президентant. incoming – приходящий к власти, вступающий в

должностьviolation of campaign rules – syn. abuse

нарушение правил проведения предвыборной кампании

minor violations – незначительные нарушения

22 См.: Гуськова Т. И., Зиборова Г.М. Трудности перевода. – М., 2000. Глагол to have с последующим инфинитивом, стр. 79

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observers – наблюдателиsyn. election watchers, checkers

2. to turn out – прийти на выборы; явиться на избирательный участок

ant. to abstain from voting – не принимать участия в выборах; воздерживаться (при голосовании)

n. abstentionn. turnout – явка, активность избирателейhigh/heavy turnout – высокая явкаlow turnout – низкая явкаexit poll – опрос избирателей при выходе с

избирательных участков

3. amendment – поправкаv. to amend – вносить поправкиto go to the polls – идти на выборыwatchdog – контролирующая организация,

контрольная или ревизионная комиссия; цензор

preliminary results – предварительные результатыsyn. early/initial/partial resultsexecutive (legislative, judicial) branch – исполнительная (законодательная,

судебная) ветвь властиeligible voters – избиратели, имеющие право голосаant. ineligible votersto cast ballot – голосовать, отдавать голосаballot/ballot paper – избирательный бюллетеньballot box – урна для голосованияabsentee ballot – бюллетень для заочного голосования

(посылается по почте избирателем, находящимся в момент выборов вне своего избирательного округа)

to woo voters – пытаться расположить к себе, привлекать на свою сторону избирателей

voting irregularities – нарушения процедуры голосования

4. valid/invalid elections – выборы, признанные действи-тельными/недействительными

to rule valid/invalid – признать действитель-ными/недействительнымиto validate/to invalidate –

a vote of confidence/a vote of no confidence –

вотум доверия/вотум недоверия

5. to revoke a mandate – отзывать мандатto hold fresh election – проводить новые выборы

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II. Translate the sentences paying attention to the underlined words and the words in italics.

A. a)1. Unless a compromise can be reached, there appears little choice but23 for the country

to go to the polls 24 for the third time in four years, a destabilising development Sri Lanka can ill afford in the midst of peace negotiations.

2. The Kremlin is thought to be concentrated at the possibility of the turn-out falling25

below 50% and invalidating the vote.3. If there was any sense of panic about polls showing Kerry trailing by as many as eight

points or more, the candidate was not letting on.4. Some SPD deputies now believe the only way to break the deadlock is for Germany

to hold fresh elections.5. Yet as Mr Bush reached the first 100 days of his second term last weekend, the talk

was not of “transformation” but of frustration – and the possibility of a wasted second term.

6. As Mr Gbagbo’s supporters danced, literally, in the streets to celebrate his continuation in power, the opposition demanded that the president should become a figurehead, like the queen of England.

7. The gap is enough to stop Mrs Merkel forming a center-right government with the CDU’s Bavarian sister party, the CSU, and junior coalition partner the FDP.

8. The Shiite list that finished first in Iraq’s elections agreed on Vice President Ibrahim al-Jaafari as its candidate for prime minister as parties continued Tuesday to haggle over the makeup of the next government.

9. President Robert Mugabe said Saturday that he hoped to stay in power until he was 100 as he celebrated an overwhelming victory in parliamentary elections that all but his supporters and a few African neighbours said were rigged.

10. The government was hoping for a high turnout to enhance Mr Mubarak’s democratic credentials.

11. If Mr Howard has any doubts about the outcome of today’s election, he did an excellent job of hiding them as he flew across Britain on a final campaign swing.

12. Mr Mubarak’s main challengers said that at some polling stations voters were casting their ballots without being properly checked.

13. Indeed, it is hard to imagine the new forces accepting another year of Mr Gbagbo, the man they fought to depose, as president.

14. Gerhard Schröder and Angela Merkel vowed to continue campaigning right up until the polls close today, breaking with convention in an electoral race whose outcome was far from clear.

15. While the party’s internal polling suggests that Labour is up to six per cent ahead nationally, strategists say the outcome is on a knife-edge in 50 to 60 marginal seats.

23 См.: Гуськова Т. И., Зиборова Г.М. Трудности перевода. – М., 2000. – Служебные слова, грамматический омоним but , стр.115.24 См.: Гуськова Т. И., Зиборова Г.М. Трудности перевода. – М., 2000. – Инфинитивный комплекс, стр. 17.25 См.: Гуськова Т. И., Зиборова Г.М. Трудности перевода. – М., 2000. – Герундальный комплекс, стр. 35.

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16. Local observers reported a number of cases of voters casting absentee ballots at multiple polling stations.

b)1. Serbia holds 26 elections this Sunday, trying for a third time to elect a new president,

after two previous efforts failed because of low voter turnout. Forth с oming parliamentary elections, however, are seen as far more important than the presidential poll, and yesterday's announcement could damage turnout on Sunday.

2. People outside the United States could only watch, wait and fume as American lined up to vote Tuesday in an election that provoked an extraordinary degree of emotional involvement beyond U.S. borders.

3. Indian voters will go to the polls in early national elections to be held in four stages in April and May, as the coalition Government, led by the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), seeks to capitalise on a booming economy and peace moves with Pakistan.

4. The Chancellor was plainly nervous about the outcome in Hamburg as he sent the new leader of the party, Franz Muntefering into a frenzied fortnight of campaigning.

5. How far the Social Democrats will have to pay at the ballot box for their attempt to modernise the engine of Europe is not known.

6. In the lead up to the election, the Kremlin worked to ensure high turnout, believing that it would confer added legitimacy on President Vladimir Putin's second term.

7. American born and British educated, Papandreou, 51, appeared equally upbeat at the ballot box.

8. Enthusiastic voters around the country showed up well before the polls opened Tuesday to cast their ballots in a bitter race for the White House that was too close to call. Some voting experts predicted a turnout of up to 125 million voters – a 20 million increase over 2000.

9. Cautious hopes began to rise well before lunchtime, as reports came in of record turnouts in swing states and among young voters and blacks.

10. Without such drastic measures the seven Iraqis, who include two women, believe they would have been unable to begin hiring election officials, establishing polling booths and drafting the electoral laws for the 275-member Iraqi National Assembly.

11. The conservative camp is confident of success in the elections, believing that a low turnout reflecting public disillusionment will help overturn a majority won by the reformists four years ago.

12. Western diplomats bravely insist that other countries have held elections amid violence, pointing out that security measures can be taken, such as moving polling stations in troubled areas such as Fallujah to secure locations.

13. Before then, however, Mr Jogi will have to prevail in the ballot booths, tens of thousands of which are being set up in the remotest jungle clearings.

14. Mrs Macapagal, an economist favoured by foreign investors and local business, was forecast to win by opinion polls before the voting and by an exit poll afterwards. But partial results of an unofficial "quick count" organised by a television news channel at times gave Mr Рое the lead last night.

15. Election officials, even in some states not considered battlegrounds, like Maryland, were predicting historically high turnout rates of 80 percent or higher. Curtis Gans, the director of the non-partisan Committee for the Study of the American Electorate,

26 См.: Бреус Е.В. Теория и практика перевода с английского языка на русский. – М., 2001. – 2.2. Переводческие преобразования, обусловленные сменой отправной точки при описании предметной ситуации. Подлежащее – фактическое обстоятельство места, стр.29

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said as many as 117.5 million to 121 million voters could cast ballots by the end of the day – 58 percent to 60 percent of those eligible. In the last presidential election, turnout was 51.2 percent of the voting age population, or 105.4 million voters, an increase of 2.2 percentage points from 1996.

16. Much in American voting machinery and procedures has changed since the contentious election of 2000, which ended in a 36-day dispute centered on the razor-thin Florida result. More than 30 states now allow early voting, to avoid last-minute backups and confusion.

B.1. Mr Koizumi has run a successful US presidential-style campaign, perhaps the first in

Japan’s electoral history, in which he has used image and a sense of firm conviction to woo the public.

2. A big shock was possible if floating voters – who comprise at least a third of the electorate – turned out en masse to support the opposition party, which has never held power.

3. Yet when the exit polls began circulating on Sunday afternoon, pundits were amazed. And the final tally confirmed the upset: the CDU and its Bavarian sister party, the Christian Social Union (CSU) came in at only 35.2% of votes, not even a full point ahead of Mr Schröder’s Social Democrats (SPD) at 34,3%.

4. Preliminary results in Salzburg Province showed the Freedom Party at less then 10 percent, about half of its previous strength.

5. Six voting booths with curtains were set up in the Moscow polling station along with four glass boxes where voters could drop their ballots.

6. In theory, nobody was supposed to be talking about exit polls in public. The media organizations that conduct them have a strict policy of keeping them under wraps until polls close, for fear of being accused of influencing the result.

7. Sierra Leone’s presidential run-off hit a snag soon after polls opened when 92,000 people were told they were ineligible to vote.

8. The Vanuatu Government of Maxime Carlot was toppled by a no-confidence vote in the South Pacific nation’s parliament. Serge Vohor, an opposition coalition leader, replaces him.

9. Oscar Berger, the former mayor of the capital, won Guatemala's presidential run-off against Alvaro Colom with 54.1 per cent of the vote. Mr Berger, of the Grand National Alliance, called on his rival to join efforts to overcome the country's problems.

10. With a budget of $180 million, the commission is expected to organise up to 9,000 polling stations, each staffed by at least four people.

11. Of 106,952,649 registered voters in Russia, 68,119,054 valid ballots were cast and 571,277 ballots were ruled invalid, Veshnyakov said.

12. Yushchenko is expected to face a run-off with Kuchma ally Prime Minister Victor Yanukovich at the elections, which analysts expect will go to a second round in November.

13. Swaziland will hold its first national vote in five years today, amid a telling absence of election fever.

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14. The first round of the elections is March 21, with the runoff a week later. The opposition parties hope to use them as a vehicle to assess the strength of the first two years of the president's second term.

C.1. Viktor Yushchenko, Ukraine's opposition leader, accused election officials of

delaying the counting of votes from the first round of presidential elections which he said would give him the lead ahead of a run-off.

2. Both top their party lists and are expected to win seats, Mr Milosevic for the Socialists and Mr Seselj for the extreme right-wing Serbian Radical Party. Both are eligible to run because they have not been convicted, although they are unlikely to be able to take their places in parliament for many years.

3. With barely 32 per cent of the vote according to reliable exit polls, it lagged well behind the 46.5 per cent of the Christian Democrats.

4. Instead of harsh rhetoric, Beijing wooed Hong Kong's voters with promises of economic aid and charmed them by sending all of China's Olympic gold medal-winners on an extended tour of the city.

5. Final results would be released next Tuesday or Wednesday, but they would not affect the outcome, he said.

6. Among its many difficult decisions are how to register voters in a country that has had neither democratic elections nor a proper census for decades and how to manage a proportional representation system that will turn the country into one huge electoral district with hundreds of candidates on one list.

7. This weekend, millions of Russians will elect their next president. Opinion polls universally predict that the vast majority will cast ballots for incumbent president Vladimir Putin.

8. The state, along with four others, goes to the polls on December 1 in an exercise that is seen as a dress rehearsal for the national election in 2004.

9. Despite her status as the once-beloved daughter of the country's founding father Sukarno, Mrs Megawati also managed only a second-place finish behind Mr Yudhoyono in the five-candidate first round of the presidential elections in July.

10. Initial results set off a carnival of celebration that sent a sea of New Democracy supporters to the party’s headquarters in central Athens.

11. Both George Bush and Mr Kerry broke with tradition and actively campaigned yesterday. Mr Bush visited campaign volunteers in Ohio before returning to the White House to wait for the returns.

12. A day after winning voter approval for constitutional amendments that move the country closer to European Union membership, Romania’s government yesterday forced three senior ministers suspected of initiating or tolerating corruption to resign.

13. Two civic watchdog organizations, Pro Democratia and Academia Catavencu, called yesterday for an investigation. They said they might appeal to Romania’s constitutional court to rule on the legality of the referendum.

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III. Fill in the blanks with suitable words in the necessary form from the list given below:a) to campaign, to vote (2), election day, guerrillas, to count, tough stance, to be valid, rebels.

COLOMBIA POLL DEATHS

Bogota, Colombia (Reuters) – Marxist (...) killed 13 people in (...) attacks Saturday as Colombians (...) in a referendum that President Alvaro Uribe hopes will save billions of dollars and fight corruption.

Uribe, a right-winger whose (...) against (...) has made him highly popular, (...) furiously for Colombians to approve the complicated 15-point referendum.

He says it will reduce graft as well as save money for spending on schools and hospitals by limiting government wages.

With 97.3 percent of votes (...) Sunday, only 24.2 percent of the electorate (...) – still falling short of the 25 percent participation necessary for the result (...).

b) polling stations (2), precinct (2), heavy turnouts, high turnouts, campaign, challenger, voters, to turn out (2), campaign aides.

AMERICAN VOTERS (...) IN DROVES

New York: American voters (...) in exceptionally large numbers Tuesday to choose their next president at the close of a long, expensive and unusually bitter (...).

There were repeated reports from (...) in key states of angry disputes and confrontations over the credentials of (...).

From (...) after (...) across the country, voters, (...) and election officials reported unusually (...) most notably in closely fought states like Florida, Ohio and Pennsylvania.

Americans have called the choice between President George W. Bush and Senator John Kerry one of the most important of their lifetimes.

There was continuing contention Tuesday over how closely political operatives could keep watch at (...) and challenge voters whose credentials they deemed suspect.

Normally, (...) would favor (...) in a presidential election, but both sides this year have mounted costly and extensive voter mobilization drives that made early interpretations risky.

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IV. Replace the words in brackets with their English equivalents in the necessary form:

a)

PUTIN'S (СОПЕРНИК) PLEDGES (НЕ БАЛЛОТИРОВАТЬСЯ)

Moscow: Vladimir Zhirinovsky said that he would not (выставлять свою кандидатуру против) President Putin (на президентских выборах) in March. Mr Zhirinovsky (баллотировался) in each previous (борьба, соревнование) since (распад СССР). His brand of fiery nationalism has struck a chord with millions of voters.

Some (наблюдатели) expect Mr Zhirinovsky's absence from (борьба, соревнование) to give Mr Putin a better chance of an easy (победа в первом туре). The Communists are struggling to find a credible candidate, and at least one senior figure in the party has been quoted in the Russian media as saying that a boycott could be used to try to prevent (явка) from reaching 50 per cent and render the result (недействительный).

Mr Zhirinovsky told his Liberal Democratic Party's congress that he (не будет баллотироваться), although his party's recent success (на выборах в нижнюю палату Думы), or parliament, is widely attributed to his personal performance and charisma. His party sits in opposition in the Duma, but always (поддерживает) the Kremlin. Few expect the little-known candidate chosen by the party to dent Mr Putin's chances.

b)

(ВЫБОРЫ В ОЛЬСТЕРЕ) KEEPS TRIMBLE GUESSING

David Trimble faces a nerve-wracking 24 hours before he knows whether he has seen off the threat from Ian Paisley, who has promised to bring down the Good Friday Agreement if his party is declared the biggest Unionist grouping after yesterday's (выборы в) the Stormont assembly.

With rain, strong winds and Champions League football giving voters plenty of excuses to stay indoors, there were fears that apathy might be the real winner, despite a personal (обращение к избирателям) by Tony Blair. A flurry of voters turned up at (избирательные участки) after they opened across Northern Ireland at 7 am, but by mid-morning the number had slowed to a trickle.

All four main parties (все еще вели предвыборную агитацию) yesterday in a desperate attempt to get the vote out, but by late afternoon there was little clear indication of (явка). As in (всеобщие выборы) two years ago, most (наблюдатели) predicted a surge in voters before (избирательные участки) closed at 10pm. The future of Mr Trimble and his Ulster Unlonists

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depends on how many moderate Protestants, many of whom would normally stay at home, bothered to vote.

(Предварительные результаты) from the 18 sixseat (избирательные округа) are expected by this afternoon, although many of the final seats, which will determine the overall balance of power, will not be declared until tomorrow.

Under the Province's (система пропорционального представительства), votes are transferred once a candidate reaches a certain quota, meaning multiple (пересчет голосов) are needed before all six seats are filled.

V. Translate the headlines.

A.

1. LABOUR’S PRIDE IN ECONOMY NOT ENOUGH TO WOO VOTERS

2. MANY UNABLE TO CAST THEIR BALLOTS3. HIGH TURNOUT AS DIVIDED AMERICA GOES TO THE POLLS4. ELECTION DRAMA BOOSTS TURNOUT5. THE WEARY AND WARY TURN OUT TO CAST BALLOTS6. A DIVIDED AMERICA VOTES7. A US ELECTION, BUT THE REST OF THE WORLD TUNES IN8. CLIFFHANGER

B.

1. WATCHED BY BUSH’S CHECKERS, KEY STATE GOES TO THE POLLS 2. BJP GAINS RAISE CHANCES OF EARLY INDIAN ELECTIONS3. HIGH TURNOUT IN GUATEMALA POLLS4. HK POLL TURNOUT MAY HURT GOVERNMENT5. CONCERN OVER NATIONALIST REVIVAL AS SERBS GO TO

THE POLLS6. GEORGIA OPPOSITION DEMANDS FRESH POLL7. MEXICAN TURNOUT CHALLENGED

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VI. Render into English.

a) В Польше состоялся второй тур президентских выборов. На пост главы государства претендовали два кандидата – Дональд Туск и Лех Качиньский. Накануне голосования шансы на победу у обоих кандидатов были практически равны. Избирательная комиссия Польши огласит результаты голосования сегодня.

b) Голосование на выборах президента США началось вчера в 14.00 мск, когда открылись избирательные участки в девяти штатах на атлантическом побережье. Последние участки закроются на Аляске в 8.00 мск.

Всего для участия в голосовании зарегистрировалось около 156 млн избирателей. Гендиректор одного из ведущих социологических агентств США Peter D. Hart Research Associates Питер Харт прогнозировал явку на уровне 55%. Директор Elections Reform Information Project Даг Чэпэн вчера днем заявил «Ведомостям», что по всей Америке у избирательных участков наблюдались очереди и явка явно будет высокой.

Досрочное голосование разрешено в 23 штатах, и, по информации Чэпэна, этим правом в некоторых из них воспользовались до 30% избирателей.

c) Впрочем, погода не повлияла на активность избирателей: очереди, выстроившиеся на всех участках еще до их открытия, были даже длиннее, чем в первом туре. Уже к 11 утра в разных регионах проголосовали от 20 до 30% избирателей, и представители ЦИКа говорили, что явка будет значительно выше, чем в первом туре.

d) К середине дня ЦИК обработал больше 99,38% бюллетеней. Разрыв то сокращался настолько, что казалось, что Ющенко вот-вот победит, то снова увеличивался. В итоге он оказался меньше 3%: 49,42% за Януковича и 46,7% за Ющенко.

e) Исход американской президентской гонки на ее финише еще менее предсказуем, чем на старте. Рейтинги президента-республиканца Джорджа Буша и сенатора-демократа Джона Керри почти одинаковые. И, по мнению экспертов, итоги выборов мало отразятся на отношениях США с Россией и остальным миром.

f) 21 ноября на Украине прошел второй тур президентских выборов. Согласно данным exit pools на 21.00 по московскому времени,

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премьер Виктор Янукович проиграл лидеру оппозиции Виктору Ющенко (42% против 54%). Между тем, более ранние опросы предсказывали победу Януковича. Опыт первого тура подсказывает: опросам, проведенным в день голосования, верить можно не всегда. Три недели назад, 31 октября, по опросам Янукович лидировал, в итоге же вперед вырвался его конкурент. Центральная избирательная комиссия обещает огласить первые официальные данные – да и то сугубо предварительные – в 3 часа ночи по Киеву (в 4 утра по Москве).

VII. Comment on the cartoon.

a) b)

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§ 4. ELECTORAL FRAUD

I. A. Read and translate the articles with the help of the Active Vocabulary list.

В. Pay special attention to the Indefinite and the Definite Articles, the Absolute Participle Constructions, the Modal Verbs and to the other difficulties.

1. ROMANIAN ELECTIONS DISPUTED

Bucharest, Romania – Romania's opposition insisted Monday that weekend parliamentary and presidential elections had been marred by fraud, while preliminary results showed the governing Social Democratic Party holding on to a narrow lead that would leave it unable to form a government 27.

Results released by the central Electoral Bureau based on half the total count gave the governing party more than 35 percent in Sunday's election, less than three percentage points ahead of the centrist Justice and Truth Alliance's 32.5 percent.

The figures 28 indicated that neither party would be able to form a majority in parliament and would have to seek partnership for a coalition government with either the nationalist Greater Romania Party, which scored about 13 percent, or its rival ethnic Hungarian Party, which netted about 8 percent.

The presidential race was also close, with Prime Minister Adrian Nastase winning 38.90 percent29, while main challenger Traian Basescu scored 34.82 percent, leading to a runoff vote on Dec. 12. Twelve candidates ran for president.

The early results revealed a much closer race than indicated by two exit polls, which had predicted the ruling party winning about 40 percent and the alliance 35 percent.

The opposition alleged fraud, with Basescu saying he had video evidence showing that the governing party bused its supporters around the country to vote repeatedly. He says the alleged fraud affected the results by 5 to 7 percent.

"Romania has the right to have fair elections," said Basescu, adding that his party will ask for lists of voters to identify those who cast their ballots multiple times.

About 3,300 Romanians from the independent Pro Democracy Association and 50 foreign observers monitored the election.

The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe said 30 the vote "seemed to be professionally and efficiently organized," but cautioned about procedures which made it possible for people to vote multiple times.

27 См.: Гуськова Т. И., Зиборова Г.М. Трудности перевода. – М., 2000. Неопределенный артикль, п.1, стр.8528 См.: Гуськова Т. И., Зиборова Г.М. Трудности перевода. – М., 2000. Определенный артикль, п.1, стр.8529 См.: Гуськова Т. И., Зиборова Г.М. Трудности перевода. – М., 2000. Абсолютная причастная конструкция (независимый причастный оборот, вводимый предлогом with), стр. 4730 См.: Бреус Е.В. Теория и практика перевода с английского языка на русский. – М., 2001.2.2. Переводческие преобразования, обусловленные сменой отправной точки при описании предметной ситуации. Английское формальное подлежащее (в качестве английского формального подлежащего часто выступают различные существительные), стр.32

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Pro Democracy chairman Cristian Parvulescu said his observers found many irregularities in the voting process, but the group could 31not determine whether there had been large-scale fraud.

Several newspapers reported that journalists working undercover were able to vote multiple times.

"The law, offering Romanians the possibility to vote in any polling station around the country, created the possibility of election fraud," said Parvulescu, who heads Pro Democracy.

The ruling party dismissed suggestions that it was responsible for any irregularities. Its campaign chief, Dan Nica, accused the opposition of sending people to vote multiple times, but said the elections were generally fair.

"The elections showed that Romania" has a mature democracy," said Foreign Minister Mircea Geoana, who has been nominated by the Social Democrats as their choice to lead the new cabinet.

His party was in jubilant mood after exit polls were released, and immediately began talks with other parties to form a coalition government.

Romania's new president will lead the Balkan country as it implements economic and judicial reforms aimed at gaining EU membership by 2007.

2. KIEV – Bowing to pressure, outgoing President Leonid Kuchma said Monday that repeating the disputed presidential election might 32be the only way out of a crisis that has badly split Ukraine.

Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych, Kuchma's protege who was officially declared the winner, also showed signs of backing down, saying he would back a new vote if allegations of fraud in the Nov. 21 election are proven.

"If we really want to preserve peace and accord, if we really want to build a democratic state ... let's hold new elections," Kuchma said in a statement.

The country needs a "legitimate president," he said.Kuchma has previously spoken of compromise, but Monday's statement amounted

to a dramatic boost for opposition candidate Viktor Yushchenko, who says the runoff was rigged and wants a new vote.

Kuchma released the statement after speaking by telephone with U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell and Dutch Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende, whose country holds the European Union's revolving presidency. Both have denounced the election as fraudulent.

The Supreme Court convened to consider opposition requests to invalidate the election because of fraud. Its ruling, which is expected in days, might pave the way for the new vote. Under Ukrainian legislation, the court cannot rule on the overall results but can declare results invalid in individual precincts.

3. ZIMBABWE POLL CALM AMID CLAIMS OF UNFAIRNESSZimbabweans voted in the country's closely watched parliamentary election

yesterday, as opposition groups and watchdog organisations accused the government of intimidation and unfair conduct of the poll.

In contrast with previous elections in 2000 and 2002, reports of violence - or serious irregularities - were minimal. However, there were some allegations of intimidation of

31 См.: Гуськова Т. И., Зиборова Г.М. Трудности перевода. – М., 2000. Модальный глагол can, стр.7032 См.: Гуськова Т. И., Зиборова Г.М. Трудности перевода. – М., 2000. Модальный глагол may, стр. 70

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voters, and the opposition Movement for Democratic Change claimed that whatever the outcome, “the election cannot be judged free and fair”.

The MDC, which holds 50 seats in Zimbabwe's 150-member parliament, is challenging Mr Mugabe's long-entrenched Zanu-PF party for power. In a report released yesterday evening, the MDC again accused the government of unfair voter registration practices, gerrymandering of electoral districts, skewing of polling stations, and silencing of independent media ahead of the vote.

The fact that the MDC chose not to boycott the election, it said, “does not confirm legitimacy on the results”. The party has hinted it may mobilise its supporters if the vote is seen as unfair.

International observers and non-governmental organisations monitoring the election in the field mostly described it as peaceful, but allegations of irregularities persisted. The Crisis in Zimbabwe Coalition, an umbrella group of NGOs, reported isolated cases of voter intimidation and coercion.

According to the group, a police support unit and staff at Harare's Chikurubi prison were forced to go and vote at a polling station there. The group also reported sighting 15 buses heading from Gweru towards Bulawayo, which it said raised concerns of recriminations against MDC supporters if the results do not go in Zanu-PF's favour.

Reginald Matchaba-Hove, chairman of the Zimbabwe election support network, said the number of people turned away at voting stations because their names were not on the voters' roll was “unusually high”.

In the Mashonaland West province near Harare, an MDC official claimed Zanu-PF youth militia were intimidating voters. John Katuli, managing the election in the Zvimba North constituency, told the FT that Zanu-PF youth were doing “forced registration” outside polling stations, asking voters to give their names and ID numbers.

Zimbabwe's rural communities are small and close-knit, and Zanu-PF gets most of its support in the countryside. With more 8,200 polling stations set up around the country, critics of the vote said the scope for intimidation of would be opposition voters was large.

Optional texts

4. ELECTION WATCHDOG DEMANDS END TO ALL-POSTAL BALLOTSPostal-only voting should33 be scrapped and electronic security measures introduced

to prevent fraud, the Electoral Commission says today.In a damning report, the independent watchdog says that John Prescott's all-postal

ballot pilot schemes in four regions in June have undermined public confidence and should never be repeated.

It calls for a comprehensive shake-up of the voting system, underpinned by tougher laws to stamp out fraud and intimidation. The commission also suggests that the Deputy Prime Minister should be stripped of his role in overseeing local elections, with responsibility transferred to the Department for Constitutional Affairs.

Its analysis of the experiments in the North East, North West, Yorkshire and the Humber and the East Midlands, exposes a catalogue of problems, including a tight timescale, a complex voting method and reports of bribery and fraud.

33 См.: Гуськова Т. И., Зиборова Г.М. Трудности перевода. – М., 2000. Модальный глагол should, стр.66

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A Times investigation during the European and local elections uncovered widespread allegations of intimidation and fraud in two of the regions – the North West and Yorkshire and the Humber.

The commission proposes to draw up its own "foundation model", allowing multiple methods of voting, including post, internet and telephone, backed by security measures.

These could include individual registration backed by personal identification numbers and scanned signatures.

But it concedes that it is too late to cancel the all-postal referendum on a regional assembly in the North East this November, or to run it under different rules.

The Tories called for the referendum to be postponed. "This is a vote of no confidence in the Government's handling of all-postal voting in the June elections," Caroline Spelman, the Shadow Local Government Secretary, said.

Sam Younger, the commission's chairman, told The Times that voters wanted the choice of voting in polling booths as well as by post, the internet or text message.

The Government welcomed the report but reserved a full response until it had examined it more fully.

"We are very keen to learn the lessons of the pilot and will pay close attention to the commission's recommendations. In particular, we note the importance the commission attaches to voter choice of electoral methods," David Lammy, the Constitutional Affairs Minister, said.

5. OPPOSITION LEADERS SHUN CHÁVEZ REFERENDUM AUDITOpposition leaders yesterday refused to participate in an audit of Venezuela's failed

recall referendum to oust President Hugo Chávez, dealing a setback to international efforts to dispel allegations of vote-rigging in the politically divided country, AP reports from Caracas.

Opposition leaders claimed they had unearthed new evidence of fraud, which they insisted the audit – proposed by Jimmy Carter, former US president, and the Organisation of American States – would fail to detect.

"Under these conditions, we won't accept this audit," said Nelson Rampersad, an anti-Chávez lawmaker, after a meeting between opposition leaders, Mr Carter and Cesar Gaviria, the OAS secretary-general.

There was no immediate comment from Mr Carter and Mr Gaviria, who had planned to be witnesses yesterday as local election officials checked a random sampling of results from 150 voting stations – a rare follow-up move to an election they have already said looked clean.

Mr Rampersad claimed touch-screen voting machines in at least 500 polling sites produced the exact same number of Yes votes in favor of ousting Chávez. He said the supposed finding indicated the machines were rigged to impose a ceiling on Yes votes.

The audit intended to compare electronic and paper ballots. But Mr Rampersad said opponents were concerned the paper ballots – which have been under the care of Venezuela's military – may have been tampered with since Sunday's votes. He said the opposition wanted the audit to include an examination of the internal workings of the machines' software.

The referendum was carried out on touch-screen voting machines, which produced a paper receipt of each vote, much like an ATM. Voters then deposited the receipts into a ballot box.

Almost 58 per cent of Venezuelans voted on Sunday to keep Mr Chávez in office. Leaders of an opposition coalition immediately cried fraud.

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Mr Carter said the audit should be completed by Thursday. "It should be sufficient to address the remaining concerns that have been expressed by the opposition," he said.

In Washington, the State Department said the referendum should end Venezuela's political crisis.

Mr Chávez is now said to be setting his sights on centralising power, including exerting control over the courts, local police and the nation's broadcast stations.

The government is "going to deepen the social and democratic revolution in Venezuela", said Vice-President Jose Vicente Rangel.

6. As voting progressed, supporters of Yushchenko and Yanukovych traded accusations of vote-rigging and violations, and said they were holding their own parallel vote counts.

Yushchenko's supporters accused the authorities of rigging voting lists to exclude people eligible to vote, and complained Sunday of widespread voting violations, including the expulsion of opposition observers from polling stations in eastern Ukraine.

Yanukovych campaign officials called a news conference Sunday afternoon to say they had registered 500 polling violations.

As many as 30,000 ballots "that wrongfully identified three 'dark-horse' candidates as removed from the race" were cast, said Stepan Gavrish, Yanukovych's representative on the Central Elections Commission.

Gavrish said that in the Poltava region town of Mirgorod, some voters had been given pens with "disappearing ink."

The Central Elections Commission asked the Prosecutor General's Office to investigate the reports of candidates' names being marked as disqualified on ballots.

Commission member Ruslan Knyazevich conceded there were irregularities on some voter lists, which he described as being of very bad quality.

A total of 33,000 polling stations were open for the country's 37 million eligible voters, the commission said.

International observers also voiced alarm over violations and irregularities. Ari Vatanen, a French member of the European Parliament observing the election,

said eligible voters were missing from the voter lists and that some voters had been allowed to cast ballots several times.

Israeli observer Yakov Rotman told Interfax that in the Donetsk region he also encountered cases of voters missing from the lists and estimated that some 5 percent of voters were not on the lists there.

The United States and the European Union have voiced concern at some aspects of the campaign and called for a clean vote.

The Committee of Voters of Ukraine, an NGO monitoring the election, said Sunday that busloads of people had been seen voting together in six different regions. People would get off the buses and go vote at polling stations, saying they were tourists, CVU chairman Igor Popov told reporters Sunday.

So far, he said, the CVU had no proof of law violations, since polling stations could give dispensations to voters to cast their ballots in other districts. "But the coincidence is strange," Popov said.

With a total of 24 candidates on the ballot, neither Yushchenko nor Yanukovych was expected to gain the 50 percent needed for a first-round victory.

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Active Vocabulary

1. to dispute elections – оспаривать результаты выборовto mar – испортить, омрачитьsyn. to taint fraud – мошенничество, фальсификацияlarge scale/massive/widespread fraud – масштабные, массовые фальсификацииfraudulent elections – сфальсифицированные, нечестные

выборыto vote/cast ballots repeatedly / multiple times –

голосовать многократно

to monitor elections – наблюдать за проведением выборовto form a majority in parliament – сформировать большинство в парламентеto form a coalition government – сформировать коалиционное

правительство

2. to declare sb winner – объявить к-л победителемlegitimate – законный, законно избранныйto rig an election – подтасовать результаты выборовrigged/flawed elections – нечестные выборыvote-rigging – подтасовка результатов голосования

3. intimidation – syn. pressuring, voter suppression, harrassment

запугивание, давление на избирателей

gerrymandering – передел границ избирательных округов в пользу к.-л. партии

coercion – принуждение4. postal voting – голосование по почте

bribery/bribing – взяточничество, подкуп

5. recall – отзыв (депутата, посла и т.д.)to detect fraud – выявить нарушения в ходе выборовsampling – выборка, выборочное обследованиеclean election – чистые, проведенные без нарушений

выборыto tamper with paper ballots –syn. to falsify ballots

подделывать избирательные бюллетени

6. expulsion of observers from polling stations – отказ в допуске наблюдателей на

избирательные участкиdark-horse candidate – малоизвестный, неожиданно выдвинутый

кандидатvoter lists (electoral roll) – списки избирателейdispensation – открепительный талон

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II. Translate the sentences paying attention to the underlined words, words and constructions in italics.

A.a)

1. After three years of economic stagnation and flailing foreign policy, Herr Shröder was deservedly beaten, with his party’s total falling to around 33 per sent.

2. A regional breakdown suggests that Labour will do well in northern England, with the Lib Dems gaining in Scotland.

3. Yet he motored on, unflappable on the campaign trail and in the halls of the parliament. Germans may not have liked the policies, but they liked the man.

4. As for Mr Gbagbo, he was elected in 2000 in a poll from which his two main opponents were barred. Few believe he could win an open election now.

5. He said parties that wanted to challenge the figures had until Tuesday night to do so and that it might take a few more days to certify the results.

6. Under LDP rules, Mr Koizumi is obliged to stand down next September but his formidable electoral success may lead to calls for him to stay on.

7. Parliamentary elections are due to be held in April, but the Socialists face an uphill task to win a fourth straight term. With the party trailing the right-of-centre New Democracy by 7–10 percentage points in opinion poll s , Mr Simitis has decided to make an early start.

8. Now Ivorians are anxiously wondering what will happen after President Laurent Gbagbo’s five-year mandate runs out at the end of this month, with threats and declarations flying in all directions.

9. But with the country still divided, and electoral lists not drawn up, the election was postponed.

10. Nonetheless, the president may not be able to count on his young fans. Turnout among this group is likely to be considerably lower than the average 78 per cent expected by pundits.

11. Yet with what could be her political finale looming a month away in the form of a run-off against Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, a former general who now has what many see as an insurmountable lead in the polls, Mrs Megawati has been scrambling for publing attention.

12. With the candidates neck-and-neck in the polls and a dozen states rated as tossups, there was the real possibility the nightmare of the 2000 presidential election would be back for an encore.

13. The demonstrations are the biggest that Georgia has seen since the civil war ten years ago that brought Mr Shevarnadze to power. Protesters see the rigged vote as another failure by him to fulfill promises to improve living conditions.

14. The Moscow Times documented widespread violations in that election, which saw Putin voted into office by a landslide.

15. Mr Aliyev, whose father Heydar Aliyev ruled from 1993 until a heart attack this April, was declared winner of Wednesday’s poll with 80 per cent of the vote against 12 per cent for his leading opponent, Isa Gambar, with 90 per cent of the vote counted.

16. On the Conservative side, 50% of the Tory voters want to see Mr Howard carrying on. Only 21% think he should quit if the Tories lose, and 25% think he should go after two years. This may reflect the lack of a popular alternative leader.

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b)1. Yushchenko accused the government on Friday of massive election fraud during the

first round of the presidential election , the AP reported. Yushchenko said the authorities had falsified some 12 percent of votes. "However, we managed to save between 8 and 10 percent of the [other] votes from being stolen," Yushchenko told reporters. He did not elaborate. A Yanukovych aide, meanwhile, charged Yushchenko's campaign with a "record number of infringements," including bribing and pressuring voters.

2. Opinion polls released before the vote tended to favour the president, with seven out of 10 polls published in July giving him a lead of at least six percentage points. However, the polls also showed many voters were undecided and pollsters believed that, fearful of intimidation, they might have hidden their preferences.

3. The final results included only 97 percent of the ballots – nearly 3 percent were rejected after they were found to have what officials called "grave voting irregularities". Among those ballots were about 150,000 from the Kirovohrad region, where there were numerous reports of voting violations, including men storming polling stations and seizing ballot boxes.

4. Turnout is likely to be low, with some illegal parties calling for a boycott.5. Lawyers told the Zimbabwe High Court that Robert Mugabe's re-election as President

should be nullified because of significant poll irregularities.6. Democrats and Republicans had already been swapping charges of fraud in voter

registration and of plans to intimidate voters at the polls .7. The council has failed to approve more than 3,000 of 8,200 prospective candidates,

including 80 sitting MPs, leading reformists to accuse it of trying to rig the elections. 8. Kiev was calm but on edge Sunday as Ukranians voted for a new president, with

many expressing fears that the mood could turn violent as allegations of election violations grew.

9. While the other key figures of the opposition – Zurab Zhvaniya and Nino Вurdzhanadze – demanded a rerun of parliamentary elections after the flawed vote of November 2 that triggered the mass demonstrations, Mr Saakashvili trusted his political instincts and called for Mr Shevardnadze's resignation from the first.

10. Many similar complaints were made to local authorities, MPs and government departments. The issue of increased potential for fraud was raised by public and politician. Ballot papers that were delivered to wrong addresses, students receiving ballot papers at university residences as well as at home and houses with communal delivery areas were all problems cited.

11. Fears about cheating, intimidation and fraud in elections are focused mainly on Britain's ethnic minorities, a report on the Government's failed experiment in postal-only voting concludes. It is feared that dominant husbands, fathers, community leaders and candidates may have coerced people into voting against their will. Multiple voting, people apparently voting when they were out of the country and false entries on the electoral roll were among the concerns raised about the local and European elections in June.

12. While nearly 30% of the country was voting on high-tech electronic devices, most have no paper-audit trail, leaving them open to challenges as to whether the count is accurate or whether there was tampering.

13. Alternatively, or additionally, people who requested absentee ballots may have been excluded from the number of eligible voters in their home district. Abstention rates in poorer areas may not be as high as the 40 per cent level when Mr Chavez won the

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2000 presidential election, but the president and his supporters could have some difficulty in transforming opinion poll intentions into real votes.

14. Record-high voter registration – 143 million – has been accompanied by an unprecedented number of charges of fraud: fictitious names, non-existent addresses, ineligible felons or non-citizens being signed up and thousands of people registered in more than one place. Courts and local election boards have already been hearing cases of partisan challenges – and critics contending that organized challenges are deliberately designed to hold down voter participation.

15. The special ICM poll also reveals that more than half of all voters,59%, and a similar number of Labour voters, do not want Mr Blair to serve a full term. Instead, they say he should step down within two years to make way for Gordon Brown. Only 14% of Labour voters say he should go immediately.

B.

1. Some voters said that they felt pressurised to vote and wanted to have their identity papers stamped, hoping that it could help to secure government jobs and in their dealings with officialdom.

2. Many of those casting ballots said they strongly supported and voted for Democratic contender John Kerry, but said that they would follow America's democratic process and accept the outcome of the election – provided there was no widespread fraud.

3. "The registered flaws and neglect of duty by several electoral commissions in the run-up to the elections and during the vote, as well as by representatives of several registered candidates for the post of president during the election campaign, had no considerable influence on the free expression of voters' will," said CIS executive secretary Vladimir Rushailo, announcing the mission's findings.

4. At the last parliamentary poll, in 2000, a new opposition party, the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), won about half of the vote despite widespread fraud and intimidation, in ZANU's favour. But thanks to gerrymandering and Mr Mugabe's power to name a fifth of MPS, it ended up with only 57 seats out of 150. The MDC filed 37 lawsuits to overturn the results from constituencies where the rigging was most blatant, but none of these challenges has yet reached a final judgment.

5. Intimidation , gerrymandering and the use of famine relief as a weapon are just some of the many abuses that have been documented so far.

6. Fifteen investigations involving eight police forces were under way last night into allegations of voting fraud and malpractice during the campaign.

7. Ballot boxes will be transparent, allowing army officers and Zanu-PF party officials in charge to see what votes have been cast. But that is the only transparency there will be about what looks like being an utterly flawed election.

8. Since 2000, which was the first time Mr Mugabe faced a serious electoral threat, he has sharpened his rigging tools. At a presidential election in 2002, ne broke enough heads and stuffed enough ballot-boxes to ensure victory, but still somehow managed to persuade many of his fellow African presidents, including, crucially, South Africa's Thabo Mbeki, that the vote was legitimate.

9. At the last parliamentary poll, in 2000, a new opposition party, the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), won about /half of the vote despite widespread fraud and intimidation in ZANU's favour. But thanks to gerrymandering and Mr Mugabe's power to name a fifth of MPS, it ended up with only 57 seats out of 150. The MDC

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filed 37 lawsuits to overturn the results from constituencies where the rigging was most blatant, but none of these challenges has yet reached a final judgment.

10. Observers report a range of misdemeanours: blatant vote-buying; the busing in of government supporters, intimidation by hired thugs, tampering with electoral rolls and ballot stuffing.

11. According to the Democrats, voter suppression – or intimidation – also lay behind the background checks and scrutiny of voter registration documents undertaken by some state Republicans at polling stations yesterday.

12. In these states and in the smaller toss-ups (Minnesota, New Hampshire, New Mexico and Wisconsin), every vote will count, and the Democratic and Republican parties are pulling out all the stops to challenge any apparent or imagined voting irregularities.

13. The European Union, the United States and independent observers denounced Sunday’s election as seriously flawed.

14. Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, president of the Philippines, and Fernando Рое Jr, the popular film star who is her main challenger, were neck and neck in the race for the presidency last night after an election day marred by sporadic violence and confusion.

15. But the numerous reported cases of abuses by election officials contrasted sharply with the spin put on the voting by the Central Elections Commission and the Prosecutor General's Office, who both said the voting had proceeded with only minor violations.

16. Exit polls conducted on the day fuel the allegations of fraud..17. The government has denied accusations of fraud, and this week it has repeatedly

brandished the results of opinion surveys conducted in the weeks before the vote, several of which gave Mr Chavez a lead of several points, as evidence that its victory is legitimate.

18. The first round of a presidential poll was marred by tension over the comeback of Efrain Rios Montt, 77, a former dictator, blamed for civil war atrocities. If he misses the run-off, many fear that his supporters will not accept the results.

19. Candidates of the Muslim Brotherhood, Egypt’s largest and most influential fundamentalist group, complained of officially inspired harassment before and during the polling.

20. Albania’s opposition leaders vowed yesterday to continue their campaign for a fresh election to overturn last Sunday’s poll, which international monitors have now agreed was seriously flawed.

21. The left-wing Sandinista Party, trailing a long way behind the Liberal Alliance in the vote count, claims that elections were marred by widespread irregularities.

III. Fill in the blanks with suitable words in the necessary form from the list given below:

a) the incumbent; rigged elections; to be refused access to polling stations; fraudulent; to supervise the poll; to cast ballots; a free and fair election; widespread fraud; to observe the poll; to campaign freely; the run-up; to run against; competitors; the transparency of elections; election monitoring; to be barred; observers.

MONITORING TOPS EGYPTIAN POLL CONCERNS

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Nine challengers (...) Hosni Mubarak, (...) who is expected to win. Decades of political restrictions have stunted the Egyptian opposition, and Mr Mubarak's (...) have had little time to prepare. But even if, as many believe, the results are a foregone conclusion, civil society activists have seized on the election as an opportunity to push for genuine reforms, including guarantees of (...).

(...) has emerged as the main area of contention in (...) to the poll.Egypt's long history of (...) has bred a culture of apathy, with most

people shunning elections in the belief that they make no difference.More than 30 local non-governmental organisations have been pressing

for the right to enter voting stations (...) . Despite a court ruling on Saturday in their favour, the electoral commission insists they (...).

The NGOs say that even if they (...) they will still be able to monitor from outside and will send in their volunteers as voters. In previous elections, (...) have reported (...) including ballot-stuffing, bussing in voters and the prevention of opposition supporters from (...).

This time Mr Mubarak has promised (...) and his challengers have been allowed (...) and to appear on state television. But doubts have also been aroused by the government's failure to address fully the concerns raised by the Egyptian judiciary, which is required (...) under the constitution.

The government had rejected US calls for foreign election monitors saying there will be judicial supervision. But many judges fear they will be exploited to legitimise a (...) election.

b) a fraud, violence, the collapse, to be rigged, to flee, opponents, spokesman, wide-spread fraud, to be disclosed, to be tainted, a re-run, massive vote fraud, stand-off

GEORGIANS ARE BRACED FOR DAY OF RECKONINGThousands of opposition activists from across Georgia poured in to the

capital yesterday, determined to block President Shevardnadze convening a new parliament whose election they insist (...).

Cheered on by crowds lining the streets, the arrival of government (...) in buses, vans and lorries from around the country raised fears of a violent showdown with security forces and government supporters massed outside parliament.

"Shevardnadze's regime ends tonight," Mikhail Saakashvili, the main opposition leader, proclaimed as he arrived in Tbilisi. "It is better for him (...), otherwise tomorrow we will trample his regime. There is a bloodless, democratic, peaceful, velvet revolution going on in our country."

Yet the threat of violence loomed as the US State Department condemned the parliamentary elections as (...).

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Mr Shevardnadze's position was further undermined yesterday by the chief of his own Security Council, who acknowledged that the elections (...) by (...) and called for (...). Tedo Dzhaparidze, who oversees Georgia's police and security forces, said that the (...) could spark (...) even more fierce than the fighting that came after (...) of the Soviet union in 1991. His warning came as members of extreme opposition parties massed across the country and followed Mr Saakashvili, a staunch nationalist, into the capital.

Condemnation from the US State Department served only to increase the pressure felt by Mr Shevardnadze, who for years had been the darling оf the West. "We are deeply disappointed in these results and in Georgia's leadership," a State Department (...) said in response to results of the November 2 elections that (...) officially yesterday. "The results do not accurately reflect the will of the Georgian people but instead reflect (...)".

IV. Replace the words in brackets with their English equivalents in the necessary form:

a)A FAIR (РЕШАЮЩИЙ ТУР ГОЛОСОВАНИЯ)

IS THE GOAL IN UKRAINE

The Washington PostThat opposition leader Viktor Yushchenko would finish first in (первый

тур) of Ukraine's presidential election was widely expected: The pro-democracy, pro-Western candidate (лидировал по опросам общественного мнения) for more than a year. What surprised many of those who supported him was the acknowledgment of his victory by Ukrainian election officials on Wednesday, 10 days after voters (пришли на выборы). For months Ukraine's corrupt and quasi-autocratic government did its thuggish best (способствовать) the election of (нынешний) prime minister, Viktor Yanukovych, by manipulating state-controlled media and assaulting opposition supporters and leaders. Most voters expected the election results (сфальсифицированы). That Yushchenko's (отрыв) was belatedly announced is testimony to the pressure from millions of Ukrainians who (явились на избирательные участки) to vote for him, as well as from Western governments that (направили) thousands of (наблюдатели) and repeatedly warned against (фальсификации).

Yushchenko must still prevail in (решающий тур выборов) next Sunday – a race where state media and other government intervention once again make him (слабый, не имеющий шансов на победу кандидат) despite (значительный отрыв) in independent (опросы общественного мнения). Nevertheless, Ukrainians who hope to steer their country toward liberal democracy have a chance to triumph in (политическая борьба) that may be

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as important to the future of Europe as it is to their nation of 50 million people.

Ukraine's choice is about its future political system and geopolitical alignment. Yushchenko promises to allow democratic institutions and to (добиваться членства) for Ukraine in NATO and the European Union. His opponent would consolidate the corrupt authoritarianism of the current regime and wed it to that of President Vladimir Putin, who aspires (восстановить) Kremlin dominion over Ukraine and other former Soviet republics.

(Первый тур выборов) should have sent a message to Putin, who blatantly (вмешивался) in the (предвыборная кампания) by channeling hundreds of millions of dollars to the official candidate and personally (агитируя за него) in the capital, Kiev, just days before the election. Kiev voted heavily for the opposition, but last Friday Putin returned again to Ukraine, where he apparently hopes to control (исход выборов) as he has elections inside Russia.

The George W. Bush administration recognizes that the United States has "an overriding interest in a democratic Ukraine," but has been fecklessly silent about Putin's (вмешательство). It has, however, pressured Ukrainian officials and allied businessmen to allow (честное голосование). Senator Richard Lugar, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and sponsor of U.S. aid programs for Ukraine, will travel to Kiev with the support of Bush (чтобы наблюдать за проведением второго тура). Lugar and Bush will not and should not (агитировать за) Yushchenko or any other candidate, as Putin has done. Their goal need be only that of the vast majority of Ukrainians: a free choice.

b)PRESIDENT OF ALGERIA UNDER FIRE

FOR PLAN (ДОБИВАТЬСЯ ПЕРЕИЗБРАНИЯ)

Algerian President Abdelaziz Bouteflika is to seek another (срок пребывания у власти) he announced yesterday, and (будет бороться, оспаривать) April's (президентские выборы). But Mr Bouteflika's opponents are accusing him of planning to win through unfair means.

On Wednesday, Rachid Benyelles, а (бывший) army general and long-standing critic of the lack of democracy in Algeria, said he (выбывает из гонки).

He cited administrative hurdles placed before his campaign and the "absence of conditions for (прозрачные и свободные выборы") He is the fourth prospective candidate (который выбывает из борьбы) alleging the election will be (нечестные).

There is a strong sense of history repeating itself.

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Five years ago, all of Mr Bouteflika's six (соперники) in the presidential (гонка) (выбыли) together on the eve of (выборы), saying (массовые фальсификации) was being prepared. Mr Bouteflika was seen as the candidate of the army, the most powerful institution in Algeria and the one that wields real political power behind the facade of civilian democratic institutions.

This time, Mr Bouteflika's (противники) complain he has been using his (должность) to gain unfair advantages. "He is monopolising state television," said Mohamed Said, an aide to Ahmed Taleb Ibrahimi, one of Mr Bouteflika's (соперники).

(Соперники президента) also accuse him of hobbling both local administrations and the judiciary.

In December, a court in Algiers froze the activities and funds of the National Liberation Front (FLN), a key party headed by Ali Benflis, another candidate. Mr Benflis had served as prime minister until last May, when Mr Bouteflika sacked him for refusing (отказаться от притязаний на пост президента). Mr Bouteflika's supporters in the FLN organised (восстание) that now (вызвало раскол) the party.

Although Mr Bouteflika's tenure has been marked by frequent power struggles and (напряженные отношения) with the military, so far it appears the army has decided not to obstruct (его попытку переизбраться на еще один срок).

In 1992 the Algerian army (отменили выборы) that an Islamist party was about to win sparking an armed (мятеж) by Islamic militants. The conflict has claimed more than 100,000 lives.

V. Translate the headlines:А.

1. DEMOCRACY IS TESTED BY CLAIMS OF VOTING ABUSE2. EGYPT’S FIRST “FREE ELECTION” IS MARRED BY FRAUD

CLAIMS3. FRAUD TAINTS LABOUR4. RISE IN POSTAL VOTES FUELS FEAR OF FRAUD5. TENSION MOUNTS AS OPPOSITION CLAIMS FRAUD IN

CHÁVEZ VICTORY6. OSCE: ELECTION LESS THAN DEMOCRATIC7. IRREGULARITIES TARNISH CROAT ELECTIONS8. VIOLENCE MARS SIERRA LEONE VOTE

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В.

1. RUN-OFF MARRED2. POLICE ATTACK OPPOSITION VOTERS AFTER FLAWED

AZERBAIJAN POLLS3. MUGABE ELECTION DISPUTED4. POLL FRAUD FEAR HIGH IN ETHNIC MINORITY AREAS5. PRESIDENTIAL CHALLENGER SAYS HIS RIVAL CHEATED6. ALBANIAN NEW POLL CALL AFTER TAMPERING7. AUDITING OF CHÁVEZ VOTE BEGINS AS FRAUD

ALLEGATIONS MULTIPLY8. EUROPE TURNS A BLIND EYE TO ALBANIAN POLL

VI. Render into English

a) Массовые демонстрации, причем не только на Западе, но и по всей

Украине, будут продолжаться. А как может быть иначе, если сторонники Ющенко убеждены: у них украли победу? В ночь после выборов Ющенко вышел к журналистам и объявил: по данным «параллельного» подсчета голосов, он выиграл уже в первом туре с результатом 50,34 процента. Спустя несколько часов штаб Ющенко обнародовал «факты массовых фальсификаций» в пользу Януковича в восточных регионах страны. Оппоненты ответили тем же. Руководитель избирательной кампании премьера Сергей Тигипко перечислил десятки случаев «подтасовок, манипуляций и запугивания» – главным образом в Киеве и в западных областях.

В общем, выборы завершились вполне предсказуемо. Все ждали и взаимных обвинений в фальсификациях, и того, что страна в очередной раз расколется на «русский Восток» и «национальный Запад».

b)О многочисленных нарушениях, допущенных на выборах, говорят

представители обоих кандидатов. прошедших во второй тур. Наблюдатели от штаба Виктора Януковича выявили на избирательных участках более 2600 таких случаев. Наиболее серьезные, по их мнению, – проведение агитации в пользу кандидата от оппозиции Виктора Ющенко в день выборов и «масштабные фальсификации итогов голосования на Западной Украине».

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Представители штаба Ющенко также обвиняют избирательные комиссии в фальсификации результатов выборов и подделке документов. Они утверждают: были случаи, когда избирателей перевозили автотранспортом между расположенными в разных областях избирательными участками для «обеспечения многократного голосования». По мнению оппозиции, в ряде случаев избирательные комиссии специально затягивали подсчет голосов и отказывались подписывать протоколы на тех участках, где побеждал Ющенко.

Международные наблюдатели сообщают о низком качестве подготовки членов избирательных комиссий и плохой организации избирательных участков для голосования. На некоторых участках не хватало избирательных урн и допускалось присутствие в кабинках для голосования нескольких человек одновременно. Но наиболее частым нарушением, зафиксированным наблюдателями стало «несоответствие числа бюллетеней количеству пришедших на участки избирателей».

VII. Comment on the cartoon.

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§ 5. ELECTION RETURNS

I. A. Read and translate the articles with the help of the Active Vocabulary list. B. Pay special attention to the attributive word combinations.

1. VIOLENCE FLARES AFTER IRANIAN ELECTION At least eight people have been killed in violent clashes in Iran as conservatives

look set to win a landslide victory in parliamentary elections.The unrest, amid a growing dispute over voter turnout34, broke out in towns in

southern and western Iran, where angry crowds clashed with police.In Firouzabad in the south, the fighting erupted when locals suspected ballot-rigging

in a tight race between a reformist candidate and a conservative and called for a recount. In Izeh, hundreds of people stormed the governor's office and attacked government and judicial buildings.

Such violence is unusual in Iran, where electoral conflict is rare and usually tribal, but it reflects a national row between conservatives and reformists over the level of voting.

As conservatives celebrated a "massive turnout", Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran's Supreme Leader, hailed it as a victory against the regime's detractors, referring to a statement from the United States that the election had been unfair.

State television claims that turnout nationwide was as high as 60 per cent.Muhammad Ali Abtahi, the Iranian Vice-President, said that it was 50 per cent – the

lowest turnout in parliamentary elections since the 1979 Islamic revolution.Turnout was far lower than for the sixth parliamentary elections in 2000, when two

thirds of voters gave the reformists a large majority. Turnout was lowest in Tehran, where national politics play a greater role in voting

patterns, with participation falling below 30 per cent. This has been attributed to disillusionment with reformist and conservative factions alike.

The reformists look even weaker than they did before the elections. In Tehran, all 30 parliamentary seats – taken by reformists in the last election – have gone to the conservative party, Alliance for the Advancement of Islamic Iran. The conservative win will further isolate President Khatami, who faces one more year in office as a lame duck president. For many, it will also confirm his ineffectual image and inability to push through the social and political reforms that he had promised.

2. GANDHI DYNASTY POISED FOR POWER New Delhi, India – India's most famous political dynasty is poised to take back

power in the world's largest democracy after voters delivered one of the biggest upsets in the nation's history.

Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee resigned Thursday night after his governing coalition suffered a landslide defeat in parliamentary elections.

Sonia Gandhi is meeting with members of her Congress party Friday, setting the stage for the return of the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty, which led India to freedom from British colonial rule and then ran the nation for 40 years.

While working swiftly to build a new coalition government around her family's party, the Italian-born Gandhi has remained non-committal about whether she will be the next prime minister.

34 См.: Гуськова Т. И., Зиборова Г.М. Трудности перевода. – М., 2000. Атрибутивные словосочетания, стр.137–139; Жебелев Б.А. и др. Учебное пособие по переводу. – М., 1993. Комментарий 1, стр. 27

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Congress MPs are due to meet on Saturday to choose their party leader, who would also be expected to head the new government. After the size of her win, Gandhi – whose husband and mother-in-law once led India – is the front-runner.

The political maneuvering on Friday came after incumbent Prime Minister Vajpayee resigned in a stunning election turnabout, ending nearly six years in power.

Gandhi's Congress party and its coalition allies gained 279 seats on Thursday, enough for a slim majority in the 545-seat Lok Sabha, or national parliament.

The ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and its allies won just 187 seats, prompting the 79-year-old Vajpayee to resign.

Vajpayee, who had been the favourite heading into the race, argued he deserved another five years in office because he had turned the economy around.

3. BUSH RETURNED IN TRIUMPHPresident George W Bush pledged to unite the nation in his second term in office

yesterday after his Democratic challenger Senator John Kerry conceded defeat following a dramatic climax to one of the more bruising campaigns in American history.

Aides said he felt jubilant that after his victory by 51 to 49 per cent of the popular vote he at last had an indisputable mandate to govern.

Four years ago he won his first term amid bitter wrangling after losing the popular vote by 500,000.

His victory also healed a 12-year-old familial wound: Mr Bush has never forgotten the pain of his father's defeat by Bill Clinton in 1988 after only one term in office.

For Mr Kerry it was the end not just of an impassioned nine-month campaign but of a lifelong ambition to live in the White House.

Accompanied by his wife, Teresa Heinz Kerry, and his running mate Senator John Edwards, he delivered a heartfelt concession speech in his home town of Boston.

His concession was the formal ending of one of America's most riveting campaigns as Mr Bush battled for re-election in the face of heated attacks, in particular over the decision to go to war in Iraq.

At dawn yesterday there was still a chance that the election would follow the acrimonious route of the poll in 2000 when disputes in Florida ended in the Supreme Court.

After an agonising night with the results trickling in, all hinged on the result in Ohio, which for months had been seen as the key battleground. With most of the votes there counted Mr Bush was ahead by about two percentage points, some 130,000 votes.

Victory in Ohio would give him the majority of seats he needed in the electoral college to be sure of victory. But Democrats had vowed to contest any remotely close results and at 2.30am Mr Edwards said there would be no concession that night, hinting at legal challenges.

For a few hours the prospect loomed of a post-election limbo, as at emerged that the Democrats were considering insisting on counting provisional ballots, which are given to voters who move house. This could have taken 12 days.

Mr Bush cancelled his plans to deliver a victory speech, and went to bed as Mr Kerry's senior staff were closeted in fraught discussions over the best course of action.

But it soon became clear that it was all but statistically impossible for him to make up the shortfall by the outstanding provisional ballots. In the middle of the morning Mr. Kerry made his three-minute telephone call to Mr Bush to concede. The president told him that he was an "admirable worthy opponent" who should be proud of the campaign he had run, the White House said.

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For Republicans there was much to celebrate. As well as retaining the White House, they picked up at least three more seats in the Senate, entrenching their control on Capitol Hill. An added boost was the defeat of Tom Daschle, the Democratic leader in the Senate.

Mr Bush now has the chance to pursue the war in Iraq with renewed vigour as well as his conservative economic agenda of tax cuts.

4. GRYZLOV: NO 7 YEAR FOR PUTINState Duma Speaker Boris Gryzlov said Friday that the pro-Kremlin United Russia

party will block a proposal to extend the, presidential term to seven years after President Vladimir Putin criticized it.

The proposal from the Ivanovo regional legislature, was put on the Duma's agenda Thursday, five weeks ahead of the presidential election that Putin is expected to win in a landslide.

Gryzlov said United Russia, which has more than 300 seats in the 450-seat Duma, will oppose the change. "The United Russia faction won't support this initiative," he told reporters.

Putin reaffirmed his opposition to the notion Thursday.Regardless of the fate of the proposal, the legislative action Thursday reinforced the

fears of critics that the victory of pro-Putin forces in December's Duma elections means he may remain in office past 2008, when the Constitution requires that he step down.

"Putin is not a tsar yet, and he personally may not even want to become one, but he is being pushed into becoming a tsar from all possible sides," Vladimir Ryzhkov, an independent deputy, said Thursday.

To amend the Constitution to change the length or number of presidential terms requires a two-thirds majority in the Duma and a three-quarters majority in the Federation Council. It also needs the president's signature and approval by two-thirds of the regional legislatures.

Optional texts

5. KOIZUMI COALITION'S MAJORITY CUT AMID BIG OPPOSITION GAINS

The ruling coalition led by Junichiro Koizumi retained power in yesterday's lower house election in Japan but with a slightly smaller majority as the opposition Democratic Party of Japan made substantial gains.

The election marks the beginning of what most analysts consider a genuine two-party system after half a century of near-total domination by the Liberal Democratic party.

The LDP-led three-party coalition won 275 seats in the 480-seat lower house against 287 last time. On its own, the LDP won 237 seats compared with 177 for the DPJ.

A tired-looking Mr Koizumi rejected suggestions that the result was a set-back, although he admitted that the DPJ had gained significant momentum after its recent merger with the Liberal party.

He conceded the LDP would have liked to have won 241 seats, which would have given it a simple majority in the lower house without counting on its coalition partners, Komeito and the New Conservatives. However, the party beat the 233 seats it won in June 2000.

The DPJ's haul of seats was substantially higher than the 137 it had previously, but lower than Mr Kan's target of 200. Nonetheless, Mr Kan, a former grassroots activist, said the DPJ had transformed the electoral scene by fighting on a firm set of policies.

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He described Mr Koizumi's grip on power as fragile, dependent on coalition partners whose policies differed in important areas such as pensions reform and amending the constitution.

The DPJ gained at the expense of small parties such as the Communists and Social Democrats. The New Conservatives lost a number of seats, including that of its leader Hiroshi Kumagai. The Buddhist-backed Komeito party underlined its importance to the LDP, bringing in 34 seats.

The DPJ did reasonably well in spite of the low turnout of 60 per cent against 62 per cent last time. A higher turnout usually benefits the DPJ.

Shinzo Abe, LDP secretary-general, conceded that the DPJ had done well in the cities. It took the election's biggest scalp by toppling Taku Yamazaki, deputy secretary-general of the LDP and one of Mr Koizumi's closest allies, in Fukuoka.

6. KARZAI WINS POWER IN AFGHAN ELECTIONSAfghanistan yesterday formally declared Hamid Karzai its first elected president.Mr Karzai, the country's interim leader for the past three years, won the vote after an

inquiry into alleged voting fraud found no grounds to invalidate the result."Hamid Karzai is the winner of the election," Zakim Shah, the chairman of the Joint

United Nations-Afghan electoral board announced in Kabul yesterday. "We are announcing the first elected president of Afghanistan."

Mr Karzai won 55 per cent of the vote, 39 points ahead of his nearest rival and enough to avoid a second round of voting.

He has won a five-year term but the political process will be completed only after parliamentary elections are held in April, although these are likely to be delayed.

Eight million Afghans voted, an exceptionally high turnout of 70 per cent, demonstrating a widespread desire for democracy and change.

It is still not clear if Mr Karzai's nearest rival, the Tajik leader and former education minister Younus Qanooni, who won 16 per cent of the vote, has accepted the result.

An aide to Mr Qanooni said the UN's election report was "unacceptable".Mohammed Mohaqeq, the warlord from the Hazara ethnic group who came third

with almost 12 per cent of the vote, has also vowed "never" to recognise Mr Karzai's government.

Mr Karzai, a Pathan tribal chief who re-entered the country in 2001 to raise the banner of revolt against the Taliban, won votes across the ethnic groups. But his biggest backing came from the majority Pathans.

Mr Karzai and western diplomats in Kabul now face the difficult task of persuading his opponents to accept the results.

A key factor will be whether the president is prepared to bring some of them into his cabinet, although he had earlier promised that he would not form a coalition government with warlords and wanted "a clean and competent" cabinet.

7. Romania elects its parliament by proportional representation, so the provisional results point to a hung chamber. The swing votes rest with two smaller parties, the far-right Greater Romania Party which took 13% on Sunday, and an ethnic Hungarian party, the UDMR, which took just over 6%. The UDMR would happily go back into government with the PSD, or form a new one with Justice and Truth. The problem lies with the Greater Romania Party. It gets on fairly well with the PSD, though less well with Justice and Truth. But both big parties would prefer to keep it out of government, because the EU and the Americans see it as extremist.

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Much now depends on the presidency. The office carries limited formal powers, but they include the right to nominate the prime minister. If Mr Nastase wins, he will probably appoint Mircea Geoana, the outgoing foreign minister, as head of a minority PSD government that relies tacitly on votes from the Greater Romania Party for its majority. If Mr Basescu wins, he can opt for cohabitation, or he may try to install a minority centre-right government that will fall in due course, paving the way for another general election.

Active Vocabulary

1. to win a landslide victory – одержать убедительную победуsyn. sweeping/overwhelming/ outright victory large majority – значительное большинствоant. slim majority – незначительное большинство absolute majority – абсолютное большинство simple majority – простое большинство two-thirds majority – большинство в две трети голосовto gain/muster/win a majority – получить большинствоfaction – фракция lame-duck president – президент, завершaющий свой второй,

последний срок пребывания на посту lame duck потерявший авторитет, влияние политик2. governing/ruling coalition – правящая коалиция

to resign – уходить в отставкуsyn. to step down, to quit, to stand downn. resignationto suffer a defeat – потерпеть поражениеbitter/heavy/crushing/landslide defeat – сокрушительное поражениеto run a nation – управлять странойto gain seats/to win seats in parliament – получить места в парламенте

3.to return a candidate – избрать кандидата

to concede (defeat) – признать поражениеsyn. to admit defeatn. concessionpopular vote – голоса избирателей (в отличие от electoral

vote – голоса выборщиков)provisional ballots – временные бюллетени

4. to extend presidential term – увеличить срок президентского правления

to put on agenda – поставить на повестку дняlegislature – законодательное собраниеto remain in office – оставаться в должности

5. to retain power – сохранить властьlower house elections – выборы в нижнюю палату

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to topple sb. – свергать к-лsyn. to overthrow

6. to formally declare sb. president – официально объявить к-л президентомinterim leader – временный президентinterim government – временное правительствоsyn. provisional/caretaker government caretaker – временно исполняющий обязанностиto accept the results – признать результаты

7. hung chamber/parliament – парламент, в котором ни одна из партий не имеет большинство

II. Translate the sentences paying attention to the underlined words and word combinations in italics.

A.1. All second-term presidents become lame ducks (though they seldom limp and quack

this early).2. Labour is heading for a historic third-term victory over the Conservatives with a

possible three-figure majority, according to the results of the Guardian/ICM eve-of-election survey.

3. If pyramids could fly, there might have been a chance of Hosni Mubarak, after 24 years as Egypt’s dictator, being voted out of pharaonic power in his country’s first-ever multi-candidate presidential election this week.

4. Blair presided over two landslide victories for Labour in 1997 and 2001 and appears poised, barring some extraterrestrial intervention, to win handily again.

5. Russia resents the role played by the security body OSCE in elections that helped return west-oriented presidents.

6. Tony Blair will embark today on a 72-hour blitz of marginal constituencies to try to halt an erosion of Labour’s majority that could leave him as a lame-duck Prime Minister for his final term.

7. Mr Lopez Obrador’s popularity helped his leftwing Party of the Democratic Revolution to a landslide victory in last month’s elections for Mexico City’s assembly.

8. Other key reforms are off the government's agenda because of its slim two-vote parliamentary majority, opposition from leftwing Social Democrats and the closeness of the next election.

9. In an unruly session of Parliament, Yanukovich's allies rejected the criticism, declaring their candidate would defeat the liberal challenger, Viktor Yushchenko, in the Nov. 21 contest. With returns from Sunday's first round nearly complete, Yanukovich, an advocate of closer ties with Russia, was nearly even with the West-leaning Yushchenko.

10. India's ruling Bharatiya Janata party yesterday won sweeping election victories in three of the country 's biggest states in a result that could profoundly affect the future of Indian politics.

11. Ralph Nader, the consumer advocate blamed by supporters of Al Gore for President Bush’s narrow victory in 2000, sent shivers through Democrats yesterday by announcing be would run for the White House again.

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12. Leaders of the main opposition Congress party, which had previously governed all three states, were in shock. But the party did retain power in New Delhi, India's capital, by a large majority.

13. Mr Duhalde has immense sway in Congress and in the recent elections increased his own bloc in the lower house to about 40 seats, thanks to an overwhelming victory in his native Buenos Aires province.

14. The Social Democrats took 30.5 per cent of the vote with the Christian Democrats polling 47.2 per cent to command an absolute majority in the Hamburg parliament.

15. He was freely and fairly elected twice in Haiti, and transferred power peaceably to his successor in 1996 – unique achievements in a land always governed by murderous dictators and military despots. He served from February 1991 until the military deposed him eight months later, finished his five-year term after the United States restored him in October 1994, and won re-election in 2000.

16. The Democratic Party gained just one seat, while the pro-democracy camp overall added three to reach a total of 25 seats, falling far short of the hoped-for majority.

17. The party beat even its own most optimistic expectations to capture almost 28 per cent of the vote, according to exit polls and early results. This was 5.2 percentage points ahead of the 22.5 per cent it gained in the last elections in 1999, when it became the dominant political force.

18. Now Mr Rove has guaranteed himself a place in the pantheon of Republican heroes. He saved Mr Bush from suffering his father’s fate as a one-term president and has given his boss a popular mandate and a far greater margin of victory than in 2000.

19. Gordon Brown and other senior ministers whom he consulted talked Mr Blair out a course of action which they argued would leave him as a lame duck leader and open the way to six months of internal Labour Party turmoil and bitter leadership contest.

20. Mr Wade, who is among the few African leaders to have arrived in power by defeating a sitting president at the ballot box , has been one of Nepad's (New Partnership for Africa’s Development) chief promoters.

21. The latest polls show that the party, whose only platform is to support Mr Putin's policies, is way ahead of all its rivals and will win a landslide victory on Sunday in the contest for 450 Duma seats.

22. Vojislav Kostunica, the law professor who led the putsch toppling Mr Milosevic three years ago, is favourite to become the next prime minister.

B.1. Today Germany, and Europe, are wondering whether Frau Merkel – if she can form a

government coalitian – really represent a fresh start or whether she will be an interim chancellor, a brief interruption in the country’s steep decline… In the coming weeks, the Germans will find out how much Maggie there is in Angie.

2. With his landslide majority, and the introduction of radical reform to limit debate, Mr Blair has effectively turned the Commons into a rubber stamp for Government legislation.

3. The danger of complacency for Labour is illustrated by the fact that nearly half of the party’s voters, 43%, expect them to win easily, compared with only 13% of Conservative supporters. Only 8% expect a hung parliament and even fower, 5% a Tory victory.

4. Romano Prodi, who hopes to replace Mr Berlusconi as prime minister, said the amendment was “tantamount to theft” and threatened to paralyse the legislature unless it was dropped.

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5. But the key issue is whether Frau Merkel can gain enough votes to secure the necessary absolute majority in tomorrow’s vote. She is pitted not only against the Social Democrats but also the Greens and the new Left party led by Oskar Lafontaine, the Chancellor’s arch-rival and former finance minister.

6. The decision to allow other candidates to stand against the 77-year-old leader, who has been returned unopposed in four previous elections, was prompted by pressure from Washington and mounting internal dissatisfaction with the Ruling Democratic Party.

7. But officials representing her rival in the Nov. 8 runoff, football superstar Geoge Weah, said he still refused to concede defeat.

8. The Social Democrats face 14 elections this year – state, local, regional, presidential and European – in which each defeat will signal a weakening of Herr Schröder’s grip on power.

9. Disillusionment among voters seems likely to produce a far lower turnout than the 67 per cent who turned out for a reformist landslide in the last parliamentary elections four years ago.

10. When Aznar was first elected president, in 1996, he was forced to govern in a coalition with regional parties. But four years ago, the Popular Party won an absolute majority and that appears to have fed an intransigence in dealing with regional leaders.

11. Analysts said that the democratic movement also suffered because of its poor planning and the idiosyncratic voting system, which ensures that no single party can win a majority of seats, even if it wins most votes.

12. A PP victory, though, is not assured. The Socialists, led by Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, won a majority of the popular vote in May's municipal and regional elections. Since then, embarrassing internal divisions have prevented their taking control of the Madrid region – where the election will be rerun next month – but they could still put up a fight next year. The PP will find it hard to repeat the absolute majority it achieved in 2000.

13. Everything Vladimir Putin does these days is perceived as a move to further consolidate his power. Certainly, he has no shortage of it, with a rubber-stamp Parliament in place and a certain landslide in the presidential election on March 14.

14. In this way Mr Chirac would keep ammunition in reserve for someone to run the executive until the current legislature ends in 2007.

15. Then the Conservatives delivered the prime minister another boost. Once among Europe's most formidable political operators, the Tories – who held office for almost two decades before Mr Blair's 1997 landslide win – have yet to rebuild themselves as a credible alternative. In two by-elections last month the party came third – despite a big swing against Labour.

16. The Conservatives are trailing far behind the Labour opposition in all polls and are widely expected to be voted out of office on May 1.

17. Mr Nader won a place on the ballot in 43 states and Washington DC four years ago, when Mr Bush won by such narrow margins in the crucial states of Florida and New Hampshire that Mr Gore would have won without Mr Nader's candidacy. Exit polls showed that almost half of Mr Nader's votes would otherwise have gone to the Democrats. In Florida, where the result was so close it had to be decided in court, Mr Nader won 97,488 votes while Mr Bush defeated Mr Gore by 537.

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18. However, Mr Chavez was yesterday basking in the international recognition of his controversial victory, with numerous international governments sending him messages of congratulations.

19. But the failure of Yabloko and the Union of Right forces to agree on a single candidate also shows the weakness of democratic forces in Russia and their lack of coordination, which was the main reason behind their defeat in the parliamentary elections.

20. Unofficial results from parliamentary elections in the former Yugoslav republic showed reformists had captured 59 per cent of parliamentary seats, enough to form a broad ruling coalition.

21. But if Mr Kwasniewski's nominee cannot muster a parliamentary majority, the likely result will be early elections.

22. European governments have decided to turn a blind eye to reports of systematic vote-rigging in Albania’s general election and in effect endorse the overwhelming but almost certainly fraudulent victory claimed by President S.B. and his Democratic Party.

III. Fill in the blanks with suitable words in the necessary form from the list given below:

a) early election results, a clear majority, wing, a landslide victory, seats (2), to speed reconciliation, to form a new government, general elections, to rule invalid, allies, presidential polls, ruling coalition’s

NATIONALISTS WIN CROATIA ELECTION

The nationalist Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ) yesterday celebrated (...) over the centrist government of Ivica Racan, the prime minister.

HDZ leaders quickly moved to assuage international concerns that a return to power by the party could injure effort (...) in the Balkans.

(...) showed the HDZ winning at least 65 (...) in Croatia's 160-seat parliament, more than twice (...) won by Mr Racan's Social Democrats, and more than his (...) five parties combined. But Mr Racan was quoted by local media late yesterday as saying his Social Democrats might still find a way to rule in coalition with moderate (...).

Without (...) in parliament, the HDZ needs coalition partners (...). Mr Zuzul, tipped to become Croatia's top diplomat in a HDZ-led cabinet, told the FT President Stjepan Mesic must invite the party to lead. "Anything else would be against the opinion of the Croatian people," he said.

The party's win continues a trend of electoral comebacks for Balkan nationalists. A week ago, a radical nationalist candidate prevailed in Serbian (...), later (...). Nationalists in Bosnia, including its (...) of the HDZ, took control after a strong showing in (...) a year ago.

But Mr Sanader and Mr Zuzul eschew the "nationalist" epithet, insisting: "Croatian national interests are best served within the EU."

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b) direct elections, hardcore, seats, electoral victory, pollsters, tally, to be contested, to contest, pundits, grassroots, turnout, allies, to resign, successor, cast ballots, Legislative

DEMOCRATS ROUT BEIJING FORCES AT HONG KONG POLLS

Hong Kong dealt a blow to China's communist leadership yesterday after democrats routed pro-Beijing forces in a stunning (...) in the former British colony.

In the first elections since huge anti-government demonstrations rocked the territory in July, the democrats delivered a big reverse for the embattled Hong Kong Government and its (...).

The humiliation of the Democratiс Alliance for the Betterment of Hong Kong (DАВ) has left pro-Beijing forces in disarray, with Tsang Yok-sing, the DAB leader, offering last night (...).

Yeung Sum, chairman of the Democratic Party (DP), said that the results reflected frustration with Tung Chee-hwa, the Hong Kong Chief Executive, and called for (...) for his (...) in 2007.

(...) and political (...) had widely predicted that the DAB would hold its vote because of its formidable (...) organisation and a (...) vote. But the elections to the district councils, which hold little real power, became a litmus test for the Government's popularity and people's democratic ambitions. A total of 1,065,363 voters (...) on Sunday, far outstripping the 816,503 who voted in 1999 and boosting (...) to 44 per cent, compared with 36 per cent four years ago.

The Democratic Party won 95 of 120 (...) that its candidates (...) in the district councils; the DAВ won just 64 of its 206 contests.

For the DP, this represented a nine-seat increase on 1999, while the DAB saw a slump of nearly 20 seats from its (...) of 83 seats four years ago. Of a total of 400 seats, only 326 (...).

The (…) Council, which is Hong Kong's parliament, is only partially elected and the Chief Executive is "elected" by a Beijing-appointed committee.

IV. Replace the words in brackets with their English equivalents in the necessary form:

a) (НАХОДЯЩИЕСЯ У ВЛАСТИ) SOCIALISTS IN GREECE (ПРИЗНАЮТ ПОРАЖЕНИЯ) IN NATIONAL ELECTIONS

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ATHENS: Greece's conservatives appeared victorious Sunday (на выборах в парламент) to determine who will steer the country through preparations for the Athens Olympics this summer and tricky (переговоры) with Turkey over the fate of Cyprus.

The Socialist leader (признал поражение) as (опросы общественного мнения при выходе с избирательных участков) broadcast by Greece's NET state television network gave (правоцентристская) New Democracy party 45.3 percent and the Panhellenic Socialist Movement, better known as Pasok, 41.5 percent.

Other (опросы) aired by private television stations gave the conservatives (отрыв) of as much as five percentage points. Yet with only a fraction of (бюллетени) counted, analysts said it was possible that Pasok could close the gap, but not enough to pull out a victory.

Greece's Socialist leader, George Papandreou (признал поражение).The vote ended Pasok's decade-long control of the country and was

another snub against socialist governments in Europe. (Явка избирателей) appeared to be (высокая), as millions of Greeks

defied frosty-temperatures, some traveling to remote hamlets and islands (чтобы проголосовать).

Thousands of overseas Greeks also returned to vote in their ancestoral birthplaces in what analysts called one of the most crucial (предвыборные гонки) since the fall of the military junta in 1974.

Ultimately, the choice Greeks faced was one between the scions of two political dynasties that have dominated the country for decades.

"Today, we decide on our future," said Costas Caramanlis, leader of New Democracy and nephew of (бывший премьер-министр) who restored democracy after (падение, крах) of a seven-year military dictatorship in 1974.

b)URUGUAY SOCIALISTS WIN HISTORIC POLL

Montevideo, Uruguay – Uruguay's left celebrated its first (победа на президентских выводах) into the wee hours Monday while (предварительные результаты выборов) indicated Tabare Vazquez would win and his main (соперники) (признали поражение по результатам опроса общественного мнения при выходе с избирательных участков).

With half of the votes (подсчитаны), the charismatic 64-year-old doctor was just short of the 50 percent needed to win in (первый тур выборов) Sunday. But he should surpass that level when more votes come in from the capital Montevideo, his stronghold and home to half of the country's voters.

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Backed by encouraging (опросы общественного мнения) and projections, Vazquez (объявил себя победителем) a few hours after compulsory voting ended in the nation of 3.4 million.

By electing Vazquez, Uruguay joins the ranks of South American nations – Brazil, Argentina, Chile and Venezuela – which have chosen left-leaning leaders on platforms of poverty alleviation after a decade of U.S.-backed free-market policies that often ended in economic chaos.

Vazquez's Broad Front coalition – including Socialists, Communists, Social Democrats and a hugely popular former (партизанское движение) – was also headed toward (большинство) in both houses of Congress.

The election marked a radical departure from the last 170 years of rule by the two traditional parties, the Colorados and Blancos, blamed for aggravating the 1999-2003 crisis and destroying social benefits envied by the rest of Latin America.

(Правоцентристская) National Party or Blanco candidate Jorge Larranaga had 38 percent of the vote, while Guillermo Stirling of the centrist ruling Colorado Party (показал худший результат) with 11 percent. Both (признали поражение) and (исключили необходимость проведения второго тура).

V. Translate the headlines:

A.

1. KOIZUMI WINS HIS GAMBLE WITH A LANDSLIDE2. KERRY’S ARMY IS LEFT BRUISED AND BAFFLED BY KNIFE-

EDGE DEFEAT.3. EX-DICTATOR PICKED AS BENIN PRESIDENT4. BATTLING UK PREMIER LOOKS TO THIRD POLL WIN5. SWISS FAR-RIGHT POLL SUCCESS SET TO STRAIN TIES WITH

EU6. HAIDER SETS SIGHTS ON AN ELECTORAL VICTORY7. BEIJING’S ELECTION TRIUMPH FORCES RETHINK8. BUSH SEALS SECOND TERM9. KUWAITI VOTE LIKELY TO GIVE GOVERNMENT A MAJORITY10. NICARAGUA POLL RESULTS DELAY11. MUBARAK’S PARTY WINS BIG MAJORITY IN RUNOFF

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B.

1. MUBARAK SECURES 88% OF EGYPT VOTE2. VICTOR VOWS TO REMAKE JAPAN3. BUSH AND KERRY PIN HOPES ON A CLEAR VICTORY4. SCHRÖDER IS ROCKED BY HAMBURG ELECTION FIASCO5. HAIDER’S STAR ASCENDS WITH VICTORY IN AUSTRIA6. NICARAGUA’S RIGHT HAILS POLL VICTORY7. SCHRÖDER BLAMES REFORMS FOR DEFEAT8. PUTIN’S POWER PLAY FOR BIG ELECTION VICTORY9. INCUMBENT SOCIALISTS CONCEDE DEFEAT10. BUSH BACK INTO THE WHITE HOUSE11. MODERATES CLAIM A BIG VICTORY IN POLLS

VI. Render into English.

a)Хамид Карзай был объявлен победителем президентских выборов,

прошедших 9 октября этого года. По официальным данным, за тогда еще временного президента страны проголосовало более 60% избирателей. Его ближайший конкурент, министр образования Юнус Кануни, набрал всего 18%. Противники Карзая попытались опротестовать итоги выборов, указывая на многочисленные нарушения в ходе голосования и подсчета голосов, однако потом почти все они отказались от претензий, а специально созданная для проверки международная комиссия сочла обнаруженные нарушения несерьезными и признала результаты выборов.

b) АМЕРИКА ВЫБРАЛА

В 6.00 по вашингтонскому времени руководитель аппарата Белого дома Энди Кард объявил о победе Джорджа Буша. Джон Керри тогда еще надеялся, что избиратели Огайо все-таки предпочли его, а не Буша. Но в полдень он признал поражение и заявил, что страна «слишком расколота» и раскол не следует углублять.

В целом по стране Буш обошел Керри на 3% (51% против 48%), или примерно 3,5 млн голосов (58,6 млн против 55,1 млн).

Уже ночью было известно, что Буш победил в 28 штатах, консолидировав 254 голоса выборщиков, а Керри «взял» 19 штатов и Колумбию, совокупно дающих 252 голоса.

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Однако окончательно итоги выборов решились в штате Огайо (20 голосов выборщиков). На 20.00 МСК Буш опережал там Керри примерно на 138 000. Но демократы долгое время заявляли, что еще не все голоса в штате подсчитаны и у их кандидата есть шанс на победу. Также не были подсчитаны голоса в штатах Айова (семь голосов) и Нью-Мексико (пять голосов). Но результат в этих штатах уже не мог повлиять на исход выборов: 12 их голосов не давали ни Бушу ни Керри в сумме с уже собранными необходимых 270.

В 2000 г. Буш одержал победу в 30 штатах и собрал 271 голос. Всего за него проголосовало 50,4 млн избирателей, а Гор, хотя и получил в целом 50,9 млн голосов, имел в коллегии только 266 голосов. Ключевым штатом тогда была Флорида, результаты выборов в которой посчитывали и оспаривали в судах четыре недели.

c) БЛЭРОВА ПОБЕДАДля лидера лейбористов Тони Блэра победа на выборах может

стать пирровой: даже многие соратники стремятся отправить британского премьера на покой.

Уже к утру 6 мая, дню рождения премьер-министра Тони Блэра, стало ясно, что в предшествующие сутки британцы оставили его на прежней работе. Лейбористская партия впервые в истории выиграла парламентские выборы третий раз подряд, и именно ей предстоит сформировать правительство страны на предстоящие четыре года. Сам именинник войдет в историю как первый лидер лейбористов, оставшийся на своем посту на третий срок. Тони Блэр имеет шанс побить рекорд бывшего лидера консерваторов Маргарет Тэтчер, пребывавшей у власти одиннадцать с половиной лет. Если он, конечно, не решит досрочно передать бразды правления более популярному и в стане лейбористов, и в стране министру финансов Гордону Брауну. Основания для этого имеются – война в Ираке и прочие непопулярные решения Блэра привели к падению его личного рейтинга и стоили партии нескольких десятков мест в палате общин.

Из 646 мест лейбористы получили 354. Лейбористы потеряли 47 кресел в нижней палате, и теперь им будет гораздо сложнее проводить свои законодательные инициативы. Многие из традиционных сторонников партии разочарованы решением Блэра ввязаться в крайне непопулярную в Британии иракскую кампанию. Некоторые эксперты и вовсе уверены, что для действующего премьера эта победа – пиррова: не слишком убедительные результаты на выборах могут заставить его уже в ближайшее время покинуть пост лидера лейбористов и главы британского правительства.

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Консерваторы, напротив, заметно укрепили свои позиции в парламенте: они получили 197 мест, отобрав часть мандатов у лейбористов и либерал-демократов (четыре года назад у консерваторов было 166 мест). Тем не менее лидер консерваторов Майкл Говард уже объявил о своей отставке. Либерал-демократы увеличили свое присутствие в парламенте на 11 мест, теперь их 62.

VII. Comment on the cartoon.

a) b)

“No need to leave your towel. The Germans are all watching the election”

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§ 6. TAKING OFFICE OR STEPPING DOWN. CABINET RESHUFFLE

I. A. Read and translate the articles with the help of the Active Vocabulary list.

B. Pay special attention to the Passive Voice and the Subjunctive Mood.C. Identify the translation difficulties put in italics and comment on them.

1. YUSHCHENKO TO BE SWORN INTO OFFICE ON SUNDAYKiev – Parliament voted Thursday to hold President-elect Viktor Yushchenko’s

inauguration this coming Sunday, setting the stage for the transition to a new government for Ukraine following months of divisive political crisis.

President Vladimir Putin, who had supported his opponent Viktor Yanukovych during the election campaign, congratulated Yushchenko, whose office swiftly announced he would visit Moscow just a day after the inauguration. Yushchenko had indicated earlier that his first foreign visit as president would be to Russia, but the timing suggested a strong desire to smooth relations with Ukraine's giant, economically critical neighbor even as he pushes for closer integration with Western Europe.

Yushchenko's spokeswoman said the visit to Moscow would be followed a day later by a trip to Strasbourg, France, to address the European Parliament.

The inauguration is35 to begin with Yushchenko taking the oath of office in the Verkhovna Rada, the parliament, followed by a military ceremony at Mariinsky Palace, the presidential ceremonial building.

Then, in what is likely to be the emotional highlight of the day, Yushchenko will make a speech at Independence Square, the center of the huge demonstrations that broke out after the Nov. 21 election in which he was declared the loser.

The November election results were annulled 36by the Supreme Court amid evidence of massive vote fraud, and Yushchenko won the Dec. 26 rerun.

Before dawn Thursday, the Supreme Court rejected an appeal of last month's election by Yanukovych, saying there was insufficient evidence to support his claim that millions of citizens were deprived of their right to vote.

Yanukovych representative Nestor Shufrich said the loser’s camp would appeal to the European Court of Human Rights, an attempt to undermine Yushchenko’s standing among the Western European countries he aims to court for integration into the European Union.

2. NEW LEADER OF GREECE OFFERS AGENDAAthens: Prime Minister-elect Costas Caramanlis on Monday began forming a

conservative administration that will try to balance pledges to make government smaller with promises of generous social spending.

"I want to underline that the people trusted us with their confidence," Caramanlis said after President Costis Stephanopoulos gave him the mandate to form a government. "Our responsibilities are very great, and we are obliged to respond to their expectations. We start work immediately."

35 См. : Гуськова Т.И., Зиборова Г.М. Трудности перевода. – М., 2000. Модальный глагол to be, стр.76.36 См.: Гуськова Т. И., Зиборова Г.М. Трудности перевода. – М., 2000. Страдательный залог, стр.56-57

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A few moments earlier, Costas Simitis, the Socialist prime minister, offered his resignation to Stephanopoulos. He will stay on as caretaker until a new government is sworn in on Wednesday. Caramanlis said he would announce his new cabinet on Tuesday.

With more than 99 percent of the vote counted, Caramanlis's New Democracy Party defeated the Socialists by 45.38 percent to 40.56 percent. George Papandreou, the departing foreign minister, led the Socialists' campaign.

The result gave New Democracy 165 seats in the 300-member Parliament. The Socialists won 117 seats, Greece's Communist Party got 12 and the Coalition of the Radical Left won 6 seats.

Caramanlis has pledged an administration smaller than the Socialist cabinet that has governed Greece for the past 11 years. Made up of 19 ministries and 50 cabinet members, that government was considered unwieldy. Caramanlis has promised to slash red tape, reduce and simplify taxes, and cut an unemployment rate of about 9 percent. He has also pledged more funds for social welfare, education and health.

Other promises include cleaning up public finances, tainted by allegations of corruption under the Socialists, by appointing corporate-style managers at government agencies and creating an independent authority to oversee state contracts.

3. SINGAPORE'S INCOMING PRIME MINISTER KEEPS OLD GUARD IN CABINET

Lee Hsien Loong, Singapore's incoming prime minister, yesterday dashed hopes of a sweeping cabinet reshuffle as he opted for keeping old guard officials.

Analysts said the new cabinet might be seen as a transition one before Mr Lee seeks his own electoral mandate as early as next year.

Mr Lee, 52, who will be sworn in tomorrow, has faced criticism that his rise was helped by his being the son of Lee Kuan Yew, the city-state's founding father.

"Lee may have decided to hold off on an extensive cabinet reshuffle until he proves he has popular backing with a convincing election victory," said an analyst.

Although the long-ruling People's Action party is virtually certain to win the next election, attention will focus on the percentage of votes the new government receives. The last election produced 75 per cent support for the PAP government under Goh Chok Tong, Mr Lee's popular predecessor.

In an apparent effort to defuse suggestions that Singapore is being governed by a Lee dynasty, the elder Mr Lee, 80, has stepped down as senior minister and will be replaced by Mr Goh. But he will remain in the cabinet as "minister mentor" and rank third in the hierarchy.

Mr Goh will also take over as central bank governor from his successor, who will retain his finance ministry portfolio in addition to being prime minister.

Although most political analysts expect no big policy changes, challenges facing the new government faces include increased competition from China and India for foreign direct investment, a declining birth rate and a better-educated population that might be less willing to accept Singapore's tough political and social controls.

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4. HUNGARY COALITION CLOSE TO COLLAPSE OVER CABINET DISPUTE

Hungary's ruling coalition was on the verge of collapse last night after Peter Medgyessy, prime minister, moved to sack a member of his cabinet belonging to the junior coalition partner, the liberal Free Democrat party.

The Free Democrats refused to accept the dismissal of Istvan Csillag, economy minister, or to nominate a replacement, saying they would demand negotiations today with the Socialist party, the senior partners in the centre-left government.

Mr Medgyessy held talks with the Free Democrats yesterday where the liberal party made clear its backing of Mr Csillag. Still Mr Medgyessy demanded the resignation in a press conference. Gabor Kuncze, Free Democrat president, responded by saying his confidence in the prime minister had been shaken.

Should37 the coalition crumble, Mr Medgyessy and the Socialists could continue as a minority government until the end of the parliamentary cycle in 2006.

It would38, however, represent the first failure to maintain a majority since the collapse of communism in 1989.

"Hungarian voters have never faced this type of crisis before," said Krisztian Szabados of Political Capital, a political consulting company in Budapest. "If the coalition falls it would damage the credibility of both parties."

Ruling as a minority government would also significantly hurt the Socialists' ability to pass legislation.

The announcement by Mr Medgyessy, who is a member of neither party, was part of a wider government shake-up that had been in the works since the Socialists were defeated in June's European elections by the conservative Fidesz party.

The economy portfolio is considered a key position because it controls a substantial budget.

Optional texts

5. AZNAR HANGS UP HIS LEGISLATIVE BOOTS King Juan Carlos dissolved Spain's parliament last night, ending eight years of

rightwing government by the prime minister, Jose Maria Aznar, and sounding the starting gun for a March general election.

The exit of Mr Aznar, who has kept his promise not to run for more than two consecutive terms of office, will be a loss to both Tony Blair and George Bush, for whom he has been a close European ally.

The friendship with Mr Blair goes back to 1998, when his family went on holiday with the Aznars in Spain's Donana national park. Despite apparently coming from opposite sides of the political spectrum, the two men hit it off and their advisers declared that there was "chemistry" at work.

That chemistry showed in several joint attempts to push economic reform of the European Union, and in the formation of an informal alliance against the combined weight of France and Germany.

It reached its highest point in the run up to the Iraq war, when Mr Aznar stood side by side with Mr Blair and Mr Bush in arguing that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of 37 См.: Гуськова Т. И., Зиборова Г.М. Трудности перевода. – М., 2000. Сослагательное наклонение, придаточные предложения условия с формой should, стр. 6238 См.: Гуськова Т. И., Зиборова Г.М. Трудности перевода. – М., 2000. Сослагательное наклонение, форма would, стр.60

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mass destruction, and that Iraq should be invaded if he did not give them up. Like Mr Blair and Mr Bush, the Spanish leader has since been unrepentant about the failure to uncover any such weapons.

Mr Aznar remains acting prime minister until a new government is formed. His successor as party leader is the deputy prime minister Mariano Kajoy.

6. HOLLOW VICTORY FOR GERMANY'S THATCHER BRINGS CHAOS TO EUROPE

Germany faced political paralysis last night after its voters failed to give Angela Merkel the resounding victory she needed to form a strong conservative government.

Exit polls showed her Christian Democrats beating Gerhard Schroder's Social Democrats, but with a lead so slender that she will be unable to form the ruling coalition she had hoped for with the pro-business Free Democratic Party. The most likely outcome from the intense horse-trading that will begin today is a "Grand Coalition" of the Christian and Social Democrats, with Frau Merkel emerging as Germany's first woman chancellor but her plans for radical economic reform in tatters.

The results were a huge disappointment for Frau Merkel, who had hoped to poll over 40 per cent but who fought a lacklustre campaign. The woman once hailed as Germany's Margaret Thatcher was a lonely victor, visibly depressed when she faced her supporters. She conceded that she had "obviously wished for a better result", but stressed that Herr Schröder's party had been voted out of power and said she would negotiate with every other party except the Left Party. Herr Schröder, who had seemed to be heading for a crushing defeat just a few weeks ago, called the result a personal defeat for Frau Merkel and claimed that his barnstorming campaign had achieved what had seemed "completely impossible".

Yesterday's results came as a blow to those like Tony Blair who were quietly hoping that a convincing Merkel victory would reshape Europe and reinvigorate the continent's largest economy. Germany has the slowest growth in the EU and over five million unemployed.

Even if she is able to form a "Grand Coalition", her ability to overhaul Germany's cumbersome labour laws, her desire to build closer relations with the United States and her willingness to embrace reform of the European Union would be greatly curtailed by her left-of-centre partners.

Critics describe such an alignment – tried only once before, in 1966 – as a recipe for disaster.

The confused result – in essence a vote against any drastic change – is forcing all parties to reshuffle their cards. The initiative, however, remains with Frau Merkel. Her party was 1.5 per cent ahead of the Social Democrats and she has priority in forming a new government.

7. I CAN SERVE A FULL TERM, INSISTS BLAIRTony Blair insisted yesterday that he intends to stay on as Prime Minister for a full

third term if he wins the election. He hinted that when the time came he would announce his impending departure and

then stay in his job while the party elected his successor. "Under Labour rules there is nothing that says you cannot serve a full term, but we have to have a transition and a handover," he said.

The view at Westminster remains that Mr Blair will go in the second half of the next Parliament. The timing will be designed to give his successor, almost certainly Gordon

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Brown, enough leeway to get his feet under the table but also to enjoy a voter honeymoon before the next election.

In an interview on the ВВС Radio 4 Today programme, Mr Blair conceded that there would be a handover period for his successor to take control but appeared reluctant to say when that would be. He admitted that his reputation had suffered "wear and tear" from criticism over Iraq but said that he wanted to remain as the party leader to push the party's agenda forward.

Active Vocabulary

1. President-elect – вновь избранный президентto be sworn into office / to be sworn in – давать присягу при вступлении в

должностьsyn. to take the oath of officeinauguration – инаугурация, церемония вступления в

должность

2. to offer/ tender one’s resignation – подать прошение об отставкеto announce a new cabinet – объявить состав нового кабинетаagenda – повестка дня; программа (партии,

правительства)

3. cabinet reshuffle – перестановка, изменения в составе кабинета министров

syn. shake-uptransition (transitional) cabinet/government –

правительство переходного периода

to seek a mandate – добиваться получения мандатаto retain a portfolio – сохранить должность министра

4. to collapse/to crumble over sth – распадаться, разваливаться из-за ч-лto sack sb – снять с поста, отстранить от должности,

уволитьsyn. to dismiss, to fireto dismiss the Cabinet –ant. to appoint a Cabinet

отправить в отставку, распустить кабинет министров

n. dismissal/sacking – отстранение от должности, увольнение minority government – правительство меньшинства

5. to dissolve a parliament – распустить парламентn. dissolution – роспускtwo consecutive terms of office – два срока пребывания в должности

подрядacting prime minister – исполняющий обязанности премьер-

министра

6. horse-trading – политическая сделка; переговоры между партнерами по коалиции

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lackluster campaign – тусклая, скучная кампания

to barnstorm – выезжать в агитационную поездку на места; произносить речи на местных собраниях

7..to hand over power – передавать властьhandover – передача (полномочий, дел и т.д.)honeymoon – зд. первоначальный гармоничный период

новых отношений

II. Translate the sentences paying attention to the underlined words, words and word combinations in italics.

A. a)1. In Britain, with its first-past-the-post system, Ms Merkel would now be forming her

government, and grooming herself as a German version of Margaret Thatcher.2. Mr Ivanov has long been a contender but Mr Medvedev may now be the favourite.

Compared with Mr Ivanov (who speaks good English but has the soul of a cold warrior), Mr Medvedev (who has a reputation as a pragmatic administrator), would be more palatable to the West.

3. Should they win, CDU chairwoman Angela Merkel would be the next chancellor.4. Gerhard Schröder, the German Chancellor, was dealt a devastating blow in

Hamburg's city-state elections yesterday, the first ballot box test in a year that looks set to be his annus horribilis.

5. With Bolivia’s political paries weak and discredited and new radical Indian movements fractured among themselves, it is not clear who can govern Bolivia should Senor Mesa go.

6. Blair's popularity has been further eroded by his close relationship with U.S. President George W. Bush and the perception that he slavishly follows Washington's foreign policy without exerting any real influence.

7. Junichiro Koizumi, the Prime Minister, dissolved parliament last month after his proposal to privatise postal services was voted down in the upper house of the Japanese Diet.

8. Mr Tung, 67, was handpicked by Beijing to become Hong Kong's first leader after the colony was returned to China in 1997, but the former shipping tycoon quickly lost public support. He was hit by successive recessions caused by the Asian financial slump.

9. Most allegations of this type are centred on minority communities, especially in large urban areas. Other allegations made have related to apparent dual or multiple voting and votes being cast by electors known to be away from the UK.

10. Speculation that he might be forced to stand down was fuelled by a report that suggested he had pledged to resign if he felt he had become a liability to the Labour Party.

11. Mr Koizumi has promised to step down should his coalition fail to win the required 241 seats to govern unchallenged.

12. Asked whether he had been sacked by the Chinese leadership he said: "That is not the case at all."

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13. Charismatic and sometimes brash, Schröder often seemed to navigate without a vision. He announced with fanfare his plan for economic and social reforms, known as Agenda 2010, but failed to articulate why Germans should endure cutbacks to their generous social welfare state.

b)

1. Incoming Singapore prime minister Lee Hsien Loong opted to keep old guard officials, dashing hopes of a cabinet reshuffle.

2. However, many fear that the new generation of politicians taking over from Mr Shevardnadze lack the experience to rein in separatist conflicts raging on the territory of the tiny Caucasian state.

3. Kim Jong-il, North Korea's dictator, yesterday staged a rare cabinet reshuffle, replacing several top officials with younger men in an apparent attempt to strengthen his power base.

4. The president acted after prime minister Leszek Miller said last week that he planned to resign on May 2, the day after Poland joins the European Union, following the splintering of his unpopular ruling Democratic Left Alliance (SLD).

5. Mr Martin, who came to power in December after edging his predecessor Jean Chrétien out of the Liberal leadership, has been itching to secure his own mandate.

6. In his letter of resignation, read at a news conference Sunday morning by Neptune, Aristide said he had chosen to resign to prevent further bloodshed in an armed uprising that has killed as many as 100 people and to ensure that the new government would conform with the Haitian Constitution.

7. Sri Lanka's political parties were urged by the country's President last night to join her in forming a national government in her ongoing power struggle with Ranil Wickremesinghe, the Prime Minister, which threatens the country's fragile peace process.

8. The prime minister, whose Congress-led coalition took power in May in an unexpected victory over its Hindu nationalist-led predecessor, struck a marked change in tone from Atal Behari Vajpayee, the former prime minister.

9. Eduard Shevardnadze resigned as President of Georgia after mass protests accused him of economic mismanagement and vote-rigging. Other ministers resigned too.

10. The Liberian Government and two rebel groups agreed at talks in Ghana to allow aid into all parts of Liberia and to ensure the safety of aid workers. Negotiations on the interim government stalled after the rebels were told that they could not have any of the top four posts.

11. Under a US-backed plan, Mr Latortue was to name some cabinet members yesterday to help form a transitional government, uniting former enemies from Mr Aristide's party with an opposition coalition. But the only names put forward as sure winners so far are anti-Aristide.

12. Argentina’s new political map fell into sharp focus this week as votes were counted in the last of a batch of regional elections and senators-elect were preparing to be sworn into office today.

13. Mahmoud Abbas, who succeeded Arafat as leader of the Palestine Liberation Organization and who is the candidate of the largest Palestinian faction, Fatah, is widely expected to win in a field of seven. The only real challenger to Abbas, 69 and known as Abu Mazen, is a medical doctor and aid worker named Mustafa Barghouti.

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14. The irony that the Chancellor, who has long been impatient to take over from Mr Blair, advised him against an early decision to quit has not been lost on senior ministers or Mr Brown's close allies.

B1. Parliament will this week become the scene of frantic forse-trading with more than

half the government's legislative programme likely to be lost as the opposition parties exploit Tony Blair's determination to go the the polls on May 5.

2. Germany's president, Horst Köhler, set the stage last night for early elections on September 18 when he announced he would dissolve parliament following a vote of no confidence in the government of the chancellor, Gerhard Schröder.

3. Bitter personal rivalries between the leaders of Ukraine's "orange revolution" forced Viktor Yushchenko to sack his government yesterday, plunging the country into fresh political crisis.

4. Mr Yushchenko said he had asked his old friend and ally Yuri Yekhanurov, a veteran government official with a record of avoiding political confrontations, to take over as acting prime minister and form a new cabinet.

5. After announcing the cabinet's dismissal, Mr Yushchenko admitted his failure to reconcile the two rival camps in his administration.

6. After a short honeymoon, the ruling coalition will begin its horse-trading, haggling over ministerial posts.

7. Speculation is rife that Blair will visit Buckingham Palace and ask Queen Elizabeth II to dissolve Parliament, triggering a four-week campaign ending with a vote on May 5.

8. Yanukovych is the choice of outgoing President Leonid Kuchma to succeed him, and has received the implicit backing of President Putin in several high-profile public appearances.

9. Carlos Mesa, Bolivia’s new president, went straight to work assembling a new cabinet yesterday, less than 48 hours after Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozoda tendered his resignation and fled the country for Miami.

10. The current president, Johannes Rau, 73, a longtime Social Democrat, is at the end of his five-year term of office . His successor will be elected May 23.

11. Mariamo Rajoy, the Spanish deputy prime minister and government spokesman, was confirmed yesterday as the Popular party candidate for prime minister, formally ratifying the nomination made by José Maria Aznar, who will step down after general elections in March.

12. The Christian Democrat mayor, Ole von Beust, called early elections after his government collapsed in December because of in-fighting with its coalition partner.

13. Mr Macapagal, who moved from the vice-presidency to the top job in 2001 when her predecessor, Joseph Estrada, was ousted in a corruption scandal, has fuelled the political debate by refusing to confirm a previous promise not to stand for president in elections next May.

14. President Jacques Chirac refused to be hurried yesterday into a reshuffle of the Raffarin government in the wake of Sunday's disastrous performance in France's regional elections, which saw sweeping gains by the leftwing opposition.

15. Ahmed Qurei, the veteran politician nominated to take over as Palestinian prime minister, yesterday demanded international guarantees of support for the peace process before be accepted the post.

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16. The commission was set up by the old US-led occupation authority that predated Iyad Allawi’s interim Government.

17. Haiti's new prime minister met political leaders yesterday to form a new cabinet as a rift deepened over Jamaica playing host to Jean-Bertrand Aristide, the ousted president whose return to the Caribbean threatened more violent protests.

18. To avoid a showdown that could have led to the immediate collapse of Mr Abbas’s government, parliament bowed to US pressure and dropped plans for a vote of confidence.

19. The shakeup , ordered by President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday, will reorganize the government into a three-tier system of ministries, services and agencies.

20. The chief justice of the Haitian Supreme Court, Boniface Alexandre, was sworn in as the head of a transitional government until elections in 2005, following a succession process that is outlined in Haiti's Constitution, and Prime Minister Yvon Neptune will retain his post until new elections are held.

C.1. Italy has had a hybrid system, in which three-quarters of the seats in both chambers

are won on a "first-past-the-post" basis, with the remainder decided by proportional representation. The PR vote is subject to a 4% threshold meant to keep tiny parties out of parliament (they tend to get in all the same, because, in the horse-trading to form broad alliances of right and left, bigger parties win over smaller ones by giving them safe seats decided by majority vote).

2. Mr Bush recently accepted the resignation of Mr Scowcroft, an increasingly outspoken critic of administration policies, as head of his foreign intelligence advisory board. It is not clear whether the president removed him or the former general decided to go.

3. The Republican-controlled Senate was convening later, with confirmation of the first of Bush’s second-term Cabinet offices on the agenda .

4. A. A., the Liberal Alliance candidate, proclaimed himself president-elect of Nicaragua yesterday, after early returns from Sunday’s general election put him ahead of D. O. by a substantial margin.

5. If Mr Rajoy does not win an absolute majority the Socialists could in theory try to form a coalition with a wide range of parties, including the communist-led coalition of left-wing parties and the Basque and Catalan separatists.

6. Defense Minister Serjei Ivanov, a hard-liner, retained his job. A collegue of Putin from their days in the security services, Ivanov is seen as a possible heir to the presidency in 2008, when Putin is required to step down after two terms of office.

7. Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada was expected last night to stand down as president of Bolivia, after bowing to a massive popular revolt which threatened to tip the country into anarchy. Government officials said the president, who took office just over a year ago, had formally said farewell to army commanders and close political allies.

8. Initial results of an opinion poll in southern Iraq suggest that Iyad Allawi, the secular leaning interim prime minister, could prove an unexpected rival to an Islamist-backed list for the votes of the country's Shia majority.

9. Newly sworn in, Bush offered an implied rebuttal to critics of his foreign policy and the war in Iraq.

10. S. A. was sworn in yesterday as Bangladesh’s 14th president, pledging to strengthen democracy and bring together the country’s bitter political rivals.

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11. After the reshuffle that abolished some ministries and merged others, 17 ministers now sit in on Cabinet meetings, compared with 30 previously.

12. Voting is compulsory in Greece, the poorest EU member state which the outgoing Socialist prime minister, Costas Simitis, steered into the eurozone in 2001.

13. Mr Roh cited the scandal as the main reason for his decision last week to call a referendum on his leadership and resign if he failed to secure a confidence vote.

14. Provincial governors and several members of Mr Khatami's cabinet have threatened to resign if the ban is not lifted.

15. Naoto Kan, leader of the Democratic party of Japan, the country's main opposition party, has resigned in a severe setback for a party that had just begun to emerge as a credible second force in Japanese politics.

16. John Redwood was unexpectedly brought back into frontline politics last night by a reshuffle in which Michael Howard shifted his Shadow Cabinet to the right.

17. Vojislav Kostunica, the law professor who won the Yugoslav presidency with Mr Milosevic's ousting but later lost it in Yugoslavia's final dissolution, is a strong contender to be the next prime minister.

18. The incoming Czech government, due to ask for a vote of confidence on Tuesday, plans piecemeal rather than radical reform according to Martin Jahn, the new deputy premier for the economy.

19. Mr Kim replaced his prime minister, two of his three deputy premiers and five ministers in what South Korean reports said was the most far-reaching government shake-up for five years.

20. Anneli Jaatteenmaki, the former prime minister of Finland who stepped down in June, denied any wrongdoing as she went on trial on Wednesday on charges of illegally obtaining secret documents that she used to win the election last year.

21. Analysts are unsure how the next government will be formed. Three consecutive failed presidential elections have left Serbia without the leader who, by tradition and law, designates the next prime minister.

22. After offering his resignation to President Ciampi, Signor Berlusconi, looking drawn, said that consultations on reshuffling his coaliton would begin today and should be completed by midday tomorrow. The new Government will then face a vote of confidence in Parliament.

III. Fill in the blanks with suitable words in the necessary form from the list given below:

a) to appoint, to resign, to win a majority, to reject, to be held, to form a government, breakaway, parliamentary elections, a coalition (2), to be split, poll.

CYPRUS (...) DIVIDES PARLIAMENT

Nicosia: Dervis Eroglu, Prime Minister of the (...) Turkish republic of Cyprus, (...) yesterday, two days after (...). President Denktas will now (...) a new prime minister to try (...). No party (...) in the 50-seat parliament and the allocation of seats is forcing at least a three-party (...).

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The parliament (...) between pro-European Union parties and those who reject a UN-proposed reunification plan. Each camp has 25 seats. Mr Denktas (...) the UN plan this year. If (...) cannot be formed, new elections will have (...) within 60 days.

b) members of parliament, successor (2), to take office, to succeed, polls, a cabinet reshuffle, parliamentary seats, deputy prime minister, to retain, to approve, hand over, to hand over power, to step down, to resign, to be appointed.

SINGAPORE'S PM SEEKS TO CURB (…)'S POWERS

Goh Chok Tong confirmed he would (…) as Singapore's prime minister this year but not before placing potential checks on the powers of his (…).

The moves come amid concerns about the increased concentration of power among family members of Lee Kuan Yew, modern Singapore's founding father.

Mr Goh is expected (…) by Lee Hsien Loong, Kuan Yew's son, while his wife, Ho Ching, is already head of Temasek Holdings, the powerful state investment agency that controls most of the city-state's leading companies and is emerging as a formidable investor in the region.

Mr Goh told Singapore's Straits Times newspaper that he wanted to introduce a system where (…) affiliated to the long-ruling People's Action party (PAP), which holds all but two (…), must first (…) the prime minister before he (…).

Mr Goh has been popular in Singapore, but informal internet (…) suggest that public support for Mr Lee is lukewarm because he is regarded as an aloof figure who lacks a populist touch.

The prime minister said he would conduct (…) before he (…), which some analysts believe indicates that he wants (…) influence in the new government under Mr Lee.

Mr Goh is also expected (…) to the advisory post of senior minister in the new government, a post that is also held by Lee Kuan Yew.

Mr Goh refused to name a (…) date, since he said he still had "important jobs" to complete, including a series of meetings with foreign leaders such as President George W. Bush in the next few months.

Mr Goh, prime minister since 1990, said in December he would (…) to Mr Lee if the economy expanded by at least 3 per cent in the first quarter of 2004, which would signal a long-awaited recovery. The economy grew by 7.3 per cent, according to the latest government data.

The younger Mr Lee is now (…), finance minister and central bank chairman.

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c) interim administration; caucuses; to take over; fair and transparent elections; direct elections; transitional; to hand over; early.

SHIA LEADER INSISTS ON (...) DIRECT ELECTIONSIraq's most senior Shia cleric declared his opposition yesterday to

America's latest plan (...) sovereignty to an appointed (...) this June. Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, who is revered by Iraq's Shia majority and has forced changes to previous American plans, instead demanded full democratic elections to a new assembly - a move that could wreck President Bush's hopes of starting to withdraw American troops from Iraq before the presidential election in the United States in November.

The coalition wants regional (...) to select a (...) assembly by late May, which will then select an interim government (...) the reins of power. A new constitution and full elections would follow in 2005.

But Ayatollah Sistani, speaking in the holy city of Najaf after rejecting entreaties from visiting members of the United States-appointed Iraqi Governing Council, insisted that there was no reason why elections should not be held much sooner. "Experts think it is possible to organise (...) in the coming months," he said. The Shias, who represent 60 per cent of Iraq's population, would clearly benefit most from (...).

IV. Replace the words in brackets with their English equivalents in the necessary form:a)

CANADIAN (ВИЦЕ-ПРЕМЬЕР ПОКИДАЕТ ПОЛИТИКУ)John Manley, Canada's finance minister and (вице-премьер),

(покидает политику), in a move which heralds (существенные изменения) in the federal cabinet.

Mr Manley, who has also served as foreign minister in a 15-year political career, said he was leaving politics to pursue "other challenges".

He denied that he was leaving because (вступающий в должность премьер-министр), Paul Martin, had not offered him a sufficiently (высокий пост в правительстве). However, Mr Manley is believed to have coveted a return to the (дожность министра иностранных дел).

Mr Martin, who (становится преемником на посту премьер-министра) on December 12, is set (внести изменения в состав кабинета) as he tries to build political impetus ahead of (всеобщие выборы), which may come as early as next April. He is expected (сместить с должности) several

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ministers seen as loyal to (уходящий, покидающий пост) prime minister, Jean Chretien.

Mr Manley (балотировался против) Mr Martin for the leadership of the ruling Liberal party in an at times acrimonious (гонка). He eventually (отозвал свою кандидатуру) in the face of Mr Martin's overwhelming popularity with the party (рядовые члены). Mr Martin, himself finance minister from 1993 until last year, is certain to give (ключевой пост министра финансов) to a (верному союзнику).

Ralph Goodale, public works minister, is seen as ( наиболее вероятная кандидатура на пост).

A former tax lawyer, Mr Manley rose rapidly through Mr Chretien's cabinet, serving as industry minister and (заняв пост министра иностранных дел) in October 2000. He has a reputation as a dogged and highly competent minister, but one who has struggled to overcome a stiff public persona.b)

KISS FAVOURITE (СТАНЕТ ПРЕЕМНИКОМ НА ПОСТУ) HUNGARY'S PRIME MINISTER

Hungary's ruling Socialist party (назначит) a replacement for prime minister Peter Medgyessy as early as this weekend in an attempt to solve a coalition dispute and (оживить) the unpopular government.

The dispute followed Wednesday's (увольнение) by Mr Medgyessy of Istvan Csillag, (экономика) minister and a member of the Free Democrat party, (младший партнер по коалиции).

One source close to the Socialist party confirmed reports that the job would go to Peter Kiss, a former Labour minister and Mr Medgyessy's chief of staff.

An engineer by training, Mr Kiss, 45, has mostly operated as a behind-the-scenes figure in the Socialist party. His selection is widely seen as a compromise among (соперники) aiming to win the party's leadership in an October congress.

Hungary's constitution requires that parliament simultaneously (утверждает) a new head of government when (увольняя, отстраняя от дел) a prime minister in what is termed a constructive (вотум недоверия). The Socialists said they would present such (предложение, шаг) next Thursday, and expect a vote in parliament on September 6.

The party (будет стремиться заручиться поддержкой) for Mr Kiss from the Free Democrats, in a meeting today.

Before the two camps agree on a new prime minister, however, they will first have (разрешить спор по поводу увольнения) of Mr Csillag. The

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Free Democrats rejected (увольнение, отстранение) and nearly (покинули правительство).

In a move of political brinkmanship, Mr Medgyessy responded by pledging (уйти в отставку) if the coalition (распадется). That backfired when Socialist party leaders (вмешались) and effectively (отказали в поддержке) for Mr Medgyessy on Thursday evening.

The Socialists' decision to dump Mr Medgyessy followed months of (напряженность) between the party and the independent technocrat they chose in 2002 (возглавить правительство). The situation was aggravated by the government’s (падение популярности) and the Socialists' poor showing in June's European elections.

Mr. Medgyessy's (смещение с должности) will mark the first time in Hungary's post-communist history that (находящийся у власти) prime minister has been replaced. Jozsef Antall, Hungary's first democratically elected prime minister, died in office in 1993.

V. Translate the headlines:A.

1. UKRAINE PRESIDENT SACKS HIS CABINET2. MERKEL’S SLIM ADVANTAGE MEANS PLENTY OF HORSE

TRADING AHEAD3. MUBARAK RESHUFFLES4. POWELL “TO QUIT” EVEN IF BUSH WINS REELECTION5. AGEING OFFICIALS OUSTED IN N KOREAN RESHUFFLE6. KOREAN PRESIDENT NAMES ‘ACTING’ PRIME MINISTER7. GEORGIANS CELEBRATE “BLOODLESS REVOLUTION” AS

PRESIDENT RESIGNS8. PAPANDREOU SUCCESSOR CHOSEN9. POTENTIAL SUCCESSORS STAKE CLAIM TO FRENCH PRESIDENCY10. LEE DASHES RESHUFFLE HOPES11. PUTIN CLEARS THE DECKS IN PURSUIT OF NEW MANDATE

B.

1. YUSHENKO TAKES OVER WITH EYE ON EUROPE2. AUSTRIAN TO NAME CABINET MONDAY3. HEAD OF JAPAN’S OPPOSITION QUITS4. CHIRAC IN NO RUSH TO RESHUFFLE CABINET5. SERBIA RULING COALITION CALLS FOR EARLY POLL AS

ALLIES QUIT6. HEAD OF WEST ASSEMBLY QUITS BEFORE VOTE OF NO

CONFIDENCE

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7. COALITION TALKS FALTER IN JAPAN8. THE TEST FACING AZNAR’S SUCCESSOR9. HU TAKES CONTROL AS JIANG RESIGNS10. STREAMLINED CABINET PUT IN PLACE BY PUTIN11. BROWN URGED BLAIR NOT TO STEP DOWN BEFORE

ELECTION

C.

1. SICK OR SACKED, HONG KONG CHIEF QUITS 2. THOUGHTS TURN TO PRESIDENT’S SUCCESSOR3. CANADA RESHUFFLE4. HAITI’S INTERIM LEADER BEGINS TO FORM CABINET AS

UNREST CONTINUES5. BOLIVIAN LEADER PROMISES NEW-LOOK CABINET6. BELGIAN PM TO STEP DOWN 7. EMBATTLED BOLIVIAN LEADER SET TO RESIGN8. COMEBACK FOR REDWOOD AS TORIES RESHUFFLE PACK9. ITALIAN CONFIDENCE VOTE EASES PATH FOR APPROVAL OF

BUDGET10. NEW ZEALAND PARTIES SEEK COALITION ALLIES11. JAPAN PICKS CABINET

VI. Render into English.

a) ДЗЮНЪИТИРО КОИДЗУМИ ВЫИГРАЛ ВЫБОРЫ В воскресенье в Японии состоялись выборы в нижнюю палату

парламента. Победу на них, по данным exit-polls, одержала правящая Либерально-демократическая партия (ЛДП) во главе с 63-летним премьером Дзюнъитиро Коидзуми. Явка на выборах превысила 60%.

По предварительной информации, ЛДП в одиночку набрала от 285 до 325 мест в палате из 480 (всего в парламент пытался пробиться 1131 кандидат), завоевав простое большинство. Именно такую цель ставили перед собой, и Коидзуми, и его основной соперник – 52-летний Кацуя Окада, лидер Демократической партии. Оба пообещали, что в случае проигрыша уйдут в отставку.

Успех ЛДП эксперты прогнозировали: по уровню популярности либерал-демократы почти вдвое превосходят Демократическую партию. А фигуры Коидзуми и Окады в этом смысле вообще несравнимы: еще несколько месяцев назад премьера поддерживали 87% японцев, сейчас–чуть меньше.

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Основные надежды Окада связывал с 30% сограждан, которые до дня голосования так и не определилась со своими симпатиями. Однако, судя по всему, большинство из них отдали голоса правящей партии, а у Демократической партии будет в нижней палате не более 127 мест.

Вчерашние выборы, 44-е по счету, – внеочередные. Месяц назад Коидзуми распустил нижнюю палату, после того как верхняя отклонила правительственный проект приватизации почтовой службы. Заблокировав этот стратегический вопрос, законодатели фактически выразили вотум недоверия премьеру. Коидзуми в ответ воспользовался своим конституционным правом на роспуск парламента и назначил новые выборы.

b) На выборах в Германии с минимальным отрывом лидирует партия Ангелы Меркель.

Вчера в Германии прошли парламентские выборы, которые должны определить, кто возглавит страну на ближайшие четыре года. Голосование завершилось в 8 часов вечера по московскому времени, и уже через минуту ведущие социологические институты распространили итоги «экзит-пулов»–опросов избирателей на выходе с участков. С незначительным отрывом лидирует правый блок ХДС/ХСС, возглавляемый Ангелой Меркель. Но это все–только предварительные выкладки. Окончательные результаты должны объявить глубокой ночью. Тогда же и станет известно, уйдет ли с политической арены канцлер Герхард Шредер или вновь, как три года назад, сумеет чудом удержаться у власти. «Экзит-пулы» рисуют такую картину. ХДС/ХСС набирает примерно 36 процентов. Следом идут социал-демократы Шредера (СДПГ) – 34 процента. То есть за последнюю неделю они сократили отрыв от правых до минимума – с 6 до 2 процентов.

Союзники Меркель из Свободно-демократической партии набирают 10,5 процента – больше, чем предсказывали все социологические опросы последнего времени. Тем не менее 46,5 процента голосов, на которые пока может рассчитывать «черно-желтая» коалиция во главе с Меркель, не хватит для формирования правительства.

«Зеленые», выступающие в альянсе со Шредером, претендуют на 8,5 процента. И наконец, «Новые левые» (блок, куда входят правившие в бывшей ГДР экс-коммунисты из Партии демократического социализма и сторонники Оскара Лафонтена, раскольника из рядов СДПГ) набирают от 7,5 до 8,5 процента.

И именно они, похоже, спутали все карты и Шредеру, и особенно Меркель. С «Новыми левыми» никто в коалицию вступать не хочет. А

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без них в новом бундестаге ни у кого не будет большинства–ни у «черно-желтых», ни тем более у «красно-зеленых».

А значит, наиболее реальный вариант на этот момент–«красно-черная большая коалиция», куда войдут две главные партии страны, христианские демократы и СДПГ. Если, конечно, любовь Шредера к власти не окажется такой сильной, что он переступит через принципы, все-таки заключит альянс с «Новыми левыми», пригласит их в правительство и тем самым сохранит за собой пост канцлера.

VII. Comment on the cartoon.

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VIII. Legislature quiz. Match these legislative chambers to their countries.

House of Commons GermanySejm United KingdomDiet IrelandBundestag JapanRiksdag MongoliaGreat Hural PolandDuma UkraineCortes SwedenDáil SpainLok Sabha IndiaVerkhovna Rada RussiaKnesset DenmarkFolketing Israel

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§ 7. REVISION

I. Translate the sentences with the active vocabulary words you have studied. Identify «the translation difficulties» and comment on them.

A.

1. Before it even began, the 2004 presidential race looked certain to be one of the most ugly and polarising electoral contests of recent times. In the event, it fully lived up to these low expectations.

2. Bush's UN speech was sandwiched between meetings with world leaders – and a sit-down with Annan. It is an unusual burst of diplomacy for Bush, who has been keeping a punishing travel schedule to swing states as he seeks re-election.

3. With a presidential election just over a year away, has the administration of President George W. Bush got the stomach not just to last the course in Baghdad but also to stick to its grand plan of "transforming" the Middle East and beyond, taking pre-emptive military action if needed?

4. In a transparent attempt to inject some sap into their desiccated campaigns, candidates for American president now routinely deploy the odd tactic of repeatedly "launching" their bid for the White House. First there is the pre-announcement of an intention to run. Then, to great hoopla, is the formation of a presidential exploratory committee. Next comes the symbolic first visit to important primary states. Finally, months after the voters have lost interest, the candidate gravely informs a bemused world that he is, indeed, a candidate. Thus John Kerry, the patrician senator from Massachusetts who seems to have been running for president since about 1968, yesterday "began" his campaign for the highest office.

5. The pensions dispute sets the stage for dramatic campaigning in the run-up to elections for the Upper House of Japan's parliament in two months, with the LDP struggling to offset the damage caused by the crisis and the DPJ having to find a new leader.

6. Western observers have criticized election campaigning, casting doubt over whether Ukraine could hold a free and fair election when the media is biased in favor of Yanukovich's candidacy.

7. Kostroma, Russia: There is almost no sign of a presidential election campaign here in the Russian heart-land, and apparently there is very little desire for one. From shoemaker to shopkeeper to hunter to teacher, it seems that almost everyone is backing the incumbent president Vladimir Putin.

8. Ohio is a vital swing state which George Bush won narrowly in 2000 and probably must win again to hold on to the White House and it will

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potentially be the decisive state tomorrow – Super Tuesday, the biggest day in the Democratic nomination process. Ten states will vote tomorrow and if they follow the example of the 20 that have voted so far, they will make John Kerry the Democratic challenger to President Bush. He has won 18 contests so far and the biggest of the states with primaries tomorrow, California and New York, are in his pocket. To keep the contest going, John Edwards, his last remaining serious rival must win a handful.

9. The long, bruising campaign was finally ending, surely not a moment too soon for the combatants.

10. Kerry's aides say their prime-factor in settling on a vice presidential nominee would be practical: whether the running mate could help draw more votes to the senator.

11. Russian campaign gurus and spin doctors have camped out in Kiev on the same mission to get Yanukovych elected, with some of them so self-confident and blatant in their actions as to admit that opposition candidate Viktor Yushchenko was poisoned so that his looks would not win him extra votes.

12. The Massachusetts senator won nine out of the 10 state contests decided on Super Tuesday, most of them by double-figure margins, crushing his only serious rival, John Edwards, who bowed out of the race and offered his support to the presumptive nominee yesterday.

13. Russia's involvement in the Ukrainian presidential race has been unprecedented. Political and cultural figures, from President Vladimir Putin to Soviet-era crooner Iosif Kobzon, have visited to root for Viktor Yanukovych.

14. He is the firm favourite to win Afghanistan's first direct presidential election in October, yet Hamid Karzai, the affable, moderate incumbent, seems an almost reluctant candidate. While other, less prominent presidential hopefuls paste their faces on windscreens and doorways, Mr Karzai's aides and supporters complain that he is inactive.

15. The Democrats hoped that by nominating a decorated Vietnam hero they would inoculate themselves against the traditional Republican charge that the “mummy party” is weak on security.

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B.

1. Because of the tight race, especially in 10 battleground states, Republicans and Democrats said the election outcome may not be known quickly. Both sides had lawyers on standby for possible challenges. The legal battle in 2000 lasted five weeks and ended in the U.S. Supreme Court, where Bush prevailed.

2. He looked back at a two-year campaign that took him from the apparently politically dead to the nomination.

3. The sums are all the more remarkable this year as the funds are flowing into a smaller number of campaigns. In 2000, there were primary challengers for both the Republican and Democratic presidential nominations. In 2004, Mr Bush is unchallenged and Mr Kerry has secured nomination in a couple of months.

4. New Hampshire goes to the polls next Tuesday in the first primary of the presidential election year – a direct one-man-one-vote election, as opposed to Iowa’s arcane caucuses – and the scene is now set for a titanic four-way battle.

5. Positioning for the 2006 contest is already under way. With Mr Fox weakened by the severe loss of congressional seats, his National Action party (PAN) suffered in last month's mid-term elections, Mr Lopez Obrador is taking the opportunity to appear more presidential. His personal austerity is a part of the appeal.

6. In the Republican Senate primary, Bill Jones, a former California secretary of state, easily defeated nine other candidates to secure the right to oppose Senator Barbara Boxer, a two-term incumbent, in November.

7. His tortured relationship with the United States worsened after he and Bush took office within weeks of one another in early 2001.

8. Faced with that widespread discontent both candidates are marketing themselves as agents of change – a normal strategy for a challenger, but a harder task for an incumbent with four years in office behind him.

9. With voters in western Ukraine and the capital Kiev expected to vote strongly for Mr Yushchenko, a pro-western liberal, the rural regions of central and southern Ukraine are shaping up as the main poll battleground.

10. Mr Roh's proposal was dismissed by many as a stunt to win votes in Chungcheong province, a crucial swing constituency in last year's election, and widespread doubts remain about the viability of the plan.

11. These figures will become increasingly important as the next election approaches, to see if the Tories can broaden their appeal beyond their core. Overall, 30 per cent of the public count as swing or floating voters. When those who are unlikely to vote are excluded, 21 per cent of those likely to turn out are floating voters.

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12. Kerry and Bush are very different candidates. First, while Bush is often derided as inarticulate, Kerry has other issues with language. He might be called over-articulate, or fond of adding 12 words when one might do. Second, if Bush is a ham on the stump, Kerry is the lead in a Shakespearean drama. He is a big man with a big voice and a command of the material and the stage, but he sometimes can appear more focused on his words than on his audience.

13. Opinion polls showed that although Iraq has certainly cost him in terms of the trust voters place in him, Mr Blair and the Labour party are on course to beat a weak opposition at the next general election, likely to be held next year.

14. But Ukrainian political analysts said the Russian spin doctors had underestimated the differences between the two countries and that PR techniques that worked in Russia had rebounded against Yanukovych.

C.

1. This year's combative presidential debates and the ever fluctuating polls were evidence of a still vibrant democracy in full song and of a competitive contest. Contrast that with more anaemic or petrified two-party systems nearer to home.

2. Andrew Cooper from Populus, a polling organisation, says that this ability to appeal to and empathise with middle class ambitions and concerns remains one of Mr Blair's key electoral assets.

3. According to the Grupo Reforma media group, Mr Lopez Obrador's national approval rating has riven by 5 percentage points since June to 59 per cent – overtaking Marta Sahagun de Fox, the president's popular wife.

4. Earlier this year, prime minister Zoran Zivkovic government rode high on a tide of popular support after the assassination of his predecessor, Zoran Djindjic, in March.

5. Republican anxiety centred on the president's failure to achieve any last-minute surge in the polls. Mr Rove was said to have hoped to create a "bandwagon-effect" that would make the incumbent unstoppable, but that did not come.

6. The most obvious indicator is that Aznar's former deputy and designated successor, Mariano Rajoy, is running comfortably ahead in the polls, regardless of the 1,3000 Spanisn troops now in Iraq.

7. John Kerry yesterday asserted his leadership of a Democratic party that pollsters said was at its most united for a generation, after he clinched the presidential nomination with a string of convincing primary wins.

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8. This tricky domestic agenda has persuaded Mr Aznar to favour Mr Rajoy as his successor over Rodrigo Rato, the internationally respected economy minister who was the other front-runner for the top job. Mr Rajoy, currently first deputy prime minister and government spokesman, has headed ministries including public administration, education and the interior.

9. Opinion polls have shown a majority would support Mr Roh in a vote of confidence – despite his approval rating hovering around 30 per cent – sparking accusations that the move is a ploy to distract attention from the SK scandal and galvanise his support before next April's parliamentary elections.

10. Party members quickly rallied behind him as soon as they were convinced he was best placed to defeat President Bush. Mr Kerry's poll ratings consistently rose against President Bush's throughout the primaries, which were far less bruising than the Democratic or Republican nomination battles four years ago.

11. Georgia, where Mr Kerry's lead is narrowing, seems to be his best hope of a win. He must eke out at least one victory to remain viable.

12. New polls told a now-familiar story – it's neck and neck in key states, including Florida and Ohio, that could decide the election.

13. Now, as the presidential campaign has narrowed to a race between the two men in the coast-to-coast Super Tuesday primaries, strains between the senators are growing evident. Their relationship has become a source of speculation among Democrats, not only because they are competitors in the primaries but because party leaders are increasingly entertaining the notion of a Kerry-Edwards ticket.

14. Though Mr Edwards is behind in the polls in every state voting today, his aides point to his record of strong finishes and his ability to attract independent and Republican voters in earlier primaries and caucuses. In Maryland, Mr Edwards is at least close behind the front-runner in the polls, which most recently put Mr Kerry's lead at 7%, but Mr Edwards has not been able to spend much time there, concentrating instead on bigger states.

15. Dr Dean, who has let slip all number of gaffes in recent weeks and fared poorly under the intense scrutiny that comes with frontrunner status, conceded that the result had relegated him down the pack.

16. While both parties had despatched litigation teams to Ohio in readiness for the expected battles, Mr Kerry's staff reached the conclusion that such a feat was beyond his reach and Ohio's prized 20 Electoral College votes were unattainable.

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D.

1. Yushchenko is expected to face a run-off with Kuchma ally Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovich at the election, which analysts expect will go to a second round in November.

2. The figures mean she will be forced into a run off in two weeks against Anna Markova, a former deputy governor and ally of Vladimir Yakovlev, the outgoing governor and long-standing rival of Mr Putin.

3. Serbia's democratic reform movement is preparing itself for big changes as Serbs head to the polls tomorrow in their most important elections since 2000. Analysts expect a dramatic reshuffling of power among rival democrats who, while struggling against each other, face an unexpectedly powerful resurgence of hardline nationalist forces.

4. Others have pointed to the Nicaraguan election of 1990, when the ruling Sandinistas saw a sizeable campaign lead disintegrate because "undecided voters" turned out en masse to vote against the leftwing party at the last minute.

5. Voter turnout in Hong Kong's first elections since the summer's mass demonstrations hit a record high yesterday, signalling likely gains for the pro-democracy movement.

6. The driving force behind the “velvet revolution” on Sunday, Mikhail Saakashvili, 35, is almost certain to be Georgia's next president. The dynamic, United States educated lawyer with a Dutch wife is expected to usher in a bold new era of Georgian politics. According to independently conducted exit polls, Mr Saakashvili's party won this month's parliamentary elections and it is assumed that Mr Saakashvili will run for president.

7. Waking up to chill, grey skies and nursing election hangovers, they had lived in the hope that once counted, the outstanding 175,000 provisional ballots – those cast by people not on the regular poll lists, perhaps because they had moved homes -would give them enough of a boost to overturn the 140,000-vote lead held by President Bush.

8. Kiev – Turnout at many polling stations was implausibly high. Absentee ballots were cast multiple times. Disappearing ink made ballots invalid. These are a few if the hundreds of violations reported by voters and independent observers at Ukraine's runoff election, which Western and local observers denounced Monday as fraught with fraud and abuse.

9. Both sides had get-out-the-vote armies primed for action, plus lawyers deployed across the country ready to throw any photo finish into court at the first sign of polling-place irregularities.

10. The Kremlin may have opted for Yanukovych because if he wins, the voting is seen as rigged and his election is not recognized by the West, it could drive him into Russia's arms in the short term. In the long term,

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however, Western leaders would soften their stance, given Ukraine's geostrategic importance, and Yanukovych would still have to balance relations with the EU, the United States and Russia if he wanted an independent Ukraine.

11. When Senator John Kerry conceded yesterday, Democrats in Ohio were left wondering how they could have lost and what more could have been done, given that 170,000 volunteers had flocked to the state from across the world.

12. One tracking poll put John Kerry, fresh from his resounding victory in Iowa, ahead in New Hampshire, where Dr Dean has commanded a double-digit lead for months.

13. Sunday's victory for Edmund Stoiber, incumbent Bavarian premier, had been widely predicted. Its magnitude had not.

14. He won r esounding victories in all regions of the country, and outscored his rivals in all the party's traditional support groups: women, African Americans, Jewish Americans and union members.

15. The frontrunner to replace Mr Kan is Ichiro Ozawa, a former secretary-general of the LDP and an outspoken reformer. He is best known for having ended the LDP's grip on power in 1993 for the only time since the end of the second world war – he led 44 rebel politicians away from the party, ending its majority.

16. The president’s acceptance of the possibility of a low turnout among Sunni voters in Iraq reflects the administration’s determination to press ahead with the polls. Donald Rumsfeld, the defense secretary, has also expressed the view that the results would be seen as legitimate if Iraqis could vote in a majority of provinces.

E.

1. The current president, Johannes Rau, a Social Democrat, announced several weeks ago that he would step down, a move that many people here assume was prompted by the conservative majority on the presidential election commission.

2. Serbia's governing reform coalition, which came to power three years ago after the toppling of Slobodan Milosevic, called for early elections yesterday after the detection of two minor parties finally wiped out its parliamentary majority.

3. A good result in the regional and parliamentary elections will give Mr Chirac a freer hand for a mid-year shake-up. This in turn will determine how he deals with Nicholas Sarkozy, the ambitious and highly popular interior minister. No love is lost between these two men. Mr Sarkozy has antagonised the president by declaring he will fight the 2007 presidential

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poll and urged 70 year-old Mr Chirac to desist from standing for a third term.

4. Senator Ben Nighthorse Campbell, a Colorado Republican and the only American Indian in the Senate, announced Wednesday that he would not seek a third term this autumn. The retirement of Campbell, who is 70 and has had health problems, will deprive Capitol Hill of one of its more colorful figures. It will also create an open Senate seat as Republicans try to keep their slim majority.

5. The suspicion lingers that Mr. Koizumi is Japan's most electable politician because he talks about economic reform without embarking on the painful business of actually carrying it out. His popularity within the otherwise moribund LDP and yesterday's cabinet reshuffle suggest that his most significant reforms are in Jananese politics.

6. Ilham Aliev, whose ailing father Geidar has held an iron grip on Azerbaijan for a decade, was confirmed in his new post by a unanimous vote. His elevation means that be is now almost certain to take over as president possibly as soon as October.

7. Since the Communists defeated the Nationalists in a civil war and took control of China in 1949, the party has repeatedly failed to execute orderly successions. All three of the men chosen-by-Mao Zedong to succeed him were purged before they could consolidate power, two of them by Мао himself and the third by Deng Xiaoping after Mao's death in 1976.

8. The latest opinion polls give the Radicals 25 per cent of votes, although no mainstream party will join them in a coalition.

9. Jaatteenmaki still enjoys support among Center Party members and in June, a year after she quit, she plans to run in elections for the European Parliament.

10. Nevertheless, pressure has been growing inside the coalition for a government reshuffle after Italy completes its six-month EU presidency at the end of December.

11. Italy's ruling centre-right coalition put aside its internal disputes yesterday and passed a parliamentary vote of confidence in itself that should allow accelerated approval of the 2004 budget.

12. The task facing Mariano Rajoy, nominated by Jose Maria Aznar to succeed him as the centre-right Popular party's candidate for prime minister in Spain's general election next March, is harder than it looks. He is likely to need all the affability and common touch with which, unlike his rather dour boss, he is credited.

13. Signor Berlusconi and Signor Prodi, who are long-standing political rivals, have been at odds since Italy took over the presidency of the EU Council of Ministers in July. At the EU summit in Rome in October,

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launching final negotiations on the European constitution, the "odd couple", as they are dubbed in the Italian press, could barely bring themselves to shake hands.

14. Mr Roh cited the scandal as the main reason for his decision last week to call a referendum on his leadership and resign if he failed to secure а confidence vote.

15. President Putin dismissed his Prime Minister and the entire Russian Government yesterday in a move to consolidate power ahead of a presidential election next month. He appointed Viktor Khristenko, the Deputy Prime Minister, as acting Prime Minister. Under the Constitution, a new candidate for the post must be submitted to parliament within two weeks of the Govermnent’s dismissal. All ministers will remain in place until a new Cabinet is appointed.

16. Ms Burdzhanadze, the former Speaker, is the acting President, having taken over on Saturday after Mr Shevadnadze was forced by protesters to leave parliament.

II. Read the articles and find the English for:

a) отозвать свою кандидатуру; соревнование, борьба; выдвижение кандидата; отставать на ... пунков; первичные выборы; кандидат на пост вице-президента; кандидаты на выдвижение от Демократической партии; предвыборная речь.

THE BRIGHT SPARK WHO FAILED TO IGNITE VOTERS

John Edwards returned to his native North Carolina to bow out formally from the Democratic contest yesterday after his failure to translate an electrifying campaign style and a populist message into votes. He never came close to halting John Kerry's progress to the nomination on Tuesday night, lagging 40 or 50 points behind him and taking only one state, South Carolina, in the whole of the primary season.

But commentators praised him as an exciting campaigner. "John Edwards has more talent in his little finger than John Kerry has in his entire body," said Charles Cook, a respected Washington analyst.

Mr Kerry said Mr Edwards showed "great promise for leadership in the years to come".

His performance has led to speculation that he could be chosen as the running mate in November.

From Iowa in mid-January to the Super Tuesday contests, Mr Edwards almost never departed from his relentlessly upbeat message, and the wide grin rarely left his boyish face.

He won over voters by his refusal to criticise the other contenders for the Democratic nomination directly, and by a rousing stump speech in which he promised to end a system of two Americas tilted to benefit of the wealthy and privileged.

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b) идти на выборы; парламентские выборы; четвертый срок пребывания у власти; уйти с поста; отрыв кандидата; опрос общественного мнения; стать преемником; не определившиеся избиратели; соперник; избирательная урна.

DUEL OF THE DYNASTIES AS GREECE GOES TO THE POLLS

Greece goes to the polls tomorrow in a parliamentary election which has turned into a cliffhanger between the scions or two political dynasties which have shaped the country's modern history.

Amid accusations of dirty tricks, the former foreign minister George Papandreou ended an unorthodox campaign last night urging Greeks to re-elect his socialist party Pasok, for an unprecedented fourth consecutive term.

The election comes five months before Athens hosts the Olympics. Mr Papandreou, 51, whose father and grandfather were also prime ministers, has vowed to free Greece of the cronyism and bureaucracy blamed for keeping it behind its EU partners.

Throughout the campaign – called in the wake of Costas Simitis's sudden decision to stand down as prime minister Mr Papandreou's mantra has been citizen-dominated politics, transparency and renewal.

Pasok – in power for all but three of the last 23 years – has been assailed by accusations of corruption, but Mr Papandreou's breezy style and fresh policies may pay off.

Since being elected to head Pasok last month, the US-born Mr Papandreou has succeeded in reducing the poll lead of the conservative opposition. The last official poll, released two weeks ago, showed the socialists three points behind. They were eight behind before Mr Papandreou took over.

With 12% of the 9.8 million voters undecided, and some 600,000 voting for the first time, victory for the centre-right New Democrats is far from assured.

Campaigners were yesterday lobbying hard, distributing leaflets across the country, including hospital wards.

With the US-educated Costas Karamanlis at the helm, New Democracy has also moved towards the centre with promises to remake Greece in the image of its richer EU partners.

Mr Karamanlis, the nephew of the celebrated prime minister Konstantine Karamanlis, and four years younger than his rival, has promised to end the divisive left-right politics that have haunted Greece since the 1946-49 civil war.

Echoing Mr Papandreou, who has been widely credited with improving ties with Turkey, the conservative leader pledged to continue with conciliatory policies.

Both men have drawn large crowds of young voters; and both, in a radical departure from the past, have tried to distance themselves from their larger-than-life relatives.

Greeks are often said to make their minds up only when they reach the ballot box, and analysts believe tomorrow's vote will be as personal as it is political. As they vote tomorrow, many may well be guided by the names of the dynasties that have dominated their political culture for so long.

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c) претендент; добиться избрания на пост президента; очевидная победа; опрос общественного мнения; объявить победителем; наблюдать за проведением выборов; восстановить, возродить процесс мирного урегулирования; сменить к-л на посту; высокая явка избирателей; проведение предвыборной агитации; ЦИК; запугивать избирателей; наблюдатели; отдавать голоса.

POLLS POINT TO CLEAR VICTORY FOR ABBAS IN PALESTINIAN ELECTION

Although Mustafa Barghouti, the main independent challenger, claimed yesterday he had enough support to secure the Palestinian Authority presidency, opinion polls point to a clear victory for Mahmoud Abbas, candidate of the dominant Fatah movement in tomorrow's election.

Latest polls gave him 59-65 per cent of the vote, with a maximum of 28 per cent for Mr Barghouti.

Whoever is declared the winner, in what will be one of the most intensively monitored votes in electoral history, will have the task of trying to revive direct negotiations with Israel.

Also tomorrow, Ariel Sharon, Israeli prime minister, will present parliament with a new coalition government that will implement his controversial plan to withdraw Jewish settlements from Gaza, a move seen internationally as a first step to reviving the peace process.

During his campaign, Mr Abbas vowed not to abandon the legacy of the late Yassir Arafat, whom he succeeded as chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organisation and whom he now hopes to replace as president of the Palestinian Authority.

Election officials predicted a high turnout for the first national election in the Palestinian Authority since 1996. Although many voters were torn between a desire to punish the leadership of the authority for the failures of the past decade and an equal desire for stable continuity, most of those questioned said they believed the election opened the way for democratic reform.

Mr Barghouti, who runs a medical charity and has the backing of much of the secular left, said yesterday he would be prepared to serve in a national unity government after the election. He would press for an international conference to resolve the conflict.

Mr Abbas yesterday failed to make an expected campaign visit to east Jerusalem, which Israel regards as part of its undivided capital. Aides said he wanted to avoid campaigning under a heavy Israeli security presence.

When Mr Barghouti went yesterday to pray at Jerusalem's al-Aqsa mosque, he was briefly detained by Israeli police, the second time he has been arrested during the campaign.

His detention highlighted the sensitive issue of Israeli-annexed east Jerusalem, which Palestinians demand as the capital of a future state. The Palestinian Central Elections Committee claimed many of the 120,000 Jerusalem Palestinians were afraid to vote, fearful Israel would take away their residency rights.

Jimmy Carter, the former US president who is leading a team of monitors from the National Democratic Institute, said he hoped for a peaceful vote. He also observed the last Palestinian presidential elections in 1996, when he accused Israel of trying to intimidate voters by filming them in East Jerusalem.

Around 800 foreign observers and 20,000 Palestinian monitors will on hand as up to 1.8m Palestinians cast their ballots. In addition to Mr Abbas and Mr Barghouti, there are five other candidates, including two Islamists, who are expected to garner only a small percentage of votes.

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III. Fill in the blanks with suitable words in the necessary form from the list given below:

a) the acting president; to win the parliamentary elections; to maintain; run for; to be nominated; mandate; to boost; presidential candidate; to rerun

OPPOSITION LEADER GIVEN CLEAR (…) PRESIDENCY

Mikhail Saakashvili, the 35-year-old American-educated opposition politician who led the resistance to former President Shevardnadze, (...) as the single (...) for the two-main opposition parties that claim (...) on November 2.

Mr Saakashvili will be supported in the vote on January 4 by his National Movement party and by the Burzhanadze Democrats, led by (...), Nino Burzhanadze. She, in turn, is being put forward as leader of the two parties for the parliamentary elections that will (...) next year. "We will not make a miracle in 40 days, but if the Georgian population gives us (...) we will keep all the promises that we gave," he told a press conference.

His hopes (...) yesterday by an announcement by the International Monetary Fund that it is ready to help Georgia (...) economic stability.

b) to step down; fourth consecutive term; premier; closely contested; the poll; to resume; a narrow margin; to call a federal election; to defeat; to bow out; a margin; term in office; opinion polls; deputy; the underdog; to take office

AUSTRALIAN (...) CALLS OCTOBER ELECTION

John Howard, Australia's prime minister, yesterday (...) for October 9, ending weeks of speculation about the timing of (...).

The election is set to be the most (...) since the Liberal-National coalition (..) after unexpectedly (...) Labor, then led by Paul Keattng, in 1996. It could also turn into a referendum on Mr Howard's support for the US-led invasion of Iraq.

Seeking a historic (...), Mr Howard called the election just hours before parliament was due (...) after a short break.

The 65-year-old prime minister, who came close to (...) of politics last year, is banking on his government's economic record and strong stand on national security, which included sending troops to Iraq and Afghanistan in support of the US. But he described the centre-right government as (...) in the battle with Mark Latham's resurgent Labor party.

Many had expected Mr Howard (...) during the present term in favour of Peter Costello, his (...), while the prime minister's judgment has been called into question over his support for the US in Iraq. Only a year ago, the coalition

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looked to be cruising to a fourth (...). But Mr Latham has revived Labor's fortunes since he became party leader in December.

(...) have put Labor ahead by (...) for much of this year, once secondary votes for small parties are included. Labor and the coalition are separated by just a handful of seats, with the coalition holding eight by (...) of 1.5 per cent or less.

c) the electorate; to boost turnout; voter intimidation; abuses; alternative voting methods; the ballot; fraud; the polling booth; to influence votes; ballot papers; watchdog; the House of Lords.

POST POST-MORTEMAll-postal ballots are not the future of British democracy

The great postal vote scandal of 2004 rumbles on. Today the elections (...), the Electoral Commission, published its analysis of what went wrong in the June elections. Its observations ought to make Tony Blair blush beetroot beneath his Tuscan tan. Eager (...) in its Northern heartlands, Labour insisted on extending a "pilot" trial of all-postal voting to no fewer than four regions, the North East, East Midlands, Yorkshire and the North West – an area inhabited by 14 million voters.

John Prescott, at whose insistence this experiment was recklessly expanded to cover such a high number of voters, was repeatedly told that the decision was unwise: by (…), by MPs, by delegations of worried minority leaders. He would listen to none of them. He failed to foresee, or to forestall, huge administrative incompetence and political malpractice.

(...) arrived late, in some cases not at all. Furthermore, the forms themselves were so complex that many – the elderly, the infirm, the gullible – had trouble filling them in. This in turn led to allegations of coercion, as unscrupulous candidates (or their representatives) sought (...) under the guise of "helping out". Further accusations of outright (...) and (...) followed.

Developing (...) is not, in itself, a bad idea. Indeed, alternatives must be pursued with vigour, but with rigour too. If people find (...) off putting – or just plain inconvenient – perhaps one solution is to bring (...) out of the box and on to the kitchen table by offering a postal option. But why insist on all-postal votes? The aim of the June pilot should have been to expand voter options, not close them down – and in doing so expose (...) to a range of (...).

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d) pollster; a lead (2); the absolute majority; the general election campaign; to slip; opinion polls; to fall short of a majority; points (2); to form a government; polling (2); to stand down

SPAIN'S RULING PARTY (...) IN POLLS

Support for the Spanish People's party government is ebbing away as concern about terrorism and separatism dominates (...) according to (...) published yesterday.

Nine days before (...), its (...) over the opposition Socialists has fallen to 5–7 (...).

There are doubts whether its prime ministerial candidate Mariano Rajoy will keep (...) won four years ago by Jose Maria Aznar, who (...).

The government's (...) gave him an absolute majority of one seat, and two media polls said he (...). Two months ago some polls gave him (...) of almost 11 points.

Any further fall before (...) on March 14 will leave him trying to (...) with the support of nationalist parties from regions such as Catalonia and the Canary Islands, parties Mr Aznar has antagonised and refused more power in the past four years.

IV. Replace the words in brackets their English equivalents in the necessary form.

a) HONG KONG'S PRO-BEIJING PARTY LEADER OFFERS

(ПОКИНУТЬ ПОСТ)

The chairman of Hong Kong's biggest pro Beijing party offered (уйти в отставку) yesterday after record numbers (явились на избирательные участки) and (проголосовали против) his candidates (за, в пользу) of pro-democracy parties in (выборы в местные органы власти).

Tsang Yok-sing, leader of the Democratic (Союз) for the Betterment of Hong Kong, called his party's performance (на выборах) "a very serious (поражение)".

The Democratic party's (победа) in 20 extra (места) in the election has been interpreted as a rebuke to Mr Tung, who has been criticised widely for ruling with little regard for popular opinion.

(Опросы общественного мнения) conducted by the Baptist University before the district elections showed that he had (рейтинг популярности) of just 17 per cent among those who planned (голосовать) on the weekend.

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(Рекордная явка на выборы) just over 1m or 44 per cent of (избиратели, имеющие права голоса) builds on a movement started in the summer when 500,000 marched in protest against the government's ham-fisted attempt to install new security laws.

b)

VICTORY FOR RIGHT IN GREEK ELECTIONS

Greece's centre-right New-Democracy party last night (одержала убедительную победу на всеобщих выборах), ending a decade of Socialist rule.

Costas Karamanlis, the new prime minister who (никогда раньше не занимал правительственных постов), faces difficult decisions over the future of Cyprus and Greece's lagging preparations for the Olympic Games.

(Признавая поражение), George Papandreou, the Socialist leader, pledged to support the new government on both issues.

(После подсчета половины голосов), New Democracy (лидировала) with 47 per cent against 41 per cent for the Panhellenic Socialist Movement (Pasok). The Greek Communist party (отставала) in third place with 5 per cent.

New Democracy appeared set (получить почти 170 мест) in the 300-seat parliament compared with 120 for the Socialists under Greece's (пропорциональная избирательная система).

The Greek government (принимает активное участие) in the United Nations-sponsored (переговоры по) Cyprus, aimed at (воссоединение) the island before it (вступает в Евросоюз) on May 1. With the Greek and Turkish Cypriot leaders still far apart (по этому вопросу), the Greek and Turkish governments are likely to play an important role in (достижение договоренности).

As the Greek Cypriot (община) is showing a lack of enthusiasm for (воссоединение), according to (опросы общественного мнения), the new Greek government will come under international pressure to help (подписать соглашение).

Mr Karamanlis has kept in contact with Turkish leaders while in opposition, but has yet to convince Ankara that the conservatives (будут поддерживать сближение, начатое) by the Socialists.

One of his immediate tasks will be (назначить министров) to handle the Olympics preparations who can win the confidence of the International Olympic Committee and Greece's (союзники). The posts of defence minister

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and public order minister are seen as especially sensitive for the success of the Games.

Analysts said (переход голосов) to the right reflected voters' desire for change. The Socialists did (завоевали популярность) after Mr Papandreou, the former foreign minister and the most popular Greek politician (стал преемником на посту партийного лидера) last month from Costas Simitis, (покидающий пост) prime minister. But the Socialist party, in power for 19 of the past 22 years, was seen by (избиратели) as having become ineffectual and corrupt.

Mr Karamanlis has pledged to leave in place (высшие должностные лица) involved with the Olympics. Most other Socialist (назначенные лица) are expected (уйти в отставку).

c)POTENTIAL (ПРЕЕМНИКИ) STAKE CLAIM

TO FRENCH (ПОСТ ПРЕЗИДЕНТА)

A change in the French constitution, reducing the (срок президентского правления) to five years from seven, is producing some surprises.

Jacques Chirac, the president, has had only 18 months of his new mandate – which is the first test of the shortened (пост президента) – yet already his potential (преемники) are feeling the need to stake their claim ahead of the 2007 (президентская гонка).

The first to declare their ambitions have been two Socialist heavyweights – Laurent Fabius, (бывший) finance minister and once France's youngest (премьер-министр), and Dominique Strauss Kahn, the first finance minister in the previous (коалиция левых сил). From within government ranks, they have been followed by Nicholas Sarkozy, the hyperactive (министр внутренних дел), who has long worn his presidential ambitions on his sleeve.

The political establishment has been caught off guard by these early candidatures, especially by the vigour of Mr Sarkozy's claim (сменить на посту) Mr Chirac, who turns 71 tomorrow. In a public debate he put Mr Chirac on notice by saying that (два срока пребывания у власти) were sufficient, adding: "When one's days are numbered one does more – and more quickly."

Other (претенденты на пост президента) are likely to be more hesitant. Michele Alliot-Mario, the defence minister, also (неожиданно выдвинутый, малоизвестный кандидат на пост президента), said yesterday: "You risk using up all your ammunition too early."

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(Срок президентского правления) was shortened under the previous parliament at the instigation of Lionel Jospin, then, Socialist premier, for two reasons.

The first was a desire to make the head of state accountable over a shorter period, seven years being seen as too long to go unchallenged (на выборах) in modern society.

The second was to avoid another awkward co-habitation whereby (пост президента) was in the hands of one party and parliament in those of another, which created an uneasy management of (исполнительная и законодательная власть).

It was decided (провести президентские выборы) first, followed six weeks later by (всеобщие выборы). .This gave the (электорат) the clear option to choose a parliament of the same colour as the president.

This is what happened last year and (кандидаты на пост президента) are basing their plans on a repeat in 2007.

Early disclosure of a candidature has the advantage of early visibility in a country where no party operates a system of (первичные выборы) to select candidates.

Indeed, the (двухэтапная) structure of the presidential election permits a wide field of candidates, including those belonging to the same party.

For instance, (в первом туре) of the 1995 presidential vote, Mr Chirac (боролся, соревновался) successfully against Edouard Balladur, who was regarded as the main candidate of the right.

However, the appearance of early (кандидаты, претенденты) is mainly the result of sharp divisions within the mainstream parties, combined with the traditional primacy of personalities over policies and ideology in French politics.

d) SRI LANKAN CRISIS DEEPENS AS PRESIDENT

(ПРОДЛЕВАЕТ СРОК ПРАВЛЕНИЯ)

The political crisis in Sri Lanka deepened yesterday when the president (продлила срок пребывания у власти) by an extra year, prompting angry protests from her (соперники) in the government and sparking fears about the prospects for (мирное урегулирование) with Tamil separatists.

President Chandrika Kumaratunga told state television her (срок) would now end in 2006, although she (была приведена к присяге на шестилетний срок) at a public ceremony in December 1999.

"It is up to me to take a decision whether I am to continue (в должности президента) till 2006 or not," she said. She claimed that a second

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investiture had been held in private in 2000. She (отрицала) any "secrecy", but (признала) that only the chief justice and the then foreign minister were present at the second investiture. Mrs Kumaratunga said she had taken part in the first ceremony to stem public concerns about her health after she evaded (попытка покушения) by Tamil (повстанцы).

Government ministers, however, said her actions were (неприемлемые). GL Peiris, the government (пресс-секретарь), said: "Anyone (находящийся на государственном посту) cannot arbitrarily and capriciously decide when their period of (пребывание в должности) comes to an end." Mr Peiris said the government did not believe there was a legal argument in support of the president's move.

(Наблюдатели) say the fact that Mrs Kumaratunga held (церемония вступления в должность) in private means that its legality could easily (поставлена под сомнение).

"Even in military dictatorships such ceremonies are public," said N Manoharan of the Institute of Peace and Conflict Studies in New Delhi. "As per international democratic norms, it would not be regarded as (действительная, имеющая силу)".

The power struggle between the president and her chief political (соперник), the prime minister, Ranil Wickremesinghe, began in November when she (уволила) three of his ministers and (ввела двухдневное чрезвычайное положение). Both leaders come from (соперничающие политические партии).

(Увольняя министра обороны), Mrs Kumaratunga wrested control of (должность министра), accusing Mr Wickremesinghe of giving away too much to the Tamil Tigers to end more than 20 years of (гражданская война). He has made it clear that this makes it impossible for him (проводить переговоры) with (повстанцы), who (ввели войну за отделение) for decades but have held (прекращение огня) for the past 23 months.

More than 65,000 lives have been lost in the war, which (разразилась, вспыхнула) after Hindu Tamils, who number 3 million, claimed that they were being discriminated against by (большинство) Sinhalese Buddhist population.

The president's moves threw (процесс мирного урегулирования) into limbo, with Norwegian (участники переговоров) who (были посредниками при заключении перемирия) suspending their efforts until it becomes clear which leader is in charge.

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V. Complete the articles with the active vocabulary words. The first letters are given to help you.

a) DEMOCRATIC ALSO-RAN ENJOYS BRIEF GLORY AS KERRY

JUGGERNAUT ROLLS ON

John Kerry moved closer to s____ the Democratic p____ n______ on Tuesday nignt, as one of the also-rans in his party's r___ enjoyed a fleeting moment of glory.

Dennis Kucinich, an Ohio congressman, finished an unexpectedly strong second in the Hawaii c_______.

Senator Kerry won the c_____ and two other n______ c______ in Idaho and Utah – further extending his already commanding l___ in the state-by-state battle to lead the Democratic c____ to President George Bush in the p_______ e______ this year.

The Massachusetts senator won without seriously c____ in the three states. Nor did his only real c_____, Senator John Edwards. Both preferred to concentrate on the 10 states holding p_____ e____ on "S____ T____" next week.

Mr Kucinich won votes from just over 1,000 Hawaiian Democrats who took the trouble to go to the p____, but it was enough for him to pick up his first eight elected d_____ to the Democratic party c_____ in July. It also helped him resist calls to leave the stage to a Kerry-Edwards duel.

The fourth surviving c_____, Al Sharpton has fared worse than Mr Kucinich and has performed poorly even among the black v____ he claims to r______.

The refusal of either man to w________ is a further b______ to Mr Kerry, who has s______ to avoid one-on-one confrontation with Mr Edwards, a North Carolina senator.

Mr Kerry has acquired more than 730 d____, but needs 2,162 to clinch the n____. More than 1,000 delegates will be chosen on Tuesday in the traditional climax of the p____ c_____, when big states including California, New York and Ohio vote.

The Massachusetts senator is ahead in the p____ in all those states and appears assured of the n_____, barring an unexpected turn of events.

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b) TWO MORE JOIN

THE CHALLENGE TO KOIZUMI

Two members of Japan's governing Liberal Democratic party said yesterday they would s_____ a_____ Junichiro Koizumi in this month's party leadership e___, bringing the number of c___ to the prime minister to at least three.

The r___ of the election, due on September 20, was far from certain in spite of Mr Koizumi's popularity with the wider e___, a___ said. Many LDP parliamentarians did not like his style or reformist a___, but they had to weigh that against their own election prospects, which could be helped by a popular leader, they added.

Shizuka Kamei, a critic of Mr Koizumi's emphasis on budgetary restraint, yesterday d___ his с___. Mr Kameil, who represents the party old guard, promised to r___ the economy through big government spending. "Current economic policies are all wrong," he said.

Masahiko Komura, former f___ m___, said he would d___ his c___ today when he had gathered the requisite 20 s___ from LDP Diet members.

Other candidates, including Yuya Niwa, former health minister, could j___ the r___ before official c___ begins on Monday.

Mr Koizumi was a surprise winner in the LDP leadership e___ two years ago thanks largely to support among rank-and-file c _____ members who were allowed to v___ for the first time.

This time c___ votes will count for 300 out of 657 points in the f___ r___. But if no clear w___ emerges, voting will go to a s___ r___ in which only the 357 LDP Diet members can participate. That could spell trouble for Mr Koizumi, whose supporting f___ wields only 59 votes.

An official who works with the prime minister said: "In spite of his popularity with voters, he only stands a 60-70 per cent chance of v___. It's not a sure thing."

Some a___ thought it unlikely the LDP would dislodge Mr Koizumi since that could risk handing victory in g___ e___ to the newly strengthened Democratic Party of Japan.

Mr Koizumi has a public support r___ of about 50 per cent, far above any other politician. His continued popularity, after two years in o___, contrasts with the 7 per cent support r___ of Yoshiro Mori, his p___, shortly before he r___ as p___ m___ in 200l.

"Mr Koizumi's trump card is his enduring popularity with voters," Mr Henry said.

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VI. Render into English.

a) Нынешняя президентская гонка – самая изнурительная и плотная за последние четыре десятилетия. В так называемых «неопределившихся штатах», где у Джорджа Буша и Джона Керри равенство сил, окопались тысячи адвокатов, которые готовы опротестовать любое решение избирательных комиссий, если будут выявлены нарушения в порядке голосования. На это накладывается новая для Америки процедура голосования по почте. Гражданам, отчаявшимся получить от политиков и экспертов хоть какой-то прогноз, остается обратиться лишь к астрологам.

b) Memento ториУ лейбористов появилась возможность потерять власть. Еще

четыре года назад, после парламентских выборов 2001 года, британские аналитики в один голос утверждали, что политический климат в стране окончательно стабилизировался и лейбористы останутся у власти еще очень надолго. Правящая партия Тони Блэра одержала убедительную победу, набрав более 42% голосов, сам премьер стал пepвым в истории лeйбopиcтом, пepeизбравшимся на второй срок, а консерваторы были полностью деморализованы.

Ровно за месяц до голосования соцопросы, проанализированные газетой Independent, показали, что его исход далеко не определен: некогда уверенные в победе лейбористы опережают консерваторов всего на 3%, то есть в пределах статистической погрешности (36% против 33%). Рейтинг либеральных демократов, потенциально способных отобрать голоса у лейбористов, составлял 21%. Журналисты констатировали, что нынешняя предвыборная гонка является самой напряженной и самой непредсказуемой за последние 20 лет; вопреки обыкновению, очевидного фаворита нет.

c) В последний день перед выборами оба кандидата совершили отчаянный рывок, пытаясь привлечь на свои стороны еще не определившихся избирателей, которых осталось около трех процентов. Керри за сутки совершил шесть остановок в четырех штатах, уделив особое внимание Висконсину и Огайо. Победа в Огайо для кандидатов особенно важна – ни один из тех кандидатов, кто проигрывал в Огайо, не выигрывал президентские выборы. А опросы общественного мнения в этом штате крайне противоречивы: одни давали победу Керри с разницей в четыре процента, другие с точно таким же разрывом – Бушу.

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Contents

1. Run-up to the election. Seeking nomination …………………………. 2

2. Opinion polls …………………………………………………………. 19

3. Rounds of voting. Casting you ballot ………………………………... 37

4. Electoral fraud ………………………………………………………... 50

5. Election returns ……………………………………………………….. 66

6. Taking office or stepping down. Cabinet reshuffle …………………... 81

7. Revision ……………………………………………………………… 99

121