Alpha Go勝棋王

A computer program has beaten a master Go player 3-0 in a best-of-five competition, in what is seen as a landmark moment for artificial intelligence.

Google's AlphaGo program was playing against Lee Se-dol in Seoul, in South Korea.

Mr Lee had been confident he would win before the competition started.

The Chinese board game is considered to be a much more complex challenge for a computer than chess.

"AlphaGo played consistently from beginning to the end while Lee, as he is only human, showed some mental vulnerability," one of Lee's former coaches, Kwon Kap-Yong, told the AFP news agency.

Mr Lee is considered a champion Go player, having won numerous professional tournaments in a long, successful career.

Go is a game of two players who take turns putting black or white stones on a 19-by-19 grid. Players win by taking control of the most territory on the board, which they achieve by surrounding their opponent's pieces with their own.

In the first game of the series, AlphaGo triumphed by a very narrow margin - Mr Lee had led for most of the match, but AlphaGo managed to build up a strong lead in its closing stages.

After losing the second match to Deep Mind, Lee Se-dol said he was "speechless" adding that the AlphaGo machine played a "nearly perfect game".

The two experts who provided commentary for the YouTube stream of for the third game said that it had been a complicated match to follow.

They said that Lee Se-dol had brought his "top game" but that AlphaGo had won "in great style".

The AlphaGo system was developed by British computer company DeepMind which was bought by Google in 2014.

It has built up its expertise by studying older games and teasing out patterns of play. And, according to DeepMind chief executive Demis Hassabis, it has also spent a lot of time just playing the game.

"It played itself, different versions of itself, millions and millions of times and each time got incrementally slightly better - it learns from its mistakes," he told the BBC before the matches started.

This virtuous circle of constant improvement meant the super computer went into the five-match series stronger than when it beat the European champion late last year.

Web address: http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-35785875

Introduction Analysis:
What: Google's AlphaGo beats Go master Lee Se-dol
Who: AlphaGo, Lee Se-dol, Kwon Kap-Yong
Where: Seoul, in South Korea.

Key words: 
artificial intelligence人工智能
agency機構
tournaments比賽
triumphed勝利
executive行政人員
virtuous circle良性循環

Syrian Civil War

More than 250,000 Syrians have lost their lives in four-and-a-half years of armed conflict, which began with anti-government protests before escalating into a full-scale civil war. More than 11 million others have been forced from their homes as forces loyal to President Bashar al-Assad and those opposed to his rule battle each other - as well as jihadist militants from so-called Islamic State. This is the story of the civil war so far.

Pro-democracy protests erupted in March 2011 in the southern city of Deraa after the arrest and torture of some teenagers who painted revolutionary slogans on a school wall. After security forces opened fire on demonstrators, killing several, more took to the streets.

The unrest triggered nationwide protests demandingPresident Assad's resignation. The government's use of force to crush the dissent merely hardened the protesters' resolve. By July 2011, hundreds of thousands were taking to the streets across the country.

Opposition supporters eventually began to take up arms, first to defend themselves and later to expel security forces from their local areas.

Violence escalated and the country descended into civil war as rebel brigades were formed to battle government forces for control of cities, towns and the countryside. Fighting reached the capital Damascus and second city of Aleppo in 2012.

By June 2013, the UN said 90,000 people had been killed in theconflict. By August 2015, that figure had climbed to 250,000, according to activists and the UN.

The conflict is now more than just a battle between those for or against Mr Assad. It has acquired sectarian overtones, pitching the country's Sunni majority against the president's Shia Alawite sect, and drawn in regional and world powers. The rise of the jihadist group Islamic State (IS) has added a further dimension.

More than 4.5 million people have fled Syria since the start of the conflict, most of them women and children. Neighbouring Lebanon, Jordan and Turkey have struggled to cope with one of the largest refugee exoduses in recent history. About 10% of Syrian refugees have sought safety in Europe, sowing political divisions as countries argue over sharing the burden.

With neither side able to inflict a decisive defeat on the other, the international community long ago concluded that only a political solution could end the conflict in Syria. The UN Security Council has called for the implementation of the 2012 Geneva Communique, which envisages a transitional governing body with full executive powers "formed on the basis of mutual consent".

Talks in early 2014, known as Geneva II, broke down after only two rounds, with then-UN special envoy Lakhdar Brahimi blaming the Syrian government's refusal to discuss opposition demands.

Mr Brahimi's successor, Staffan de Mistura, focused on establishing a series of local ceasefires. His plan for a "freeze zone" in Aleppo was rejected, but a three-year siege of the Homs suburb of al-Wair was successfully brought to an end in December 2015.

At the same time, the conflict with IS lent fresh impetus to the search for a political solution in Syria. The US and Russia led efforts to get representatives of the government and the opposition to attend "proximity talks" in Geneva in January 2016 to discuss a Security Council-endorsed road map for peace, including a ceasefire and a transitional period ending with elections.

What began as another Arab Spring uprising against an autocratic ruler has mushroomed into a brutal proxy war that has drawn in regional and world powers.

Iran and Russia have propped up the Alawite-led government of President Assad and gradually increased their support. Tehran is believed to be spending billions of dollars a year to bolster Mr Assad, providing military advisers and subsidised weapons, as well as lines of credit and oil transfers. Russia has meanwhile launched an air campaign against Mr Assad's opponents.

The Syrian government has also enjoyed the support of Lebanon's Shia Islamist Hezbollah movement, whose fighters have provided important battlefield support since 2013.

The Sunni-dominated opposition has, meanwhile, attracted varying degrees of support from its international backers - Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Jordan, along with the US, UK and France.

Until late 2015, rebel appeals for anti-aircraft weapons to stop devastating government air strikes were rejected by the US and its allies, amid concern that they might end up in the hands of jihadist militants. A US programme to train and arm 5,000 rebels to take the fight to IS on the ground also suffered a series of setbacks before being abandoned.

Web address: http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-26116868

Introduction Analysis:
What: the story of syrian civil war
Who: Syrian, President Bashar al-Assad
Where: Syria, Aleppo

Key words: 
conflict衝突
erupt爆發
demonstrators示威者
resignation辭職
Shia Alawite sect什葉阿拉維教派
political divisions政治分裂
weapons武器

Aung San Suu Kyi

Aung San Suu Kyi is state counsellor of Myanmar and winner of the 1991 Nobel Prize for Peace.

Aung San Suu Kyi is the daughter of Myanmar's independence hero, General Aung San.

He was assassinated during the transition period in July 1947, just six months before independence, when Ms Suu Kyi was only two.

In 1960 she went to India with her mother Daw Khin Kyi, who had been appointed Myanmar's ambassador in Delhi.

Four years later she went to Oxford University in the UK, where she studied philosophy, politics and economics. There she met her future husband, academic Michael Aris.

After stints of living and working in Japan and Bhutan, she settled in the UK to raise their two children, Alexander and Kim, but Myanmar was never far from her thoughts.

When she arrived back in Rangoon (Yangon) in 1988 - to look after her critically ill mother - Myanmar was in the midst of major political upheaval.

Thousands of students, office workers and monks took to the streets demanding democratic reform.

"I could not as my father's daughter remain indifferent to all that was going on," she said in a speech in Rangoon on 26 August 1988, and was propelled into leading the revolt against the then-dictator, General Ne Win.

Inspired by the non-violent campaigns of US civil rights leader Martin Luther King and India's Mahatma Gandhi, she organised rallies and travelled around the country, calling for peaceful democratic reform and free elections.

But the demonstrations were brutally suppressed by the army, who seized power in a coup on 18 September 1988. Ms Suu Kyi was placed under house arrest the following year.

The military government called national elections in May 1990 which Aung San Suu Kyi's NLD convincingly won - however, the junta refused to hand over control.

Ms Suu Kyi remained under house arrest in Rangoon for six years, until she was released in July 1995.

She was again put under house arrest in September 2000, when she tried to travel to the city of Mandalay in defiance of travel restrictions.

She was released unconditionally in May 2002, but just over a year later she was put in prison following a clash between her supporters and a government-backed mob.

She was later allowed to return home - but again under effective house arrest.

During periods of confinement, Ms Suu Kyi busied herself studying and exercising. She meditated, worked on her French and Japanese language skills, and relaxed by playing Bach on the piano.

At times she was able to meet other NLD officials and selected diplomats.

But during her early years of detention she was often in solitary confinement. She was not allowed to see her two sons or her husband, who died of cancer in March 1999.

The military authorities had offered to allow her to travel to the UK to see him when he was gravely ill, but she felt compelled to refuse for fear she would not be allowed back into the country.

She was sidelined from Myanmar's first elections in two decades on 7 November 2010 but released from house arrest six days later.

Her son Kim Aris was allowed to visit her for the first time in a decade.

As the new government embarked on a process of reform, Aung San Suu Kyi and her party rejoined the political process.

When by-elections were held in April 2012, to fill seats vacated by politicians who had taken government posts, she and her party contested seats, despite reservations.

"Some are a little bit too optimistic about the situation," she said in an interview before the vote. "We are cautiously optimistic. We are at the beginning of a road."

She and the NLD won 43 of the 45 seats contested, in an emphatic statement of support. Weeks later, Ms Suu Kyi took the oath in parliament and became the leader of the opposition.

And the following May, she embarked on a visit outside Myanmar for the first time in 24 years, in a sign of apparent confidence that its new leaders would allow her to return.

However, Ms Suu Kyi became frustrated with the pace of democratic development.

In November 2014, she warned that Myanmar had not made any real reforms in the past two years and warned that the US - which dropped most of its sanctions against the country in 2012 - had been "overly optimistic" in the past.

And in June, a vote in Myanmar's parliament failed to remove the army's veto over constitutional change. Ms Suu Kyi is also barred from running for president because her two sons hold British not Burmese passports - a ruling she says is unfair.

In 2015, the military-backed civilian government of President Thein Sein said a general election would be held in November - the first openly contested election in 25 years.

Early on after the vote on 8 November it became clear the NLD was headed for a landslide victory.

On 13 November, the NLD secured the required two-thirds of the contested seats in parliament to win a majority in what was widely regarded as a largely fair vote - although there were some reports of irregularities.

However, hundreds of thousands of people - including the Muslim Rohingya minority, who are not recognised as citizens - were denied voting rights.

Web address: http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-pacific-11685977

Introduction Analysis:

What: Aung San Suu Kyi's whole life

Who:Aung San Suu Kyi, Aung San, Ne Win

Where: Myanmar, Yangon

Key words: 

Myanmar緬甸

Nobel Prize for Peace諾貝爾和平獎

NLD(National League for Democracy)全國民主聯盟

assassinated暗殺

transition過渡時期

dictator獨裁者

democratic民主的

opposition反對黨

confinement限制

defiance反抗