Which one below is true according to the news? [br] [originaltext]In this secti

In this section， you will hear five short news items.
Each item will be read only once.
After each item， there will be a fifteen-second pause.
During the pause， read the question and the four choices marked A， B， C and D，and decide which is the best answer.
Then mark the corresponding letter on the answer sheet with a single line through the centre.
16. The prime minister， David Cameron， is urging today’s youngsters to look beyond the traditional French and German lessons to concentrate on the tongue of the future—Mandarin. Cameron said that a partnership between the British Council and Hanban— the Chinese National Office for Teaching Chinese as a Foreign Language— will double the number of Chinese language assistants in the UK by 2016 and provide increased funding to lower the cost to schools of offering Mandarin as a language option.
17. Max Baucus， the influential Democratic senator from Montana， is set to become the next US ambassador to China. “It’s an interesting ‘ pick ’ in the sense that security competition with China is heating up and he doesn’t have much of a record on security issues，” said Dan Blumenthal， director of Asian studies at the American Enterprise Institute. While Baucus will certainly get up to speed， he’s probably less likely than his predecessors to interfere with the White House and the Pentagon on military or political issues.
18. According to the European Commission’s Institute for Energy， just 0. 3 percent of the Saharan Desert’s intense solar energy can provide Europe with all the electrical power it needs. A company called Nur Energy plans to capture some of it by building a solar plant similar to an Israeli one in the Negev desert that uses heliotropic mirrors. This technology， unlike photovoltaic cells， can generate energy even when the sky is overcast or at night. Thousands of mirrors， spread over 100 square kilometers， will concentrate sunlight to a tower where it heats and melts a special salt.
19. The pressure to feed Asia’s growing population has led to dangerous levels of overfishing near Pacific coastlines. An example can be found in Sindangan， a fishing town in the southern Philippines. Wild catches are falling while prices are rising. The fisherman says the area’s once healthy fish stocks are in danger because of an increase in the number of fishing boats. Across the South China Sea， fish catches near shore have dropped since the nineteen eighties. That drop has pushed fishermen to go offshore with bigger boats. Benjamin Francisco is an official with the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization. He says some of the methods they use to increase their catches are destructive.
20. In 1961， Hal Berman became the first chief of Special English. He saved Special English from destruction by people who did not see its value. And he showed how to change one thousand five hundred words into a living language that informed， educated and entertained millions of people. In the beginning， Special English had one fifteen-minute news show that was broadcast to Africa and Asia once a day. Today， Special English broadcasts thirty-minute programmes by shortwave and medium-wave sixteen times a day around the world.