2016年12月26日 星期一

Week Eight- 英國脫歐

Voting to leave the EU was an act of national self-confidence. Politicians should be more optimistic about Brexit

26 DECEMBER 2016 • 4:55PM



When Mervyn King speaks about the economic future, it is generally a good idea to listen. The former governor of the Bank of England did not have a perfect record as an economic forecaster (no one does), but he does have a near-unique experience of economic policy built up over more than 30 years at the Bank. Lord King, a cross-bench peer aligned to no political party, says Britain should be more optimistic and “self-confident” about its prospects outside the European Union. 

Stephen Martin, the new head of the Institute of Directors, strikes a similar note, arguing that leaving the EU will “open our eyes” to the economic opportunities that lie outside Europe. Mr Martin, too, is politically non-partisan, interested only in what is good for British business. Both men are right and politicians should learn from them. Many of those who lead this country, or simply aspire to, should be approaching Brexit with a very different, more optimistic attitude. 
Asking for more optimism about Brexit is not, as some of its opponents suggest, a way of continuing the divisions of the referendum. As Theresa May proves, it is perfectly possible to have voted Remain in June and to argue today that Brexit can be good for Britain. Mrs May will soon give a major speech on Brexit which she says will offer a vision of the country Britain can become outside the EU.  
If it lives up to her promise, Mrs May’s speech will be exactly what the country needs, but her most important audience may be among her own colleagues and officials. Voters are largely positive about the future, believing in this country’s ability to thrive. Sadly, that belief is often lacking in some ministers and especially in the Civil Service. Too many still regard the Brexit vote as an error and the exit that must follow as a problem to be managed and mitigated, not an opportunity to be seized. 
Outside the EU, Britain will be able once again to decide its own laws on everything from immigration to industrial strategy. We must surely also get more scope to build closer trading relationships with dynamic economies around the world. These are the freedoms that the British people chose for themselves and their country in the biggest vote in our history: the referendum vote to leave the EU was a huge collective act of optimism and belief that this country’s best days are yet to come. Brexit is a good news story, and our leaders should do more to tell it that way. 


Structure of the Lead：
     WHO-Lord King
     WHEN-not given
     WHAT-says Britain should be more optimistic and “self-confident” about its prospects outside the European Union
     WHY-not given
     WHERE-United Kingdom
     HOW-not given


Keywords：
   1. brexit：脫歐
   2. forecaster：推測者
   3. aspire：嚮往、懷有大志
   4. division：分開
   5. referendum：公民投票
   6. thrive：興旺、繁榮
   7. mitigate：緩和、減輕
   8. dynamic：強而有力的
   9. freedom：自由權
   10. optimism：樂觀

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2016年12月12日 星期一

Week Seven- 白頭盔

White Helmets visit Montreal to discuss harrowing work in Syria


Published Friday, December 9, 2016 10:01PM EST 

Amid Syria’s brutal civil war, a team of brave volunteers are risking their lives to provide life-saving emergency aid to those living through the chaos.
The White Helmets, also known as the Syrian Civil Defence, are a group of nearly 3,000 unarmed volunteers who work daily to rescue those injured in the country’s ongoing bombings. Since it formed in 2013, the group estimates it has saved more than 73,530 lives.
Members of the group visited Concordia University in Montreal Thursday to discuss their harrowing but important work. The event coincided with a screening of the 40-minute Netflix documentary “The White Helmets,” directed by Oscar-nominated director Orlando von Einsiedel.
Farouq Habib, one of the group’s leaders, was a banker before he began volunteering.
“I feel on a personal level, I’m a better person now,” Habib told CTV News.
The group was expected to remain in Canada for several days for more screenings, but returned to Syria early to resume their work.
“To me it’s the genuine, genuine definition of heroism,” said James LeMesurier, another member of the group.
The work is undeniably dangerous. The White Helmets have run into active bombing zones and sniper fire to rescue injured civilians. To date, 154 volunteers have been killed in the line of duty, and they say that four of their warehouses have been hit by bombs.
The reason the White Helmets continue to risk their lives, they say, is dedication. The group is comprised of everyday men and women, including bakers, pharmacists and shopkeepers, who underwent first-aid and emergency training to be able to help out in the hardest hit areas of Syria. All volunteers take a pledge to three core principles: humanity, solidarity and impartiality.
“They go by a motto of, ‘To save one life is to save humanity.’ And I think that that is true,” said Lindsay Gladding, a senior program manager with World Vision Canada.
But the group is not without controversy. The White Helmets have been criticized for receiving financial backing from western governments and faced accusations that some members have faked rescue videos. In some cases, the group has even been accused of aligning with terrorists.
Habib says the White Helmets are clear about who they consider the enemy.
“Anyone who targets civilians in Syria, for us, is a criminal,” he said.
As the war rages on, the group says that there are many lives they are simply incapable of saving. For that reason, they say that Syrian refugees, including those in Canada, will be critical in efforts to one day rebuild the country’s future.



Structure of the Lead：
     WHO-a team of brave volunteers
     WHEN-not given
     WHAT-are risking their lives
     WHY-to provide life-saving emergency aid to those living through the chaos.
     WHERE-Syria
     HOW-not given


Keywords：
   1. brutal：殘忍的、粗暴的
   2. chaos：混亂
   3. harrowing：悲慘的
   4. resume：重新開始、繼續
   5. genuine：真誠的、坦率的
   6. heroism：英勇精神
   7. dedication：奉獻、貢獻
   8. humanity：人道、慈愛
   9. solidarity：團結
   10. impartiality：無私
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2016年12月5日 星期一

Week Six- 美古關係

U.S. Airlines Can Now Make Direct Flights to Cuba

  • by Reuters

Cuba said on Friday it was ready to receive U.S. commercial flights beginning next week and that it viewed their renewal after being suspended in 1961 as another positive step in a growing detente.
JetBlue  JBLU -0.14%  is scheduled to inaugurate direct flights between the long-time nemeses on Aug. 31, when it flies from Fort Lauderdale, Fla., to Villa Clara in central Cuba.
American Airlines  AAL -0.82%  in September will start flying from Miami to the provinces, followed by other airlines.
There will be 20 daily flights to Havana by the end of the year.
“It is a positive step and contribution to the improving relations between Cuba and the U.S.,” deputy transportation minister Eduardo Rodriguez told local media.
 Josefina Vidal, who heads Cuba’s U.S. diplomacy department, said Cuba had confirmed the JetBlue flight, removing the last technical hurdle of official approval.
Rodriguez said U.S. airlines would be handled in a similar fashion as the 110 airlines currently flying to Cuba and with equal attention to security issues that were already a normal part of the country’s system.
“Cuba is strong in matters of operational and aviation security, which are recognized internationally,” the Communist Party daily, Granma, quoted him as stating.
Seventeen U.S. charter flights land every day in Cuba, but they are expected to gradually succumb to competition from the airlines.
Cuba has been experiencing a tourism boom since the announcement in December 2014 that the U.S. would normalize diplomatic ties and work to solve various outstanding issues.
Last year, a record 3.5 million tourists visited, straining dilapidated infrastructure and pushing up prices, especially in the capital. Thousands of homes now rent out rooms, helping to ease the strain, and some 2,000 private restaurants have opened.
The Obama administration has focused on allowing normal travel, loosening restrictions despite a ban on tourism that only Congress can lift, and authorizing travel related businesses to set up shop in Cuba and communications companies and banks to provide support such as roaming and credit cards.
The direct flights follow the opening of the first U.S. administered hotel and arrival of the first U.S. cruise ship earlier this year.
Some 300,000 Cubans living in the U.S. now travel home annually. In 2015, the Cuban government reported 161,233 Americans visited, compared to 91,254 in 2014, and arrivals through June nearly doubled compared with the same period last year.

 Structure of the Lead：
     WHO-Cuba
     WHEN-on Friday
     WHAT-said 
     WHY-it was ready to receive U.S. commercial flights beginning next week and that it viewed their renewal after being suspended in 1961 as another positive step in a growing detente.
     WHERE-not given
     HOW-not given


Keywords：
   1. suspend：暫停、中止
   2. detente：緩和政策
   3. inaugurate：開始、開展
   4. airline：航線
   5. relations：國家之間的關係
   6. aviation：航空、飛行
   7. normalize：使正常化
   8. restriction：限制
   9. roaming：國際漫遊
   10. direct flight：直飛航線
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2016年11月28日 星期一

Week Five- 火箭回收

SpaceX Makes History By Successfully Landing Rocket on Floating Ship

  • by 
    •  
  • Clay Dillow
 
  • @cwdillow
 

SpaceX made history Friday afternoon by successfully landing the first stage of a Falcon 9 rocket on a floating drone ship in the Atlantic Ocean following the successful launch of a resupply mission bound for the International Space Station.
The first stage rocket booster made a perfect landing on SpaceX’s drone ship, coming to rest upright just meters from dead center on the landing pad.
Today’s landing marks SpaceX’s fifth try at setting down one of its booster stages on its unmanned drone ship—cheekily named Of Course I Still Love You—and the first that didn’t end with the destruction of the rocket. The successful touchdown marks a historic achievement, not only for SpaceX, but for spaceflight in general. The ability to successfully recover and reuse rocket boosters could drastically reduce the high cost of launching people and objects into orbit and beyond.
The company successfully landed one of its Falcon 9 first stage boosters on dry land at Cape Canaveral in December, but having proven its landing systems work and that rocket recovery is indeed feasible, it returned to exclusively attempting the much more challenging drone ship landings. Such drone ship landings are necessary if SpaceX is going to achieve its long-term objective of providing regular and relatively inexpensive space launch services by recovering and reusing its first-stage rocket boosters.
Missions to higher orbits require rockets to travel too fast and too far from their point of origin to make terrestrial landings feasible. It simply requires too much extra fuel to turn the first stage around and pilot it all the way back to its launch site (it’s also safer to land rockets at sea rather than on land, where even a “near miss” could threaten populated areas).
Landing on the drone ship at sea requires the first stage to carry less fuel for its return trip, cutting weight and mission costs. The ability to land at sea consistently would be huge for SpaceX, in theory enabling it to recover the first stages of its Falcon 9 rockets—and the nine costly Merlin rocket engines contained in each one—for virtually any mission regardless of how high and fast the rocket must travel to deliver its payload to the proper orbit.
The launch also marks SpaceX’s first flight to the ISS since a similar mission in June of last year ended abruptly when the rocket disintegrated mid-flight due to a mechanical failure.
Though today’s landing marks a historic milestone for SpaceX, the company has a lot more work ahead of it if it wants to meet its ambitious target of launching 18 rockets this year. Today’s launch marked the just the third launch of 2016, meaning the company has 15 launches to go and a shade less than nine months to complete them.
The rocket launch on Friday placed a SpaceX Dragon capsule on a path to link up with the ISS on Sunday morning carrying a range of experiments and supplies, as well as an experimental inflatable habitat.



http://fortune.com/2016/04/08/spacex-lands-rocket-booster/




Structure of the Lead：
     WHO-SpaceX
     WHEN-Friday afternoon
     WHAT-made history
     WHY-not given
     WHERE-in the Atlantic Ocean
     HOW-by successfully landing the first stage of a Falcon 9 rocket on a floating drone ship


Keywords：
   1. land：著陸、降落
   2. launch：發射
   3. bound：彈回
   4. destruction：毀壞
   5. touchdown：著陸、降落
   6. mission：飛行任務
   7. payload：彈頭
   8. orbit：運行軌道
   9. inflatable：得意的
  10. habitat：棲息地


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2016年11月12日 星期六

Week Four- 巴黎氣候高峰會


Kerry Urges Strong Agreement on Climate Change Ahead of Paris Conference


Justin Worland Oct. 18, 2015
    
'Failure is not an option'

Secretary of State John Kerry on Saturday urged leaders from around the world to agree to strong measures to address climate change. The speech comes just six weeks before a United Nations conference that diplomats expect to yield the most significant international agreement on the issue ever reached.

In his address, Kerry joined a chorus of climate change advocates who paint the negotiations as an opportunity to transition the world to a low-carbon economy in which investment dollars flow into renewable energy sources and other technology to stem global warming.

“We need every country on the same page, all pushing for an ambitious, durable, and inclusive agreement that will finally put us on the path towards a global clean-energy future,” Kerry said in a speech in Milan. “Failure is not an option.”
Kerry dismissed the notion that climate change can be addressed by future generations, arguing that global security hangs in the balance of the negotiations. Specifically, he pointed the refugee crisis in Syria as a situation that has been exacerbated by climate change. In the future, drought and sea-level rise will have even more dramatic impacts barring action, Kerry said.

 “I’m not telling you that the crisis in Syria was caused by climate change,” he said. “But the devastating drought clearly made a bad situation a lot worse.”
The U.N. conference, which begins next month, has been described as the last opportunity to craft an agreement that will forestall some of the worst effects of climate change. Over the past several months, countries from around the world have submitted plans to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions in the coming decades. An agreement at this year’s conference aims to build upon those commitments and create a structure to monitor and improve upon them.


http://time.com/4077597/kerry-climate-speech/?iid=sr-link8


Structure of the Lead：
     WHO-John Kerry
     WHEN-on Saturday
     WHAT-urged leaders from around the world 
     WHY-to agree to strong measures to address climate change
     WHERE-not given
     HOW-not given


Keywords：
   1. diplomat：外交官
   2. chorus：齊聲、異口同聲
   3. advocate：提倡、主張
   4. transition：轉變
   5. notion：想法
   6. exacerbate：使惡化
   7. drought：乾旱
   8. devastating：毀滅性的
   9. forestall：預先阻止
 10. emission：排放
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2016年11月5日 星期六

Week Three- 巴黎恐攻

The Bataclan theater, the epicenter of the terror attacks in Paris

By Ishaan Tharoor   November 13, 2015 


The concert hall was crammed with more than 1,000 people who had come to see a sold-out show by the American rock band Eagles of Death Metal. Gunmen apparently burst into the crowd and started firing indiscriminately. At least two attackers were killed. According to reports, they detonated suicide vests as police approached, killing four police officers.

The incident was one in a spate of seemingly coordinated attacks around the city.
The Bataclan, located in the 11th arrondissement in eastern Paris, is a famous venue near an area known for its nightlife. It dates back to the 19th century, when it used to stage vaudeville "spectacles," and played host over the years to luminaries such as Edith Piaf, Nick Cave and Lou Reed. It went through a series of incarnations as a cinema and is now a multi-purpose concert hall. The theater's colorful facade was done in the exotic "chinoiserie" popular at the time of its construction, and once boasted an actual pagoda rooftop.

According to the Guardian, the Bataclan's horseshoe-shaped ground floor can fit seating or be made for standing room.
“It looked like a battlefield, there was blood everywhere, there were bodies everywhere," one survivor told the Guardian after being freed from the Bataclan. "Everyone scrabbled to the ground. I was on the ground with a man on top of me and another one beside me up against a wall. We just stayed still like that. At first we kept quiet. I don’t know how long we stayed like that, it seemed like an eternity."
French President François Hollande called the carnage in the theater and elsewhere an assault "of unprecedented proportions." He then went to the Bataclan to survey the scene.

According to reports, Hollande declared there that France was "going to lead a war," presumably against Islamist militants. He said his country's response would be "ruthless."
Relatives of members in Eagles of Death Metal who spoke to The Washington Post said the band managed to escape.
Mary Lou Dorio, the mother of Julian Dorio, the band's drummer, told The Post that her son was safe. She said the band members fled the concert hall when the attack began, but that the fate of several crew members remains unknown.
“It was awful,” she said. Her son initially went to a local police station, where he was able to call his wife. He had left his phone on stage. Earlier in the day, Dorio posted a far happier photo from his visit to the French capital.
Dorio's wife, Emily, said that she spoke to her husband only briefly.

“We are just holding our breath and saying prayers for everyone,” she told The Post. “He called to say that he loved me and he was safe. Everyone on stage was able to get off.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2015/11/13/the-bataclan-theater-the-epicenter-of-the-terror-attack-in-paris/

 Structure of the Lead：
     WHO- Gunmen
     WHEN- not given
     WHAT- burst into the crowd and started firing indiscriminately
     WHY- the concert hall was crammed with more than 1,000 people
     WHERE- inside the concert hall
     HOW- not given 


Keywords：
   1.  indiscriminately：隨意地、任意地
   2. detonate：引爆
   3. coordinated：組織有序的
   4. scrabble：在...上亂趴
   5. eternity：無止盡的漫長
   6. carnage：大屠殺
   7. assault：攻擊、襲擊
   8. unprecedented：史無前例的
   9. presumably：大概 
  10.ruthless：無情的、殘忍的
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2016年10月29日 星期六

Week Two- 歐洲難民


Hungarian Journalist, Petra Laszlo, Fired for Kicking Migrants on CameraOpen Source


By ROBERT MACKEY SEPT. 8, 2015



An Internet television channel associated with Hungary’s far-right Jobbik party fired a camera operator on Tuesday after images of her kicking and tripping migrants spread across social networks.



The camerawoman, identified as Petra Laszlo by the Hungarian news site 444.hu, was captured on video tripping a migrant fleeing from the police at a makeshift relocation camp in Roszke, a few hundred yards from the Serbian border.



Frustrated at the conditions in the camp, hundreds of migrants — among them Syrians, Iraqis and Afghans — burst through police lines at the camp on Tuesday, the CNN correspondent Arwa Damon reported.


After more images appeared online showing Ms. Laszlo kicking migrants, including a child, her employer, N1TV, which works to popularize the virulently anti-immigrant Jobbik party, said in a brief statement that she had “behaved in an unacceptable manner,” and had been fired.

Video recorded by Ms. Laszlo for the broadcaster’s YouTube channel showed the man she tripped carrying a child in his arms as he ran from a police officer. The footage was edited to conceal the fact that Ms. Laszlo, wearing a surgical mask, had stuck out a leg to send the man sprawling.

The report shot by Ms. Laszlo also showed some of the migrants rounded up by the police after their attempted escape chanting, “Allahu Akbar,” or “God Is great.” In an interview with The Washington Post on Monday, the Roman Catholic Church’s prelate in southern Hungary cited that chant as evidence that Muslims fleeing war in the Middle East should be kept out. “They’re not refugees. This is an invasion,” Bishop Laszlo Kiss-Rigo said. “They come here with cries of ‘Allahu akbar.’ They want to take over.”

The bishop, whose remarks came one day after Pope Francis called on Catholics to take in refugees, said that he was “in total agreement with” Hungary’s prime minister, Viktor Orban, who wrote last week that migration from Muslim lands undermined efforts “to keep Europe Christian.”

The pope, Bishop Kiss-Rigo told The Post, “doesn’t know the situation.”




http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/09/world/europe/hungarian-journalist-fired-after-abusing-migrants-on-camera.html?_r=0


Structure of the Lead：
     WHO- An Internet television channel
     WHEN- on Tuesday
     WHAT- fired a camera operator
     WHY- images of her kicking and tripping migrants spread across social networks
     WHERE- not given
     HOW- not given
Keywords：

  1. trip：絆倒
  2. migrant：移民
  3. flee：逃離
  4. makeshift：臨時用的
  5. correspondent：通訊記者、特派員
  6. conceal：隱藏、隱瞞
  7. sprawl：伸展四肢倒下
  8. prelate：高級教士
  9. take over：接手、接管
  10. take over：接手、接管


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