News English 新聞英文

News English Course Materials

新聞英文課程自編講義

授課老師：葉姿青學生姓名： ______學號： ______

Table of Contents: 目錄 1. Course Syllabus･･･････････････････p. 3 2. Grading ･･･････････････････････p. 5 3. Introduction to News English････････p. 6 4. News English Structure････････････p. 8 5. Politics: Left and Right････････････････p. 10 6. Politics: Conspiracy Theory･････････････p. 14 7. Finance: The Global Recession･･･････････p. 16 8. Surveillance and WikiLeaks･････････････p. 19 9. Terrorism and Terrorist Attack･･････p.27 10. Refugee Crisis･･･････････････････p.37 11. Environment･･････････････････････p.39 12. Zika Virus････････････････････････p.45 13. Appendix (1): Expression Key･･･････p.53 14. Appendix (2): Exercise Sheets･･･････p.55 15. Appendix (3):Writing Style Guide････p.57 16. Appendix (4): On “Fake News”････p.60

1. Course Syllabus

Week Date Course Contents

1 2/16 Introduction to course Introduction to News English 2 2/23 Exercise: View 1st MOOCS and online test in class. Introduction to Structure of News Article 3 3/2 Preview: Complete 2nd MOOCS and the 2nd online test before attending the class. Politics: Left and Right 4 3/9 Preview: Complete 3rd MOOCS and online test. Politics: Conspiracy Theory 5 3/16 Preview: Complete 4th MOOCS and online test. Finance: The Global Recession 6 3/23 Preview: Complete 5th MOOCS and online test. 7 3/30 Social Issue: The World of Surveillance and WikiLeaks Feedback on Report 1. Submit 1st journal report (word document, 250-word, 8 4/6 double space) on the platform, and print out a hardcopy. 2. Complete Evaluation Form for peer review. 9 4/13 Midterm Presentation: Give an individual 3-5 minutes PPT presentation based on the topics and related issues 10 4/20 discussed in previous weeks. 11 4/27 Global News: Terrorism and Terrorist Attacks Global News: Refugee Crisis 12 5/4 Preview: Complete 6th MOOCS and online test. 13 5/11 Global News: Environmental Issue 14 5/18 Global News: Zika Virus Feedback on Report 1. Submit 2nd journal report (word document, 250-word, 15 5/25 double space) on teaching resources platform, and print out a hardcopy. 2. Complete Evaluation Form for peer review.

16 6/1 [Tentative] 公開成果展

17 6/8 Final Presentation: Give an individual 3-5 minutes PPT presentation based on the topics and related issues 18 6/15 discussed in previous weeks.

2. Grading Policy

A. 期中、期末個人專題報告 60％

1. 期中英文報告：15%

250 字=1 頁 A4, double space, time new roman, size 12

2. 期中 PPT：15%

時限 3~5 分鐘

3. 期末英文報告： 15%

250 字/1 頁 A4, double space, time new roman, size 12

4. 期末 PPT：15%

時限 3~5 分鐘

B. 其他個人作業 20％

1. 觀看 6 支 MOOCS 並完成線上測驗：10%

2. 每週於課堂上根據焦點議題發表個人意見於網站的論壇區：

10%

C. 組別/團體活動 20％

製作 1 支影片(教學、創作、戲劇、宣傳、微電影等等)：20%

約 5~15 分鐘

3. Introduction to News English A. Warm-up Exercise: What are the pros and cons of reading the news? Is reading news important in our life? Why or why not?

B. Newsworthiness

1. Timing The word news means things that are new —information on the latest, most current events. 2. Significance The number of people affected by the event, the importance of the event to international relations, or the magnitude of the event is important 3. Proximity Distance is not only measured geographically, but culturally as well. 4. Prominence Celebrities, politicians, and royalty—they are newsworthy simply because they are famous. 5. Human Interest They appeal to readers' emotions, sympathy or sense of curiosity.

C. Sections of a Newspaper

1. Hard News (Serious News): This is what we think of when we say "the news." These stories inform the reader of events that have happened within the recent past, usually the day before, and are usually found in the first section of any newspaper or at the top of a news website. 2. Features: These articles are generally longer and go deeper into their subject matter. They may seek to emotionally affect the reader, to explain the news, or to offer personal insight. 3. Sports: This section reports on teams that have won or lost, the prospects of different clubs and personalities. This section may be divided according to the activity, such as baseball, football or basketball. 4. Business: These articles often describe profits and losses at various companies trends in stock markets, and profile important CEOs and other leaders. 5. Editorial/Op-Ed: Articles in this section don't simply inform readers about events, but interpret them from a particular viewpoint. For example, an opinion article won't just report on a politician's speech, but will interpret the speech in either a positive or negative way. 6. Science: These articles report news about advances in scientific knowledge. 7. Health: These articles either describe the latest medical news or inform readers about maintaining fitness. 8. Entertainment: This section consists of movie and theater reviews, descriptions of local festivals, and gossip and interviews related to celebrities. 9. Technology: This section consists of articles discussing the latest advances in computers, robotics, and energy. 10. Travel: These articles describe how to get to exotic locations, where to stay, the best food and how much you can expect to spend there.

4. News English Structure

A. Structure of a News Article

1. Headline: (eye-catching) • Unique grammar and vocabulary. Using simple present tense. 2. The Lead: (grab reader’s attention) • Appears in the first sentence to sum up main facts or information (mostly they are summary leads) in a single line. 3. The Body: (full detail and conclusion) • Details: expand on the lead to explain/clarify further • Power quote: from witnesses, experts • Nut graph: significance, distinctiveness of an article

B. Features of News

1. Different kinds of article – Fact-based – Opinion-based 2. Vocabularies – Synonyms – Tones *Aim at precision/accuracy. 3. Effects – Biased, misleading – Objective, neutral, fair, disinterested, factual – Emotive, conservative, reactionary, liberal *Vocabulary/Wording used may affect the tone and establish perspective of the news article.

C. Ethics of Journalism

News writing is based on the principle of journalistic professionalism. This principle states that reporters and journalists should be objective in their writing. This means

they must treat all the participants fairly, with disinterestedness and factuality, and that they must be free from political influence.

D. Headlines

1. Use simple present tense to describe past events. – President Obama defends stimulus bill. 2. Use present progressive to describe ongoing events. – FDA still probing Friday’s J&J recall. 3. Use the infinitive form of the verb (to +V.) to describe future events. – Malaysia to update its quota system. 4. Don’t use auxiliary verbs, such as “have” or “to be,” in passive sentences. – Bullet removed from head. 5. Leave out articles “a/the/this…” and “to be” to save space. – Suspect arrested in NYC bomb attempt. 6. Use nouns, verbs and prepositions as adjectives. – Post-Copenhagen climate talks begin amid discord. 7. Use specialized vocabulary and abbreviations. – Judge nixes media request for iPhone warrant. (note: nixes for refuses; warrant is a legal term) 8. Colloquialisms or even slang terms are commonly used. – Hillary slams Iran prez following Ahmadinejad’s rant at UN. 9. Special uses of punctuation. – Joint Chiefs Chair: No, No, No. Don’t Attack Iran. (indicating a speaker) – Stocks fall after wild day; Europe woes linger. (indicating a different angle of the same story) E. Exercise 1. Three people have been killed in a terrible shop fire. → Terrible shop fire kills 3. 2. The Boston Red Sox have humiliated the Toronto Blue Jays, who lost 8-0. → Boston Red Sox humiliate Toronto Blue Jays 8-0. 3. Police mistakes have led to 183 crimes not being detected. → Police mistakes: 183 crimes not detected 4. A judge has sentenced a lottery winner to jail for a bank robbery. → Lottery winner jailed for robbery.

5. Politics: Left and Right Left Wing vs Right Wing Comparison Chart

Left Wing Right Wing

Political Liberal Conservative Philosophy

Economic Policy Income equality; higher tax rates on the Lower taxes and less regulation on businesses; wealthy; government spending on social reduced government spending; balanced budget; programs and infrastructure; stronger regulations on business.

Healthcare Policy Believe that access to healthcare is one of Oppose government-provided universal the fundamental rights of all citizens. healthcare and the Affordable Care Act. Favor Support universal healthcare, the competition to Medicare from private insurance Affordable Care Act, expansion of companies; oppose Medicaid expansion. Medicare and Medicaid.

Immigration Pathway to citizenship for undocumented No "amnesty" for undocumented immigrants; Policy immigrants; moratorium on deportations stronger border patrol and fence to check illegal or prosecutions of undocumented immigration. Belief that illegal immigration is immigrants who are young adults and lowering wages for citizens and documented have no criminal record. immigrants.

Views on Generally in favor of abortion rights, and Generally against abortion and opposed to stem Abortion stem cell research. cell research.

Views on Gay Generally support gay marriage; support Generally opposed to gay marriage; opposed to Rights anti-discrimination laws to protect LGBT certain anti-discrimination laws because they against workplace discrimination. believe such laws conflict with certain religious beliefs and restrict freedom of religion.

Views on Gun In favor of gun control laws like Strongly opposed to gun control laws; strong Rights background checks or waiting periods proponents of the Second Amendment. before buying a gun; banning automatic

Left Wing vs Right Wing Comparison Chart

Left Wing Right Wing

weapons; and disallowing concealed weapons.

Associated Democratic Party, Green, Socialist Republican Party; Libertarians; Constitutional Political Parties Party

Associated Media The New York Times, MSNBC National Review, Fox News

Ideologies Social Democracy; Federalism;Socialism, Capitalism; Conservatism Communism; Collectivism; Marxism

Famous Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher, George Proponents of Einstein, Barack Obama, Francois Washington, Winston Churchill, George W. Ideology Hollande, Barney Frank, Nancy Pelosi, Bush, Mitch McConnell, Rupert Murdoch, Rush Noam Chomsky, Warren Buffett. Limbaugh, Tony Abbott, Mitt Romney

Source of reference: http://www.diffen.com/difference/Left_Wing_vs_Right_Wing

U.S. Political Parties: Democrat versus Republican comparison chart

Parties Democrat Republican

Philosophy Liberal, left-leaning. Conservative, right-leaning.

Economic Minimum wages and progressive Believe taxes shouldn't be increased for Ideas taxation, i.e., higher tax rates for anyone (including the wealthy) and that higher income brackets. Born out wages should be set by the free market. of anti-federalist ideals but evolved over time to favor more government regulation.

Social and Based on community and social Based on individual rights and justice human ideas responsibility

Military Decreased spending Increased spending issues

Gay Support (some Democrats disagree) Oppose (some Republicans disagree) Marriage

Abortion Should remain legal Should not be legal (with some exceptions)

Death While support for the death penalty is A large majority of Republicans support the Penalty strong among Democrats, opponents death penalty. of the death penalty are a substantial fraction of the Democratic base.

Taxes Progressive (high income earners Tend to favor a "flat tax" (same tax rate should be taxed at a higher rate). regardless of income). Generally opposed to Generally not opposed to raising taxes raising taxes. to fund government.

Government Government regulations are needed to Government regulations hinder free Regulation protect consumers. market capitalism and job growth.

Healthcare Support universal healthcare; strong Private companies can provide healthcare Policy support of government involvement in services more efficiently than

healthcare, including Medicare and government-run programs. Oppose Medicaid. Generally support Obamacare provisions like (1) requirement Obamacare. for individuals to buy health insurance or pay a fine, (2) required coverage of contraceptives.

Stance on There is greater overall support in the Republicans are generally against amnesty Immigration Democratic party for a moratorium on for any undocumented immigrants. They deporting - or offering a pathway to also oppose President Obama's executive citizenship to - certain undocumented order that put a moratorium on deporting immigrants. e.g. those with no certain workers. Republicans also fund criminal record, who have lived in the stronger enforcement actions at the border. U.S. for 5+ years.

Strong in California, Massachusetts, New York Oklahoma, Kansas, Texas states

Symbol Donkey Elephant

Famous Franklin Roosevelt (FDR), John F. Abraham Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt, Ronald Presidents Kennedy, Bill Clinton, Woodrow Reagan, George Bush, Richard Nixon Wilson, Jimmy Carter, Barack Obama

2016 Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders Donald Trump Presidential Candidates

Source of reference: http://www.diffen.com/difference/Democrat_vs_Republican

The Democratic party The Republican party U.S. politics is dominated by two political groups, the Republican party and the Democratic party. 1. Republicans are described as conservative, or on the right of the political spectrum. 2. Democrats are described as progressive, and on the left of the political spectrum.

6. Politics: Conspiracy Theory A. Definitions:

1. Conspiracy: a ______made by two or more people to do something that is harmful or illegal. 2. Theory: an ______or ______that is intended to explain facts or events. 3. Conspiracy theory: ______that explain events, especially traumatic ones, in ways that, unknown to most people, the world is really ______.

B. Examples: 1. The Roswell UFO Incident.  This theory claims that the U.S. military recovered an alien spaceship and even some alien bodies in the Nevada desert near Roswell. 2. The Apollo Moon Landing Hoax.  This theory is based on photographic inconsistencies that its supporters believe prove no one actually went to the moon, and that the photos were taken in a Hollywood movie studio. 3. The Cover-Up of the Assassination of John F. Kennedy.  Although the official government investigation concluded that he was shot by a lone gunman, many people continue to believe that more than one gunman was present, and that the organizers included the CIA, FBI, KGB and even the Mafia. 4. The 9-11 attacks were actually planned by the U.S. government.  This theory suggests that the U.S. government needed an attack in order to gain public support for the militarization of the society. 5. The Murder of Princess Diana.  This theory alleges that her relationship with a famous Muslim had brought scandal to the Royal Family, and to prevent further scandal she had to be murdered.

C. Language Drill—Evaluating Claims Many articles and scientific texts cite research or expert opinions to support claims put forth by the writer. One way to evaluate the strength of a claim is to look closely at the verbs used. 1. Verbs showing high degree of confidence in the claims being presented are: find (out), point out, know, discover, conclude, … 2. Verbs showing low degree of confidence in the claims being presented are: suggest, think, believe, claim, …

7. Finance: The Global Recession “The global recession,” “the financial tsunami,” and “the economic crisis”—these and many other phrases describe the worst economic recession to hit the world's economies since the Great Depression in the 1930s.

A. Key words/phrases: 1. Subprime mortgage: a home loan sold to people who have little chance of actually paying it back. 2. Predatory lending: lending practices in which homeowners were sold a loan with an agreed interest rate, but in fact the interest they were being charged exceeded the interest they were paying, resulting in significant long-term losses to the homeowner. 3. Mortgage-backed security: a complex financial instrument by which debt owned by banks was bundled together and then cut into pieces and sold as an investment. 4. Bubble economy: a market situation in which the price of assets exceeds their actual value; when these burst, they can seriously disrupt the economy. 5. Foreclosure: the process by which a bank regains ownership from a homeowner after he or she stops paying the mortgage.

B. Timeline of the Great Recession 1. March 17, 2008. Financial giant Bear Stearns faces collapse, rescued by rival Morgan Stanley. 2. September 15, 2008. Lehman Bros. collapses. Considered the official start of the Great Recession. 3. September 16, 2008. AIG, world’s largest insurance company, rescued by US$85 billion loan from U.S. government. 4. October 3, 2008. US$700 billion TARP rescue plan to save the nation’s banks approved. 5. February 16, 2010. U.S. Congress passes US$787 billion “stimulus package.” 6. April 16, 2010. Goldman Sachs investigated by U.S. Senate for subprime mortgage-backed securities fraud. C. Vocabulary: profit junk bond hedge fund CEO the stock market

D. An Article: “Cut and Print” Cut and Print: Understanding the Central Bank Strategy for Averting Economic Crisis

ISA SOARES, “QUEST MEANS BUSINESS” Seven years on from the global financial crisis, economic growth is still a concern. Some people [are] even asking if [the] next recession could be just around the corner. Max Foster takes a look at how central banks can make a difference.

MAX FOSTER, CNN CORRESPONDENT When financial turmoil comes along, central banks go into crisis mode, trying to keep recessions and depressions at bay with every tool they’ve got. Turns out, they only have two—cut rates, print money.

That’s what happened when America’s housing collapse snowballed into a global financial crisis. Starting in 2007, the U.S. Federal Reserve slashed interest rates 10 times in 15 months. During 2008 and 2009, central banks around the world cute rates 299 times.

But when near-zero interest rates didn’t get credit flowing again in the U.S., the Fed embarked on an historic experiment—creating money out of thin air. It started buying massive amounts of bonds, eventually ballooning its balance sheet to more than $4 trillion.

Other central banks followed, with the so-called “quantitative easing” (QE), But this wasn’t the first time. Japan did it from 2002 to 2006, pushing the BOJ’s—the Bank of Japan’s—balance sheet above 150 trillion yen at its peak.

Economists are split on whether that stimulus really helped Japan’s economy, but the tool was out of the bag, and central banks have been using it ever since.

Source: CNN Interactive English Magazine. 2015, Dec. No. 183.

E. Vocabulary balance sheet depression 蕭條 financial turmoil Print money 印鈔資產負債表 financial crisis interest rate 利率 recession 衰退 bond 債卷

F. Key Term: central bank 中央銀行

QE (quantitative easing) 量化寬鬆 the U.S. Federal Reserve 聯準會

8. The World of Surveillance and WikiLeaks A. Article: “Surveillance State: NSA Spying and more”

At the start of June 2013, a large number of documents detailing surveillance by intelligence agencies such as the US’s NSA and UK’s GCHQ started to be revealed, based on information supplied by NSA whistle blower, Edward Snowden.

These leaks revealed a massive surveillance program that included interception of email and other Internet communications and phone call tapping. Some of it appears illegal, while other revelations show the US spying on friendly nations during various international summits.

Unsurprisingly, there has been a lot of furor. While some countries are no doubt using this to win some diplomatic points, there have been increased tensions between the US and other regions around the world.

Much of the US surveillance programs came from the aftermath of the 9-11 terrorist attacks on the US in 2001. Concerns about a crackdown on civil rights in the wake of the so-called “war on terror” have been expressed for a long time, and these revelations seem to be confirming some of those fears.

Given the widespread collection of information, apparently from central servers of major Internet companies and from other core servers that form part of the Internet backbone, activities of millions (if not billions) of citizens have been caught up in a dragnet style surveillance problem

called PRISM, even when the communication has nothing to do with terrorism.

What impacts would such secretive mass surveillance have on democracy?

B. Ted Talk: “Julian Assange: Why the world needs WikiLeaks” https://youtu.be/HNOnvp5t7Do About this talk The controversial website WikiLeaks collects and posts highly classified documents and video. Founder Julian Assange, who's reportedly being sought for questioning by US authorities, talks to TED's Chris Anderson about how the site operates, what it has accomplished -- and what drives him. The interview includes graphic footage of a recent US airstrike in Baghdad. Transcript Chris Anderson: Julian, welcome. It's been reported that WikiLeaks, your baby, has ... in the last few years has released more classified documents than the rest of the world's media combined. Can that possibly be true? Julian Assange: Yeah, can it possibly be true? It's a worry -- isn't it? -- that the rest of the world's media is doing such a bad job that a little group of activists is able to release more of that type of information than the rest of the world press combined. CA: How does it work? How do people release the documents? And how do you secure their privacy? JA: So these are -- as far as we can tell -- classical whistleblowers. And we have a number of ways for them to get information to us. So we use just state-of-the-art encryption to bounce stuff around the Internet, to hide trails, pass it through legal jurisdictions like Sweden and Belgium to enact those legal protections. We get information in the mail, the regular postal mail, encrypted or not, vet it like a regular news organization, format it -- which is sometimes something that's quite hard to do, when you're talking about giant databases of information -- release it to the public and then defend ourselves against the inevitable legal and political attacks. CA: So you make an effort to ensure the documents are legitimate. But you actually almost never know who the identity of the source is. JA: That's right, yeah. Very rarely do we ever know. And if we find out at some stage then we destroy that information as soon as possible. (Phone ring) God damn it. (Laughter) CA: I think that's the CIA asking what the code is for a TED membership. (Laughter) 20

So let's take the example, actually. This is something you leaked a few years ago. If we can have this document up ... So this was a story in Kenya a few years ago. Can you tell us what you leaked and what happened? JA: So this is the Kroll Report. This was a secret intelligence report commissioned by the Kenyan government after its election in 2004. Prior to 2004, Kenya was ruled by Daniel arap Moi for about 18 years. He was a soft dictator of Kenya. And when Kibaki got into power -- through a coalition of forces that were trying to clean up corruption in Kenya -- they commissioned this report, spent about two million pounds on this and an associated report. And then the government sat on it and used it for political leverage on Moi, who was the richest man -- still is the richest man -- in Kenya. It's the Holy Grail of Kenyan journalism. So I went there in 2007, and we managed to get hold of this just prior to the election -- the national election, December 28. When we released that report, we did so three days after the new president, Kibaki, had decided to pal up with the man that he was going to clean out, Daniel arap Moi. So this report then became a dead albatross around president Kibaki's neck. CA: And -- I mean, to cut a long story short -- word of the report leaked into Kenya, not from the official media, but indirectly. And in your opinion, it actually shifted the election. JA: Yeah. So this became front page of the Guardian and was then printed in all the surrounding countries of Kenya, in Tanzanian and South African press. And so it came in from the outside. And that, after a couple of days, made the Kenyan press feel safe to talk about it. And it ran for 20 nights straight on Kenyan TV, shifted the vote by 10 percent, according to a Kenyan intelligence report, which changed the result of the election. CA: Wow, so your leak really substantially changed the world? JA: Yep. (Applause) CA: Here's -- We're going to just show a short clip from this Baghdad airstrike video. The video itself is longer. But here's a short clip. This is -- this is intense material, I should warn you. Radio: ... just fuckin', once you get on 'em just open 'em up. I see your element, uh, got about four Humvees, uh, out along ... You're clear. All right. Firing. Let me know when you've got them. Let's shoot. Light 'em all up. C'mon, fire! (Machine gun fire) Keep shoot 'n. Keep shoot 'n. (Machine gun fire) Keep shoot 'n. Hotel ... Bushmaster Two-Six, Bushmaster Two-Six, we need to move, time now! All right, we just engaged all eight individuals. Yeah, we see two birds, and we're still firing. Roger. I got 'em. Two-Six, this is Two-Six, we're mobile. Oops, I'm sorry. What was going on? God damn it, Kyle. All right, hahaha. I hit 'em. CA: So, what was the impact of that?

JA: The impact on the people who worked on it was severe. We ended up sending two people to Baghdad to further research that story. So this is just the first of three attacks that occurred in that scene. CA: So, I mean, 11 people died in that attack, right, including two Reuters employees? JA: Yeah. Two Reuters employees, two young children were wounded. There were between 18 and 26 people killed all together. CA: And releasing this caused widespread outrage. What was the key element of this that actually caused the outrage, do you think? JA: I don't know, I guess people can see the gross disparity in force. You have guys walking in a relaxed way down the street, and then an Apache helicopter sitting up in one corner firing 30-millimeter cannon shells on everyone -- looking for any excuse to do so -- and killing people rescuing the wounded. And there was two journalists involved that clearly weren't insurgents because that's their full-time job. CA: I mean, there's been this U.S. intelligence analyst, Bradley Manning, arrested. And it's alleged that he confessed in a chat room to have leaked this video to you, along with 280,000 classified U.S. embassy cables. I mean, did he? JA: Well, we have denied receiving those cables. He has been charged, about five days ago, with obtaining 150,000 cables and releasing 50. Now, we had released early in the year a cable from the Reykjavik U.S. embassy. But this is not necessarily connected. I mean, I was a known visitor of that embassy. CA: I mean, if you did receive thousands of U.S. embassy diplomatic cables ... JA: We would have released them. (CA: You would?) JA: Yeah. (CA: Because?) JA: Well, because these sort of things reveal what the true state of, say, Arab governments are like, the true human-rights abuses in those governments. If you look at declassified cables, that's the sort of material that's there. CA: So let's talk a little more broadly about this. I mean, in general, what's your philosophy? Why is it right to encourage leaking of secret information? JA: Well, there's a question as to what sort of information is important in the world, what sort of information can achieve reform. And there's a lot of information. So information that organizations are spending economic effort into concealing, that's a really good signal that when the information gets out, there's a hope of it doing some good. Because the organizations that know it best, that know it from the inside out, are spending work to conceal it. And that's what we've found in practice. And that's what the history of journalism is. CA: But are there risks with that, either to the individuals concerned or indeed to society at large, where leaking can actually have an unintended consequence?

JA: Not that we have seen with anything we have released. I mean, we have a harm immunization policy. We have a way of dealing with information that has sort of personal -- personally identifying information in it. But there are legitimate secrets -- you know, your records with your doctor; that's a legitimate secret. But we deal with whistleblowers that are coming forward that are really sort of well motivated. CA: So they are well-motivated. And what would you say to, for example, the, you know, the parent of someone -- whose son is out serving the U.S. military, and he says, "You know what, you've put up something that someone had an incentive to put out. It shows a U.S. soldier laughing at people dying. That gives the impression -- has given the impression to millions of people around the world that U.S. soldiers are inhuman people. Actually, they're not. My son isn't. How dare you?" What would you say to that? JA: Yeah, we do get a lot of that. But remember, the people in Baghdad, the people in Iraq, the people in Afghanistan -- they don't need to see the video; they see it every day. So it's not going to change their opinion. It's not going to change their perception. That's what they see every day. It will change the perception and opinion of the people who are paying for it all. And that's our hope. CA: So you found a way to shine light into what you see as these sort of dark secrets in companies and in government. Light is good. But do you see any irony in the fact that, in order for you to shine that light, you have to, yourself, create secrecy around your sources? JA: Not really. I mean, we don't have any WikiLeaks dissidents yet. We don't have sources who are dissidents on other sources. Should they come forward, that would be a tricky situation for us. But we're presumably acting in such a way that people feel morally compelled to continue our mission, not to screw it up. CA: I'd actually be interested, just based on what we've heard so far -- I'm curious as to the opinion in the TED audience. You know, there might be a couple of views of WikiLeaks and of Julian. You know, hero -- people's hero -- bringing this important light. Dangerous troublemaker. Who's got the hero view? Who's got the dangerous troublemaker view? JA: Oh, come on. There must be some. CA: It's a soft crowd, Julian, a soft crowd. We have to try better. Let's show them another example. Now here's something that you haven't yet leaked, but I think for TED you are. I mean it's an intriguing story that's just happened, right? What is this? JA: So this is a sample of what we do sort of every day. So late last year -- in November last year -- there was a series of well blowouts in Albania like the well blowout in the Gulf of Mexico, but not quite as big. And we got a report -- a sort of engineering analysis into what happened -- saying that, in fact, security guards from

some rival, various competing oil firms had, in fact, parked trucks there and blown them up. And part of the Albanian government was in this, etc., etc. And the engineering report had nothing on the top of it. So it was an extremely difficult document for us. We couldn't verify it because we didn't know who wrote it and knew what it was about. So we were kind of skeptical that maybe it was a competing oil firm just sort of playing the issue up. So under that basis, we put it out and said, "Look, we're skeptical about this thing. We don't know, but what can we do? The material looks good, it feels right, but we just can't verify it." And we then got a letter just this week from the company who wrote it, wanting to track down the source -- (Laughter) saying, "Hey, we want to track down the source." And we were like, "Oh, tell us more. What document, precisely, is it you're talking about? Can you show that you had legal authority over that document? Is it really yours?" So they sent us this screen shot with the author in the Microsoft Word ID. Yeah. (Applause) That's happened quite a lot though. This is like one of our methods of identifying -- of verifying what a material is, is to try and get these guys to write letters. CA: Yeah. Have you had information from inside BP? JA: Yeah, we have a lot, but I mean, at the moment, we are undergoing a sort of serious fundraising and engineering effort. So our publication rate over the past few months has been sort of minimized while we're re-engineering our back systems for the phenomenal public interest that we have. That's a problem. I mean, like any sort of growing startup organization, we are sort of overwhelmed by our growth. And that means we're getting enormous quantity of whistleblower disclosures of a very high caliber, but don't have enough people to actually process and vet this information. CA: So that's the key bottleneck, basically journalistic volunteers and/or the funding of journalistic salaries? JA: Yep. Yeah, and trusted people. I mean, we're an organization that is hard to grow very quickly because of the sort of material we deal with. So we have to restructure in order to have people who will deal with the highest national security stuff, and then lower security cases. CA: So help us understand about you personally and how you came to do this. And I think I read that as a kid you went to 37 different schools. Can that be right? JA: Well, my parents were in the movie business and then on the run from a cult, so the combination between the two ... (Laughter) CA: I mean, a psychologist might say that's a recipe for breeding paranoia. JA: What, the movie business? (Laughter) (Applause)

CA: And you were also -- I mean, you were also a hacker at an early age and ran into the authorities early on. JA: Well, I was a journalist. You know, I was a very young journalist activist at an early age. I wrote a magazine, was prosecuted for it when I was a teenager. So you have to be careful with hacker. I mean there's like -- there's a method that can be deployed for various things. Unfortunately, at the moment, it's mostly deployed by the Russian mafia in order to steal your grandmother's bank accounts. So this phrase is not -- not as nice as it used to be. CA: Yeah, well, I certainly don't think you're stealing anyone's grandmother's bank account. But what about your core values? Can you give us a sense of what they are and maybe some incident in your life that helped determine them? JA: I'm not sure about the incident. But the core values: well, capable, generous men do not create victims; they nurture victims. And that's something from my father and something from other capable, generous men that have been in my life. CA: Capable, generous men do not create victims; they nurture victims? JA: Yeah. And you know, I'm a combative person, so I'm not actually sort of big on the nurture. But some way -- There is another way of nurturing victims, which is to police perpetrators of crime. And so that is something that has been in my character for a long time. CA: So just tell us, very quickly in the last minute, the story: what happened in Iceland? You basically published something there, ran into trouble with a bank, then the news service there was injuncted from running the story. Instead, they publicized your side. That made you very high-profile in Iceland. What happened next?

JA: Yeah, this is a great case, you know. Iceland went through this financial crisis. It was the hardest hit of any country in the world. Its banking sector was 10 times the GDP of the rest of the economy. Anyway, so we release this report in July last year. And the national TV station was injuncted five minutes before it went on air. Like out of a movie, injunction landed on the news desk, and the news reader was like, "This has never happened before. What do we do?" Well, we just show the website instead, for all that time, as a filler. And we became very famous in Iceland, went to Iceland and spoke about this issue. And there was a feeling in the community that that should never happen again. And as a result, working with some Icelandic politicians and some other international legal experts, we put together a new sort of package of legislation for Iceland to sort of become an offshore haven for the free press, with the strongest journalistic protections in the world, with a new Nobel Prize for freedom of speech. Iceland's a Nordic country so, like Norway, it's able to tap into the system. And just a month ago, this was passed by the Icelandic parliament unanimously. CA: Wow.

(Applause) Last question, Julian. When you think of the future then, do you think it's more likely to be Big Brother exerting more control, more secrecy, or us watching Big Brother, or it's just all to be played for either way? JA: I'm not sure which way it's going to go. I mean there's enormous pressures to harmonize freedom of speech legislation and transparency legislation around the world -- within the E.U., between China and the United States. Which way is it going to go? It's hard to see. That's why it's a very interesting time to be in. Because with just a little bit of effort we can shift it one way or the other. CA: Well, it looks like I'm reflecting the audience's opinion to say, Julian, be careful and all power to you. JA: Thank you, Chris. (CA: Thank you.) (Applause)

9. Global News: Terrorism and Terrorist Attack

A. Discussion

1. Under what—if any—conditions is the invasion of a country justified, or even necessary? For example, what if the country’s leaders are violently oppressing their own people, or even committing genocide? 2. If your country were attacked, would you fight to defend it? Why or why not? 3. Would you be willing to “make the ultimate sacrifice” (die) for your country? Explain your answer.

B. War in Afghanistan

On September 11, 2001, the World Trade Center in NYC and the Pentagon were attacked with hijacked commercial airplanes. The attacks were blamed on Al Qaeda and especially its leader, Osama bin Laden. Bin Laden had been sheltered for years by the ultra-Islamic Taliban regime in Afghanistan. Within months, a U.S.-supported rebellion swept the Taliban from power. By 2006, though, the Taliban began making a comeback, resulting in a gradual increase in the number of U.S. soldiers directly fighting—and dying—in Afghanistan.

Follow-up Question: Was the United States justified in its invasion of Afghanistan? If it was justified, was it a wise move?

C. Freedom Fighter or Terrorist?

What’s in a word? A lot, if contention between the BBC and U.S.-based news agencies is any indication. Ever since the BBC refused to label the attacks against the World Trade Center on September 11th, 2001, as terrorist attacks, many Americans feel the British media agency has lost its legitimacy.

The BBC says that it feels the word terrorist, defined as those who use violence to incite terror in their victims, is tainted with political implications that prevent an objective reporting of the facts. Even the perpetrators of the 2005 bus and subway attacks were labeled bombers—not terrorists.

Many U.S. and Israeli news agencies counter that not describing these individuals as terrorists itself ignores the fact that suicide bombing resulting in multiple victims with no connection to the bombers’ complaints is factually terrorism. By not labeling it as such, they say the BBC is distorting the facts and giving such actions a sense of legitimacy.

Conversely, many authoritarian regimes have latched on to the same word to describe democracy and freedom movements that few in the West would describe as terroristic. Myanmar’s military junta, for example, describes its opponents as terrorists.

Source of material: Tim Ferry, Breaking News English!: A Complete Guide to Understanding English News, 2nd ed., Cosmos Culture Ltd., 2015, pp. 24, 200, 204.

D. 2016 Würzburg train attack

Source: http://edition.cnn.com/2016/07/20/world/germany-train-attack/ ISIS inspired teen who attacked German train passengers, official says

By Elizabeth Roberts, CNN Updated 1346 GMT (2146 HKT) July 20, 2016

(CNN)A German official on Wednesday described the footage of the teenage suspect in the German train stabbings as a "classical farewell video" of a suicide attacker that indicates he was inspired by ISIS.

Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere said the 17-year-old also left a goodbye letter saying he prayed that he could take revenge on all infidels. The stabbings took place Monday night on a train shortly after it left Wurzburg for Treuchtlingen. Five passengers were injured, and police shot the teen dead after a confrontation. The suspect has not been named.

At a news conference Wednesday in Berlin, de Maiziere called the YouTube video authentic and said the teenager appeared to have been "driven" by ISIS propaganda. In the video, the teen described himself as a soldier of the caliphate and a martyr.

However, the minister said, he acted as a lone wolf and "the video does not contain any indications as to whether there was an order from ISIS." He said that it's unclear when the video was made. German officials have said the ISIS connection was under investigation. ISIS has claimed responsibility for the attack, and its news agency, Amaq, on Tuesday released the video of the young man speaking in Pashto, waving a knife at a camera calling himself "a soldier of the caliphate." The interior minister also indicated the teenager may be from Pakistan, not Afghanistan as authorities initially said Tuesday. CNN has contacted Pakistan's Ministry of Foreign Affairs and is awaiting an official reply.

On Monday night, the attacker exited a bathroom on the train armed with a knife and ax and began stabbing passengers. According to German police, about 20 to 30 people were on the train, which made an emergency stop short of the station at Wurzburg-Heidingsfeld. The assailant jumped off the train, and was chased and confronted by police. He attacked officers with his ax, and they opened fire, shooting him dead, police said. Four people -- members of the same family and tourists from Hong Kong -- were injured on the train. Another woman was wounded after the assailant jumped from the train and fled. Two people remain in critical condition,

according to German police. De Maiziere said he is not sure if all the victims will survive this "brutal act."

German officials reported that on Saturday, the teen learned a good friend had been killed in Afghanistan. Inside his room, police said they found a hand-drawn flag resembling the one used by ISIS. They also found notes in Pashto, written in Arabic and Latin characters in the assailants' room. Bavarian Interior Minister Joachim Herrmann said the attacker came to Germany as an unaccompanied minor a year ago, eventually settling in Ochsenfurt, in Bavaria. He was taken in by a foster family two weeks ago. Chief Prosecutor Erik Ohlenschlager said Tuesday: "We have no indications that he was already radicalized before he came to Germany." Germany absorbed more than 1 million refugees last year. Some Germans have been concerned over the presence of terror groups in the country -- both the potential for attackers to slip in with migrants and the concern they may be able to radicalize disaffected youths. Three Syrian men were arrested last month on suspicions they were planning to carry out a mass casualty attack in Duesseldorf.

De Maiziere said Wednesday, "We did a lot of work last year to prevent attacks and to improve security in Europe and Germany." He listed security measures taken in recent months, including making journeys abroad to terroristic organizations punishable, and improving collaboration with national and international security services. But the minister warned that "Germany might face in the future lone-wolf attacks by Islamists such as the one carried out by the 17-year-old man. Like several other EU countries, like the entire EU, Germany is also a target area of international terrorism. I have said it for a long time. The situation is serious."

CNN's Claudia Otto, Vivian Kam, Nadine Schmidt, Joshua Berlinger and Chandrika Narayan contributed to this report.

E. Islam, Islamic State, and ISIS or ISIL

1. Islam (/ˈɪslɑːm/) (1) Islam began in the early 7th century. Originating in Mecca, it quickly spread in the Arabian peninsula and by the 8th century the Islamic empire was extended from Iberia in the west to the Indus river in the east.

(2) It is the religion articulated by the Quran, a text considered to be the verbatim word of God (Allāh) as both the unaltered and the final revelation of God, and by the teachings and normative example of Muhammad (c. 570–8 June 632 CE)—the last prophet of God.

(3) Islam is an Abrahamic monotheistic religion that upholds that God is one and incomparable and that the purpose of existence is to worship God. Believers think that Islam is the original, complete and universal version of a primordial faith that was revealed many times before through prophets including Adam, Noah, Abraham, Moses, and Jesus.

(4) It is the world's second-largest religion and the fastest-growing major religion in the world (with over 1.7 billion followers or 23% of the global population), known as Muslims. Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islam

2. Islamic State (1) It is a type of government primarily based on the application of shari'a (Islamic law), dispensation of justice, maintenance of law and order. From the early years of Islam, numerous governments have been founded as "Islamic".

(2) Since the 20th century, the term has taken on a more specific connotation. Today, many Muslim countries have incorporated Islamic law, wholly or in part, into their legal systems. Certain Muslim states have declared Islam to be their state religion in their constitutions, but do not apply Islamic law in their courts. Islamic states which are not Islamic monarchies are usually referred to as Islamic republics.

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamic_state

3. The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) or The Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (Isis) (1) ISIL, also known as ISIS, originated in 1999, and pledged allegiance to al-Qaeda and participated in the Iraqi insurgency following the 2003 invasion of Iraq by Western forces. The group first proclaimed itself a worldwide caliphate and began referring to itself as Islamic State or IS in June 2014. As a caliphate, it claims religious, political and military authority over all Muslims worldwide.

(2) It is a jihadist militant group that follows a fundamentalist, Wahhabi doctrine of Sunni Islam—an adoption of the name Islamic State and its idea of a caliphate—which have been widely criticized, and mainstream Muslim groups reject its statehood.

(3) This group has been designated a terrorist organisation by the United Nations and many individual countries. ISIL is widely known for its videos of beheadings of both soldiers and civilians, including journalists and aid workers, and its destruction of cultural heritage sites.

(4) The United Nations holds ISIL responsible for human rights abuses and war crimes, and Amnesty International has charged the group with ethnic cleansing on a "historic scale" in northern Iraq. Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamic_State_of_Iraq_and_the_Levant

F. Burkini ban: Armed police force woman to remove swimwear on Nice beach Harry Cockburn, Wednesday 24 August 2016

'It was pretty violent. I had the impression of a pack going after a woman sitting on the ground, crying with her daughter.'

Armed police have forced a woman on a beach in Nice to remove her burkini as part of a controversial new ban. The incident occurred on the beach at the city's Promenade des Anglais, the location of the lorry attack on Bastille Day in which 84 people were killed last month.

Photographs show four police officers armed with handguns, batons and pepper spray standing round the woman who was lying on the beach wearing a blue headscarf and matching top.

After speaking to the woman, she appears to remove the blue long-sleeve top. She is thought to have been issued with a fine and warned about the new dress code on the beach.

Several women have now been fined in France for wearing the swim wear.

Women now face fines for wearing Burkinis on beaches in some French resorts Vantage

Source: http://www.independent.co.uk/

G. 4-year-old girl beheaded in Taiwan knife attack

By Tiffany Ap, CNN Updated 0542 GMT (1242 HKT) March 29, 2016 | Video Source: CNN

(CNN) A 4-year-old girl was beheaded in Taiwan in what appears to have been a random knife attack, state media said. On Monday morning, a 33-year-old man attacked the girl with a cleaver in full view of her mother as they were on their way to a metro station in Taipei, the island's capital, the official Central News Agency, or CNA, said.

The mother of the slain child said her daughter had been riding her bike about a meter away from her when it became stuck. She saw the man approaching and at first thought he was going to help her daughter but he drew his knife and decapitated her.

"At first I thought he was going to lift up the bike to help my daughter. When I walked over to tell him that it's OK, I saw both of them fall on the ground, and the suspect was wielding the knife and cutting my daughter," she said. "I saw the suspect slashing my daughter with a cleaver. I immediately grabbed him but I could not pull him away." Bystanders heard her screams for help and rushed to restrain the attacker until police arrived.

"I'm devastated, because I will never see her again, and she'll never see her siblings again," the mother said. She told reporters she hopes her daughter's death will prompt important discussions and "make people pay more attention to love."

An initial investigation found that the suspect, identified only by his surname Wang, waited near the metro station after allegedly buying the knife at a supermarket earlier that day. Citing police, CNA said the man had a history of mental illness and had received treatment at a psychiatric hospital.

The suspect was detained at a police station, where a large angry crowd gathered. Officers attempted to escort him out of the building, still with blood splashed across his face, but several people rushed the suspect, eventually forcing police to take him back inside.

H. Man stabs passengers aboard Taiwan train

Read: Man stabs passengers aboard Taiwan train

In 2014, a 21-year-old Taiwanese man, Cheng Chieh, went on a mass stabbing spree on the Taipei metro system, killing four people and injuring 24 more.

By Sophie Brown, Vivian Kam, Chieu Luu and Greg Botelho, CNN Updated 0758 GMT (1458 HKT) May 22, 2014

Police arrested Taiwanese college student, Cheng Chieh, Wednesday over a deadly knife attack on Taipei's subway.

Moments after his train left a station in Taipei on Wednesday, a young Taiwanese man randomly stabbed passengers before his violent fury ended when he was forced to the ground, police said.

At least four people were killed and 22 others injured in the incident -- the first such attack since the East Asian nation's mass rapid transit (MRT) system opened in 1996, media in Taiwan and nearby Hong Kong reported.

According to police, the suspect, a 21-year-old college student, began attacking people 20 seconds after his train left Longshan Temple Station in Taipei.

Staff were alerted something was wrong after people hit an emergency button, and the train stopped at the next station, Jiangzicui.

The man was subdued by Taipei City Police "along with MRT staff and courageous passengers," the Taipei City Police Department said in a press release.

The suspect was identified as Cheng Chieh, a second-year environmental engineering student at Tunghai University in Taichung, Taiwan's third largest city.

Cheng had been considering the attack for some time, a police spokesperson told reporters after the incident.

During questioning by police, Cheng said he had wanted to do "something big," like killing on the train network, when he was in elementary school, according to the director-general of New Taipei City's police department, Chen Kuo-en. Later, when the suspect was in high school and college, he told his classmates of the idea, Chen said.

Cheng had no medical record of mental illness, according to the police director-general. But the vice president of Cheng's university said there were indications from the student's activities on social media that he could be mentally unstable.

"We got a tip from his former high school classmates around the end of April, and that tip said the alleged killer posted something on his Facebook page saying 'I'm 35

going to do something big,'" Tunghai University Vice President Tsai Jen-Teng told CNN.

The college arranged a formal counseling session for Cheng on May 9 but he failed to show up, Tsai said. Several days later, he attended another meeting with a military officer, and "seemed to be acting quite normally," he said.

Cheng transferred to Tunghai University last summer after struggling to maintain his grades at a military academy. "He failed over half of his courses," Tsai said.

He lived in the Taipei area, close to where the stabbing occurred, according to Tsai.

Tsai said the university received no other indication from Cheng's college classmates that he had been acting unusually: "We were really surprised."

The university has opened its chapel for people to pay their respects and pray for the victims and their families. "We are really sad and thinking about the families who have been affected," Tsai said.

Before he boarded the train, Cheng allegedly bought two fruit knives from a supermarket, the New Taipei City Police Department director-general said, adding that the suspect showed no signs of remorse for the attack.

The incident has sparked a debate online about whether the death penalty is appropriate punishment for such attacks. A Facebook group named "Indefinitely supporting death penalty for Cheng Chieh" had over 32,000 "likes" as of Thursday.

Several Facebook fan pages supporting Cheng have appeared following the stabbing, with names like "Go Cheng Chieh" and "Love Cheng Chieh fans' special page." However, many more netizens have rallied against these support pages, calling on users to report the sites and flood them with negative comments.

Since the incident, city police announced they had taken several steps to bolster security on the rapid transit system, including deploying 80 special officers at stations and aboard trains.

10. Global News: Refugee Crisis A. An Article A Desperate Crossing: The Human Face of Europe’s Refugee Crisis

ARWA DAMON, CNN CORRESPONDENT Your country is in chaos. You have a choice—stay and face war, or leave and take your chances. Pay a smuggler, follow the crowd or go it alone. Unsure if you’ve made the right decision, wondering if you’ll survive—unwanted, exhausted, afraid.

Hundreds of thousands of refugees and migrants have crossed the Mediterranean Sea this year in small boats like this; a human tide sweeping into Europe, most looking to escape war, persecution and death in countries like Afghanistan, Syrian and Iraq.

These dinghies are often no match for the waves and the currents. Many turn back, like these Pakistani migrants were forced to do. Many others drown, plunged into the sea, some without life jackets, unable to swim. Undeterred, 60 more migrants and refugees piled into a rubber dinghy to try to get across.

The promises of a new life continue to lure them to these waters. Europe’s migrant crisis is spiraling out of control on a scale not seen since World War II. The International Organization for Migration estimates more than 300,000 people reached the shores of Greece so far this year. Many are trying to reach Germany, a country known to welcome refugees. It’s expecting to take one million asylum seekers this year.

Yilmaz is a media activist from Al-Hasakah city in Syria. He fled ISIS almost two years ago. For many like Yilmaz, the journey begins with social media. A smartphone is a necessity.

YILMAZ PASHA, SYRIAN REFUGEE There [are] Facebook groups for the whole journey. And it’s like marketing—numbers of smugglers, maps, all the experience.

ARWA DAMON, CNN CORRESPONDENT A safe arrival on the shores of the Greek island of Kos—Yilmaz and his friends know they’re lucky to be alive. They walk to a holding area to register with port police, then board a bus to move north. Few migrants intend to stay in Greece. Once the migrants and refugees have crossed the Aegean Sea to Greece, they head to the border with Macedonia, then into Serbia, Hungry, Austria and Germany. 37

From Kos, the journey is more than 2,400 kilometers, around 1,500 miles. The massive numbers of refugees and migrants means there’s safety in numbers, but also overwhelms local police, whose governments failed to prepare for this type of influx.

In late August, Macedonia closed its border with Greece, creating a bottleneck, leaving thousands stuck under the rains with no shelter and no one to help them. When the border opened again, chaos.

Those who make it keep moving north. At a train station in Macedonia, we find 20-year-old Mohammad, a man we first met after we towed his dinghy to shore. This train will carry these migrants and refugees through Macedonia. Their next stop, the border with Serbia, a country many say is the most hospitable.

Nearby at the Belgrade train station, we meet up with Mohammad again. Mohammad and his friends will take a bus to the Hungarian border, where they’ll walk across.

The Hungarian government takes a hard line to prevent more refugees and migrants from coming here, maintaining that they are simply abiding by EU regulations when it comes to processing asylum seekers. Everyone fears ending up in the camps in Hungary where all we spoke to say the conditions are inhumane.

This is the Keleti train station in central Budapest. Hundreds of people wait to board a train to Munich. Police block the entrance to the station, urging people to leave. Desperate and defiant, they decide to take matters into their own hands, no longer willing to be left at the mercy of governments and political decisions.

We are on the highway that connects Budapest to Jena, and there are thousands of people, most of them refugees of the war in Iraq and Syria, who have decided to walk.

Along the way, surprising and heartwarming acts of kindness: Hungarian citizens handing out supplies, in stark contrast to the response by their government. Nights falls and more volunteers appear, with hot food, clothing and supplies.

After almost 10 hours of walking, Hejar and his family along with hundreds of others have to stop. Exhausted, they camp by the side of the highway. In the middle of the night, the Hungarian government, under immense pressure, finally charters buses to take people to the Austrian border. The migrants and refugees walk across as day breaks.

Source: CNN Interactive English Magazine. Nov., 2015. No. 182.

11. Global News: Environment A. Al Gore's climate change film An Inconvenient Truth Paramount Pictures says the follow-up documentary will premiere at 2017 Sundance Film Festival The Associated Press Posted: Dec 10, 2016 12:00 PM ET Last Updated: Dec 10, 2016 12:14 PM ET

Al Gore's climate change documentary, An Inconvenient Truth, is getting a sequel where he will suggest some solutions to slow global warming. (Koji Sasahara/The Associated Press)

Al Gore's climate change documentary, An Inconvenient Truth, is getting a sequel.

Paramount Pictures said Friday the follow-up to the Oscar-winning original will premiere at the 2017 Sundance Film Festival in January.

In the new documentary, former vice-president Gore examines global warming's escalation and the solutions at hand, Paramount said.

In a statement, Gore called for a re-dedication to solving what he called the climate crisis and said there are reasons to be hopeful.

He met this week with president-elect Donald Trump to discuss the topic and termed the meeting productive.

Several days later, Trump picked Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt, a climate-change denier, as head of the Environmental Protection Agency.

 Climate change denier to run U.S. environmental agency

The Sundance festival said it will feature other films and events about environmental change and conservation.

B. Retired general tapped for Homeland Security post, climate change denier to run environmental agency Former World Wrestling Entertainment executive chosen to head the Small Business Administration The Associated Press Posted: Dec 07, 2016 3:59 PM ET Last Updated: Dec 07, 2016 6:51 PM ET

President-elect Donald Trump is tapping retired Gen. John Kelly for his administration. He has picked Kelly to lead the Homeland Security Department, according to people close to the transition. (Manuel Balce Ceneta/Associated Press)

Donald Trump embraced new cabinet officers Wednesday whose backgrounds suggest he's primed to put tough actions behind his campaign rhetoric on immigration and the environment, even as he seemed to soften his yearlong stance on immigrants brought to the U.S. illegally as children.

It's clearer by the day, underscored by Trump's at-times contradictory words, that his actual policies as president won't be settled until after he takes his seat in the Oval Office in January.

Retired Marine Gen. John Kelly has been selected to head the Department of Homeland Security, and Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt, a climate-change

denier whose policies have helped fossil fuel companies, is to be announced as head of the Environmental Protection Agency.

Separately, Trump named the former chief executive of World Wrestling Entertainment, Linda McMahon, to head the Small Business Administration.

Trump's long presidential campaign was in large part defined by searing rhetoric and his steadfast promises to build an impenetrable wall on the border with Mexico and crack down on immigrants living in the U.S. illegally. But he struck a softer tone in an interview published Wednesday after he was named Time magazine's person of the year.

"We're going to work something out that's going to make people happy and proud," Trump said. "They got brought here at a very young age; they've worked here, they've gone to school here. Some were good students. Some have wonderful jobs. And they're in never-never land because they don't know what's going to happen."

He offered no details about a policy that would make that clear.

Talk vs. action

During the campaign, Trump's tough comments — including a vow to overturn President Barack Obama's executive orders on immigration — have led to fears among immigrant advocates that he will end Obama's Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program. Hundreds of thousands of young immigrants have gained work permits and temporary protection from deportation under the 2012 program, which aides to Trump have said would be revisited.

Others continue to press the immigrants' case. Chicago Mayor Rahm Emmanuel presented Trump a letter Wednesday from 14 big-city mayors urging him to keep the program intact.

"They were working hard toward the American dream," Emmanuel told reporters in lobby of Trump's skyscraper. "It's no fault of their own their parents came here. They are something we should hold up and embrace."

Though some immigrant advocates hope Trump's words were an olive branch, others were skeptical.

"We've seen this movie before," Frank Sharry of the immigrant-rights group America's Voice said in a statement. "Unfortunately we expect no pivot and no softening."

If confirmed, Kelly will be the second retired four-star general in Trump's cabinet. (Carolyn Kaster/Associated Press)

Meanwhile, Trump moved toward making another addition to the collection of generals in his cabinet, settling on Kelly to head Homeland Security, according to people close to transition. Kelly, who joined the Marine Corps in 1970, retired this year after a final command that included oversight of the Guantanamo Bay detention centre.

He has a reputation as a border hawk after a time in the Southern Command, which is based in South Florida and regularly works with Homeland Security on missions to identify and dismantle immigrant smuggling networks.

Trump also picked Pruitt, a longtime critic of the EPA, to head that same agency, according to person close to Pruitt who was not authorized to speak publicly about the choice before it was announced. The move comes just after Trump met with former vice-president Al Gore, who is an environmental activist, and said he had "an open mind" about honouring the Paris climate accords.

That gave hope to some environmentalists, but on Wednesday Trump's apparent decision was denounced by Democrats.

"Mr. Pruitt's record is not only that of being a climate change denier, but also someone who has worked closely with the fossil fuel industry to make this country more dependent, not less, on fossil fuels," said Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders.

But Oklahoma Sen. Jim Inhofe, a Republican, said Pruitt "has proven that being a good steward of the environment does not mean burdening taxpayers and businesses with red tape."

Also Wednesday, Trump said he plans to name his secretary of state next week and insisted that former rival Mitt Romney still had a chance. Trump, who has met twice with the 2012 Republican nominee, denied he was stringing Romney along to make him pay for saying the former reality show star was unfit to be president.

"No, it's not about revenge. It's about what's good for the country, and I'm able to put this stuff behind us — and I hit him very hard also," Trump said in a telephone interview on NBC.

Those close to the selection process have said that Trump has begun moving away from both Romney and another former front-runner, former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani.

Senate foreign relations chairman Bob Corker and former CIA director David Petraeus had also been previously identified by transition aides as part of the final four though Trump has now expanded the pool.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/trump-john-kelly-homeland-security-1.3885902

12. Global News: Zika A. An Article Zika Ground Zero: Brazil Is the Front Line of the Global Battle on the Debilitating Disease

KRISTIE LU STOUT, NRES STREAM The World Health Organization now says Zika virus is spreading explosively around the Americas and that the alarm… and the level of alarm is extremely high. The organization says it will hold an emergency meeting on the virus on Monday.

Now, this is the scope of the outbreak right now. These countries in red have reported active transmission of the disease. Meanwhile, the countries in yellow have reported cases of the Zika virus, but all were from travelers returning from infected areas.

Now, this mosquito-borne disease has been linked to microcephaly. It causes brain damage. Now, thousands of babies were born with this debilitating condition in Brazil, the ground zero of the Zika outbreak. And Shasta Darlington met with some of the mothers.

SHASTA DARLINGTON, CNN CORRESPONDENT She was so excited, but the birth of her second child left Rafaela Oliveira more alone than she could have imagined. At three months, Luiz Felipe has a big appetite just like her first baby, but he was born with a small head and brain damage—microcephaly.

“People here react like he’s got some contagious disease,” she says. “People look at him when we are in the street.” There was no warning. Doctors only detected the disorder after Luiz Felipe was born. “What gives me strength is the love I feel for him,” she says. Luiz Felipe will need to be cared for his entire life.

So, she’s doing this three times a week right now, taking her son to physical therapy. And yet, she goes back to work in March. It’s not clear how she’s gonna do this. And she’s the only person in her family who has a job.

Here in the state of Pernambuco we’ve seen the heartache and the financial burden this is putting on families. More than 4000 cases of newborn microcephaly have been reported in Brazil since Zika was detected less than a year ago. A third of them are here, where babies and moms face endless jabs and tests.

Doctor Angela Rocha [is] one of the first to make the link between Zika and microcephaly.

“These babies have brain damage to differing degrees, which means inserting this generation into society is going to be very complicated,” she says.

Research continues to establish a cause and effect with the Zika virus, spread by the same mosquitoes that transmit yellow fever and dengue. There’s no vaccine, no cure, which means the Aedes aegypti mosquito is public enemy number one.

JAILSON DE BARROS CORREIA, RECIFE HEALTH SECRETARY All the effort has been put on having… has been put on prevention, by having the population of mosquitoes under control.

SHASTA DARLINGTON, CNN CORRESPONDENT 200,000 troops now going door to door, eliminating the stagnant water that serves as the mosquitoes’ breeding ground and educating families.

The health ministry admits it’s been losing the war against the mosquito, and mothers-to-be across Brazil see their moment of hope turned into moment of unbelievable anguish.

Source: CNN Interactive English Magazine. April, 2016. No. 187.

B. Vocabulary breeding ground disorder prevention contagious infect stagnant water debilitating jab transmit, transmission detect mosquito-borne vaccine disease outbreak virus

C. Key Terms microcephaly dengue The World Health Organization yellow fever The health ministry

D. News Report: Zika Before the Rio Olympics

Rio Olympics Zika: The trouble with Aedes Aegypti

• BBC News • Reported by Wyre Davies • Date: 14 June 2016 • Source: http://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-36516209

It seems almost inconceivable that the world's biggest sporting event could be derailed by a tiny insect, the Aedes aegypti mosquito.

However distant or unlikely that possibility is, Brazil's government is going to great lengths to persuade athletes and visitors that Rio de Janeiro will be perfectly safe come the Olympic Games opening ceremony at the Maracana Stadium on 5 August.

"We estimate that fewer than one in 500,000 visitors to Rio will contract the Zika virus," said Ricardo Barros, Brazil's new health minister.

Mr Barros has only been in the post for a month, after the impeachment process against Dilma Rousseff forced a change of government, but he clearly sees reassuring Brazil and the world over the Zika outbreak as his number one priority.

Obvious concern

I asked the minister how the government could be so confident in asserting that there was an "almost zero" risk of contracting Zika when the latest advice from the World Health Organisation (WHO) was that "women in Zika-affected areas should consider delaying becoming pregnant".

"There's no contradiction," replied Mr Barros.

"We are working closely with the WHO but our figures show that rates of Zika infection have fallen by 87% this year already."

In Brazil, there have been more than 1,500 confirmed cases of microcephaly, in which babies are born with abnormally small heads.

With other neurological conditions also blamed on Zika, there is obvious concern about the virus.

After the WHO's advice that pregnant women should not travel to Zika-infected areas and subsequent evidence that the virus could be transferred through sex as well as via the bite of an infected mosquito, a handful of athletes declared they would not be participating in Rio 2016.

Other big names, including Irish golfer Rory Mcllroy and UK heptathlete Jessica Ennis Hill, said they would be in Rio after having initially expressed concern about travelling.

Long jumper Greg Rutherford, who won a gold medal at the 2012 Olympic Games in London, is even thought to have frozen his sperm as a precaution before he travels to defend his title in Rio.

The stakes have been raised further by a recent letter calling on the WHO to recommend that the Rio Olympics should be cancelled over fears about Zika. The open letter has been signed by more than 200 academics and specialists, among them prominent Brazilian anthropologist Deborah Diniz.

"There is a clear risk to global health in sponsoring these Olympic Games inviting half a million people to Brazil," she argues.

"Having an epidemic like this poses concrete risks to women of reproductive age."

Backlash

Such arguments brought a rapid backlash from other specialists, who said the outbreak was now under control.

Political leaders in Rio, including the city's often outspoken mayor, Eduardo Paes, also reacted.

Mr Paes told the BBC that calls for the Olympics to be called off were a complete overreaction.

"It's completely crazy," said Mr Paes, who has also had to defend a series of other setbacks associated with the Games, including severe delays to critical transport networks and broken promises to clean up the city's chronically polluted waterways.

"At this time of the year, in August, when the Olympics are going on, there are no cases of dengue or Zika because of the weather," he said.

"I don't want to minimise it at all but there's a lot of exaggeration going on."

The mayor is adamant that public information campaigns and greater general awareness about Zika are having an impact.

Old habits die hard

We joined one such campaign "on patrol" in the sprawling working class suburb of Jacareipagua, about a mile from the main Olympic Park to the south of Rio. A team of public health officials in brand-new uniforms knocked on doors in streets around the local clinic to inform residents about the importance of taking precautions against disease-carrying mosquitoes.

"We show them how to cover up areas of still or stagnant water, where the Aedes [mosquitoes] might breed," a team leader told me.

But in these areas, in particular, old habits die hard.

"I don't use repellent - I never have," said local resident Paulo Jose, reflecting the widely held view that somehow people here are immune to diseases like Zika and dengue fever.

As Paulo Jose was listening to the advice, I must have caught and squashed at least five mosquitoes in the space of 30 seconds.

The white-washed wall was stained red with little spots of blood, evidence that the insects had recently been feeding.

Notwithstanding the difficulties in getting the message through in some areas, the Brazilian government says it is dedicating unprecedented resources to the fight against Zika and other mosquito-borne diseases.

In Rio de Janeiro alone, the government says it has allocated more than $17.5m (£12.4) to "reinforce" the local health network during the Olympic and Paralympic Games.

They say there will be more ambulances, extra health professionals and at least 3,000 people working on anti-Zika campaigns in the city.

Best hope

Verifiable figures for people who contracted Zika are difficult to pin down and vary wildly from state to state, not helped by the fact that many of those infected show few if any symptoms at all.

There is still a lot to discover about the Zika virus, how it is contracted and what other conditions, in addition to microcephaly, it may be responsible for.

There is no vaccine yet, for example, and definitive tests to show if someone has definitely had the virus are still not widely available.

Cancelling the Olympic Games would be an extreme measure at this late stage and perhaps, indeed, a measure too far.

The best hope, for the Games organisers and Rio city officials, may be a continuation of the extremely cold weather we have been having in Brazil recently.

Temperatures have been so low the mosquito population in parts of Brazil could be decimated, for the duration of the Olympic and Paralympic Games at least.

E. News Report: Zika After the Rio Olympics

No Zika Cases Reported During Rio Olympics, W.H.O. Says

• The New York Times • Reported by SABRINA TAVERNISE • Date: SEPT. 2, 2016 • Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/03/health/zika-rio-olympics.html?_r=0

No Zika infections were reported in Brazil during the Olympics, either among athletes or visitors, the World Health Organization said Friday.

The international health agency convened experts this week to decide whether the Zika virus remained a public health emergency. They voted yes, they announced at a news briefing Friday, in part because new infections had been reported in Singapore and Guinea-Bissau.

But one bright spot was the Olympics. Brazil presented data that the experts said had convinced them that no infections had occurred either during the Games or after visitors and athletes had returned to their home countries.

“They gave us very convincing data,” said Dr. David Heymann, a professor of infectious disease epidemiology at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, who led the panel of experts. He said health facilities in Brazil had been poised to track and treat Zika cases, but had reported none.

The W.H.O. said in May that the Olympics would not significantly affect the spread of the Zika virus and that canceling the Games did not make sense. Its assessment came after a group of health experts called for the Games to be canceled, arguing that holding them would only exacerbate what had become a global epidemic.

But the W.H.O.’s assessment appears to have been be right, health experts said Friday.

“Many people have been tested and there have been no confirmed cases,” said Dr. Peter Salama, the executive director of outbreaks and health emergencies at the agency, adding that Brazil had been on high alert with “enhanced and active surveillance.”

“We feel fairly confident that the risk assessment that there would be no significant increase of transmission due to the Olympics seems to be on track,” he said.

Scientists have known about Zika since the 1940s, but its explosive spread in Latin America began only recently. Symptoms in adults are mild, but the virus can cause severe birth defects in pregnant women, so it is being tracked closely. It moved from Brazil to Colombia and is now spreading fast in the Caribbean, particularly in Puerto Rico, where there are more than 14,000 infections, including in nearly 1,000 pregnant women. In the continental United States, small clusters have occurred in South Florida.

Experts said the world should still be on high alert. They said the disease was probably becoming endemic in a number of countries.

“This still does remain an emergency of international concern,” Dr. Heymann said. “This extraordinary event is rapidly becoming, unfortunately, an ordinary event.”

13. Appendix (1): Expression Key

Source: Gershon, Steven. Present Yourself 2 Viewpoints. 2nd ed. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2015. 58-78.

14. Appendix (2): Exercise Sheets

Source: Gershon, Steven. Present Yourself 2 Viewpoints. 2nd ed. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2015. 58-78.

15. Appendix (3): Writing Style Guide

Appendix (4): On “Fake News”

'I don't like watching fake news': Trump blasts CNN during event honoring Black History Month By Allan Smith, Feb. 1, 2017, 10:56 AM

President Donald Trump called CNN "fake news" on Wednesday during a White House event honoring Black History Month.

Trump was going around the table, pointing out a pair of attendees who had supported him on cable news. He first pointed to Darrell Scott, a pastor and early Trump supporter, whom Trump said he met "when he was defending me on television." The president then called out Paris Dennard, a GOP strategist and CNN contributor. "Paris has done an amazing job in a very hostile CNN community," Trump said. "He's all by himself, seven people and Paris," he continued. He added with a smile, "I'll take Paris over the seven. But I don't watch CNN, so I don't get to see you as much. I don't like watching fake news."

Turning his attention to Fox News, Trump said the network "has treated me very nice." "Wherever Fox is, thank you," Trump said. The president also reiterated that he views "a lot of the media" as the "opposition party," claiming without evidence that members of the press "knowingly" report "incorrect things." "They really have to straighten out their act," Trump said. "They are really dishonest people."

Donald Trump. Screenshot/CNN

http://www.businessinsider.com/trump-calls-cnn-fake-news-2017-2