Myanmar, jade mine,landslide, Hpakant,2015

Myanmar jade mine landslide kills around 100

About 100 people have been killed in a landslide as they picked through mountains of waste rubble in a remote mining area of northern Myanmar searching for precious jade, state media has reported.

Those killed were thought to have been mainly itinerant miners, who make a living scavenging through mountains of waste rubble dumped by mechanical diggers used by mining firms at the centre of a secretive multibillion-dollar industry in the restive Kachin state.

Saturday’s massive landslide crushed dozens of shanty huts clustered on the barren landscape and which were home to an unconfirmed number of people.

The disaster happened at about 3.30am local time (9pm GMT) and lasted just a couple of minutes, according to Zaw Moe Htet, a local gems trader whose village overlooks the devastated area in the Hpakant mining area.

Video footage of the area shot on Saturday shows men carrying several bodies slung in blankets watched by a crowd of local people in a dusty plain near the village of Sai Tung.

Nilar Myint, an official from the local administrative authorities in Hpakant, said rescue teams have so far found 97 people killed in the landslide.

Myanmar is the source of virtually all of the world’s finest jadeite, a translucent green stone that is prized above almost all other materials in neighbouring China.

In an October report, advocacy group Global Witness estimated that the value of jade produced in 2014 alone was $31bn (£20.4bn), the equivalent of nearly half the country’s GDP.

But that figure is about 10 times the official $3.4bn sales of the precious stone last year, in an industry that has long been shrouded in secrecy with much of the best jade thought to be smuggled directly to China.

Local people in Hpakant complain of a litany of abuses associated with the mining industry, including the frequency of accidents and land confiscations.

The area has been turned into a moonscape of environmental destruction as huge diggers gouge the earth looking for jade.

Twelve Night-Adopt,don't Abandom

Film: Twelve Nights [Chinese/ 十二夜]

Director: Raye

Producer: Giddens Ko 九把刀, Sophia Sui 隋棠

Cinematographer: ZHOU Yi-hsien 周宜賢

Performers: Dogs at an unnamed shelter in Taiwan

Breeds featured: Taiwan dogs, Shiba Inu, German Shepherd, Basset Hound

Production information: Atom Cinema, 2013 (Taiwan)

A documentary about what dogs experience at a high-kill shelter in Taiwan

Twelve nights is a made in Taiwan documentary about dogs who are taken into a government-run shelter. New dogs taken in only have 12 days in which to get adopted before they die of disease or are destroyed.

“Twelve Nights,” shot almost entirely inside a government-run animal shelter in southern Taiwan, follows the fate of several stray dogs, starting from their initial capture on the streets. After 12 days in the shelter, the animals are destroyed, have died of disease, or, if they are lucky, end up in the arms of a new owner.

Although the problem of street dogs isn’t a fresh one in Taiwan, the movie has attracted a throng of animal lovers. As of the beginning of this week, “Twelve Nights” had pulled in more 30 million New Taiwan dollars (US$1 million) since its release on Nov. 29, according to the film’s distributor, a considerable amount for a documentary in Taiwan.

The film opens with a black-and-white puppy named Jumpy prancing happily in a well-manicured neighborhood and other harmless-looking dogs wandering the streets.

The scene quickly changes. Animals — including a kitten and a basket full of puppies — are jerked and tossed around by workers as they are taken to the shelter.

… A new documentary about the plight of animals in Taiwan’s shelters has sparked a public discussion about the treatment of stray dogs and cats on the island, prompting the government to amend its policies.

The film shows many dogs entering the shelter looking healthy but later falling ill or dying due to the rampant transmission of canine distemper and other diseases inside the facility. – wall street journal

The purpose of the film, (the director Raye) said, is to influence policy makers with more effective solutions on reducing the stray-animal population, including adoption, laws requiring pet owners to implant microchips in their pets for ID purposes, and neutering or spaying animals. –wall street journal

“Animal shelters are helping to solve a difficult problem that our society has long neglected. They are not the documentary’s target of criticism,” (Producer, Giddens Ko) said. “Our criticism is aimed at the people who have created this problem: The pet owners who abandoned these animals.” – Taipei Times

Vocabulary

documentary 紀錄
amend 修改
microchips 微芯片
rampant 猖獗
distributor 經銷商
manicure 修指甲
toss 折騰
jerk 混蛋
harmless-looking 看起來無害的


Source
http://blogs.wsj.com/scene/2013/12/13/film-triggers-debate-on-plight-of-taiwans-homeless-dogs/

http://weliveinaflat.com/blog/twelve-nights-movie/

Volkswagen Chief Warns on Existential Threat of Cheating Scandal

Volkswagen Chief Warns on Existential Threat of Cheating Scandal

Volkswagen AG’s designated Chairman Hans Dieter Poetsch warned managers that the diesel-emissions scandal could pose “an existence-threatening crisis for the company,” as it pleaded for public trust with full-page ads in national newspapers.

The German car maker faces a Wednesday deadline to present a plan to fix some 2.8 million vehicles in its home market. Poetsch told managers last week he was certain the Wolfs burg, Germany-based car maker will overcome the crisis with enough effort, according to Welt am Sonntag newspaper. 

Volkswagen and German industry have been rocked by charges, first made by U.S. regulators on Sept. 18, that the car maker had used software to hoodwink regulators about the true emissions of its diesel cars for years. As owners of 11 million affected cars across the globe, regulators and investors await answers, the crisis has wiped out almost 30 billion euros ($34 billion) of the company’s value.

As Volkswagen’s new chief executive officer, Matthias Mueller, vows to repair the damage, the car maker undertook a media campaign that included a full-page meaculpa advertisement published in major German newspapers to mark the 25th anniversary of the country’s reunification.

Instead of lauding a quarter century of German unity, the company used fine print on a broad white field to say it would dispense with celebratory expressions, instead assuring the public that it will resolve the crisis.

“We just want to say one thing: We will do everything to win back your trust,” the car maker said in the ad Sunday.

Merkel Statement

After mostly remaining silent on the cheating scandal, Chancellor Angela Merkel on Sunday called the disclosure by Germany’s largest car maker “a dramatic event” and said Volkswagen must clarify the affair swiftly. She ruled out a longer-term impact on the country’s industry.

“I believe that the reputation of German industry, the trust in Germany as a business location, hasn’t been so shaken that we won’t continue to be seen as a good business location,” Merkel told Deutschlandfunk radio in an interview.

An internal investigation has already yielded several engineers who admitted to installing the fraudulent software in 2008 for EA 189 diesel-motor models, Bild am Sonntag newspaper reported Sunday. The decision for the regulatory work-around came as project engineers determined there was no way to meet both emissions standards and cost controls, a jam that threatened to bring the marquee project to a halt, Bild said.

The result was a so-called defeat device that disengaged emissions controls when an auto wasn’t being tested, breaching emissions rules and prompting a raft of government investigations and lawsuits since the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency cited the violations last month.

新增說明文字

Vocabulary

hoodwink 蒙蔽
emission 排放
executive 行政人員
reunification 重新統一
disclosure 洩漏
swiftly 如飛
diesel 柴油機
disengage 解開
breach 突破口
prompt 提示

Sinking of Dong Fang Zhi Xing

Sinking of Dong Fang Zhi Xing

The Most Serious Shipwreck In China

MV Dong Fang Zhi Xing (Chinese: 東方之星) was a river cruise ship that operated in the Three Gorges region of inland China. On 1 June 2015, the ship was traveling on the Yangtze River in Jianli.

The ship's positioning Friday was a step forward in the dayslong nightmare playing out on a section of the Yangtze River that flows through Hubei province(湖北省).

Time	21:28,(UTC+8)
Date	1 June 2015
Location	Yangtze River,China(specifically JianliCounty, Jingzhou, Hubei)
Coordinates	29.712283°N,112.923589°E
Participants	454
Outcome	Ship sank,12 rescued
Deaths	442
Survivors	12

Detailed procedure

Around 9:28 pm on 1 June 2015, Dong Fang Zhi Xing was making a 1,500 km (930 mile) trip from Nanjing to Chongqing via the Yangtze River. When the ship was nearJingzhou, it was caught in a storm and sank in approximately 15 m (49 ft) deep waters. The captain and thechief engineer said that the ship was hit by a tornado, and the China Meteorological Administration confirmed that a tornado occurred in Jianli County with wind-speeds reaching EF1 strength, or approximately 138–177 km/h (86–110 mph). It is believed that the tornado struck the river near the ship's location.

Questions about cause of disaster

Questions remain about what happened to the Eastern Star.Authorities have taken the captain and the chief engineer into custody but have revealed little about what they have said, other than that a tornado hit the ship.

It's unclear why the Eastern Star was the only ship on the busy waterway so badly affected by the storm.

Satellite information from a website run by the Transport Ministry shows the cruise ship suddenly changing direction a matter of minutes before authorities say it sank.

But what caused the ship to start moving downstream rather than upstream isn't clear. One possibility is that the change in direction came after the ship was left disabled and drifting by the storm.

Top government officials have demanded an investigation into the cause of the disaster.

	Structure of the lead
WHEN	1 June 2015
WHERE	Yangtze River in Jianli, Hubei
WHAT	Sinking of Dong Fang Zhi Xing
WHO	Passengers
WHY	Thunder storm
HOW	442 people dead

Same-sex marriage in the United States

WEEK 3

In the United States of America, same-sex marriage has been legal nationwide since June 26, 2015, when the United States Supreme Court ruled in Obergefell v. Hodges that state-level bans on same-sex marriage are unconstitutional.The court ruled that the denial of marriage licenses to same-sex couples and the refusal to recognize those marriages performed in other jurisdictions violates the Due Process and the Equal Protection clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment of the United States Constitution. The ruling overturned a precedent, Baker v. Nelson.

While civil rights campaigning took place from the 1970s,the issue became prominent from around 1993, when the Hawaii Supreme Court ruled that the prohibition was unconstitutional. The ruling led to federal actions and actions by several states, to restrict marriage to male-female couples, in particular the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA). During the period of 2003 to 2015, various lower court decisions, state legislation, and popular referendums had already legalized same-sex marriage to some degree in thirty-eight out of fifty U.S. states, in the U.S. territory Guam, and in the District of Columbia. In 2013 the Supreme Court overturned a key provision of DOMA, declaring part of it unconstitutional and in breach of the Fifth Amendment in United States v. Windsor because it "singled out a class of persons" for discrimination, by refusing to treat their marriages equally under federal law when state law had created them equally valid. The ruling led to the federal government's recognition of same-sex marriage, with federal benefits for married couples connected to either the state of residence or the state in which the marriage was solemnized. However the ruling focused on the provision of DOMA responsible for the federal government refusing to acknowledge State sanctioned same-sex marriages, leaving the question of state marriage laws itself to the individual States. The Supreme Court addressed that question two years later in 2015, ruling, in Obergefell, that same-sex married couples were to be constitutionally accorded the same recognition as opposite-sex couples at state/territory levels, as well as at federal level.

By the time that same-sex marriage became legal nationally, public opinion on the subject had reached almost 60% approval levels according to polls by the Wall Street Journal, Human Rights Campaign, and CNN,having been consistently over 50% since 2010 and trending consistently upward over the years prior.

◎STRUCTURE◎
▶WHO / Homosexual
▶WHEN / June 26, 2015
▶WHAT /
▶HOW /
▶WHERE / United States of America

◎KEYWORD◎

▶unconstitutional / 違憲
▶jurisdiction / 管轄權
▶Amendment / 修訂
▶federal / 聯邦
▶ referendum / 公投
▶Supreme / 最高
▶discrimination / 區別
▶solemnized / 舉行婚禮
▶sanctioned / 制裁
▶upward / 向上

Fifa is the body responsible for running world football. It has recently been dogged by accusations of corruption, particularly after awarding the 2022 World Cup to the tiny but rich and influential Gulf state of Qatar. In December 2014, Fifa chose not to release its own investigation into corruption, instead releasing an executive summary which it said exonerated the bidding process. The report's independent author, American lawyer Michael Garcia, resigned in protest.

The World Cup is the most-watched sporting event in the world, larger even than the Olympics. It generates billions of dollars in revenue from corporate sponsors, broadcasting rights and merchandising. These arrests and investigations cast doubt over the transparency and honesty for the process of allocating World Cup tournaments, electing its president, and the administration of funds, including those earmarked for improving football facilities in some of Fifa's poorer members.

The FBI has been investigating Fifa for the past three years. The investigation was initially sparked by the bidding process for the Russia 2018 and Qatar 2022 World Cups, but was widened to look back at Fifa's dealings over the past 20 years.

The Department of Justice's indictment says that the corruption was planned in the US, even if it was then carried out elsewhere. The use of US banks to transfer money appears to be key to the investigation.

Mr Blatter consistently denied wrongdoing while several of his close colleagues were indicted by the US. In September, he was named as the subject of a separate criminal investigation launched by Swiss prosecutors.

Apart from Mr Blatter, the most senior figures accused are football powerbrokers in North America, Latin America and the Caribbean.

They are connected to Concacaf, the continental confederation which operates under the Fifa umbrella and is essentially in charge of football in that region. One of its key roles is helping to agree World Cup TV and sponsorship deals in the US.

Jeffrey Webb is the head of Concacaf and was widely seen as being groomed as a successor to Fifa president Sepp Blatter. He has been extradited to the US.

His predecessor, the above-mentioned Jack Warner, has also been indicted. Mr Webb replaced Mr Warner after he was forced to step down after an internal Fifa fraud inquiry.

Latin American football chiefs also figure heavily in the list. There are two former presidents of Conmebol, which represents South American football nations: Nicolas Leoz and Eugenio Figueredo.

出處：http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-32897066

深難字詞：

exonerated 免除

merchandising 銷售

administration 管理

indictment  起訴書

prosecutors 檢察官

confederation 聯盟

transparency 透明度

 predecessor 前任

above-mentioned 上述

groomed 培養