Friday, February 16, 2018
Thirteen Russians Indicted in US Election Interference
A United States federal grand jury has charged 13 Russian nationals and three Russian companies with plotting to interfere in the 2016 U.S. presidential election. The indictment, announced by the Justice Department, came from the office of Special Counsel Robert Mueller. The indictment says the defendants used fake social media accounts and stolen identities to influence political opinion. The Russians’ goal was to create conflict, the indictment says. It says the defendants’ efforts were meant to help the campaign of Republican Party candidate Donald Trump and hurt that of Hillary Clinton, the Democratic Party nominee. The charges also say the defendants communicated with “unwitting individuals” linked to the Trump campaign and activists to organize political activities. President Trump himself has rejected any Russian interference in the campaign. On Friday, the president wrote on Twitter: “Russia started their anti-US campaign in 2014, long before I announced that I would run for President. The results of the election were not impacted. The Trump campaign did nothing wrong - no collusion!” The Justice Department named Mueller special counsel in May. The office is under orders to investigate “any links and/or coordination between the Russian government and individuals associated with the campaign of President Donald Trump.” Last October, the grand jury also indicted Paul Manafort, who served as Trump’s campaign chairman and Rick Gates, another top campaign official. They were charged in connection with their work for the government of Ukraine, two Ukrainian political parties, and former president Viktor Yanukovych. George Papadopoulos, another advisor for the Trump campaign admitted he had lied to federal investigators about meetings with a Russian agent in connection with the campaign. In December, a former national security advisor for Trump, Michael Flynn, pleaded guilty in an investigation led by Mueller’s office. Flynn admitted to lying about his contacts with the Russian ambassador to the United States, Sergey Kislyak, before Trump’s inauguration. Court papers also say that Flynn knows the identities of members of Trump’s transition team that had detailed knowledge of his outreach to Russia. Hai Do adapted this story for Learning English based on AP and VOA news reports. Caty Weaver was the editor. _________________________________________________________________
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What It Takes - Elie Wiesel
00:00:11 ALICE WINKLER: There were very few Nazi concentration camp survivors who were willing to tell their stories after World War II ended. A decade passed, and then some. They had lived through something that was beyond words, but Elie Wiesel, who had survived Auschwitz and Buchenwald, knew the stakes were too high for silence. His parents and younger sister had been killed. Six million of his fellow Jews had been killed. He shattered the silence with a slim volume called simply Night. 00:00:48 GEORGE GUIDALL: “I pinched myself. Was I still alive? Was I awake? How was it possible that men, women, and children were being burned and that the world kept silent? No. All this could not be real — a nightmare, perhaps. Soon, I would wake up with a start, my heart pounding, and find that I was back in the room of my childhood with my books.” 00:01:20 “My father's voice tore me from my daydreams. ‘What a shame, a shame that you did not go with your mother. I saw many children your age go with their mothers.’ His voice was terribly sad. I understood that he did not wish to see what they would do to me. He did not wish to see his only son go up in flames.” 00:01:49 “My forehead was covered with cold sweat. Still, I told him that I could not believe that human beings were being burned in our times. The world would never tolerate such crimes. ‘The world? The world is not interested in us. Today, everything is possible, even the crematoria.’” 00:02:16 ALICE WINKLER: That excerpt was from the audiobook version of Night, read by actor George Guidall. Here is Elie Wiesel. 00:02:25 ELIE WIESEL: I wrote it not for myself, really. I wrote it for the other survivors who found it difficult to speak, and I wanted really to tell them, "Look, you must speak. As poorly as we can express our feelings, our memories, but we must try." I wrote it for them because the survivors are a kind of most endangered species. 00:02:51 Every day, every day there are funerals, and I felt they were — for a while, they were so neglected, so abandoned, almost humiliated by society after the war. 00:03:06 ALICE WINKLER: Elie Wiesel’s own funeral was just two weeks ago, as I am recording this podcast. The most outspoken witness of the Holocaust is gone, so we knew it was time to take his interview and his speeches out of the Academy of Achievement’s archive to share them with you. This is What It Takes, and I’m Alice Winkler. 00:03:31 OPRAH WINFREY: "Hattie Mae, this child is gifted," and I heard that enough that I started to believe it. 00:03:37 ROGER BANNISTER: If you have the opportunity, not a perfect opportunity, and you don't take it, you may never have another chance. 00:03:43 LAURYN HILL: It all was so clear. It was just, like, the picture started to form itself. 00:03:48 DESMOND TUTU: There was no way in which a lie could prevail over the truth, darkness over light, death over life. 00:03:56 CAROL BURNETT (quoting CARRIE HAMILTON): “Every day I wake up and decide, today I'm going to love my life. Decide.” 00:04:03 JOHNNY CASH: My advice is, if they're going to break your leg once when you go in that place, stay out of there. 00:04:08 JAMES MICHENER: And then along come these differential experiences that you don't look for, you don't plan for, but boy, you’d better not miss them. 00:04:22 ALICE WINKLER: When Elie Wiesel agreed to record an interview with the Academy of Achievement, in 1996, he was very concerned about editing. He asked the interviewer, Irv Drasnin, a couple of times, whether he could see the final version. He did not want the meaning of his words to be changed. 00:04:40 ELIE WIESEL: Words are so important to me, you know. Who knows what — once you take out one sentence, it can — you can distort the whole meaning. 00:04:46 ALICE WINKLER: Of course, in this podcast, I normally do a lot of editing, so I hope I do justice to his words. I will leave them as intact as possible. The excerpts you’ll hear come from several sources: his 1996 interview, a talk and Q&A session with students he gave that same year, as well as two other talks he gave at Academy events in 2003 and 2007. What you will not hear in any of this tape is Elie Wiesel talking about his experiences in a concentration camp. 00:05:21 Those stories, he explained, were literally unspeakable. He could only manage to tell them in writing, and even then, language was not up to the task. 00:05:33 ELIE WIESEL: I used the words simply, "Look, we have to tell the story as best as we can, and we know that we won't succeed." I know I won't succeed. I know I haven't succeeded. 00:05:42 ALICE WINKLER: But where Elie Wiesel did succeed was in forcing the world to confront a hideous reality, and he raised questions about God and man that will never be answered but must keep being asked. Questions, he liked to say, are always far more important than answers. 00:06:09 A few biographical details you should know about Elie Wiesel if you don’t already: He was born in Romania to a Hasidic family. Hasids belong to a particularly pious and spiritual sect of Judaism. At 15, he was taken with his family and his entire community to Auschwitz. He and his father were transferred to Buchenwald, where his father would die. He would never see his mother or his youngest sister, Tziporah, again. 00:06:38 ELIE WIESEL: Well, my childhood, really, was a childhood blessed with love and hope and fate and prayer. I come from a very religious home, and in my little town, I was not the only one who prayed and was loved. There were people who were poorer than us, and yet, in my town, we were considered to be not a wealthy family but well-to-do, which means we weren't hungry. 00:07:10 There were people who were. I spent most of my time talking to God more than to people. He was my partner, my friend, my teacher, my king, my sovereign, and I was so crazily religious that nothing else mattered. Oh, from time to time we had anti-Semitic outbursts. 00:07:41 Twice a year, Christmas and Easter, we were afraid to go out because those nights we used to be beaten up by hoodlums. It didn't matter that much. In a way, I was almost used to that. I saw it as part of nature. It's cold in the winter, it's hot in the summer, and Easter and Christmas you are being beaten up by a few anti-Semitic hoodlums. 00:08:08 And now it is still the child in me that asks the questions. It is still the child in me that I am trying to entertain or to reach with my stories, which are his stories. 00:08:24 ALICE WINKLER: After the war, Elie Wiesel became a journalist and an author, a professor and an advocate for human rights. In 1986, he won the Nobel Peace Prize. The Nobel Committee called him a messenger to mankind, one who had worked for peace, atonement, and human dignity, and not just on behalf of the Jews, but on behalf of all humanity. Interviewer Irv Drasnin asked Wiesel who had influenced him most before the war. 00:08:54 ELIE WIESEL: Well, naturally, my grandfather. He was a Hasid, meaning a member of the Hasidic community, and I loved him. I adored him. So thanks to him I became a Hasid, too, and my mother, who actually continued his tradition, she's the one who brought me to Hasidic masters. And all the stories I tell now — I've written so many books with Hasidic tales. These are not mine. These are theirs, my mother's and my grandfather's. 00:09:27 My father taught me how to reason, how to reach my mind. My soul belonged to my grandfather and my mother, and they enriched me, of course. They influenced me profoundly to this day. When I write, I have the feeling, literally, physically, that one of them is behind my back looking over my shoulder and reading what I'm writing, and I'm terribly afraid of their judgment. 00:09:58 ALICE WINKLER: The books he remembers best were religious: the Bible, the Talmud, Hasidic stories. 00:10:04 ELIE WIESEL: After the war, I began reading, of course. I went to the Sorbonne, and I began reading literature. It was still Dostoevsky and Thomas Mann, the usual, Kafka. I remember the awakening that occurred in me when I read for the first time, Franz Kafka. Literally, I remember it. I remember it was in the evening I began reading it and spent the entire night reading, and in the morning I heard the garbage collector around five o’clock. Usually, I was annoyed at the garbage collector. 00:10:32 It's a very ugly noise that they make, ugly sounds. That morning I was happy. I wanted to run out and embrace them, all these garbage collectors, because they taught me that there was another world than the world of Kafka, which is absurd and desperate and despairing. I read a lot. I teach my students not creative writing but creative reading, and it is still from my childhood. 00:11:01 You take a text, and you explore it. You enter it with all your heart and all your mind, and then you find clues that were left for you, really foredestined to be received by you from centuries ago. Generation after generation there were people who left clues, and you are there to collect them. And at one point, when you understand something that you hadn't understood before, that is a reward. 00:11:27 As a child, really, at age 10, 11, 12, I was writing already, and I wanted to become a writer, and I even wrote a book of commentaries on the Bible. It's so bad. I found it after the war. It's so horrible. I'm embarrassed even to admit that I had written it. My ambition really was, even as a child, to be a writer, a commentator, and a teacher, but a teacher of Talmud. 00:11:52 And here I am. I'm a writer, for want of a better word, and I'm a teacher. 00:12:06 I was 15 when I entered the camp. I was 16 when I left it, and all of a sudden you become an orphan and you have no one. I had two little sisters. I knew that with my mother the first night, they were swept away by fire. 00:12:29 My older sisters I discovered by accident after the war in Paris. I was in an orphanage. But to be an orphan — you can become an orphan at 50. You are still an orphan, and very often, very often I think of my father and my mother, really. At any important moment in my life, they are there thinking, "What an injustice now, really." 00:12:58 To date, I haven't written much about that period. I wrote 40 books. Maybe four or five deal with that period because I cannot — I know that there are no words for it, so all I can try to do is to communicate the incommunicability of the event. And furthermore, I know that even if I found the words, you wouldn't understand. It is not because I cannot explain that you won't understand. It is because you won't understand that I can't explain. 00:13:33 ALICE WINKLER: And yet, he did try to make us all understand as best we could, but even Elie Wiesel waited ten years after the war before he attempted it. 00:13:48 ELIE WIESEL: You know, you can be a silent witness, which means silence itself can become a way of communication. There is so much in silence. There is an archeology of silence. There is a geography of silence. There is a theology of silence. There is a history of silence. 00:14:05 Silence is universal. And you can work within it — and it even has its own parameter and its own context — and make that silence into a testimony. Job, after he lost his children and everything, his fortune and his health — Job, for seven days and seven nights he was silent. And his three friends who came to visit him were also silent. That must have been a powerful silence, a brilliant silence. 00:14:33 Well, you see, silence itself can be testimony. And I was waiting for ten years, really, but it wasn't the intention that — my intention simply was to be sure that the words I would use were the proper words. I was afraid of language. 00:14:48 ALICE WINKLER: It was his friend François Mauriac, a leading French Catholic author and Nobel Prize winner, who pressed him to overcome his fear and find words, even if they were inadequate. Here is another excerpt from the audiobook version of Night, read by actor George Guidall. 00:15:11 GEORGE GUIDALL: “Never shall I forget that night, the first night in camp that turned my life into one long night seven times sealed. Never shall I forget that smoke. Never shall I forget the small faces of the children whose bodies I saw transformed into smoke under a silent sky. Never shall I forget those flames that consumed my faith forever.” 00:15:41 “Never shall I forget the nocturnal silence that deprived me for all eternity of the desire to live. Never shall I forget those moments that murdered my God and my soul and turned my dreams to ashes. Never shall I forget those things, even were I condemned to live as long as God Himself. Never.” 00:16:30 ALICE WINKLER: It seems remarkable in hindsight, but after Elie Wiesel wrote Night, he could not find a publisher willing to take it. 00:16:38 ELIE WIESEL: In spite of Mauriac, who was the most famous author in Europe — he brought it personally from publisher to publisher — they didn't want it. It was too morbid, they said. "Nobody wants to hear these stories." Finally, a small publisher, who, by the way, was also Beckett's publisher — which means he had courage — and he published it. So we brought it to an American publisher. It went from publisher to publisher to publisher. All of them refused it. 00:17:08 They gave the same reasons, until a small publisher picked it up, and from '60 to '63, three years, it didn't sell 1,500 copies. Nobody wanted to read it. It doesn't matter. I am not here to sell. I'm here to write. 00:17:31 ALICE WINKLER: Over the next 50 years, though, Night did sell, an estimated 100 million copies, and Elie Wiesel went on to become the best known and most eloquent witness to the Holocaust. There are several questions that readers tend to ask him when they get the chance, as they did at the Academy of Achievement events. 00:17:50 NEWMAN NAHAS: Newman Nahas. I’m a Ph.D. student at Oxford. I did religious studies, and now I’m doing philosophy, you’ll be pleased to hear. I was wondering: How do you reconcile for yourself the ubiquity of suffering with your faith in God? 00:18:05 ELIE WIESEL: This is a — of course, a very important question to me, and I imagine to you, too, since you asked it, but in truth, I never really left it. I never divorced God. I have problems with God. I always had, meaning always, since the war. I come from a very religious background, and immediately after the war, when I went to France, to an orphanage, I really became as religious as before. 00:18:34 It’s only after what the psychiatrists call the latency period that I began rebelling, asking questions, and the questions remained open. I did not find any answer. All that I asked then I ask now. In other words, where was He, or, "Where were You? What did You do? How is it possible?" One cannot understand that tragedy with God or without God. There is no answer to it. I can only tell you that I still have faith. 00:19:08 But my faith is wounded. But then there was a great Hasidic master, Rebbe Nachman. He said that: “No heart is as whole as a broken heart.” And I paraphrase it: “No faith is as whole as a wounded faith.” 00:19:25 ALICE WINKLER: Another question Elie Wiesel regularly gets asked is how he could possibly have gone on at all after what he endured, even occasionally finding optimism. 00:19:37 ELIE WIESEL: Well, I could answer you and say, "What is the alternative?" But that's not enough. In truth, I have learned something. The enemy wanted to be the one who speaks, and I felt — I still feel — we must see to it that the victim should be the one who speaks and is heard. 00:20:02 And therefore, all my adult life, since I began my life as an author, or as a teacher, I always try to listen to the victim. In other words, if I remain silent, I may help my own soul, but because I do not help other people, I poison my soul. Silence never helps the victim. It only helps the victimizer. 00:20:33 Faith — I think of the killer and I lose all faith, but then I think of the victim, and I am inundated with compassion. 00:20:44 ALICE WINKLER: Elie Wiesel’s compassion extended to victims of war around the world, whether in Darfur or in the former Yugoslavia, and that compassion often led him to travel and bear witness in person, as he did when he went to Bosnia. 00:21:00 ELIE WIESEL: I would go literally from house to house, from tent to tent, speaking to the victims. That’s all my role, to speak to victims. And I listened, and incredibly, not one person completed the story. He or she always — in the middle of the story — burst out in tears. And then I felt maybe this is the role of the writer today, to collect their tears and turn them into a story and perhaps into prayer. 00:21:38 ALICE WINKLER: Elie Wiesel famously said once that indifference is the epitome of evil, and so he took up the cause of Soviet Jews and Miskito Indians, the “disappeared” of Argentina, and Cambodian refugees, on and on. He was really a moral compass for the second half of the 20th century and on into the 21st. The one criticism I could find of him was from people who felt that his ardent defense of Israel blinded him to the suffering of Palestinians. 00:22:12 I’m not sure “ironic” is the right word, but there is something profound about the fact that Elie Wiesel managed to find hope all the days of his adult life by running toward the fire, by opening his heart again and again and again to the victims of man’s most savage acts against man. He spoke quite a bit about hope amidst despair, during a talk he gave at the Academy of Achievement in 2003. It seems like a good place to end. 00:22:42 ELIE WIESEL: My obsession has been lately hope. Where does one find hope in this century? The century just began. What a century it is. After all, remember, all of you who are students: December 31, 1999. It was a great day and a great night. All over the world, people were celebrating — champagne, dancing, laughing. Why? 00:23:12 Because we all had a feeling: “At last, the 20th century is gone. Good-bye.” 00:23:21 That was the feeling we all had because it was a terrible century, a century that had so many maledictions and so many curses, almost unparalleled in history. Why? — Because we had two totalitarian ideologies and two world wars and so many other wars and civil wars and revolutions. Wherever you turned there was despair, at least in the first part of the century, the first half. 00:23:52 Later on, we had other problems. We discovered the deception, the betrayal of any ideal, any human ideal, in the Gulag. Even those who in the beginning had hope for humanity as an option, as the kind of laboratory for good things, for fraternity, for peace — which communism used to be, at least in the very beginning, but turned out to be a prison for all that was good, all that was noble in human aspirations. 00:24:26 So where does one turn? And then we hoped the century will be gone and now we can start all over again, and here we are, almost three years later, and we know that it’s not finished. I think there are dozens and dozens of wars and conflicts, armed conflicts, still going on. Famine has not been vanquished, although it could be. Children still suffer. 00:24:53 Every minute that we speak, literally every minute, somewhere in this world a child dies of disease, of violence, of pain, solitude, hunger. And of course, that is inexcusable, that children should die. Any time a child dies — and here we go with Dostoevsky — it calls into question even God’s existence. 00:25:22 If a child dies, that means something is wrong with creation and perhaps the Creator. And we see now that we didn’t do much. Personally, I feel let down by myself, by my generation. We — some of us at least — we tried immediately after the war to bear witness. That was our motto, that was our work, our philosophy, our moral philosophy, to bear witness. Why? 00:25:50 Because we felt if we bear witness and we tell the tale, certain things will not happen again. Impossible. If we tell the next generations, in plural, where hatred is born, why it comes into life, and where it leads, there will be no more hatred, no more racism, no more anti-Semitism, no more fanaticism. 00:26:20 We were convinced, strangely enough, in 1945 when the war ended — and my generation had all the reasons in the world to be terribly pessimistic and give up on anything and become hedonists. Why not? The hell with it; we paid our dues. Let’s live a life of pleasure and joy. We owe nothing to anyone. Just the opposite — on a very strange level we were very optimistic. 00:26:49 We said history now will go in a different direction, and since it didn’t, I think we feel let down a little bit, and we feel something is wrong. Where do we go? What does one do? What else can one do? I will say it bluntly: if Auschwitz didn’t put an end to anti-Semitism, what will? 00:27:13 If it didn’t put an end to racism, what will? If it didn’t put an end to war, what will? So what else can one do to attain hope? Here I will quote Camus, who is one of my favorite writers and philosophers. Camus, at one point, said, "Where there is no hope, one must invent it." It's almost simplistic what I'm going to tell you, but I think it can have a meaning. 00:27:48 If I think of myself alone, I have the right to despair. If I think of you, I don't. 00:28:03 ALICE WINKLER: Elie Wiesel, survivor, witness, writer, teacher, and humanitarian. He died this year in 2016 at the age of 87. 00:28:15 You heard him speaking here to students at the Academy of Achievement in 1996, 2003, and 2007. There were also excerpts from an Academy interview conducted in 1996. This is What It Takes. I’m Alice Winkler. And be sure to listen to our next episode in two weeks, featuring Sir Roger Bannister, the beloved Olympic runner and the first man to run a mile in under four minutes. 00:28:49 Support for What It Takes comes from the Catherine B. Reynolds Foundation. END OF FILE
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Thursday, February 15, 2018
Everyday Grammar: In, On, and At
When English speakers talk about time and place, there are three little words that often come up: in, on, and at. These common words are prepositions that show a relationship between two words in a sentence. Some prepositions are rather easy for English learners to understand: behind, over, under, next to, etc… But these little two-letter prepositions seem to create confusion. Here are a few rules to help you understand when to use in, on, and at in a sentence. For describing time and place, the prepositions in, on, and at go from general to specific. Prepositions and Time Let’s start by looking at how we talk about time. English speakers use in to refer to a general, longer period of time, such as months, years, decades, or centuries. For example, we say “in April,” “in 2015” or “in the 21st century.” Moving to shorter, more specific periods of time, we use on to talk about particular days, dates, and holidays . You may hear, “I went to work on Monday,” or “Let’s have a picnic on Memorial Day.” For the most specific times, and for holidays without the word “day,” we use at. That means you will hear, “Meet me at midnight,” or “The flowers are in bloom at Easter time.” Prepositions and Place When English speakers refer to a place, we use in for the largest or most general places. You can say that “VOA is located in Washington, D.C.” And “for the best food, try the restaurants in Chinatown.” For more specific places, like certain streets, we use the preposition on. You may know that President Obama lives on Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington, D.C. Finally, we get to the most specific places. For exact addresses or intersections, we use the preposition at. If I invited you to visit us here at VOA, I would say, “Come to my office at 330 Independence Avenue.” To be exact, it’s at the corner of Independence and 3rd Street.” In English, though, there is always an ‘exception to the rule.’ When talking about transportation, things get a little hard to understand. We use on for public vehicles like buses or trains, but also for smaller ones like a bicycle. “I rode there on my bicycle.” However, you ride in a car. Still, it helps to know that English prepositions do have some rules. Following the “general to specific” rule should help you most of the time. I’m Jill Robbins. And, I’m Ashley Thompson. Dr. Jill Robbins wrote this story for Learning English. Ashley Thompson was the editor. ______________________________________________________________ Words in This Story specific - adj. clearly and exactly presented or stated : precise or exact intersection - n. the place where two or more streets meet or cross each other Now it’s your turn. What helps you to remember the prepositions in English? Do you have any grammar tips you’d like to share? Write to us in the comments section.
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Florida School Shooting Is One of Deadliest in US History
Students and neighbors describe the suspect in the Florida high school shooting as a troubled teenager. They said he threatened and harassed other students. He talked about killing animals. And he shared photos of himself on social media posing with guns. On Wednesday, Nikolas Cruz killed 17 people and injured another 16. He used a semi-automatic rifle, an AR-15, at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida. Cruz had been expelled from the school for “disciplinary reasons,” the county sheriff said. Math teacher Jim Gard told the Miami Herald that before Wednesday’s fatal shooting, Cruz may have been identified as a potential threat. “There were problems with him last year threatening students, and I guess he was asked to leave campus,” Gard told the paper. Student Victoria Olvera said Cruz had been abusive to his ex-girlfriend. She said he was expelled after a fight with another boy. School officials said Cruz had been attending a different, nearby school since his expulsion. Cruz was an orphan. His father died many years ago, and his mother died last November. Cruz lived with family friends in Broward County, north of Miami. A lawyer for the family said they knew that Cruz owned the AR-15. But they made him keep it locked up in a cabinet. He did have the key, however. The lawyer, Jim Lewis, told the Associated Press the family had no idea that anything could be wrong with Cruz. He said Cruz is “just a mildly troubled kid who’d lost his mom. ... He totally kept this from everybody.” An official in Broward County told CNN that Cruz was getting treatment at a mental health clinic. But he had not been there for more than a year. Some students said they recognized Cruz from an Instagram photo. In it, he is posing with a gun in front of his face. The students called him “weird” and a “loner.” One of the students said he was not surprised officials had identified Cruz as the shooter: “I think everyone had in their minds if anybody was going to do it, it was going to be him.” The city mayor said teachers had tried to help Cruz make connections at school. But they had not succeeded, he said. School official Robert Runcie said Cruz had not previously warned the school of an attack. He said, “There weren’t any phone calls or threats that we know of that were made.” On Thursday morning, Cruz was charged with 17 counts of premeditated murder. And the shooting in Florida became the fourth-deadliest school attack in modern U.S. history. Here is a look at the others: 1. Bath Consolidated School, Bath, Michigan May 18, 1927: Andrew Kehoe, a farmer unhappy about the property taxes being used to fund a rural school, blew it up with a bomb. The explosion killed 45 people, including his wife and 38 children. 2. Virginia Tech University, Blacksburg, Virginia April 16, 2007: Seung-Hui Cho, a senior at the college, killed 32 people and injured 17 others in the attacks at a residence hall and the Engineering, Science and Mechanics building. 3. Sandy Hook Elementary School, Newtown, Connecticut Dec. 14, 2012: Adam Lanza killed his mother before going to the school where he killed 20 first graders and six staff members. 4. Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, Parkland, Florida Feb. 14, 2018: A gunman killed 17 students and injured 16 others both inside and outside the school. 5. University of Texas, Austin, Texas Aug. 1, 1966: A former Marine sharpshooter, Charles Whitman, climbed to the observation deck of the university tower. From there, he killed 14 people and wounded 31 others. Before the attack on campus, Whitman had also killed his wife and mother. 6. Columbine High School, Littleton, Colorado April 20, 1999: Eric Harris, 18, and Dylan Klebold, 17, killed 12 fellow students and one teacher. They also injured 21 people in a planned assault. 7. Umpqua Community College, Roseburg, Oregon Oct. 1, 2015: Christopher Harper-Mercer killed nine people and wounded seven. He let one person go to deliver a message to the police. 8. Red Lake Indian Reservation, Red Lake, Minnesota March 21, 2005: Sixteen-year-old Jeffrey Weise killed his grandfather, a tribal police officer, and his grandfather's girlfriend. Then, armed with his grandfather's police weapons, he went to Red Lake High School, where he killed seven people and wounded five others. 9. Oikos University, Oakland, California April 2, 2012: One L. Goh, 43, stood up in a nursing class at the Korean Christian college and ordered all the students to line up against the wall. He killed seven people and wounded three others. 10. California State University, Fullerton, California Jan. 12, 1976: University custodian Charles Allaway killed seven people and injured two others. I'm Kelly Jean Kelly. And I'm Bryan Lynn. Hai Do adapted this story for Learning English based on VOA and Associated Press reports. Kelly Jean Kelly was the editor. Write to us in the Comments Section or on our Facebook page. ______________________________________________________________ Words in This Story teenager - n. someone between the age of 13 and 19 years old disciplinary - adj. intended to correct or punish bad bahavior expel - v. to officially force someone to leave a school, a place, or an organization premeditated - adj. planned in advance
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Lucky Foods for the Lunar New Year
The Lunar New Year begins February 16. It is one of the biggest and most important holidays in Asia. In China, it is called “chun jie.” In Vietnam, it is known as “Tet.” And in Korea, it is “Seollal.” While the names may be different, these and other countries mark the coming year with many similar activities: family reunions, festivals, cleaning and organizing the home, the color red, and -- of course -- traditional foods. Today, we learn about five foods considered lucky during the Lunar New Year. Spring rolls The Chinese name for the holiday means “spring festival” in English. And spring rolls -- a common New Year’s food – are named in honor of the holiday. Spring rolls are often made of finely cut vegetables, such as carrots and cabbage, and pork meat. They are wrapped in dough that turns crispy and golden as it fries. To fry is to cook in oil over high heat. Spring rolls are said to look like large pieces of gold. The food is a symbol of wealth and financial success for the coming year. Vietnamese red sticky rice In Vietnam, one food you will find during Tet is orange-red sticky rice. The special dish is called xoi-gac. It is made with gac, a fruit that only grows in Asia. In English, it is known as baby jackfruit. The inside of the fruit is a beautiful, deep red. This gives xoi-gac its orange-red color. And it is the dish’s color that makes it especially popular during Tet; red represents luck, happiness and celebration in many Asian cultures. Xoi-gac is made by steaming white sticky rice with gac fruit, coconut milk and sugar. The result is an exceptional, sweet taste. Korean rice cake soup No Korean New Year celebration is complete without tteokguk, or rice cake soup. Eating a bowl of it is said to bring a person a long life. Eating tteokhuk also represents growing another year older. In fact, Koreans may ask a person their age by saying “how many bowls of tteokguk have you eaten?” The soup includes broth, vegetables and thin, round pieces of rice cake. The round shape it said to symbolize old Korean money. So, tteokguk is said to bring riches, too. Radish cake While Koreans celebrate the New Year with rice cake, people in Taiwan do it with radish cake. A big reason? In the Hoklo language spoken in Taiwan, the words for “radish” and “good fortune” are homophones, or words with different meanings that sound the same. Radish cake is made with thinly cut pieces of radish, rice flour, fatty meat, spices, shrimp and dried mushrooms. It is cut into pieces and fried. The result is a savory snack. This dish can be easily found in food places all year long. But, it is said to bring good luck for the next 12 months if you eat radish cake around the Lunar New Year. Fish In many places in Asia, fish is another lucky food for the New Year. And there is another homophonic connection in China. The Mandarin word for fish (yu) sounds like the word for surplus, which means more or extra. So, fish also symbolize wealth. As a New Year dish, it is often steamed with ginger and soy sauce and topped with greens, like cilantro and spring onions. But do not eat all of it! To be especially lucky, there should be some left for a meal the next day. That suggests your riches will continue throughout the new year. Happy New Year to all! I’m Ashley Thompson. And I’m Caty Weaver. Do you celebrate the Lunar New Year? If so, what are some of the lucky or traditional New Year foods where you live? Let us know in the comments section! _________________________________________________________________ Words in This Story dough - n. a mixture of flour, water, and other ingredients that is baked to make bread, cookies, etc. steam - v. to cook, heat, or treat (something) with steam crispy - adj. pleasantly thin, dry, and easily broken broth - n. liquid in which food (such as meat) has been cooked symbolize - v. to be a symbol of (something) savory - adj. having a spicy or salty quality without being sweet snack - n. a small amount of food eaten between meals
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South African Parliament Names Ramaphosa President
South Africa’s parliament has chosen Cyril Ramaphosa as the country’s new president. Ramaphosa was elected by the parliament without a vote in Cape Town, the legislative capital. South Africa’s chief justice told lawmakers that Ramaphosa was the only candidate nominated. After the announcement, lawmakers of the ruling African National Congress began to sing and dance in celebration. However, the opposition Economic Freedom Fighters party walked out of parliament before a vote could take place. Party leader Julius Malema said his party does not want to legitimize Ramaphosa’s election. He is calling for parliament to be dissolved and early elections to be held. The unusual situation came hours after former president Jacob Zuma told the country on national television that he was stepping down. Zuma’s nine years in office had been marked by many accusations of corruption. Zuma had wanted to delay his resignation until June. However, ANC members said they would hold a no-confidence vote in parliament Thursday if he did not resign immediately. Who is Cryil Ramaphosa? Ramaphosa served as deputy president under Zuma. He was expected to succeed him after being elected president of the ANC in December. The new president has been active in the ANC since he became a student activist while studying law in the 1970s. For his activities, he was arrested in 1974 and jailed for nearly a year in solitary confinement. Then, he became involved in trade unions as a legal way to protest the racially separated government at the time. Later, he formed the National Union of Mineworkers in 1982 which grew to have 300,000 members. A strike in 1987 showed the movement’s power to white leaders as international calls for racial equality in the country increased. South Africa was ruled under a system of racial separation known as apartheid. But that system began to come apart as activists, led by Nelson Mandela, pushed for equality. Ramaphosa became part of a group tasked with moving South Africa to democracy in 1990 after Mandela was released from 27 years in prison. Former president Mandela identified Ramaphosa as a leader in a “new generation” of activists. He also led the group that wrote the country’s new constitution. When Ramaphosa failed to succeed Mandela as president in 1999, he turned to business where he became one of Africa’s richest men. In his business career, he held stakes in McDonald’s and Coca-Cola local businesses. He made millions of dollars in deals that required investors to partner with non-white shareholders in South Africa. However, a miners’ strike that turned violent in 2012 hurt his popularity. Police killed 34 miners at the Marikana platinum mine. Ramaphosa had been a director of the company at the time. In recent years, Ramaphosa re-entered politics and became deputy president in 2014. However, as deputy to Zuma, he had been criticized for not speaking out against the president. Ramaphosa has promised to rebuild the country’s economy, increase growth and create jobs. South Africa is considered one of the BRICS nations: an association of five major developing economies that include Brazil, Russia, India and China. The country hosted the 2010 FIFA World Cup with hopes that the international sports event would bring tourism, trade and expansion. But, the nation of more than 50 million people has struggled with weak economic growth and high unemployment of over 25 percent for years. I’m Mario Ritter. Richard Green reported this story for VOA News. Mario Ritter adapted it for VOA Learning English with additional information from AFP. Hai Do was the editor. _______________________________________________________________ Words in This Story legitimize –v. to make acceptable, to give acceptance or legality to solitary confinement –n. being held without contact with others in prison no-confidence vote –n. a vote in a legislative body that shows approval or disapproval of a leader career –n. the path of someone’s work life stake –n. a share or interest in ownership We want to hear from you. Write to us in the Comments section, and visit our Facebook page.
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News Words: Solidarity
Solidarity was shown at this year's entertainment awards show, the Golden Globes. Learn what solidarity means in this week's News Words.
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Scientists Test New Treatment for Injuries that Produce Arthritis
American researchers are looking for new ways to reduce arthritis pain. Arthritis is known to affect older people. Over time, the joints of the body suffer damage and become inflamed. The condition has also been found to affect younger adults who suffer knee or ankle injuries. Now, University of Iowa scientists are using new methods for treating arthritis with existing medicines. They hope to target individuals who develop the condition shortly after an injury. In tests, the scientists injected the medicines directly into the damaged joints. The hope is that the treatment will then block the cycle of cell dysfunction that follows an injury, and protect against arthritis. The scientists have yet to carry out experiments with people. They used pigs instead because the animals’ joints react like human ankles. Filling in a need The United States Defense Department and National Institutes of Health provided money for the University of Iowa study. The Associated Press says the scientists are now seeking financial support for human studies. The tests are part of an effort to understand why an aggressive form of arthritis can develop after some injuries, such as a broken bone in a joint, seem to have healed. “It’s very promising,” said Farshis Guilak, a regenerative medicine specialist at Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri. He said there are no treatments right now for any form of arthritis that has been able to affect the disease. Guilak was not involved in the study. Osteoarthritis is the most common kind of arthritis. It usually happens when cartilage, which protects the joints, wears away over many years of use. Yet about 5.6 million people in the U.S. get post-traumatic osteoarthritis, which strikes much faster. This condition comes from injuries to weight-bearing joints, like knees and ankles. People who suffered knee injuries are three to six times more likely to develop arthritis in that joint than other people who have never been injured. They are also more likely to get arthritis about 10 years earlier. That information comes from a report published last year in The Journal of Athletic Training. Interrupting the process In the Iowa study, the researchers made several observations about what happens to cartilage after an injury. They found that only some cartilage cells die immediately after the injury. But over the next 48 hours, more cells die and others begin to work less effectively. Inside cells are tiny power plants, called mitochondria. Somehow, joint injuries causes the mitochondria inside cartilage cells to become overactive and produce substances called oxidants. Mitchell Coleman was the lead researcher in the University of Iowa study. He noted that, “if you can interrupt that early process, whatever is going on with those mitochondria in the first day, you can have a… benefit to the tissue itself.” In the tests, Coleman and his team used two old drugs: amobarbital, a calming drug known to limit energy production in cells, and an antioxidant named N-acetylcysteine. To avoid body-wide side effects, the researchers created a form of the drug that is liquid while being injected, but becomes solid at body temperature. They injected one or the other drug into the pigs’ broken joints, both after the injury and again one week later. Each drug separately helped protect cartilage, the team reported this month in the journal Science Translational Medicine. A year later, the cartilage in the treated animals appeared stronger that that in the untreated pigs. The treated animals also showed no signs of pain. The scientists say additional research is needed to tell if the treatment works in people. For now, people who have had joint injuries should get treatment for the injury and keeping up exercise, said Lisa Cannada, a spokesperson for the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons. I’m Phil Dierking. Lauren Neergard reported this story for the Associated Press news agency. Phil Dierking adapted her report for Learning English. George Grow was the editor. What do you do to treat join injuries or arthritis? We want to hear from you. Write to us in the Comments Section or on our Facebook page. _______________________________________________________________ Words in This Story antioxidant - n. a substance that is added to food and other products to prevent harmful chemical reactions in which oxygen is combined with other substances bear - v. to accept or endure cartilage - n. a strong but flexible material found in some parts of the body (such as the nose, the outer ear, and some joints) cycle - n. a set of events or actions that happen again and again in the same order dysfunction - n. the state of being unable to function in a normal way inflame - v. to cause (a part of your body) to grow sore, red, and swollen ligament - n. a tough piece of tissue in your body that holds bones together or keeps an organ in place oxidant - n. an oxidizing agent. plants - n. a building or factory where something is made
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