FIFA to Investigate Russian Racism Against French Soccer Players

  Soccer's international governing body, FIFA, is investigating reported racial abuse by soccer fans in Russia. The top international soccer competition, the World Cup, is to take place in Russia in less than three months. The reported abuse took place Tuesday during a match in St. Petersburg between the French and Russian national teams. During the game, people in the crowd reportedly yelled a racist term repeatedly at black players from France. The yelling was captured by television cameras. It reportedly can be heard clearly after Paul Pogba scored France’s second goal. France won the match three to one. FIFA said on Wednesday that it was collecting evidence and would contact the anti-discrimination organization Fare Network. The group helps FIFA investigate reports of racism. A FIFA statement said the group is collecting evidence connected to the incident. FIFA said it could not comment further until it had considered all the evidence. French Sports Minister Laura Flessel commented on Twitter.   “Racism has no place on the soccer field,” she wrote. “We should act together at a European and international level in order to stop this intolerable behavior.” Weaknesses in World Cup preparation Fare Network said the incident in St. Petersburg shows the weaknesses in Russia’s preparations for the World Cup. Piara Powar is head of Fare Network. “If photographers heard it pitch-side, then there must have been stewards and other officials who also heard it,” he said He said it will be a bad sign for the World Cup if officials do not have a plan by the end of this month to deal with racist fan behavior. He said, “So close to the World Cup, questions are being asked...to why it wasn’t dealt with as it occurred during play.” This latest incident of reported racism is the third this season at St. Petersburg Stadium, which is to hold a World Cup semifinal match. The other two cases involve the city’s local team, Zenit. The United European Football Association begins to hear one of those cases May 31. The World Cup is to start two weeks later.  I’m Caty Weaver. This story was originally written by Dmitri Lovetsky and Jamesv Ellingworth for the Associated Press. Phil Dierking adapted this story for VOA Learning English. Caty Weaver was the editor. How do you think sports leagues can control racist fans?  We want to hear from you. Write to us in the Comments Section or on our Facebook page. ____________________________________________________________ Words in This Story intolerable - adj. too bad, harsh, or severe to be accepted match - n. a a contest between two or more players or teams occur - v. to happen  pitch - n. (chiefly British) an area that is used for playing sports​; a playing field steward - n. (chiefly British) someone who is in charge of a race, contest, or other public event​

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English @ the Movies: 'Cut It Out'

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Russia Expels More British Diplomats

  Russia ordered new cuts Friday to the number of British diplomats in the country. The move has worsened the clash between Russia and several European countries and the United States over the poisoning of a former Russian spy in Britain. On Thursday, Russia’s Foreign Ministry announced the removal of 60 American diplomats, in answer to the United States’ expulsion of the same number of Russian diplomats earlier this week. The increased removal of diplomats on both sides has reached a level unseen even during the height of the Cold War. More than 20 countries and NATO have ordered the expulsion of over 150 Russian diplomats. The actions were meant as a show of support for Britain over the March 4 poisoning of former Russian spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter, Yulia, in the British city of Salisbury. Britain blamed the poisoning attack on Russia. Russia has strongly denied involvement in the poisoning. It also announced it would expel the same number of diplomats from each nation. Russia’s Foreign Ministry intensified the dispute Friday, saying it has ordered Britain to reduce its diplomats in Moscow to the number that Russia now has in London. The ministry has given Britain one month to take action. In answer, a representative of the British Foreign Office said Russia’s move was “regrettable” but expected, based on its earlier actions.   A hospital treating the Skripals said Thursday that the daughter’s condition was improving quickly. Her father, however, remains in critical condition. Dmitry Peskov, press secretary to Russian President Vladimir Putin, spoke with reporters on Friday. He said that “Russia didn’t start any diplomatic wars,” and “remains open for developing good ties.” He also said Russia has called a meeting with the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons next week to push for an “objective investigation.” Russia has accused Britain of failing to support its claims with evidence and refusing to share materials from its investigation. The Russian Foreign Ministry said it told the British ambassador on Friday that Moscow is ready to cooperate in the investigation. I'm Alice Bryant. The Associated Press reported this story. Alice Bryant adapted it for Learning English. Ashley Thompson was the editor.  _______________________________________________________________ Words in This Story   critical – adj. relating to or involving a great danger of death prohibition – n. relating to or involving a great danger of death objective – adj. based on facts rather than feelings or opinions  

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What It Takes - John Irving

00:00:01    JOHN IRVING: I’ll begin where I always begin, which is at the end. I’ve never started to write a novel or a screenplay without knowing the ending first, and I don’t mean that I need only to know what happens at the end of a novel or a screenplay before I begin. I need to know the sentences themselves.   00:00:23    ALICE WINKLER: But I need to start at the beginning. That voice belongs to John Irving. He’s one of the finest and most widely read American novelists of the past 50 years: The World According to Garp, A Prayer for Owen Meany, The Cider House Rules — all his — and most recently, Avenue of Mysteries. Five of his novels have been turned into movies. Before we return to the story of John Irving’s approach to writing stories end-first, I need to say, “This is What It Takes from the Academy of Achievement. I’m Alice Winkler.”   00:01:01    OPRAH WINFREY: "Hattie Mae, this child is gifted," and I heard that enough that I started to believe it.   00:01:07    ROGER BANNISTER: If you have the opportunity, not a perfect opportunity, and you don't take it, you may never have another chance.   00:01:13    LAURYN HILL: It all was so clear. It was just, like, the picture started to form itself.   00:01:18    DESMOND TUTU: There was no way in which a lie could prevail over the truth, darkness over light, death over life.   00:01:26    CAROL BURNETT (quoting CARRIE HAMILTON): “Every day I wake up and decide, today I'm going to love my life. Decide.”   00:01:34    JOHNNY CASH: My advice is, if they're going to break your leg once when you go in that place, stay out of there.   00:01:39    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.   00:01:52    ALICE WINKLER: I interrupted John Irving with my introduction. He was starting to explain how he never begins writing a novel without knowing first what the final sentences will be, which, if you think about it, is a little mind-boggling. So picking that back up, here’s John Irving speaking in New York to an international gathering of Academy of Achievement delegates in 2005.   00:02:16    JOHN IRVING: I need to know what the words are and the atmosphere that those words convey. I need to know how melancholic a story this is, how uplifting or not. It’s like an endnote to a piece of music. I can’t imagine where the reader should jump into this story if I don’t know where I’m going first. This is an aspect, my wife tells me, of my over-controlling nature.   00:02:46    But I am a believer in the novels of the 19th century, a plot-driven, character-based novel where the passage of time is almost as important — or as important — as any of the major/minor characters in that story; the passage of time and the effects of the passage of time on the people in that story.   00:03:11    In The World According to Garp, "We are all terminal cases," is the last sentence of that novel, but it was the first sentence I wrote. "You’ve got to get obsessed and stay obsessed. You have to keep passing the open windows," was the first sentence I wrote for The Hotel New Hampshire, but I knew it was the end of the novel. It was the pep talk, the anti-suicide language at the end of what was a suicidal novel.   00:03:39    ALICE WINKLER: In the case of The Cider House Rules, it was a benediction, a tender phrase that the doctor at the orphanage says to the orphans every night as he turns out the light.   00:03:50    JOHN IRVING: "Princes of Maine, Kings of New England," they're anything but. They're orphans. Nobody wanted them. But he says this to make them feel better.     00:03:59    ALICE WINKLER: That line, "Princes of Maine, Kings of New England," isn’t just the last line. It’s a refrain, repeated several times in the novel, a technique John Irving is very fond of and compares to the repetitions you find in any long piece of music, in an opera or a soundtrack. John Irving’s novels are always long, and his stories famously complicated. He says the process of researching and note-taking and mapping typically takes him 18 months before he begins writing, but always, those final lines are on a postcard, tacked to the wall, because what he is doing is reconstructing the story from the back to the front, as he says, until he knows where the front is.   00:04:47    JOHN IRVING: The atmosphere at the end of a novel, if I don’t know what it is, how do I know I want to spend five years making that journey? If I don’t know that there isn’t something that is an emotional kick at the end of that story, why am I going to invest the time? The novel I’ve just finished took seven years. That’s my longest, and I hope that I don’t do that again.   00:05:08    But believe me, I never would have started if I didn’t know that there was something emotionally gratifying enough at the end of the story. Why would I take the time? Why would I take the time? At the end of The Fourth Hand, a man who’s lost a hand and a woman who’s lost a husband are making love in a Green Bay, Wisconsin hotel.   00:05:32    We don’t know what the future holds in store for them or for people like them, for people who’ve lost things. People are always losing things in my novels, not always comically, but sometimes so. This ending was on another postcard for two-and-a-half years: “Outside their warm hotel, the cold wind was a harbinger of the coming winter, but they heard only their own harsh breathing. Like other lovers, they were oblivious to the swirling wind, which blew on and on in the wild, uncaring Wisconsin night.” If I can’t hear the sentences, I don’t start. I don’t know enough yet about the story.   00:06:15    ALICE WINKLER: It would be like coming home from the airport, Irving says, and telling his wife that something amazing had happened during the landing, but without knowing what it was. He says he'd have to be a pathological liar to pull that off.   00:06:28    JOHN IRVING: I think one of the reasons that there’s so much research in most of my novels, one of the reasons I’ve become fascinated in learning about people I know nothing about: ether-addicted abortionists in Maine orphanages in the 1930s, children's orthopedic surgeons — I don’t know anything about that, or I didn’t.   00:06:50    But becoming a student of something as a process of beginning a story, it’s another way of making you wait before you start writing. You can’t start this book because you don’t know enough yet. You haven’t learned enough about obstetrical-gynecological surgery. You have to study it. You have to learn something about it. You have to find a doctor who will talk to you and a doctor who’s going to be willing to read that manuscript and say, "No, you idiot. The episiotomy doesn’t work that way."   00:07:19    You need an expert, and you have to become a kind of quasi-expert yourself, and that is a way — it's a way of keeping myself from jumping into the story before I know as much as I can about it. The research in that way is useful. My friend and fellow writer, Michael Ondaatje, has often told me the same thing. You go off and make a student of yourself of something. You learn something you know nothing about, and it’s a way of slowing yourself down.   00:07:45    I also write in longhand and on an old-fashioned typewriter. I don’t want something in my life that speeds up the process of telling the story. I’m not an intellectual. I’m a storyteller. I don’t even think of myself as an artist. I’m a craftsman. I’m building a house, and it’s the architecture of my novels, the structure of them, the overall building itself that first interests me, that gets me interested in the process.   00:08:15    The ending of A Prayer for Owen Meany was, of course, a prayer. He’s dead. You know it from the opening. But how he dies and why, you’ve got to wait. You’ve got to wait a long time to find that out. "O God — please give him back! I shall keep asking You." Another postcard, another thing tacked on the wall. There’s another reason for all of this. It isn’t just the over-controlling instinct that my wife points to.   00:08:42    It's that, by the time I start writing the story, I want to know everything that happens. I don’t want to be distracted by the questions: “Is Alice going to see Jack again? When? Are their paths going to cross again? How long do we have to wait?” I want to know all those things. I want to know everything that happens so that the story I’m telling you, it’s already happened to me. I know it.   00:09:07    It’s already happened so that all I’m thinking about are the sentences. Make them short if you want the thing to move quickly, make them long if you want the reader to slow down. Right? I don’t want to be distracted from the language. All I want to be thinking about is the language, the sentences, the next sentence and the sentence after that. I don't want to be thinking about what happens to so-and-so. I know. I know. It's already happened, and all I’m thinking about is in what order should you receive the news.   00:09:35    ALICE WINKLER: When people hear about his process, John Irving says, they almost always ask...   00:09:39    JOHN IRVING: Surely something changes. Surely somewhere along the way you get a better idea.   00:09:44    ALICE WINKLER: Here’s how he answers them.   00:09:45    JOHN IRVING: In the sequence of events in the middle of the story, that's often true. Sometimes a character I had never thought of, a minor character or a major/minor one, will make an appearance in the middle of the story and move the story in a slightly different way, but the ending never changes. It never has. Never has. Eleven novels, it never has changed. I might fool around with that first sentence, but I won't fool around with the last. It's just — it is where I'm going.   00:10:14    MUSIC: LOBSTER DINNER (THE CIDER HOUSE RULES SOUNDTRACK)   00:10:25    ALICE WINKLER: His need for clarity about where he is going makes good sense if you know where he has been. So I’m going to switch gears here and move away from how John Irving writes his novels, to talk about what went into making him the writer that he is, the person that he is. Most of what you’re going to hear from here on is from an interview Irving sat for when he attended that Academy of Achievement Summit. The interviewer was journalist Irv Drasnin, who started the conversation by asking John Irving to talk about his childhood in Exeter, New Hampshire.   00:10:59    JOHN IRVING: Largely happy, but there was a mystery in it that I think provoked my imagination. Namely, no adult in my family would ever tell me anything about who my father was. I knew from an older cousin, only four years older than I am, everything, or what little I could discover about him. But I was born with that father's name, John Wallace Blunt, Jr., and it probably was a gift to my imagination that my mother wouldn't talk about him because when information of that kind is denied to you as a child, you begin to invent who your father might have been.   00:11:51    And this becomes a secret, a private obsession, which I would say is an apt description of writing novels and screenplays, of making things up in lieu of knowing the real answer.   00:12:06    MUSIC: PICKERS LEAVE (THE CIDER HOUSE RULES SOUNDTRACK)   00:12:13    JOHN IRVING: I was 39 and divorcing my first wife when my mother deposited on my dining room table some letters from my father, which were written from an air base in India and from hospitals in India and China in 1943. He was a flyer. He flew the Himalayan route, the Hump, as it was called. He and his crew were shot down over Japanese-occupied Burma and hiked some 15 days — 225 miles later — into China.   00:12:51    The letters were all patiently, painstakingly explaining to her why he didn't want to remain married to her but that he hoped to have some contact with me. My mom never permitted him that contact. In 1948, when I was 6, she remarried, and my stepfather, Colin Irving, legally adopted me, so that my name was changed from John Wallace Blunt, Jr. to John Winslow Irving, Winslow being my mom's maiden name.   00:13:34     And the mystery continued. I think it probably is the most central or informative part of my childhood — is what I didn't know about it — and as friends and critics have been saying of my novels for some time, I've been inventing that missing parent, that absent father, in one novel after another.   00:14:07     ALICE WINKLER: Including in the novel John Irving had just published when he sat down for this conversation. That book is called Until I Find You. It’s the one he mentioned that took him seven years to write, and it weighs in at whatever 824 pages weigh. A lot.    00:14:26    JOHN IRVING: In 2002, in December of 2002, in the middle of that book, which was, once again, a missing-father novel, I was contacted by a 39-year-old man named Chris Blunt, who said, "There's a possible chance that I might be your brother," and of course, I knew it was not a possible chance at all but a likelihood. And I since have met two brothers and a sister I didn't know about, and I found out more about this man, who died five years before Chris found me. And the coincidences of the father I was imagining, who was waiting for me to finish my story in the last two chapters of this novel — the actual father turned out to have some similarities to the man I had already imagined.   00:15:30     ALICE WINKLER: Meeting his siblings, hearing about his father, it knocked John Irving for a bit of a loop, but it also eased his burden, he says.          00:15:38     JOHN IRVING: When you're a kid and you don't know about someone, it's natural to demonize him. In other words, if no one would talk about this guy, how bad a guy was he. Right? Imagine the worst. Well, it was nice to hear from these two brothers and my one sister that they loved him, that they thought he was a good father, although he was married four times and had children with three of those wives, not the fourth. And it was astonishing, for the first time, to see — in my late 50s, early 60s, which I was at the time — photographs of my father when he's younger than my grown children are today.   00:16:27     I have a 40-year-old son and a 36-year-old son, and I'm looking at pictures of Lieutenant John Wallace Blunt when he's 24, with his flight crew in China. And he doesn't, to me, to my eyes, look like me, although he does. What he really looks like is one of my kids. Right?   00:16:51    ALICE WINKLER: So that is the tale of how John Irving began to fill in the missing pieces of his own life, as a middle-aged man already with grown children of his own, and already an accomplished author. As he said, it was the holes in his story that had driven him to invent and to write decades before — that, and the perfect disposition for a life of writing.   00:17:15     JOHN IRVING: I think that an early sort of pre-writing indication that I had the calling to be a writer was how much time I liked to spend alone. I wasn't antisocial. I had friends, but I didn't really want to hang out with them after school. What I saw of them at school was enough. I needed to be in a room by myself even before I was writing, just imagining things, just thinking about things.   00:17:42     If there was a weekend with too many cousins or other people around, I got a little edgy. I think the need to be by myself, which I've recognized in a couple of my own children, is one that was respected by my grandmother, with whom I lived until my mom remarried when I was six. And I was fortunate to be in a big house, my grandmother's house, and there were lots of places to get off by yourself and imagine those things I didn't know.   00:18:14     And I find as — and I'm 63, and my capacity to be by myself and just spend time by myself hasn't diminished any. That's a necessary part of being a writer. You’d better like being alone.   00:18:39     ALICE WINKLER: There was another feature of John Irving’s life as a child that you wouldn’t think would incline him towards a brilliant career in literature, but think again.   00:18:47     JOHN IRVING: At the time, they didn't have the language for it that we have, perhaps in overabundance, today — dyslexia, learning disabilities, whatever they are. I had something of that nature and never knew I had it until one of my children was diagnosed as being slightly dyslexic. And when they showed me the results of how they determined that he had a learning disability, I realized that they were describing exactly what I had always done.   00:19:20     I just, you know — what it amounted to, in essence, was that I would ask my friends, "How long did the history assignment take you? How long did the English assignment take you?" And if they said, "Oh, it's 45 minutes," I would just double the time or triple the time, and I'd say, "Well, it's an hour-and-a-half for me." I just knew that everything was going to take me longer. Right?   00:19:41    Well, I don't think that's a bad disability to have if you're going to write long novels. There's no reason you should write any novel quickly. There's no reason you shouldn't, as a writer, not be aware of the necessity to revise yourself constantly. And surely, as much as — more than a half, and maybe as much as two-thirds of my life, as a writer, is rewriting. I wouldn't say I have a talent that's special as that I have an unusual kind of stamina.   00:20:14     I can rewrite sentences over and over again, and I do, and the reshaping of something, the restructuring of a story, the building of the architecture of a novel, the craft of it is something I never tire of. And maybe that comes from what homework always was to me, which was redoing, redoing, redoing, because I always made mistakes, and I always assumed I would. And that meant that my grades weren't very good, and that meant that school was hard for me, but when I got out of school and my focus could go to the one thing I wanted to do — the novel, the screenplay of the moment — I knew how to work, you know. I knew how to concentrate because I had to.   00:21:07     ALICE WINKLER: Whatever kind of learning challenges Irving had, it didn’t keep him from reading and loving books, even if it took him longer than most to get through them. His favorite author was Dickens.   00:21:18     JOHN IRVING: I read Charles Dickens when I was 14 or 15. It might be hard for many 14-, 15-year-olds today to read Dickens. That language seems so old-fashioned, if not exactly dated, to us now — the amount of detail, the sheer complexities of those stories and plots — but those were the novels I read that made me want to write novels. If I had read, frankly, some more modern or post-modern novels at the time, I might have wanted to do something else.   00:21:48     I've always been a fan of the 19th-century novel, of the novel that is plotted, character-driven, and where the passage of time is almost as central to the novel as a major/minor character — the passage of time and its effect on the characters in the story. Those old 19th-century novels, all of them long, all of them complicated, all of them plotted.   00:22:17     Not just Dickens — but especially Dickens — but also George Eliot, Thomas Hardy. And among the Americans, Melville and Hawthorne always meant more to me than Hemingway, Faulkner, Fitzgerald. I'm not a modern guy.   00:22:30    ALICE WINKLER: So this old-fashioned guy, at around the age of 14 or 15, suddenly felt the urge to write and began filling notebook after notebook.   00:22:41    JOHN IRVING: I started writing almost like landscape drawing or life drawing. I never kept a diary. I never wrote about my day and what happened to me, but I described things. You know, if I had known how to draw, maybe I would have drawn hundreds of pictures of my grandmother's garden, but instead, I wrote sort of landscape descriptions of it. I think that was what was so compelling to me about those Dickens and Hardy novels, that — just the lushness of detail, the amount of description, the amount of atmosphere that is plumped into those novels.   00:23:28    It's like nothing you read today, except from those writers who are essentially 19th-century storytellers themselves: the Canadian, Robertson Davies; the German, Günter Grass; García Márquez; Salman Rushdie. Basically, I was never a Hemingway person. I never understood that. In Moby Dick, there was a story — the longer, the better.                  00:23:56     ALICE WINKLER: Back to Irving at 14, though. There was one other thing besides his devotion to 19th-century literature, besides his learning disability, besides his need for solitude that John Irving credits with giving him the skills to write the kind of books he would grow up to write. It’s the thing we’re going to end this episode with: wrestling. Mm-hmm. I’ll say it again. Wrestling.   00:24:23    JOHN IRVING: Well, you’ve got to be disciplined. I think the sport of wrestling, which I became involved with at the age of 14 — I competed until I was 34 — kind of old for a contact sport. I coached the sport until I was 47. I think the discipline of wrestling has given me the discipline I have to write. There's a kind of repetition that's required.   00:24:52     You repeat and repeat over and over again the dumbest things, the simplest moves, the simplest defenses, until they become like second nature, but they don't start out that way. They don't start out that way. So much of a sport like wrestling is drilling, is just repeating and repeating and repeating so that you've done this thing so many times that if somebody just touches your arm on that side, you know where to go.   00:25:21    You could do it with your eyes closed. If you're off your feet and you're up in the air, you — if you've been there enough, you know where the mat is. You know it's here. It's not there. You just know where it is. You don't have to see it, but you've been through that position enough so that you're not looking for the mat. You're not thinking, "Is it up here? Is it down there? Am I going to land on my head? Am I going to land on my tail?" You know.   00:25:46     Well, I think sentences are like that. If you're comfortable enough with all kinds of sentences — with verbs and their gerundive, with active verbs, with short sentences, with long sentences — you know how to put them together. You know how to slow the reader down when the reader is at a place where you want the reader to move slowly, and you know how to speed the reader up when you're at a place in the story where you want the reader to go fast.   00:26:11     It's drilling. It's repetition. I don't put much value in so-called inspiration. The value is in how many times you can redo something. Most people would find it boring, like sit-ups, you know, like skipping rope. But I always had — I could put my mind somewhere else while I skipped rope for 45 minutes. You know, people say, "What? How can — you have to be dumb to skip rope for 45 minutes." No. You have to be able to imagine something else.   00:26:40     While you're skipping rope, you have to be able to see something else. You have to imagine that your next opponent stopped skipping rope 15 minutes ago. Then you keep going.   00:26:55     ALICE WINKLER: Novelist and workhorse John Irving. This conversation was recorded at the Academy of Achievement Summit in 2005. I’m Alice Winkler, and I guess it’s cheating when I say that I always know what my last line is before I begin. This is What It Takes from the Academy of Achievement. Thanks to the Catherine B. Reynolds Foundation for making every episode of What It Takes possible.                  END OF FILE

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California Judge Rules Coffee Needs Cancer Warning

  A judge has ruled that coffee sellers in California must warn people that coffee may contain a substance linked to cancer. The Council for Education and Research on Toxics brought a case against dozens of coffee companies in 2010. The not-for-profit group wanted the coffee industry to either remove the chemical acrylamide from its processing, or warn buyers about it. Acrylamide has been identified as a possible cancer-causing substance. The chemical is naturally produced during cooking at high temperatures, including during the roasting of coffee beans. California state law requires warnings to be written on products containing chemicals identified as possible causes of cancer or birth defects. The coffee industry had argued that the amount of acrylamide resulting from the coffee-making process is not enough to cause harm. Starbucks and other major producers have cited studies suggesting that coffee provides several health benefits. But Los Angeles Judge Elihu Berle ruled Wednesday the companies had failed to prove that acrylamide levels in coffee do not cause harmful effects. Coffee companies have resisted calls to remove acrylamide from their products, saying it would change the taste of the drinks. In a statement, the National Coffee Association criticized the ruling and said it was considering an appeal and other possible legal actions. “Cancer warning labels on coffee would be misleading,” the statement said. “The U.S. government’s own Dietary Guidelines state that coffee can be part of a healthy lifestyle.” Many coffee stores already have put up warnings saying acrylamide is a cancer-causing chemical found in coffee. But such signs are often put in places not easily seen by buyers. The lawsuit also seeks civil punishments as large as $2,500 per person for every incident of exposure to acrylamide at California coffee stores since 2002. Those punishments could reach huge amounts in California, which has a population of nearly 40 million. The ruling does not become final until April 10, giving coffee companies the chance to dispute the decision and seek an appeal. I’m Bryan Lynn. Bryan Lynn adapted this story, based on reports from the Associated Press and Reuters.  Ashley Thompson was the editor. We want to hear from you. Write to us in the Comments section, and visit our Facebook page. _____________________________________________________________ Words in This Story roast – v. to cook or dry with heat defect – n. a problem or fault that makes someone or something not perfect label – n. small piece of paper or other material providing information about the thing it is attached to misleading – adj. not necessarily true lawsuit – n. process by which a court of law makes a decision to end a disagreement between people or organizations exposure – n. the state of coming into contact with something  

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News Words: Blockchain

Blockchain is a new word that describes accounting technology. Learn what it is with News Words.

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Just in Case You Don't Use 'If'...

  It is no surprise that many popular love songs use conditionals. Conditional sentences show that something is true only when something else is true. So, they help us talk about wishes, hopes and even regrets. In her song “All the Way,” classic American jazz singer Billie Holiday sings about love. She uses the word “unless” to show a condition. When somebody loves you It’s no good unless he loves you all the way The word unless means “if not.” When Holiday says, “It’s no good unless they love you all the way,” she means a romance is not good if the person does not love you completely. On a past Everyday Grammar program, we told you about conditionals that use the word if. For example, “If I practice enough, I can speak English.” But, in today’s program, we will tell you about other words and phrases we use to make conditionals in spoken English. First, let’s quickly go over how conditionals work: Conditional sentences have two parts: the conditional clause, which shows the condition, and the main clause, which shows the result. For example, “If I practice enough” is a conditional clause and “I can speak English” is the main clause. Conditional clauses are not complete sentences. They need a main clause to be complete. There are a few types of conditionals. Some show possible situations, like the sentence about speaking English. Some show improbable situations. And, others show situations that are impossible or very unrealistic. You can learn more about this in our past program. Unless Now, let’s continue with unless. In our Billie Holiday example, “unless they love you all the way” is the conditional clause. It shows the condition. And “It’s no good” is the main clause. It shows the result of the condition. Some English learners have a habit of putting the words “unless” and “if” together as “unless if” but these words should not be used together. Otherwise and or Two more words that express the same idea as unless are otherwise and or. Each word means if not. So, unless, or, otherwise and if not have the same basic meaning. Keep in mind that or and otherwise also have other meanings. But in conditional statements, they mean “if not.” In his song “Trouble Loves Me,” British singer Morrissey uses the word otherwise to talk about unreturned love. So, console me Otherwise hold me Just when it seems like… The conditional clause is “otherwise hold me” and the main clause is “So, console me.” Notice that his conditional and main clauses use the imperative form, so the subject “you” is not stated but is understood. The word otherwise sometimes uses a different sentence structure in conditionals. Here’s an example: The plane must be delayed. Otherwise, she would have called. In this example, the clauses are separate sentences. More importantly, even though the clause “otherwise, she would have called” contains the conditional word, it does not state the condition. The condition is “the plane must be late.” Having the condition appear in a separate sentence or clause is common with otherwise and or. Listen to an example using or: Finish your lunch or you can’t play outside. Here, the condition is “finish your lunch” and the result is “You can’t play outside.” You’ll notice that the result clause – not the conditional clause – contains the conditional word or. In case Let’s move on to the phrase in case. We use in case to talk about things we should do to prepare for other things that may happen. For example: I’ll bring an umbrella in case it rains. In this sentence, I don’t know if it will rain or not. But it’s possible. Now, listen to same sentence with if. I’ll bring an umbrella if it rains. Did you get the difference in meaning? In the if sentence, I’ll wait to see if it rains first. Then, I’ll bring an umbrella. Another usage for in case is mainly for signs about what to do if danger occurs. The structure of the conditional clause is in case of + noun. For example: In case of emergency, break glass. As long as Our last conditional phrase for today is as long as. When we begin a conditional clause with as long as, the statement is a little stronger than using if. As long as essentially means “only if.” In his song called “As Long as You Love Me,” American pop singer Justin Bieber says that his love can survive any difficulty.      As long as you love me We could be starving we could be homeless we could be broke As long as you love me Because this is a song, it doesn’t follow standard sentence structure. Here, the conditional clause is “as long as you love me.” And, the other lines are main clauses. One important note about conditionals is that you can often switch the placement of main and conditional clauses and get the same meaning. For example: I’ll bring an umbrella in case it rains means the same as In case it rains, I’ll bring an umbrella.   And, if you learn conditionals, you’ll have a lot more freedom to express yourself in English. I’m Alice Bryant. Alice Bryant wrote this story for Everyday Grammar. Caty Weaver was the editor.   Some of the conditionals we learned today don't follow the sentence structure of the three common types, but it's good to know a little about each:                 Three Common Types of Conditionals           Conditional clause  Main clause  Type 1:  Future   Real    In case it rains   If I learn conditionals  Simple present  I’ll bring an umbrella.  I'll have a lot more freedom to express myself in English.  Simple future  Type 2:   Present   Unreal    If I practiced more  Simple past I would be a much better musician right now.  Would + simple present (or)  Would + present continuous  Type 3:   Past   Unreal  If the event hadn’t ended so late  Past perfect  I would have gotten more rest last night. Would have + past participle Would have + past perfect continuous   ________________________________________________________________ Words in This Story   phrase – n.  group of two or more words that express a single idea but do not form a complete sentence clause – n. a part of a sentence that has its own subject and verb habit – n. a usual way of behaving console – v. to try to make (someone) feel less sadness or imperative – adj. having the form that expresses a command rather than a statement or a question essential – adj. in a way that is very basic starving – adj. suffering from lack of food switch – v. to make a change from one thing to another

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Hamas Plans Huge Demonstrations Along Gaza-Israel Border

  Hamas leaders of the Palestinian territory of Gaza are asking people to march along its border with Israel in the coming weeks. Hamas is seeking to gather large crowds to set up camps near the border beginning on Friday. It plans a number of demonstrations leading to a larger march to the border fence on May 15. That day marks the 70th anniversary of Israel’s establishment as an independent nation. Palestinians call it “the Nakba,” or catastrophe. Gaza’s leaders aim to gather hundreds of thousands of people for what organizers are calling the “Great Return March.” The group has not been able to get that many people to attend past demonstrations. But members of the Israeli government are still concerned. They have promised to react strongly if demonstrators cross the border. Hamas official Ismail Radwan said, “When we march to the border, the organizers will decide then what to do.” He warned Israel against harming the protesters. Hamas says the demonstration will center on the difficulty faced by hundreds of thousands of Gazans. They say they belong to families forced to flee their homes in what is now Israel, during the war that led to its creation. Hamas seized Gaza from the internationally supported Palestinian Authority in 2007. Conditions in the territory have worsened since then. Israel and Egypt blocked land, sea and air paths around Gaza when Hamas took power. Gaza and Israel have also fought three wars in that time. And last year, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas placed restrictions on Gaza to pressure Hamas into surrendering control of the area. All of these events have greatly damaged Gaza’s economy. Unemployment is well over 40 percent, there is no public, drinkable water and electricity is on for only a few hours a day. Egypt has tried to organize an agreement between Hamas and the Palestinian Authority. But, earlier this month, a bomb exploded near vehicles transporting Palestinian Authority officials into Gaza. The prime minister and security chief were among them but were not hurt. The Palestinian Authority blamed Hamas for the attack. Hamas blamed Israel. Mkhaimar Abusada is a political science professor at Gaza’s al-Azhar University. He said the Hamas leaders see themselves surrounded by opponents on three sides: Israel, Egypt and the Palestinian Authority. He said the protests are designed to move attention away from their problems at home while also troubling Israel without starting another war. “They think busying Israel with this issue may put it under pressure,” he added. Hamas’ popularity has greatly decreased over time. It is unclear whether the group will be able to gather the crowds it believes it can. Still, Gaze is a territory where there is little else for people to do with their free time. This, combined with social pressure could help bring in people. The demonstrations will begin after the Muslim midday prayer on Friday. Buses will carry people from all over Gaza to the five camps, situated several hundred meters from the border fence. Organizers say they are trying to make use of a Palestinian demand known as “right of return.” It demands that relatives of refugees who lost their homes in 1948 be able to regain their property. Israel opposes any large return of refugees, saying it would destroy the country’s Jewish character. Israeli Cabinet Minister Yoav Galant is a former general and member of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s inner Security Cabinet. He said the military is well-prepared to prevent any border crossing. “We will try to use the minimum force that is needed in order to avoid Palestinians wounded and casualties,” he said. “But the red line is very clear. They stay on the Gazan side and we stay in Israel.” Violent incidents along the border have taken place every Friday since December 6. That is when President Donald Trump recognized disputed Jerusalem as Israel’s capital. He also announced plans to move the United States Embassy from Tel Aviv. I’m Caty Weaver. And I’m Pete Musto.   Fares Akram reported this story for the Associated Press. Pete Musto adapted it for VOA Learning English. Caty Weaver was the editor. We want to hear from you. What do you think the result of the demonstrations will be? Write to us in the Comments Section or on our Facebook page. _____________________________________________________________ Words in This Story   catastrophe – n. a terrible disaster situated – adj. located in a particular place character – n. a set of qualities that are shared by many people in a group or country minimum – adj. least or lowest possible in amount or degree casualties – n. people who are hurt or killed during an accident or war

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In Pakistan, Malala Says She Will Continue Fight for Girls’ Education

  Nobel Peace Prize winner Malala Yousafzai says she is excited to be home in Pakistan for the first time since the Taliban tried to kill her in 2012.  She was just 14 when attackers got on her school bus in Swat Valley and shot her in the head. They wanted to stop her expanding campaign for the education of girls. Yousafzai spoke at her welcoming ceremony at Pakistan Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi’s office Thursday. She said she will continue to campaign for the education of girls. She also asked Pakistanis to be united on issues like health care and education. When she was attacked, Yousafzai was flown out of Pakistan to The United Arab Emirates and then to Britain, where she was treated. She has lived in that country since. She attends the University of Oxford. She told the gathering that it was hard to wait for more than five years to return home. Abbasi also spoke, praising Yousafzai for her sacrifices and defense of girls’ education. He said he was happy to welcome her home, where, he said, terrorism has been defeated. Since her attack and recovery, Yousafzai has led the “Malala Fund.” She said it has invested $6 million in schools. “For the betterment of Pakistan, it is necessary to educate girls,” she said. The 20-year-old university student and her parents are under heavy security. Yousafzai’s return was kept secret. Many Pakistanis are welcoming her return. The party of politician and former sports star, Imran Khan, said her return was a sign of the defeat of terrorism in Pakistan. It is not clear if Yousafzai will travel to Mingora, her hometown in Swat Valley. A relative there, Mohammad Hassan said her return marked one of the happiest days of his life. Swat Valley school children made similar comments. 12-year-old Javeria Kahan said “I wish I could see her in Swat. I wish she had come here, but we welcome her.” Marvi Memon, a top leader of the ruling Pakistan Muslim League party, also welcomed Yousafzai. She said it was a proud day for Pakistan. After she recovered, Yousafzai returned to campaigning for girls’ education. She has spoken at the United Nations, established the Malala Fund, written a book, and taken other action to support the cause. In 2014 the Nobel Committee presented her with its highest honor, the Peace Prize. At home in Pakistan, some have criticized her, calling her a spokesman for the West. But Yousafzai argues that education is neither Western, nor Eastern. Often when she has spoken in public she has praised her home country and spoken in her native Pashto language. She has long promised to return to her home. Pakistani officials say they captured several people in connection with attack on Yousafzai. But the leader of the Taliban in Pakistan, Mullah Fazlullah, is still free. Officials believe he is hiding in neighboring Afghanistan. I’m Susan Shand. The Associated Press reported this story. Susan Shand adapted it for Learning English. Caty Weaver was the editor.  ____________________________________________________________ Words in This Story blessing – n. something that helps you or brings happiness — usually singular    

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Judge Drops Murder Charges Against Man Who Spent 45 Years in Jail

  A man in the state of Michigan is free this week after being wrongly convicted of murder and spending 45 years in prison. A judge has agreed to permanently drop the case against the man. Richard Phillips is 71 years old. He said of his release that the criminal justice system “works – it just didn’t work fast enough.” A lawyer for Michigan’s Wayne County, Kym Worthy, said a new investigation by her office supported Phillips’ claim that he had no role in the shooting death of Gregory Harris in 1971. She said a key witness lied during the trial in 1972. Worthy said, “There’s nothing I can say to bring back 40 years of his life.” The case was re-opened at the urging of the Innocence Clinic, part of the University of Michigan’s law school. It made the request after the co-defendant in the 1972 trial told the state’s parole board in 2010 that Phillips was not involved in the crime. The co-defendant also said the key witness who lied during the trial helped him kill Harris. The Innocence Clinic began working with Phillips on his case in 2014. He had been freed on bond since December 2017 and was expected to get a new trial this year. But the judge’s ruling this week means he does not need a second trial. Judge Kevin Cox told Phillips, “You have seen the worst and best of the criminal justice system.” Phillips likely will receive more than $2 million as part of Michigan’s wrongful conviction law. David Moran is director of the Innocence Clinic. He said no one in the United States has ever served more time in prison before being freed than Phillips. “His freedom truly belongs to him again,” Moran said. When asked about his years in prison, Phillips told reporters, “I’ve never carried bitterness around, so I’m not a bitter man.” As a free man, one of Phillips’ goals is to reunite with his two children. They were just 2 and 4 years old when he went to prison in 1972. Phillips said he has not heard from them and does not know where they live. Phillips has settled in an area just outside of Detroit. He attends a church where he shares his story with others. I’m Jonathan Evans.   The Associated Press reported this story. Xiaotong Zhou adapted it for Learning English. Ashley Thompson was the editor. ________________________________________________________________ Words in This Story   parole – n. permission given to a prisoner to leave prison before the end of a sentence usually as a reward for behaving well convict – v. to prove that someone is guilty of a crime in a court of law​ bitterness – n. feeling or showing a lot of hatred or anger bond – n. the amount of money that someone promises to pay if a prisoner who is allowed to leave jail does not return later for a trial or to prison : an agreement to pay bail

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March 29, 2018

A look at the best news photos from around the world.

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