week1-菲律賓掃毒

‘Walk for Life’ protesters march in Philippines

‘NO KILLING’:Archbishop Socrates Villegas said that ‘execution is murder’ and added that ‘we cannot teach that killing is wrong by killing those who kill’

Sun, Feb 19, 2017

AP, MANILA

Thousands of people yesterday joined a march with Catholic Church leaders in Manila in one of the largest shows of opposition against Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte’s crackdown on illegal drugs and attempts to reinstate capital punishment.

Police estimated that at least 10,000 people joined the “Walk for Life” march and rally starting at dawn at Rizal Park, carrying placards that read “Choose life” and “No to death penalty.”

Organizers gave a larger estimate of the crowd.

It was the latest sign of the Roman Catholic Church’s increasing activism against a government crackdown that has left thousands of drug suspects dead and efforts by pro-Duterte legislators to reinstate the death penalty as early as next month.

Catholic bishops expressed concern over drug killings in a recent statement read in churches across the nation.

Archbishop Socrates Villegas said that no civilized nation should allow such actions to continue unabated.

“They ought to be judged by the court of law and never by the extrajudicial means,” Villegas said in a statement.

Duterte, a longtime city mayor before being elected to the presidency in May last year on an anti-crime platform, has asked the Philippine Congress to revive the death penalty, preferably by public hanging.

That, along with his pro-birth control stance and threats to kill criminals, has put him on a collision course with the church in Asia’s largest Catholic nation.

“Execution is murder,” Villegas said. “We cannot teach that killing is wrong by killing those who kill.”

Duterte has been antagonistic to the church, once calling it “the most hypocritical institution” and lashing out at some local bishops he accused of corruption and sexual abuse.

Senator Leila de Lima, one of the most vocal critics of Duterte’s anti-drug campaign, joined the rally.

State prosecutors charged her in court on Friday for allegedly receiving bribes from detained drug lords, an allegation that she denies.

The prosecutors alleged that De Lima, while she was secretary of justice in the administration of former Philippine president Benigno Aquino III, received huge bribes from detained drug lords to finance her senatorial campaign last year.

The bribes were allegedly solicited by her former driver and lover, who was also charged.

If judges, who would handle the three separate complaints, assess that there is strong evidence against her, they might decide to issue a warrant for her arrest.

De Lima told reporters at the rally that the criminal charges were meant to intimidate her, but said Duterte’s administration would fail.

“I will continue to fight. They cannot silence me,” she said.

網址: http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/front/archives/2017/02/19/2003665264

WHO: protesters who are against to Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte’s policy

WHEN: 2017-02-18

WHY: against to Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte’s policy

WHERE: Manila

Revive 復興

lashing out 猛烈抨擊

rally示威運動

bribe 賄賂

warrant 保證

unabated不減弱的

reinstate恢復

week 8 - pokemon go

‘This is some mind-control stuff': A Detroit Lions player is done with Pokemon Go

By Matt Bonesteel

August 2, 2016

Detroit Lions quarterback Matthew Stafford was on ESPN’s “Mike & Mike” on Tuesday morning, and he had some sad news on an addiction that is crippling his team:

Despite their quarterback’s misgivings, the Lions seem to have embraced the game. The team posted a video of tight end Eric Ebron hunting Pokemons (-men? I have questions) in downtown Detroit on its official website, so if that isn’t an official endorsement I don’t know what is.

But one player confronted his demons head on. Guard Larry Warford started playing the game like everyone else while living in Arizona this summer but quickly stopped once he saw that it was turning people into even bigger zombies than they already are with their smartphones. He talked Monday with Carlos Monarrez of the Detroit Free Press:

“I’ll tell you why I stopped playing it,” he said Monday. “I was walking down Mill Avenue in Tempe, Ariz., pretty much on (Arizona State’s) campus. … I was walking down and literally everyone that was on their cell phone walking down that same street was playing Pokemon Go. I was looking at their screens and it was about 30, 40 people walking down Mill (Avenue).

“It was a bunch of people playing it and I was like, ‘I don’t like this.’ I deleted it because I was like, ‘This is some mind-control stuff.’ I don’t like it.”

Warford was on his way to meet friends at a restaurant when he ran into an unnamed Lions teammate on Mill Avenue. He was playing it, too.

“I was like, ‘This is bad, this is bad,’ ” Warford said. “They were playing it and I was like, ‘Nope!’ And I deleted it right there, right when I got to the restaurant. The funny thing is, the people I was eating with, they were playing it, too.”

Lions Coach Jim Caldwell, for one, is not having any of it and won’t be playing, which isn’t exactly surprising considering his extreme sideline stoicism.

“No,” Caldwell said Monday. “I’m certainly not going to get into it in the future, either. I’ve seen all the reports. I have no idea exactly how it works. I haven’t had time to think about that aspect. I’ll leave it up to you.”

網址"https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/early-lead/wp/2016/08/02/this-is-some-mind-control-stuff-a-detroit-lions-player-is-done-with-pokemon-go/?utm_term=.11227689e213

5w1h

who:Detroit Lions quarterback Matthew Stafford

when:August 2, 2016

關鍵字"

cripple 削弱

literally (口語) 差不多,簡直

week seven 白頭盔

After Years of War, Celebrities Find a Syrian Group to Back

By LIAM STACKSEPT. 14, 2016

The complex and brutal conflict in Syria has defied the best efforts of peace negotiators and humanitarian officials for more than five years, but a new group of luminaries is weighing in on a war that has cost hundreds of thousands of lives: celebrities.

More than two dozen actors, singers and other prominent people have signed a petition urging the Nobel Prize committee to award its 2016 Peace Prize to a group of volunteer rescue workers toiling in cities across the war-torn country. The move draws attention to both the horror of the conflict and the growing willingness of well-known Americans to adopt it as a cause célèbre.

The White Helmets, also known as the Syria Civil Defense, are a group of volunteer emergency workers who rush to the scene of airstrikes in civilian areas of cities like Aleppo, which was once the country’s largest but is now divided between rebel groups and the regime of President Bashar al-Assad. His central government has rained bombs on citizens for years, and the White Helmets say they have pulled more than 60,000 people alive from the rubble.

The petition may have no impact on who gets the Nobel Peace Prize, which will be awarded on Oct. 7. But its organizer, an advocacy group called the Syria Campaign, said it was hopeful that the celebrities’ endorsement of the rescue workers, as well as an upcoming Netflix documentary about them, were signals of growing concern for the plight of Syrian civilians, who they say have often been overshadowed in the West by concerns about refugees and the Islamic State.

Raed Saleh, the leader of the White Helmets, said in a statement that it was a “huge morale boost”to see increased international support for their work, especially from people they recognized from the movies. The signatories include George Clooney, Ben Affleck, Daniel Craig, Justin Timberlake, Aziz Ansari and Zoe Saldana.

“For international stars to stand next to the White Helmets’ humanitarian cause gives a morale boost for all people doing this work,” Mr. Saleh said. "We deeply appreciate this support and remain determined to rescue as many souls as possible and create the opportunity for peace. This is our mission.”

Syria is far from the first conflict to attract celebrity attention, and stars like Angelina Jolie and Mr. Affleck have devoted considerable time to touring war zones and raising money for relief efforts. So why has it taken more than five years for celebrities to adopt Syria as a cause?

One reason may be the complicated nature of the conflict, which has involved hundreds of rebel groups, including some linked to Al Qaeda, and has set the stage for the rise of the Islamic State, analysts said. It has confounded policy makers, so movie stars and pop singers can hardly be expected to have done any better.

“For years people have been confused by the perceived complexity of the Syria conflict and have continually asked, ‘Who are the good guys?’ ” said Anna Nolan, the director of the Syria Campaign.

The announcement that Netflix would produce a documentary about the White Helmets, and the drive to award them the Nobel Peace Prize, answered that question for public figures who wanted to get involved.

“The White Helmets are probably one of the most inspiring stories that has come out of the Syrian conflict, so it is a very easy group to endorse and stand behind because they are real life heroes on the ground,” said Lina Sergie Attar, a writer who founded a humanitarian organization that works with refugees on the Turkey-Syria border.

Celebrity activism has sometimes been controversial, but Ms. Attar said she was glad to see famous people support a local organization addressing “the heart of the problem.”

“We’ve seen celebrities go to refugee camps, but I’ve always watched that and thought they were engaging with refugees as if they’re divorced from the political and military circumstances that created the refugee crisis itself,” said Ms. Attar. "That was very frustrating to watch.”

Kassem Eid is a Syrian asylum seeker in Germany who spent two years touring the United States with the Syrian-American Council campaigning for the United States to act against the Assad regime. The experience left him deeply cynical about American policy makers. But he said he believed in the work of the White Helmets, and thought that actors, writers and singers could perhaps do some good.

“I have more faith in the devil than in politicians,” he said. “But movie stars and celebrities don’t have elections to win, so they can say whatever they want or whatever they believe is right.”

網址: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/15/world/middleeast/white-helmets-nobel.html?_r=0

Who: White helmets

Why: Syria civil war

關鍵字

Rebel 反叛

Protesters Rally for Second Night Against Decision in Eric Garner Case

 DECEMBER 5, 2014, 4:22 AM EST

Thousands took the streets and chanted Garner’s last words: “I can’t breathe.”

Thousands of protesters gathered in major U.S. cities for a second night Thursday to rally against the police-involved deaths this year of unarmed black men, just hours after New York’s mayor announced a citywide police retraining program and one day after the news that a white officer would not be indicted in the death of Eric Garner.

A large and rowdy crowd gathered at Foley Square in Lower Manhattan, as similar protests popped up in Washington, D.C., Chicago and elsewhere, echoing demonstrations the night earlier. Garner died in July after officer Daniel Pantaleo put him in a chokehold, an aggressive move that is banned by the New York Police Department.

Wednesday’s grand jury announcement, which came just over a week after a similar outcome in the Ferguson, Mo., case involving teenager Michael Brown, sparked an immediate outcry and led a number of activists and elected officials to demand a federal investigation.

Attorney General Eric Holder announced Wednesday that the Justice Department had opened a civil rights inquiry into the incident, which was caught on video and later went viral.

As footage of the rallies filled news segments Thursday evening, with many protesters chanting Garner’s final words “I can’t breathe,” his mother Gwen Carr opened up about her reaction to the grand jury’s decision not to indict Pantaleo.

“I couldn’t believe that they came back and didn’t come back with probable cause to bring this case to trial. I couldn’t even answer a phone call,” she told CNN. “I just wonder… what video was they watching? Because obviously it wasn’t the one the whole world was watching.”

Carr said she does not accept Pantaleo’s apology. “He was choking him and my son was begging for his life. That was the time for the apology. He should have got up off of him and let him breathe… I would have still had my son,” she added. “He has no regard for human life if this is the way he treats suspects.”

She hopes that Pantaleo will still face charges in federal court.

網址

http://fortune.com/2014/12/05/protesters-rally-for-2nd-night-against-decision-in-eric-garner-case/

導言分析

what: thousands of people took to the streets to protest

who:Eric Garner ,Michael Brown

when:DECEMBER 5, 2014

why: two black people were killed because of over law enforcement

where: Lower Manhattan, Washington, D.C.,Chicago

關鍵字

chokehold 鎖喉

chant 反覆歌頌 

rally 召集

indicted 被..起訴

WHO Declares Zika an International Public Health Emergency

 Justin Worland @justinworland
 Updated: Feb. 1, 2016 2:06 PM  

The World Health Organization declared the spread of Zika and an associated birth defect an international public health emergency Monday, freeing funds to combat the disease.

“This is an extraordinary event,” said WHO Director General Margaret Chan at a press conference Monday. “It poses a public health threat to other parts of the world and a coordinated international response is needed.”

Chan cited the pattern of the disease’s spread, the lack of a vaccine, and the large global population of mosquitoes that can carry the virus as factors that contributed to the declaration.

The declaration, only the fourth in WHO’s history, comes just days after the organization said the total number of cases could hit 4 million by the end of the year. The virus has spread rapidly throughout the Americas infecting people in more than 20 countries. Officials in Brazil, the hardest hit country, have estimated 1.5 million infections. WHO was criticized for waiting months after an Ebola outbreak hit West Africa to declare an international public health emergency in 2014.

Officials noted that their concerns center around a possible relationship between Zika and microcephaly, a birth defect characterized by shrunken heads and brain damage, and not Zika itself. The Zika virus, first discovered in 1957, was thought to be harmless for decades before the link with microcephaly emerged in recent months.

Countries across North and South America have taken precautions to stem the spread for the virus. El Salvador called on women in the country to hold off on pregnancy for two years. The U.S Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) issued travel warnings for much of Latin America telling pregnant women to avoid the area.

WHO officials said they were not calling for restrictions on travel to affected countries but advised travelers to take precautions to protect themselves from mosquito bites.

網址:

http://time.com/4202499/who-zika-public-health-emergency/?iid=sr-link7

導言分析

what: Zika virus

who: The World Health Organization

when: Feb. 1, 2016

why: Zika virus poses a public health threat  to other part of the world

關鍵字

zika virus 茲卡病毒

mosquitoes 蚊子

microcephaly 小頭畸形症
 hold off 推遲

Oxford’s 2015 Word of the Year Is This Emoji

• Katy Steinmetz @katysteinmetz
 

Updated: Nov. 16, 2015 2:08 PM

It's a historic moment of recognition for little images that have been gaining popularity since 1999

Oxford Dictionaries made history on Monday by announcing that their “Word of the Year” would not be one of those old-fashioned, string-of-letters-type words at all. The flag their editors are planting to sum up who we were in 2015 is this pictograph, an acknowledgement of just how popular these pictures have become in our (digital) daily lives:

“Although emoji have been a staple of texting teens for some time, emoji culture exploded into the global mainstream over the past year,” the company’s team wrote in a press release. “Emoji have come to embody a core aspect of living in a digital world that is visually driven, emotionally expressive, and obsessively immediate.”

Oxford University Press—which publishes both the august Oxford English Dictionary and the lower-brow, more-modern Oxford Dictionaries Online—partnered with keyboard-app company SwiftKey to determine which emoji was getting the most play this past year. According to their data, the “Face With Tears of Joy” emoji, also known as LOL Emoji or Laughing Emoji, comprised nearly 20% of all emoji use in the U.S. and the U.K., where Oxford is based. The runner-up in the U.S., with 9% of usage, was this number:

Caspar Grathwohl, the president of Oxford Dictionaries, explained that their choice reflects the walls-down world that we live in. “Emoji are becoming an increasingly rich form of communication, one that transcends linguistic borders,” he said in a statement. And their choice for the word of the year, he added, embodies the “playfulness and intimacy” that characterizes emoji-using culture.

Though this marks a historic moment of recognition for the pictures plastered throughout tweets and texts, Oxford has not added or defined any emoji in their actual databases. Nor, says a spokesperson for the publisher, do they have plans to do so at this point. The word emoji, however, has been in both the OED and Oxford Dictionaries Online since 2013.

Japanese telecommunications planner Shigetaka Kurita is credited with inventing these little images in 1999, taking the emoticons that had been gaining steam on the Internet to an iconic level. Inspired by comics and street signs, the name for the alphanumeric images comes from combining the Japanese words for picture (e-) and character (moji). “It’s easy to write them off as just silly little smiley faces or thumbs-up,” sociolinguist Ben Zimmer told TIME for a story on how emoji fit into humans’ long history of using pictures to communicate. “But there’s an awful lot of people who are very interested in treating them seriously.”

網址

http://time.com/4114886/oxford-word-of-the-year-2015-emoji/

導言分析

what: word of 2015

who: the''Face With Tears of Joy''emoji

when: Nov. 16, 2015

關鍵字

oxford dictionary 牛津字典

word of the year 年度代表字

emoji 表情符號

embody 體現