Fluency News #17

‍Hello, everyone!

Sejam bem-vindos e bem-vindas a mais um episódio da nossa nova série de podcasts, o Fluency News! Aqui, você vai treinar a sua escuta e ficar por dentro do que está acontecendo no mundo, sempre com as três principais notícias da semana, tudo em inglês! Ao longo do episódio, nós também adicionamos explicações em português das coisas que achamos que precisam de mais atenção, assim você não perde nenhum detalhe!

No episódio desta semana, nós falamos sobre os assaltos a banco que aconteceram em duas cidades no Brasil, as empresas Coca-Cola, Pepsi e Nestlé sendo nomeadas os maiores poluidores por plástico do mundo pelo terceiro ano consecutivo, o projeto de lei “imposto de milionários” que passou na Argentina, a deterioração da Grande Barreira de Corais na Austrália e, por fim, sobre o comprometimento de 14 países em proteger os oceanos.

Nós temos uma nova página de dicas de inglês no Instagram, vá conferir! @fluencytvingles

Toda semana temos um novo episódio do Fluency News, não deixe de escutar! See you!

Este episódio foi escrito por Lívia Pond.

Sources

Brazen armed bank heist in Brazil leaves cash scattered on road
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/12/1/brazen-armed-bank-heist-in-brazil-leaves-cash-scattered-on-road

Armed bank robbers storm another Brazilian town, battle police
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/12/2/armed-bank-robbers-storm-another-brazilian-town-battle-police

Coca-Cola, Pepsi and Nestlé named top plastic polluters for third year in a row
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/dec/07/coca-cola-pepsi-and-nestle-named-top-plastic-polluters-for-third-year-in-a-row?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

Argentina Passes “Millionaire’s Tax” to Fund Covid-19 Recovery
https://www.commondreams.org/news/2020/12/06/argentina-passes-millionaires-tax-fund-covid-19-recovery

Great Barrier Reef has deteriorated to ‘critical’ level due to climate change
https://abcnews.go.com/International/great-work onbarrier-reef-deteriorated-critical-level-due-climate/story?id=74569794

In rare show of solidarity, 14 key nations commit to protect oceans
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/2020/12/in-rare-show-of-solidarity-14-key-nations-commit-to-protect-oceans/

Transcrição do episódio

What is up, everyone! Welcome back to Fluency Academy’s Fluency News, the podcast made for you to train your listening skills, improve your comprehension skills, and keep you updated on what’s happening around the world. I’m Scott Lowe, your host and native English speaker. My love for chimarrão is no secret to anyone, so I’ve learned to speak Portuguese to be able to fully enjoy it.

If you’re new here, let me give you a quick rundown of our routine. We’ll present you some of the most important news stories of the week, and we’ll come in with snippets of explanations in Portuguese, to make sure you understand everything you’re hearing. You can check out the description of this episode for the transcript and all our sources.

Alright, let’s get started! Our main story today comes from Brazil, but it could have come from a movie. Check this out.

Bank robbers in southern Brazil blasted explosives and fired high-calibre weapons at police late on Monday, in an audacious heist that wounded two people and left reams of cash in the streets to be pocketed by locals.

The robbery began just before midnight on Monday in the southern city of Criciuma and lasted nearly two hours, according to a statement from military police in Santa Catarina state.

Images shared on social media showed armed men firing automatic weapons on the city streets, taking hostages and then making their getaway in a fleet of cars. In their wake, the robbers left cash strewn across the streets. Residents soon spread out to snatch up the notes, television footage showed.

“So far, four people have been arrested who collected part of the paper bills that were thrown to the ground due to the explosion,” the police said.

Authorities have located 810,000 reals ($154,120), police added.

There were at least 30 criminals in 10 cars, Anselmo Cruz, the head of the state police’s robbery and kidnapping department, told television network Globo News. They blocked access points to the city to prevent police reinforcements from responding swiftly.

“It was an unprecedented action for the state. There was never anything with this scope, this violence,” Cruz said Tuesday.

Police later located the attackers’ vehicles in a neighbouring municipality, Cruz said.

Criciuma’s Mayor Clesio Salvaro took to Twitter while the events were still unfolding to warn locals of the “robbery of great proportions, by very well-prepared thieves”.

“As mayor of Criciuma, I ask that you stay home, don’t leave home, exercise all precaution,” Salvaro said in a video he posted just before 2am local time. “Tell your friends and families. Let the police do their job.”

Brazil has a long history of bank heists, and major lenders have struggled with a wave of violent robberies in recent years as criminals have mastered the use of explosives to access cash.

The brazen robbery resembles another that took place in July in the city of Botucatu, in Sao Paulo state. There, around 30 armed men blew up a bank branch, took residents hostage and exchanged gunfire with police officers before making their getaway.

On Wednesday, more than 20 armed robbers stormed a bank in Cameta, exchanging gunfire with police in the streets and killing one person before fleeing in a convoy of vehicles.

The attack, in the early hours of the morning in the northern riverside of the city was the second such heist in as many days in Brazil, marking an escalation in the scale, organisation and aggression of bank robberies.

“They drove around shooting at the police and at the houses. It was a horrible scene to see,” said Junior Gaia, who lives nearby, in an interview with television network Globo News. “We were all laid out on the floor, afraid they would invade the homes.”

The attack saw the group of men, armed with high-calibre weapons, storm a branch of Banco do Brasil SA, the Para state security ministry said.

Images on social media showed a firefight in the streets of the town. The robbers killed one hostage during the heist, the ministry added, while another local resident was shot in the leg and is in a stable condition in hospital.

“We pray to God to comfort the family of the young man who lost his life,” Cameta Mayor Waldoli Valente wrote on Facebook.

The robberies took place at the start of December, when bank coffers are filled in anticipation of employees withdrawing their year-end bonuses, according to Cassio Thyone, a council member of the non-profit Brazilian Forum on Public Safety.

“It doesn’t happen without planning,” Thyone told the Associated Press by phone. “It’s another demonstration that everything is planned. They think of the location, and the timing.”

The security ministry said it had found one abandoned getaway vehicle outside the town with explosives inside. The town was now calm, it added, with police reinforcements arriving by plane and boat.

It was not immediately clear how many hostages had been taken or if they were all freed. Authorities also did not say how much money was stolen from the bank.

State-controlled lender Banco do Brasil did not immediately comment on the attacks.

No fim dessa história, eu usei duas estruturas pouco usadas no cotidiano, na fala informal. Usar abreviações e contrações é o mais comum no dia a dia. Ao invés de dizer “was not” ou “did not”, eu diria “wasn’t”, ou “didn’t”. Em notícias, textos formais e documentos, essas contrações não são usadas, e a forma completa é mais adequada. Na linguagem informal, não contrair essas estruturas só seria usado para dar ênfase, e não em uma conversa.

In other news, Coca-Cola, Pepsi and Nestlé were named the top plastic polluters for the third year in a row. They have been accused of “zero progress” on reducing plastic waste.

Coca-Cola was ranked the world’s No 1 plastic polluter by Break Free From Plastic in its annual audit, after its beverage bottles were the most frequently found discarded on beaches, rivers, parks and other litter sites in 51 of 55 nations surveyed.

It was found to be worse than PepsiCo and Nestlé combined: Coca-Cola branding was found on 13,834 pieces of plastic, with PepsiCo branding on 5,155 and Nestlé branding on 8,633.

The annual audit, undertaken by 15,000 volunteers around the world, identifies the largest number of plastic products from global brands found in the highest number of countries. This year they collected 346,494 pieces of plastic waste, 63% of which was marked clearly with a consumer brand.

All companies stated that they are working on reducing their plastic use and increasing the use of sustainable packaging.

“Work on” é um phrasal verb, uma expressão formada por duas ou mais palavras. Aqui, nós temos um verbo, “work”, que significa “trabalhar”, e uma preposição, “on”, que significa “sobre”. Esse phrasal verb significa “continuar a trabalhar”, ou “trabalhar em”, no sentido de tentar melhorar algo.

In other quick news, lawmakers in Argentina on Friday approved a new one-time levy on the country’s richest citizens to raise money to address the devastating health and economic consequences of the ongoing coronavirus crisis.

Senators passed the bill, which imposes a tax of at least 2% on individuals with assets worth more than $2.45 million, by a margin of 42 to 26, Reuters reported Saturday.

According to the BBC, the funds will be used to pay for medical supplies, emergency aid for small and medium-sized businesses, financial support for students and social programs, and natural gas development.

“We must find points of connection between those who have the most to contribute and those who are in need,” said Senator Anabel Fernandez Sagasti.

Você já deve ter visto a palavra “bill” com o significado de “conta”, quando você está em um restaurante, por exemplo. Em inglês, essa palavra tem outro significado. Ela pode significar “projeto de lei”, como temos nessa história.

On our final story, before the more positive one we try to add in every episode, comes from Australia, where the status of its Great Barrier Reef has deteriorated.

The conservation status for Australia’s Great Barrier Reef has declined from “significant concern” to “critical” due to increasing impacts associated with climate change, a new report has found.

The damage to the reef is a result of ocean warming, acidification and extreme weather, which has resulted in coral bleaching, according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s (IUCN) 2020 World Heritage Outlook report, which tracks whether the conservation of the world’s 252 natural World Heritage sites is sufficient to protect them in the long term. The process of coral bleaching occurs when water is too warm and the algae the corals expel from their tissues cause them to turn completely white.

The decline of the coral has also resulted in decreasing populations of certain marine species, researchers found. The reef, the most extensive in the world, houses more than 1,500 species of fish.

A third of the natural World Heritage sites are currently being threatened by climate change, the IUCN reported.

Well, that’s depressing. Quick, let’s see some good news! In a rare show of solidarity, 14 key nations commit to protect the oceans.

WHEN THE HEADS of state of 14 nations sat down together in late 2018 to discuss the grim condition of the world’s oceans, there was no certainty that anything consequential would result. The leaders planned 14 gatherings, but met only twice before the pandemic upended their talks.

So when the group announced this week the world’s most far-reaching pact to protect and sustain ocean health, it signaled a bit more than a noteworthy achievement in a complicated time. The agreement, negotiated via the nuance-free tool of video conferencing, also offered hope of a renewed era of global accord on climate, where issues grounded in science might finally trump political posturing.

Overall, the 14 leaders agreed to sustainably manage 100 percent of the oceans under their national jurisdictions by 2025—an area of ocean roughly the size of Africa. Additionally, they vowed to set aside 30 percent of the seas as marine protected areas by 2030, in keeping with the United Nations’ campaign known as “30 by 30.” (Read more about 30 by 30 here.)

Both of those large commitments, the leaders say, will help end overfishing and illegal fishing, rebuild declining fish stocks, halt the flow of plastic waste into the seas, and clean up “dead zones” created by runoff from farm waste.

“What I find really interesting is that 14 nations spent the last two years talking to each other in an experiment you’d like to see more of in the future,” says Nancy Knowlton, a marine scientist emeritus at the Smithsonian Institution, who was not involved in the project. “They are working together as a team. Starting with countries on the same page provides a mechanism for actually achieving success.”

Now that is definitely good news! It’s always awesome to see people and countries coming together to do some good, isn’t it?

Alright, that’s where we’re going to end today’s episode. Don’t forget to check out fluencytv.com for more free content, and check out our instagram page, @fluencytvingles, for tips and updates on events and stuff. I hope you’re having a fantastic day, and I’ll see you next time. Peace out!