Fluency News #25

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, trazemos atualizações da história da semana passada sobre o WhatsApp, cobrimos os incidentes com os Boeing e falamos do ataque que matou o embaixador italiano no Congo. Por fim, também falamos da House of One, um templo de adoração que está sendo construído em Berlim.

Nós temos uma 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.

Transcrição do episódio:

What is up, everyone! I’m Scott Lowe, and welcome to this week’s episode of Fluency News!

Fluency News is Fluency Academy’s news podcast, made for you to put your skills in practice while getting news from around the world, to keep you informed and connected. To make sure you understand everything we talk about here, and all structures that maybe aren’t as common in everyday speech, I’ll come in in Portuguese a couple of times, to explain some vocabulary, grammar and pronunciation.

As always, you can find the transcription of this episode and the sources to all of our stories in the description, or by going to fluencytv.com. I recommend you check out our content portal anyway, because we have over a thousand FREE lessons in five different languages for you to explore. Again, that’s fluencytv.com.

Now let’s jump into it! We’re going to start off today’s episode with the Boeing engine problems that are being investigated and are causing countries to ban the planes with the same engine.

Showers of jet engine parts over residential areas on both sides of the Atlantic have caught regulators’ attention and prompted the suspension of some older Boeing Co planes from service.

Saturday’s incidents involving a United Airlines 777 in Denver and a Longtail Aviation 747 freighter in the Netherlands put engine maker Pratt & Whitney in the spotlight, though there is no evidence they are related.

Pratt & Whitney, which is owned by Raytheon Technologies Corp, said it was coordinating with regulators to review inspection protocols. It is expected to increase inspections ordered after previous incidents.

After the Colorado engine failure, when United Flight 328 dropped debris on a northern Denver suburb before landing safely, Boeing recommended the suspension of 777s with the same variant of PW4000 turbine. Japan, meanwhile, imposed a mandatory suspension.

The European Union Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) weighed in on Monday, requesting more information on the Pratt engines in light of both events. A woman sustained minor injuries in the Dutch incident, which scattered turbine blades on the town of Meerssen. One was found embedded in a car roof.

After receiving more information, EASA said the incidents were unrelated. “Nothing in the failure and root analysis show any similarity (between the two incidents) at this stage,” the regulator said.

The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) said it would soon issue an emergency airworthiness directive based on the United event.

Both incidents involve the same type of PW4000 engine that equips a relatively small number of older planes, some grounded by the COVID-19 pandemic, limiting the likely repercussions.

They nonetheless bring a new headache for Boeing as it recovers from the much more serious 737-MAX crisis, which resulted in the grounding of its flagship narrowbody jet after two deadly crashes.

“This is certainly an unwelcome situation for both Boeing and Pratt, but from time to time issues will pop up with aircraft and engines,” said Greg Waldron, a managing editor at industry publication Flight Global.

“The PW4000-powered 777-200 is slowly fading from service,” he said, adding that the pandemic-driven slump means that airlines forced to suspend it “should be able to fill any network gaps” with 787s or other 777s equipped with General Electric Co engines.

Analysts at broker Cowen predicted limited impact on Boeing’s share price, which fell about 2.1% on Monday.

Na frase “which resulted in the grounding of its flagship narrowbody jet”, nós temos uma palavra interessante. Você já ouviu falar sobre “flagships”? Flagships são navios almirantes, ou ponte de comando. Mas no mundo dos negócios, eles são os “carros-chefe”, o principal produto, de uma marca ou empresa. Uma empresa de celulares, como a Samsung, por exemplo, pode produzir muitos modelos diferentes, mas apenas um será o “flagship”, o produto principal que ela quer vender.

Now an update in a story we covered last week. WhatsApp users who do not accept its updated terms and conditions by the 15 May deadline will be unable to receive or send messages until they do so.

Their account will be listed as “inactive”. And inactive accounts can be deleted after 120 days.

Calls and notifications will still function for “a short while” but, TechCrunch reported, probably only a “few weeks”.

WhatsApp announced the update in January.

There was a backlash among many users who thought it meant the company was planning to change the amount of data it shared with its parent company, Facebook.

It later clarified this was not the case – the update is actually aimed at enabling payments to be made to businesses.

WhatsApp already shares some information with Facebook, such as the user’s IP address and purchases made via the platform. But this is not the case in Europe and the UK, where different privacy laws exist.

Following the initial announcement, platforms such as Telegram and Signal saw a huge surge in demand as WhatsApp users sought alternative encrypted-messaging services.

WhatsApp delayed the initial rollout and has now changed the way it is notifying users of the changes.

Você sabe o que é um endereço IP? Você já deve ter escutado esse termo em filmes e seriados. Um endereço de protocolo de internet, que a gente chama de endereço IP ou somente de IP, é uma sequência de números ligada a cada aparelho que se conecta à internet, podendo ser usada para descobrir a sua localização.

Now, before we move on to some positive news, we have a sad and worrying story. The Italian ambassador to Congo, an Italian Carabinieri police officer and their Congolese driver were killed Monday when gunmen attacked a U.N. convoy traveling to a school in eastern Congo, the Italian Foreign Ministry and residents said.

Luca Attanasio, serving at the Italian embassy in the country since 2017, Carabinieri officer Vittorio Iacovacci and their driver Moustapha Milambo were killed in the attack. Other members of the convoy were wounded and taken to a hospital.

Congo’s interior ministry said four others in the convoy were kidnapped, but one person has since been found by Congo’s army.

The ambush occurred as the convoy was traveling from Goma, Congo’s eastern regional capital, to visit a World Food Program (WFP) school project in Rutshuru, the U.N. agency said.

The WFP said the attack occurred on a road that had been cleared previously for travel without security escorts, and it was seeking more information from local officials on the attack. Eastern Congo is home to myriad rebel groups all vying for control of the mineral-rich Central African nation that is the size of Western Europe.

The attack, about 25 kilometers north of Goma, was right next to Virunga National Park. North Kivu Gov. Carly Nzanzu Kasivita said the U.N. vehicles were hijacked by the attackers and taken into the bush. The Congolese army and park guards for Virunga National Park came to help those who had been attacked, he said.

“There was an exchange of fire. The attackers fired at the bodyguard and the ambassador,” the governor said.

Attanasio was shot in the abdomen, according to a statement by Congo’s Interior Ministry. He was then transported to the U.N. Mission in Congo hospital where he died from his wounds, the ministry said.

Without citing sources, Italian state TV on Monday night said the convoy apparently was the target of a kidnapping attempt with the aim of securing ransom money.

Attanasio, a 43-year-old career diplomat, left behind a wife and three young children.

The attack occurred in the same area where two Britons were kidnapped by unidentified gunmen in 2018, said Mambo Kaway, head of a local civil society group.

Na frase “Eastern Congo is home to myriad rebel groups all vying for control”, nós temos duas palavras que podem ser novidade pra você, e que talvez tenham dificultado seu entendimento. As palavras são “myriad” e “vying”. “Myriad” significa “quantidade inumerável” e “vying” significa “competindo”, “rivalizando”. O que significa que a frase pode ser traduzida como “O leste do Congo é o lar de uma quantidade inumerável de grupos rebeldes, todos competindo por controle”. Agora ficou mais fácil de entender, não é?

Now let’s get to our good news, so we can end this episode on a positive note! On the site of a church torn down by East Germany’s communist rulers, a new place of worship is set to rise that will bring Christians, Jews and Muslims under one roof – and it has already been dubbed a “churmosquagogue”, combining the names of places of worship of all three religions, “church”, “mosque” and “synagogue”.

The foundation stone of the House of One in Berlin will be laid at a ceremony on 27 May, marking the end of 10 years of planning and the beginning of an estimated four years of construction, and symbolising a new venture in interfaith cooperation and dialogue. The €47m (R$ 312m) building, designed by Berlin architects Kuehn Malvezzi, will incorporate a church, a mosque and a synagogue linked to a central meeting space. People of other faiths and denominations, and those of no faith, will be invited to events and discussions in the large hall.

“The idea is pretty simple,” said Roland Stolte, a Christian theologian who helped start the project. “We wanted to build a house of prayer and learning, where these three religions could co-exist while each retaining their own identity.”

Andreas Nachama, a rabbi who is turning the vision into reality in partnership with a pastor and imam, said: “There are many different ways to God, and each is a good way.” In the House of One, Christians, Muslims and Jews would worship separately, but would visit each other for religious holidays, commemorations and celebrations, he added.

“It is more than a symbol. It is the start of a new era where we show there is no hate between us.”

The House of One will be built on the site of St Peter’s church in Petriplatz, which was damaged during the second world war and demolished in 1964 by the GDR authorities. When the foundations of the church were uncovered more than a decade ago, consideration was given to a memorial or a new church on the site. “But we wanted to create a new kind of sacred building that mirrors Berlin today,” said Stolte. “The initiators are acting as placeholders. This is not a club for monotheistic religions – we want others to join us.”

The federal government and the state of Berlin have between them contributed €30m to the cost of the project, with another €9m coming from donations and fundraising. A new drive for contributions, launched in December, is expected to fill the gap of nearly €8m.

The project has been generally supported by faith communities and the public, said Stolte, although “in the first few years there were some fears that we were mixing religions or trying to create a new religion”.

The inclusion in the planning of people of no faith was a very important aspect of the House of One project, he said. “East Berlin is a very secular place. Religious institutions have to find new language and ways to be relevant, and to make connections.”

And that is it for today’s episode, everyone! And as always we have a new episode of Fluency News every week, so make sure to tune in next time. Don’t forget to check out fluencytv.com for the transcript of this episode, all of our sources and all those amazing free lessons I mentioned in the beginning.

E pra todo mundo perguntando se temos vagas abertas na Fluency Academy, infelizmente, todas as turmas estão lotadas! Então, se você quiser estudar inglês, espanhol, francês, italiano, alemão ou até mesmo japonês, inscreva-se de graça na nossa lista de espera. Assim, na próxima vez que abrirmos uma turma, você vai saber primeiro e vai ter uma chance ainda melhor de conseguir uma vaga! É só clicar no link na descrição desse episódio e se inscrever! É super rápido, leva 15 segundinhos.

Peace out.

Fontes:

Boeing engine blowouts investigated as older 777s are suspended
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-boeing-777-japan/japan-requests-airlines-stop-using-boeing-777s-with-pw4000-engines-until-further-notice-idUSKBN2AL0PD?utm_source=reddit.com
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2021/feb/22/dutch-investigate-boeing-747-after-engine-parts-drop-after-takeoff-netherlands

UK temporarily bans Boeing 777 planes with engine that blew apart in US
https://www.euronews.com/2021/02/22/uk-temporarily-bans-boeing-777-planes-with-engine-that-blew-apart-in-us

WhatsApp to switch off messages for all who reject new terms
https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-56154543

Italian ambassador to DR Congo killed in UN convoy attack
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-56151600
https://www.our-legend.com/post/italian-ambassador-dead-in-un-convoy-attack-congo
https://apnews.com/article/italian-ambassador-killed-congo-38a1a38dbe27608228a968c8a424d6db

Christians, Muslims and Jews to share faith centre in Berlin
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/feb/21/christians-muslims-and-jews-to-share-faith-centre-in-berlin