Fluency News 43

Hello, everyone!

Sejam bem-vindos e bem-vindas a mais um episódio da nossa série de podcasts, o Fluency News! Aqui, você vai poder 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, falamos sobre os protestos, contra o presidente, que continuam acontecendo no Brasil, o “tsunami” de lama que destruiu uma cidade japonesa, a possibilidade de uma vacina contra HIV, o teste bem-sucedido de uma semana de trabalho de apenas quatro dias na Islândia e a boa notícia de que a vacina da Johnson & Johnson parece ser eficaz contra a variante delta.

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.

Episode transcript

What is up, everyone! Welcome to another episode of Fluency News. I’m Scott Lowe, and I’m thrilled to have you with me. Together, we’ll see some of this week’s most relevant stories, and if necessary, have some explanations in Portuguese.

Before we get started, let me just remind you to go to fluencytv.com. There, you’ll find the transcript of this episode, all of our sources and free lessons in all the languages Fluency Academy currently teaches. So, head over to fluencytv.com to get all that goodness.
Now let’s see what’s happening around the world.

To start, we have an update to last week’s main story. Protesters are still taking to the streets in Brazil to call for President Jair Bolsonaro’s impeachment, as new allegations rose.

On Friday, July 2nd, a supreme court judge ordered an investigation into whether Bolsonaro had failed to act after being alerted to suspicions of high-level corruption involving the procurement of millions of Covid vaccines from the Indian pharmaceutical company Bharat Biotech.

An opinion poll by CNT/MDA released on Monday (July 5) show that 48.2% of Brazilians believe the administration of Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro is “bad” or “terrible”.

<hlt>TAKE TO é um phrasal verb, uma combinação de verbo e preposição, que tem alguns significados diferentes. Pode significar “começar a gostar” de alguma coisa, ou “formar um hábito”, “continuar fazendo algo”. Ou como nós temos aqui, TAKE TO THE STREETS significa literalmente “ir às ruas” geralmente com o propósito de protestar alguma coisa. E aqui nós temos o uso desse phrasal verb no tempo verbal “present continuous”, TAKING TO.<hlt>

Eles estão indo às ruas protestar // They are taking to the streets to protest

At least four people are dead, and dozens are still missing after a mudslide swept across a seaside city in Japan on Saturday (July 3). According to the city mayor, over 80 people are unaccounted for.

On Monday, there were about 1,500 rescue workers searching at the site, including police, firefighters and members of the military.

“We want to rescue as many victims … buried in the rubble as soon as possible,” Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga told reporters.

Footage posted on social media showed mud “tsunami” crash down a mountain and into the city, destroying homes in its path.

Residents said the mudslide struck at about 10:30 local time on Saturday, after days of torrential rain in central and eastern Japan.

The city – a resort popular for its hot springs – saw more rainfall in the first three days of July than it usually sees in the whole month.

Meanwhile, hundreds of thousands of residents in three prefectures – Shizuoka, Kanagawa and Chiba – have been ordered to evacuate following warnings of further flooding in low-lying areas.

At a news conference on Sunday, Heita Kawakatsu, the governor of Shizuoka, said the prefecture will investigate whether the mudslide was caused due to deforesting the area, which might have reduced the ability of mountain soil to retain water.

Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga, who held emergency talks with ministers on Sunday, expressed his condolences to the victims of the landslide and stressed that emergency workers were doing their utmost to save lives, rescue people and help with evacuations.

He has also asked people in the worst-affected districts to stay alert and to take precautions.

Flooding related disasters, like landslides, are a traditional yet serious risk to the country. This is because half of the Japanese population and 75% of the country assets are concentrated in flood-prone areas, according to experts.

“Japan has a whole lot of risk factors leading to landslides. For instance, it’s prone because of its mountainous terrain and a lot of places where the soil is volcanic ash, which is not as strong,” seismologist Robert Geller, professor emeritus of the University of Tokyo, told CNN.

A rise in rainfall due to global warming is increasing the risk of devastating mudslides.

“Global warming is making everything worse and is increasing the frequency of rainfall that can cause damaging landslides,” Geller added. “The rainy season is going to last for another week or 10 days. Because of global warming, we’re probably getting more rainfall now than we normally do.”

<hlt>Em português, para dizer que “há” alguma coisa, podemos usar o verbo TER ou HAVER ou EXISTIR. Mas em inglês não podemos usar o HAVE com esse sentido. A estrutura correta é THERE IS ou THERE ARE, se for plural. Quando queremos dizer que algo “há” no passado, usamos geralmente o verbo TINHA, ou HAVIA, tanto para o singular, quanto para o plural. Mas em inglês, quando temos essa diferença entre plural e singular, usamos THERE WAS para o singular e usamos THERE WERE para o plural. Nessa história, nós temos o uso de THERE WERE, para dizer que HAVIA 1500 pessoas trabalhando no resgate de sobreviventes do deslizamento.<hlt>

We have some good news when it comes to the effects of the coronavirus. Trials of a new HIV vaccine have begun at Oxford University, building on the success of the Covid vaccine developed by the institution.

It is the first in a series of evaluations in HIV-negative individuals, for prevention, and in people living with HIV, for a cure.

In phase one of the trial, which is run by the university’s Jenner institute, 13 HIV-negative adults, aged 18-65 and who are considered not to be at high risk of infection, will initially receive one dose of the HIV vaccine. A further booster dose will be given after four weeks.

HIV-positive adults will be involved in later phases of the trial, while plans exist to start similar trials in Europe, Africa and the US.

The trial is part of the European Aids Vaccine Initiative, an internationally collaborative research project funded by the European Commission.

Oxford University said its vaccine candidate would be the “best solution” to ending the Aids epidemic.

Professor Tomáš Hanke, Professor of Vaccine Immunology at the Jenner Institute , and lead researcher on the trial said: “Even in the broader context of increasing antiretroviral treatment and prevention, an HIV-1 vaccine remains the best solution and likely a key component to any strategy ending the AIDS epidemic.”

<hlt>Na frase “in phase one of the trial, which is RUN by the university”, nós temos um uso do verbo RUN que você pode não conhecer. Geralmente, esse verbo é traduzido como “correr”, “fugir” ou “ir”. Aqui, tem um sentido completamente diferente. Esse verbo tem dezenas de significados, e aqui, significa CONDUZIR. Os testes são conduzidos pela universidade. RUN BY.<hlt>

The world’s largest ever trial of a four-day working week and reduced working time in Iceland was an “overwhelming success” and should be tested in the UK, researchers have said.

More than 1 percent of Iceland’s working population took part in the pilot program, which cut the working week to 35-36 hours with no reduction in overall pay.

The trials, which ran from 2015 to 2019 and involved more than 2,500 people, boosted productivity and wellbeing and are already leading to permanent changes.

The researchers estimate that as a result of new agreements struck in 2019-2021 after the trials ended, 86 percent of Iceland’s entire working population now either have reduced hours or flexibility within their contracts to reduce hours.

The joint analysis, carried out by the think tanks Autonomy in the UK and the Association for Sustainability and Democracy (Alda) in Iceland, found that the well-being of workers who took part improved dramatically across a range of indicators.

Perceived stress and burnout, as well as health and work-life balance were significantly improved across practically all groups.

“The Icelandic shorter working week journey tells us that not only is it possible to work less in modern times, but that progressive change is possible too,” said Gudmundur D. Haraldsson, a researcher at Alda.

Will Stronge, director of research at Autonomy, said: “This study shows that the world’s largest ever trial of a shorter working week in the public sector was by all measures an overwhelming success. It shows that the public sector is ripe for being a pioneer of shorter working weeks – and lessons can be learned for other governments.

<hlt>EVER é uma palavra em inglês que pode ter inúmeros significados dependendo do contexto, e não pode ser traduzida literalmente para o português. Como vemos aqui, EVER significa “em algum momento”, ou “até o momento”. Este é o maior estudo desse tipo na história, até o momento. EVER também pode significar “sempre”, “mais do que nunca”, ou “desde”.<hlt>

In reassuring news for the more than 12 million Americans vaccinated with Johnson & Johnson, a new study indicates the single-shot vaccine will likely offer good protection against the delta variant, according to the company.

The highly transmissible delta variant is now predicted to become the dominant strain in the United States.

The findings are preliminary but promising. In a laboratory experiment, researchers analyzed the blood of 10 people who had been vaccinated with the single-shot Johnson & Johnson vaccine, and tested it against multiple concerning variants, including delta.

They found that the vaccine appeared to work against new variants, as indicated by so-called “neutralizing antibody titers” and other indications of immune system response.

“Today’s newly announced studies reinforce the ability of the Johnson & Johnson COVID-19 vaccine to help protect the health of people globally,” Dr. Paul Stoffels, vice chairman of the executive committee and chief scientific officer at Johnson & Johnson, said in a statement.

Prior data has indicated that other vaccines, including those made by Pfizer and Moderna, are also likely to hold up against the delta variant.

Alright, that’s where we’re going to end today episode. Before we go, let me just remind you to head over to fluencytv.com to have access to all of our sources, the transcript of this episode and thousands of free lessons in all the languages we currently teach here at Fluency Academy.

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Stories

Brazil Vaccine Scandal Imperils Bolsonaro as Protests Spread
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/03/world/americas/brazil-bolsonaro-vaccine-scandal.html
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/jul/03/brazilians-take-to-streets-to-demand-removal-of-jair-bolsonaro
https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/brazils-bolsonaro-implicated-alleged-graft-scheme-lawmaker-uol-reports-2021-07-05/
https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/more-brazilians-disapprove-bolsonaro-amid-pandemic-poll-shows-2021-07-05
Japan mudslides leave 113 people unaccounted for
https://www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/en/news/20210705_13/
https://www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/en/news/backstories/1699/
https://edition.cnn.com/2021/07/05/asia/japan-missing-mudslide-intl-hnk/index.html
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-57712884
Trials of new HIV vaccine begin at Oxford University
https://www.itv.com/news/2021-07-05/trials-of-new-hiv-vaccine-begin-at-oxford-university
World’s largest ever four day week trial in Iceland ‘overwhelming success’
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/four-day-week-pilot-iceland-b1877171.html
https://www.bbc.com/news/business-57724779
Johnson & Johnson vaccine seems to stand up against delta variant, preliminary research suggests
https://abcnews.go.com/Health/jj-vaccine-stand-delta-variant-preliminary-research-suggests/story?id=78612193&cid=social_fb_abcn&fbclid=IwAR29SshgtQuY8Jw0FwtaUZ4-_hkxSq12qU7utEfKyQDOW_tZaF1VMBEfje0