Fluency News #54

Hello, everyone!
Sejam bem-vindos e bem-vindas a mais um episódio da nossa 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 vemos um update da história que cobrimos na semana passada sobre as Coréias do Norte e do Sul. Também falamos sobre “the Pandora papers” e sobre um povo aborígene australiano recuperar a posse de uma área no país.
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.

Episode Transcript

What is up, everyone! I’m Scott Lowe and welcome to another episode of Fluency News! Our podcast series is perfect for those who understand English and want to keep in contact with the language, or for those who want to challenge themselves. It doesn’t matter what category you’re in, what matters is that you’re here.

Here you’ll listen to some of the most relevant stories of the week, and you’ll learn some expressions, words or structures that may be new to you. After each story, you’ll hear me give some explanations in Portuguese, to further your understanding of this episode, and to expand your vocabulary.

We’re going to kick off this episode with an update to a story we covered last week. Following months of extensive talks, North Korea has restored communication lines with the South.

On Monday morning, October 4th, South Korea’s unification ministry said officials from both Koreas exchanged their first phone call since August.

“With the restoration of the South-North communication line, the government evaluates that a foundation for recovering inter-Korean relations has been provided,” the ministry said in a statement.

KCNA, Pyongyang’s official news agency, called for Seoul to fulfil its “tasks” to mend tense cross-border ties, repeating Kim’s speech last week that he had decided to recover the lines to help actualize people’s hopes for peace.

Seoul’s defense ministry said the hotlines have contributed to preventing unexpected clashes, and their reopening would hopefully lead to great easing of military tension.

North and South Korea had previously cut and restored communications, so only time will tell what happens next. The countries are still technically at war.

For é uma preposição que tem alguns usos e significados diferentes, dependendo do contexto. Ela pode ser usada para falar de favores, por exemplo, se você disser algo como “can you cook for me, please?”. Alguns verbos, como “wait”, “look” e “ask”, são frequentemente acompanhos por essa preposição. For também é usado quando estamos falando de um período de tempo, por exemplo, “I studied Portuguese for two years”. E pode ser usado como estamos vendo aqui, para indicar função. Nesses casos, ele vai ser sempre acompanhado de um verbo no gerúndio, terminado em ING. Aqui, nós temos “a foundation for recovering”. Outros exemplos seriam “opportunities for mentoring”, “use for studying”.

Our main story today regards the Pandora Papers. The Papers, a collection of millions of documents, reveal offshore deals and assets of billionaires, world leaders and public officials.

The cache includes 11.9m files from companies hired by wealthy clients to create offshore structures and trusts in tax havens such as Panama, Dubai, Monaco, Switzerland and the Cayman Islands.

They expose the secret offshore affairs of 35 world leaders, including our current and former presidents, prime ministers and heads of state. They also shine a light on the secret finances of more than 300 other public officials such as government ministers, judges, mayors and military generals in more than 90 countries.

The use of offshore companies is not illegal or by itself evidence of wrongdoing, but news organizations in the consortium said such transactions could be used to hide wealth from tax collectors and other authorities.

There are emails, memos, incorporation records, share certificates, compliance reports and complex diagrams showing labyrinthine corporate structures. Often, they allow the true owners of opaque shell companies to be identified for the first time.

The files were leaked to the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) in Washington. It shared access to the leaked data with select media partners including the Guardian, BBC Panorama, Le Monde and the Washington Post. More than 600 journalists have sifted through the files as part of a massive global investigation. It isn’t known how the files were obtained by the Consortium.

The Pandora papers represent the latest – and largest in terms of data volume – in a series of major leaks of financial data.

The Czech prime minister, the king of Jordan and the chairman of India’s biggest conglomerate were among global figures denying wrongdoing on Monday, after the leak of what major news outlets called a secret trove of documents about offshore finance.

India said it would investigate cases linked to the data dump, while Pakistani Finance Minister Shaukat Tarin said officials named in the documents would be investigated – including himself.

The Kremlin said it had seen no evidence in the leak of hidden wealth among Russian President Vladimir Putin’s entourage, after the Washington Post said the documents showed Putin’s mistress had used offshore funds to buy a flat in Monaco.

Jordan’s King Abdullah was reported to have used offshore accounts to spend more than $100 million on luxury homes in the United Kingdom and the United States.

The royal palace said in a statement it was “no secret that His Majesty owns a number of apartments and residences in the United States and the United Kingdom. This is not unusual nor improper.”

DLA Piper, a London law office representing Abdullah, told the consortium of media outlets that he had “not at any point misused public monies or made any use whatsoever of the proceeds of aid or assistance intended for public use.”

Jordan appeared to have blocked the ICIJ website on Sunday, hours before the Pandora papers launched.

Media outlets will still publish more of their findings over the coming days, beginning with revelations about the offshore financial affairs of some of the most powerful political leaders in the world.

With the amount of data leaked, it’s impossible for us to cover it all, but we’ll leave our sources and other links in the description of this episode. So, if you’re curious and would like to know more about it, feel free to check it out. By going to fluencytv.com you’ll also find the transcript of this episode.

Nesta notícia, nós usamos muito a palavra offshore, como você deve ter notado. Essa palavra também é usada no português, nesse mesmo sentido. Se traduzido literalmente, significa “no mar”, mas na verdade, se refere aos paraísos fiscais, que ficam “além das fronteiras” de cada país. No inglês americano, a palavra se escreve junta, mas no inglês britânico, off e shore são separadas por um hífen. Off é uma preposição que tem alguns significados diferentes, estando sozinha ou se for combinada com outras palavras. Mais comumente, significa “desligado” ou “fora”. Shore significa “costa” ou “litoral”. Offshore, então, pode ser usada para se referir a empresas e coisas que são independentes do continente, estão no “além mar”.

In some good news, Australia’s Daintree rainforest has finally returned to Aboriginal ownership.

The area of more than 160,000 hectares will now be co-managed by the Queensland government and the Eastern Kuku Yalanji people with a hope of eventually transitioning into being run solely by the Indigenous owners.

An official acknowledgment ceremony was held on Wednesday, September 29 in the town of Bloomfield.

“Their culture is one of the oldest living cultures and this land handback recognizes their right to own and manage their Country,” Meaghan Scanlon, Minister for the Environment and the Great Barrier Reef, wrote on Twitter.

Chrissy Grant has been a member of the Kuku Yalanji negotiating committee for the past four years.

“Our goal is to establish a foundation to provide confident and competent people with pathways and opportunities for mentoring, training, apprenticeships, work experience and employment for our Eastern Kuku Yalanji Bama (people) to fill positions from a wide range of skilled trades, land and sea management, hospitality, tourism and research so that we are in control of our own destinies,” she said in a statement.

The Daintree, a lowland tropical rainforest believed to be the oldest in the world, is about 125 km north of the tourist hub of Cairns and borders the Great Barrier Reef. It is part of the Wet Tropics of Queensland UNESCO World Heritage site.

When it was awarded its designation in 1988, UNESCO wrote that “this stunningly beautiful area is extremely important for its rich and unique biodiversity.”

It’s good to know that the Aboriginal people of Australia are gaining back ownership of the land they’ve cared for, and that they are striving to continue to do so.

Nós sempre usamos a palavra news para falar das notícias. Você sabia que news é um substantivo incontável? Em português, nós podemos falar “notícia”, quando estamos falando de uma história, e “notícias”, quando estamos falando de mais de uma história, ou o conjunto de notícias em um jornal, por exemplo. Em inglês, podemos dizer “new”, quando dizemos que algo é novo, mas sempre que estamos falando de notícias ou de uma novidade, vai ser com o S no final, news, mas é normalmente acompanhado de “the”, como em “the news”, sendo singular, e não plural. As notícias, “the news”, a notícia, “the news, a novidade ou as novidades, “the news”.

And that was our last story of the day. We should always end these episodes on a positive note, right? And speaking of positives, você sabia que a gente tem uma lista de espera? Se você quer aprender inglês, espanhol, francês, italiano, alemão, japonês ou mandarim, você pode se inscrever na nossa lista de espera 100% de graça!

Assim você não vai perder a oportunidade de estudar com os super professores da FluencyTV quando a gente abrir uma nova turma. É super rápido: aperte o link na descrição desse episódio e faça a sua inscrição.

There’s a new episode of Fluency News every week! Check back to get informed and train your English skills. Until next time. Peace out.

‍Stories
North Korea reopens hotline with South in bid to mend ties
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-58784306
https://en.yna.co.kr/view/AEN20211004000300325
https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/nkorea-says-inter-korean-hotlines-will-be-restored-monday-kcna-2021-10-03/

Pandora papers: biggest ever leak of offshore data exposes financial secrets of rich and powerful
https://www.reuters.com/world/pandora-papers-document-dump-allegedly-links-world-leaders-secret-wealth-2021-10-03/
https://www.businessinsider.com/russia-state-media-omits-putin-and-circle-in-pandora-coverage-2021-10
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-58780559
https://www.theguardian.com/news/2021/oct/03/king-of-jordan-hidden-property-empire-worth-more-than-100m-pandora-papers-reveal
https://www.ndtv.com/world-news/panama-fears-new-pandora-papers-expose-on-tax-havens-2562120
https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/wireStory/leaked-records-open-pandora-box-financial-secrets-80390755
https://www.occrp.org/en/the-pandora-papers/pandora-papers-reveal-offshore-holdings-of-ukrainian-president-and-his-inner-circle
https://www.theguardian.com/news/2021/oct/03/pandora-papers-biggest-ever-leak-of-offshore-data-exposes-financial-secrets-of-rich-and-powerful
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-58780465
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-58780561
https://thehill.com/policy/international/575102-pandora-papers-roil-pakistani-politics-pm-pledges-investigation
https://english.kyodonews.net/news/2021/10/83b734bcc16e-1000-japan-firms-people-named-in-pandora-papers-on-tax-havens.html
https://thenybanner.com/index.php/2021/10/04/king-of-jordan-has-a-100m-real-estate-empire-pandora-papers-reveal/
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-58775944
https://www.bsocialplus.com/post/cases-pertaining-to-pandora-papers-to-be-investigated-by-indian-government
https://news.sky.com/story/pandora-papers-biggest-document-leak-yet-reveals-secrets-of-how-powerful-stash-their-cash-12425493‍

Australia’s Daintree rainforest returned to Aboriginal ownership
https://edition.cnn.com/travel/article/australia-daintree-rainforest-aboriginal-owners-intl-hnk/index.html‍