Fluency News 57

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 falamos sobre os documentos que mostram países pedindo por mudanças no relatório da IPCC. Nós falamos sobre a captura de um dos criminosos mais procurados da Colômbia e sobre a proteção de dados pessoais se tornando um direito fundamental no Brasil.

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! How are we all doing today? Welcome to another episode of Fluency News! I’m Scott Lowe and this is Fluency Academy’s news podcast, made for you to put your skills to the test!

Here with me, you’ll have the opportunity to practice your listening and comprehension skills, while staying connected to the world.

We’ll cover some of this week’s biggest news stories, and you’ll hear me speak a little Portuguese to explain anything that we think deserves a little more attention. Head over to fluencytv.com to see the transcript of this episode and all of our sources. Now, let’s get started!

We start today’s episode with the leak of documents that show countries are trying to change a scientific report on how to handle climate change. The documents raise questions for the COP26 climate summit taking place in November.

The leak reveals countries pushing back on UN recommendations for action and comes just days before they will be asked at the summit to make significant commitments to slow down climate change and keep global warming to 1.5 degrees.

The leaked documents consist of more than 32,000 submissions made by governments, companies and other interested parties to the team of scientists compiling a UN report designed to bring together the best scientific evidence on how to tackle climate change.

The leak shows a number of countries and organizations arguing that the world does not need to reduce the use of fossil fuels as quickly as the current draft of the report recommends.

An adviser to the Saudi oil ministry demands “phrases like ‘the need for urgent and accelerated mitigation actions at all scales…’ should be eliminated from the report”.

One senior Australian government official rejects the conclusion that closing coal-fired power plants is necessary, even though ending the use of coal is one of the stated objectives of the COP26 conference.

Saudi Arabia is one of the largest oil producers in the world, and Australia is a major coal exporter.

Brazil and Argentina, two of the biggest producers of beef products and animal feed crops in the world, argue strongly against evidence in the draft report that reducing meat consumption is necessary to cut greenhouse gas emissions. The draft report states, “plant-based diets can reduce greenhouse gas emissions by up to 50% compared to the average emission intensive Western diet”. Brazil says this is incorrect.

Both countries call on the authors to delete or change some passages in the text referring to “plant-based diets” playing a role in tackling climate change, or which describe beef as a “high carbon” food. Argentina also asked that references to taxes on red meat and to the international “Meatless Monday” campaign, which urges people to forgo meat for a day, be removed from the report.

The South American nation recommends “avoiding generalization on the impacts of meat-based diets on low-carbon options”, arguing there is evidence that meat-based diets can also reduce carbon emissions. Brazil maintains the focus of debate should be on the levels of emissions from different production systems, rather than types of food.

Professor Corinne le Quéré of the University of East Anglia, a leading climate scientist who has helped compile three major reports for the IPCC, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, has no doubts about the impartiality of the IPCC’s reports.

She says all comments are judged solely on scientific evidence, regardless of where they come from.

“There is absolutely no pressure on scientists to accept the comments,” she told the BBC. “If the comments are lobbying, if they’re not justified by the science, they will not be integrated in the IPCC reports.”

She says it is important that experts of all kinds – including governments – have a chance to review the science.

“The more the reports are scrutinized”, says Professor le Quéré, “the more solid the evidence is going to be in the end because the more the arguments are brought and articulated forward in a way that is leaning on the best available science”.

The United Nations was awarded a Nobel Prize in 2007 for the IPCC’s work on climate science and the crucial role it has played in the effort to tackle climate change.

<htl>No começo dessa história, nós usamos o phrasal verb pushing back. Esse phrasal verb do verbo push pode ter dois significados, que podem ser identificados por contexto. O primeiro deles é “atrasar” ou “adiar” alguma coisa. O significado que nós temos aqui, é o segundo, o de “rejeitar”, “discordar”, “se opor”. Esse significado é mais usado na América do Norte, e você vai perceber qual dos sentidos é o adequado pelo contexto. Nesta história temos outros verbos que indicam o significado, como “argue”, “reject”, “call to delete” ou “demand to change”.>hlt>

The Brazilian Senate has passed a proposal for an amendment to the Constitution, which includes personal data protection, to the list of citizen fundamental rights and guarantees.

Data available in digital channels is also covered in the proposals, which Congress will enact since amendments to the Constitution do not require the presidential sanction stage. There were no votes against the amendment.

The proposal establishes that the federal government is solely responsible for the organization and supervision of the protection and processing of personal data. It also has exclusivity in terms of legislation relating to the protection and processing of personal information.

Moreover, the amendment means personal data protection becomes an unchangeable clause of the Brazilian Constitution, meaning that any future changes must strive to enhance, improve, and maintain citizen data privacy rights.

This was the second time the Senate analyzed the proposals. In 2019, senators scrutinized the bill for the first time when prosecutors involved in an anti-corruption investigation and government officials, including president Jair Bolsonaro, had their Telegram accounts hacked.

According to the rapporteur of the bill, senator Simone Tebet, the proposal brings the principles of the General Data Protection Regulations (LGPD) to the Constitution. Introduced in September 2020, LGPD regulates personal data processing by individuals, public or private entities in Brazil across any medium, including digital media, with a goal of ensuring the privacy of data subjects.

A survey carried out by Datafolha Institute showed Brazilians are concerned about their data security. Some 92% of the users of digital services said they are aware companies retain their information to some degree. Those same people, when asked to judge on a scale of 1 to 10, where 10 is “very secure”, 5.1 was the average score given to how secure respondents feel their information is in digital environments

<hlt>A palavra moreover não é uma usada com frequência no discurso informal, ou na fala do dia a dia. Ela significa “além disso”, ou “além do mais”. Informalmente, você pode usar sinônimos, como “besides”, “additionally”, “more so”, “on top of that”, “also”, “as well”. São muitas opções, mais até do que as que eu dei aqui, e você pode usar a que você preferir. Depende só do que soa mais natural para você.<hlt>

Security forces in Colombia have captured Dairo Antonio Usuga, the country’s most wanted drug trafficker. Better known as Otoniel, the leader of the Gulf Clan, was captured on Saturday in a rural area in the Uraba region.

President Ivan Duque hailed Otoniel’s capture as a victory, likening it to the arrest three decades ago of the notorious Colombian drug kingpin, Pablo Escobar.

“This is the biggest blow against drug trafficking in our country this century,” Duque said during a news conference. “This hit is only comparable to the fall of Pablo Escobar in the 1990s.”

The Colombian president said his government was working on extraditing Otoniel, most likely to the United States, where he was first indicted in 2009 in a Manhattan federal court on drug trafficking charges.

The 50-year-old also faces criminal charges in Brooklyn and Miami in the US on charges of “operating continuing criminal enterprises, participating in international cocaine trafficking conspiracies and using firearms in furtherance of drug trafficking crimes”.

Authorities have been after Otoniel for years. Colombia had offered a reward of up to $800,000 for information leading to his capture, while the US had put a bounty of $5m on his head.

Duque said Otoniel’s arrest “marks the end of the Gulf Clan”, but analysts and human rights group worry the move could result in more violence at a time of worsening clashes between armed groups.

“When the head of an organization, a ‘kingpin’, is toppled, there are a dozen underlings ready to take their place. And I have no doubt the same will happen with Otoniel,” said Sergio Guzman, director of Colombia Risk Analysis.

Still, the takedown of Otoniel was a success, Guzman said, as it comes at a time when the Colombian security forces are slowly losing control of rural areas to armed gangs.

“It’s positive that they’re able to capture one of the most wanted criminals in Colombia,” Guzman said. “They didn’t gun him down, they didn’t bombard him. This means there was intelligence, this means there was infiltration. This means there was a sophisticated operation that led to his capture.”

The US and the United Kingdom provided the intelligence in the operation to capture Otoniel, according to The Associated Press news agency, while more than 500 members of Colombia’s special forces and 22 helicopters were used in the jungle raid.

<hlt>Nessa história, nós temos o uso de alguns tempos verbais diferentes. No nosso portal, na descrição, você encontra a transcrição deste episódio, e vai notar nesta notícia, algumas palavras em negrito. Elas são exemplos de alguns dos tempos verbais que encontramos aqui. Todas as palavras marcadas estão em algum tempo verbal. Algumas em Simple Past, Past Continuous, Present Perfect ou Past Perfect Continuous. Quando falamos de uma ação que começou e acabou no passado, usamos o Simple Past. Quando estamos falando de uma ação que começou no passado e continua até o presente, usamos o Present Perfect. Quando falamos de uma ação que estava acontecendo no passado quando outra ação começou a acontecer, usamos o Past Continuous. Se essa ação não tiver um tempo pontual, uma marcação definida, é possível usar o Past Perfect Continuous. Essas diferenças podem ser percebidas com o contato diário e frequente com o idioma, mesmo que você não esteja estudando gramática ou saiba esses termos com perfeição.<hlt>

And finally, in some wholesome news, a group of dads is striving to make a change and impact the youth of a city in Louisiana, USA.

After a violent week of fighting in school that saw 23 students arrested in three days, Southwood High School parents knew something had to change.

Some dads decided to take matters into their hands. They formed Dads on Duty — a group of about 40 dads who take shifts spending time at the school in Shreveport, Louisiana, greeting students in the morning and helping maintain a positive environment for learning, rather than fighting.

The students say it’s working — and the numbers prove it. There hasn’t been a single incident on campus since the dads showed up.

And though none of the dads have degrees in school counseling or criminal justice, they do have some relevant experience.

“We’re dads. We decided the best people who can take care of our kids are who? Are us,” Michael LaFitte, who started Dads on Duty, said.

Now, any negative energy that enters the building has to run the gauntlet of good parenting.

“I immediately felt a form of safety,” one of the students said. “We stopped fighting; people started going to class.”

“You ever heard of ‘a look?'” one student asked while describing a “power” they claimed all dads have.

The dads aren’t there to be guards, though. They make jokes, interact positively with students, give guidance when needed. And it’s that perfect mix of tough love and gentle ribbing that dads do so well that has helped transform this school.

“The school has just been happy — and you can feel it,” a student said.

And now the dads plan to keep going to Southwood indefinitely.

“Because not everybody has a father figure at home – or a male, period, in their life. So just to be here makes a big difference,” the dads said.

They’d like to start chapters of Dads on Duty throughout Louisiana — and hope to eventually take on schools across the country — without a fight.

And that’s where we end today’s episode, folks. Remember, you can check back every week for new episodes, where we give you the most relevant stories of the week while expanding your knowledge and vocabulary in English. To keep learning, you can head over to fluencytv.com, our content portal, that houses over a thousand different lessons in seven different languages.

Você quer ter aulas aprofundadas comigo e com os outros professores da Fluency TV? Você pode se inscrever na lista de espera para as nossas próximas turmas de inglês, espanhol, francês, italiano, alemão, japonês e mandarim. Não fique de fora: aperte o link na descrição desse episódio e faça a sua inscrição 100% gratuita.

See you soon! Peace out!

Fontes:

COP26: Document leak reveals nations lobbying to change key climate report
‍https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-58982445

Personal data protection to become a fundamental right in Brazil
‍https://www.zdnet.com/article/personal-data-protection-to-become-a-fundamental-right-in-brazil/

https://certifiedintel.com/2021/10/brazil-set-to-enforce-personal-data-protection-as-a-basic-right/

Colombia’s most wanted drug lord ‘Otoniel’ captured in jungle raid
‍https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-10-24/colombia-drug-lord-captured/100563778

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/colombia-s-most-wanted-drug-lord-captured-jungle-raid-n1282224

https://edition.cnn.com/2021/10/24/americas/colombia-drug-lord-otoniel-intl-hnk/index.html

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-59026214

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/10/24/otoniel-colombias-most-wanted-drug-lord-captured

https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/colombia-armed-forces-capture-top-drug-trafficker-otoniel-sources-2021-10-23

Dads spend time in Louisiana high school after 23 students were arrested in string of violence
‍https://www.cbsnews.com/news/dads-louisiana-high-school-student-violence/