Fluency News #58

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 resultados das conferências G-20 e COP26, sobre a suposta agressão de repórteres brasileiros pelo time de segurança de Jair Bolsonaro e sobre a operação em Minas Gerais contra um grupo criminoso que deixou pelo menos 25 mortos. Também falamos sobre o primeiro santuário de baleias na América do Norte.

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.

Episode Transcript

What is up, everyone! Welcome to another episode of Fluency News! I’m Scott Lowe, one of your English teachers here at Fluency Academy, and I’m thrilled that you’re joining me today.

Every week we get together to talk about some of the most relevant stories of the week, and we take some time to learn a new thing or two. For that learning moment, you’ll hear me speaking a little Portuguese, to make sure you understand everything we’re talking about.

You’ll find all of our sources in the description, and you can read the transcript of this episode by going to fluencytv.com. Now, without further ado, let’s get started!

Last week, we talked about the COP26 and the changes some countries wanted to make in the reports. Well, the summit took place this past weekend, and there are some points that are worth talking about.

Before the summit in Glasgow, a meeting between leaders of the world’s 20 biggest economies (G-20) took place in Rome. They endorsed a global minimum tax aimed at stopping big businesses from hiding profits in tax havens, and agreed to get more Covid vaccines to poorer nations. They also committed to stronger action than ever before to limit global warming, but failed to strike a deal on phasing out coal. Only 12 of the 20 countries committed to be carbon-neutral by 2050.

The result of the leaders of the world’s top economies was being watched closely from the COP26 U.N. climate summit, which was beginning in Glasgow, Scotland at the same time as the deal was concluded.

“The decisions we make today will have a direct impact on the success of the Glasgow summit and, ultimately, on our ability to tackle the climate crisis,” Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi, the G20 host, told leaders.

Speaking from Glasgow, Alok Sharma, the U.K. minister who is president of COP26, said he was “cautiously hopeful about what I’m hearing from Rome … I know discussions haven’t been easy.”

The result of G20 leaves space for a major fight over which countries need to raise their climate targets during this decade and by how much. Europe and the U.S. have put pressure on China and India throughout the buildup to COP26. But Beijing and New Delhi have responded by saying that the onus is on wealthy countries to do more.

With the world warming because of fossil fuel emissions caused by humans, scientists warn that urgent action is needed to avoid a climate catastrophe.

The G20 bloc, which includes Brazil, China, India, Germany and the United States, accounts for an estimated 80% of global greenhouse gas emissions, but hopes the Rome meeting might pave the way to success in Scotland have dimmed considerably.

Chinese President Xi Jinping and Russia’s Vladimir Putin both decided to follow events only via video link and diplomats looking to seal a meaningful accord said both countries, as well as India, were resisting ambitious new climate goals.

A palavra tackle é um verbo que pode significar “enfrentar”, “resolver algo”. Essa palavra também descreve uma manobra do futebol americano, que descreve o ato de segurar fisicamente ou levar um oponente ao chão. Como o futebol americano é um dos esportes mais conhecidos e famosos nos Estados Unidos, o significado da palavra pode ser identificado pelo contexto. Se tackle puder ser substituído por “try”, “undertake” ou “deal with”, significa “resolver” ou “lidar”. Se tiver uma conotação física, é a manobra do esporte.

Still staying on topic of the summits, Brazilian reporters were allegedly attacked by Jair Bolsonaro’s security detail while they were covering the president’s trip to Rome for the G20 summit, according to local media.

Bolsonaro has had a hostile relationship with the press and has long accused journalists of publishing fake news and treating him unfairly.

The alleged attacks took place as the far-right president was out on the streets of the Italian capital on Sunday, meeting some Brazilians dressed in the national team shirts.

Videos of the incident recorded by reporters showed the bodyguards jostling with the journalists, pushing them out of the street, while Bolsonaro took selfies and talked to his supporters.

One of the videos taken by UOL journalist Jamil Chade showed chaotic scenes of the security staff shoving him as supporters of the president chanted abuses at reporters.

A security officer twisted his arm and snatched away his phone with which he had recorded the attacks, Chade told news agency EFE. The officer threw the phone on the ground after being scolded by other reports on the scene.

Broadcast journalist Leonardo Monteiro of TV Globo was punched in the stomach and pushed by one of the bodyguards after asking Bolsonaro why he didn’t attend any G20 events on Sunday, newspaper O Globo reported.

It wasn’t clear whether the bodyguards, dressed in civilian clothes, were Brazilian or Italian.

Ana Estela De Sousa, Europe correspondent of the Brazilian daily Folha de S.Paulo said she was “pushed and brutally treated” by the officers.

“In the past 20 years that I have been covering trips of presidents and events of this type, nothing like this has ever happened to me.”

The Brazilian president was not part of the photo of G20 leaders taken at the Trevi Fountain, and videos from the events showed him as an isolated figure. The far-right president didn’t attend the COP26 Climate Change summit either.

Você sabe qual é a diferença entre whether e if? Ambas significam “se”, mas é preferível usar whether quando temos explícitas as alternativas de escolha. “If” é mais usado quando temos uma intenção de condição. É possível usar as duas palavras na maioria das frases, mas whether foca nas opções de escolha. No caso dessa história, usamos whether porque queremos focar que não é claro se o time de seguranças do presidente brasileiro era da Itália ou do Brasil.

Since we talked about the Brazilian president, let’s take a look at what happened in Brazil on Sunday, October 31st, in the state of Minas Gerais.

Police have killed at least 25 suspects in a warlike operation against a heavily armed criminal gang. The unprecedented sting marked a violent escalation in the country’s ongoing struggle against criminal groups staging elaborate bank heists.

The alleged criminals were gunned down in the south-eastern state of Minas Gerais, where police claimed they had been poised to unleash an attack.

“This operation … will go down in history,” the Minas Gerais state security secretary, Rogério Greco, told local radio.

Police said the group, which had holed up in two locations in Varginha, opened fire on them shortly after their arrival Sunday morning.

“Our idea was to make arrests, but from the moment they recognized our presence, the fight started,” Aristides Amaral Junior, a highway police spokesperson, told reporters: “They had weapons of war. Tons of gasoline, explosives.”

The federal highway police, which took part in the mission, said the group had “a veritable military arsenal” including assault rifles, .50-caliber machine guns, explosives and bulletproof vests.

Police claimed that those killed on Sunday had been plotting similar assaults to those that happened in December 2020 and this past August, before they were tracked down.

“Minas Gerais is most certainly not a good place to commit crime,” said Greco, congratulating the security forces for their “sensational” actions.

Last year police killed more than 6,400 people, the overwhelming majority young black men. Almost 200 police officers were killed, a 10% rise compared with the previous year.

Nessa história, nós temos um exemplo de frases estruturadas usando a voz passiva. Você pode encontrá-la marcada em negrito, na descrição deste episódio em fluencytv.com. A voz passiva é útil para alguns contextos nos quais o que realmente importa não é quem fez a ação do verbo, mas quem recebeu a ação. Quando falamos em voz ativa e voz passiva, estamos nos referindo à estrutura de frases, ou seja, à ordem das palavras.

Frases na active voice (voz ativa) são aquelas em que o sujeito que pratica a ação está em evidência, já em frases na passive voice (voz passiva), o objeto que recebe a ação é que está em evidência. Como a maioria das histórias relata acontecimentos e não necessariamente pessoas, é muito comum que essa linguagem esteja presente em notícias, e no linguajar jornalístico.

O que fazemos na voz passiva é enfatizar quem ou o que recebeu determinada ação. Para isso, usamos verb to be + past participle do verbo seguinte.

Let’s end today’s episode with some good news, shall we? The first North American whale sanctuary is taking shape in Nova Scotia, Canada.

The Whale Sanctuary Project, the first wild refuge for whales retired from marine parks, is expected to officially open its visitor and operations center in Sherbrooke, N.S.

The new center has been built in a renovated century home on the main street in Sherbrooke, a former timber and gold-mining town about 200 kilometers northeast of Halifax.

Greg Wier, the warden of the rural municipality that includes Sherbrooke, said the public wants to see whales in their natural environment rather than in captivity. “There’s a lot of public outcry for these whales being held in little pens,” he said in an interview this week.

The proposed 40-hectare, coastal sanctuary – to be enclosed by large underwater nets – is expected to be built next year. It will be as large as 50 Canadian football fields and about 300 times larger than the biggest tank in any marine park.

The refuge could welcome its first whales in early 2023, assuming the project gets the required federal and provincial permits, said Charles Vinick, the project’s executive director. It is designed to accommodate up to eight beluga whales, which he said can’t be returned to the open ocean because of their lack of survival skills.

The non-profit group has started a campaign to raise up to $20-million for the project, which also calls for the construction of a veterinary clinic and interpretation center near the refuge. Another $2-million would be needed annually for operations. The group is not asking for government funds.

About 200 belugas and 50 orcas are being kept in marine parks and aquariums around the world, though precise figures have been difficult to come by since entrepreneurs in China started building marine parks and importing whales from Russia. The Marineland Park in Niagara Falls, Ontario, has about 40 belugas and Canada’s lone captive killer whale, Kiska.

Public attitudes toward keeping these highly intelligent and socially complex animals in captivity have changed as researchers have learned more about their lives.

The world’s first whale sanctuary opened in southern Iceland in 2019. The Sea Life Trust has two belugas from China – Little Grey and Little White.

And that’s where we’re going to end today’s episode, folks.

Se você quiser ter aulas com os melhores experts em fluência de idiomas do mundo, se inscreva na nossa lista de espera! Assim você vai ficar sabendo quando abrirem novas vagas nas turmas de inglês, espanhol, francês, italiano, alemão, japonês e mandarim. Para não ficar de fora, aperte o link na descrição desse episódio e faça a sua inscrição 100% gratuita.

There’s a new episode every week, and we’ll be waiting for you. Peace out.

Stories

G20 and CPO26 summits
‍https://www.scmp.com/news/china/diplomacy/article/3154367/g20-leaders-promise-try-limit-global-temperature-rises-15c
‍https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-59114871
‍https://www.npr.org/2021/10/31/1050928998/g-20-carbon-neutrality-cop26-coal-financing
‍https://www.cnbc.com/2021/10/30/g-20-leaders-endorse-global-minimum-corporate-tax-deal-for-2023-start.html
‍https://thehill.com/policy/international/579231-g20-leaders-endorse-global-minimum-tax?rl=1
‍https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/oct/30/climate-experts-warn-world-leaders-15c-is-real-science-not-just-talking-point
‍https://www.reuters.com/business/environment/uks-johnson-warns-climate-recalls-fall-roman-empire-ahead-g20-summit-2021-10-30/
‍https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-59105878
‍https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/climate-action-challenges-g20-1.6232087
‍https://apnews.com/article/climate-g-20-summit-business-scotland-glasgow-680f5e2f9bd1f243820587ab2f158911
‍https://www.reuters.com/world/g20-leaders-have-reached-deal-climate-language-final-communique-source-2021-10-31/

Reporters attacked by Bolsonaro’s security agents in Rome
https://www.dw.com/en/reporters-attacked-by-bolsonaros-security-agents-in-rome/a-59681718
‍https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/nov/01/jair-bolsonaros-security-alleged-to-have-used-violence-against-brazilian-journalists-at-g20-reports
‍https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/bolsonaros-security-press-altercation-brazil-leader-isolated-g20-2021-10-31/

Brazilian police kill 25 suspects allegedly part of bank robbery gang
‍https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/oct/31/brazilian-police-kill-suspects-allegedly-part-bank-robbery-gang
‍https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2021/10/31/bazil-police-assault-minas-gerais/
‍https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/31/world/americas/brazil-police-kill-25-bank-gang.html

North America’s first whale sanctuary is taking shape in rural Nova Scotia
‍https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/article-north-americas-first-whale-sanctuary-is-taking-shape-in-rural-nova/