Fluency News #65

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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 algumas notícias vindas do Brasil: o trágico acidente que deixou pelo menos dez mortos no estado de Minas Gerais e a decisão de parar o monitoramento do cerrado brasileiro. Também falamos sobre o comunicado iraniano sobre os guepardos no país, e sobre a decisão do Canadá de tornar ilegais as terapias de conversão.

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! Welcome back to Fluency Academy’s Fluency News, the podcast made for you to train your listening skills, improve your comprehension skills, and keep you updated on what’s happening around the world. I’m Scott Lowe, one of your native English-speaking teachers.

If you’re new here, let me give you a quick rundown of our routine. We’ll present you some of the most important news stories of the week, and we’ll come in with snippets of explanations in Portuguese, to make sure you understand everything you’re hearing. You can check out the description of this episode for the transcript and all our sources.

Alright, let’s get started! We have a couple of stories coming from Brazil today, so let’s start with those.

The death toll from an accident in which a slab of cliff rock toppled onto pleasure boaters on a Brazilian lake has risen to 10, police said.

Authorities said that there was a possibility that some people were still missing on Sunday following the accident in Minas Gerais state. At least 32 people were injured, though most were released from hospitals by Saturday evening.

The accident occurred between the towns of Sao José da Barra and Capitolio, from which the boats had left. Videos showed a gathering of small boats moving slowly near the sheer rock cliff on Furnas Lake when a fissure appeared in the rock and a huge piece toppled onto several of the vessels.

The bodies were taken to Passos city, where coroners worked to identify them. The work was difficult because of the high-energy impact of the rock on the boaters, said a regional civil police official, Marcos Pimenta.

The press office of Minas Gerais state told the Associated Press that the fire department had deployed divers and helicopters to help. Minas Gerais governor Romeu Zema sent messages of solidarity with the victims via social media.

Furnas Lake, called the “sea of Minas”, is a popular tourist draw in the area.

The state of Minas Gerais has been experiencing heavy rains that have forced almost 17,000 people out of their homes due to flooding, according to the state civil defense. Officials suggested that the earlier rains could have contributed to the wall coming loose.

The Brazilian Navy, which also helped in the rescue, said it would investigate the causes of the accident.

Nessa história nós temos o uso do tempo verbal Present Perfect. O Present Perfect é usado para dar a ideia de algo que começou no passado e que ainda acontece no tempo presente. Ele também pode ser usado para falar de algo que aconteceu, mas ainda não está claro que finalizou. Nessa notícia, eu digo, por exemplo, que o número de mortos pelo acidente has risen. Isso quer dizer que o número aumentou, mas ainda não é possível saber se esse é o número definitivo. A notícia ainda está em andamento, e as buscas não foram encerradas, portanto o número pode mudar. No jornalismo, é muito comum o uso desse tempo verbal, principalmente porque muitas histórias são noticiadas assim que começam a acontecer, e muitas atualizações e mudanças não previstas podem acontecer.

In other news, Brazil will stop monitoring deforestation in the Cerrado, the world’s most species-rich savanna, a government researcher said, citing a lack of funds, days after data showed destruction hitting a 6-year-high in 2021.

The Cerrado, which neighbors the Amazon rainforest and stretches across several Brazilian states, is a major bulwark against climate change due to the carbon it absorbs. It is often likened to an upside-down forest because its plants sink roots deep into the ground.

Deforestation rose 8% to 8,531 square kilometers in the Cerrado for the 12-months through July, data from national space research agency Inpe showed.

The decision to stop monitoring the Cerrado was made because of budget cuts, said Claudio Almeida, a scientist who coordinates satellite monitoring at Inpe.

Inpe will no longer produce annual figures for Cerrado deforestation unless it can find a new source of funding, Almeida said in a written message.

A “minimal team” will continue producing monthly deforestation figures for the Cerrado but will run out of money in six months or less, he said.

Marcio Astrini, head of the environmental group Climate Observatory, said he hoped the government would find funding to continue monitoring such a vital ecosystem.

“Monitoring shows if deforestation is advancing, and if deforestation will doom a biome that is so important for Brazilians,” Astrini said.

Earlier this week, scientists expressed alarm at the rising destruction in the Cerrado, saying it results in huge greenhouse gas emissions and threatens to drive species to extinction.

“Every time you go to the Cerrado to do field research, it’s not rare to discover a new species of plant or even animals,” said Manuel Ferreira, a geographer at the Federal University of Goias. “There are still many species yet to be studied.”

Pode ser que você não esteja familiarizado com a palavra bulwark. Ela não é muito usada em contextos informais hoje em dia, e acabamos usando outros sinônimos no lugar dela. Bulwark pode ser traduzido para “baluarte”, ou “bastião”. Significa algo que te protege de situações perigosas ou desagradáveis. Nesse caso, o cerrado brasileiro é um baluarte contra alterações climáticas no mundo.

In some environmental news from a different country, there are only a dozen Asiatic cheetahs left in the wild in Iran, and the situation for the highly endangered species is being described as “extremely critical.”

“The measures we have taken to increase protection, reproduction, and the installation of road signs have not been enough to save this species,” Hassan Akbari, the deputy environment minister, told the Tasnim news agency.

He said there are believed to be only nine male and three female Asiatic Cheetahs in the country, compared to an estimated 100 in 2010.

Environmentalists say the world’s fastest animal has been the victim of drought, hunting, habitat destruction, and scarcity of prey due to hunters in the remote and arid central plateaus.

Capable of reaching speeds of 120 kilometers per hour, cheetahs once stalked habitats from the eastern reaches of India to the Atlantic coast of Senegal and beyond.

They are still found in parts of Southern Africa, but have practically disappeared from North Africa and Asia.

Iran, one of the last countries in the world where the animals live in the wild, began a United Nations-supported protection program in 2001.

The Iranian Cheetah Society says the only remaining habitats left for the majestic cats is the Miandasht Wildlife Refuge and Touran Biosphere Reserve in northeast Iran.

How sad is that? These big cats are facing extinction due to human interference. 🙁

Nessa notícia, já no começo, nós temos o uso da voz passiva no inglês. Se você já escuta a gente há um tempinho, pode ser que já esteja familiarizado, familiarizada com a voz passiva. 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, à ordem das palavras. Frases na active voice são aquelas em que o sujeito que pratica a ação está em evidência, já em frases na passive voice, o objeto que recebe a ação é que está em evidência.

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,. Aqui, um dos exemplos é is being described. Verbo to be, seguido do verbo regular “describe”, no particípio do passado.

In some very positive news, conversion therapy is now illegal in Canada, marking a major milestone in LGBTQ2S+ rights in the country.

After parliamentarians came together to unanimously pass legislation to eradicate the harmful practice in late 2021, the Criminal Code sanctions came into force on Jan. 7th.

That means that now, anyone who looks to subject someone of any age, consenting or not, to so-called conversion therapy could face up to five years in prison.

Conversion “therapy,” as it has been called, seeks to change a person’s sexual orientation to heterosexual or gender identity to cisgender. It can include seeking to repress someone’s non-heterosexual attraction, or repressing a person’s gender expression or non-cis gender identity.

These practices can take various forms, including counselling and behavioral modification, and they have been opposed by numerous health and human rights groups. There continue to be calls for further mental health and educational supports for those who have survived conversion therapy.

After years of calls for action and past failed attempts to pass a bill to ban conversion therapy, the accelerated all-party effort—despite some after-the-fact concerns raised by a few Conservative MPs—has been praised by political leaders as well as by LGBTQ2S+ advocates both in Canada and abroad.

Few countries have criminalized conversion therapy, and Canada now has what the federal Liberal government has described as “among the most comprehensive” protections in the world.

Alright, that’s where we’re going to end today’s episode. Don’t forget to check out the description on fluencytv.com to see the transcript of this episode and all of our sources. You’ll also find more free content in seven different languages there. Also, check out our Instagram page, @fluencytvingles, for tips and updates on events and other cool things. I hope you’re having a fantastic day, and I’ll see you next time. Peace out!

Stories

Rock face collapses and strikes tourist boats in Brazil, killing at least 8
https://www.seattletimes.com/nation-world/rock-face-collapses-and-strikes-tourist-boats-in-brazil-killing-at-least-8/
https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20220109-toll-climbs-to-8-in-brazil-cliff-collapse-2-missing
https://www.tmz.com/2022/01/09/7-rockslide-brazil-kills-boaters-dead/
https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/death-toll-brazil-waterfall-rock-face-collapse-rises-10-2022-01-09/
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/1/9/wall-of-rock-collapses-on-brazils-furnas-lake-kills-seven
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/jan/08/brazil-rock-breaks-from-cliff-and-falls-on-boaters-leaving-at-least-five-dead
Brazil stops tracking savanna deforestation despite rising destruction
https://www.reuters.com/markets/us/brazil-stops-tracking-savanna-deforestation-despite-rising-destruction-2022-01-06
‍Iran Says Only 12 Asiatic Cheetahs Left In Country
https://www.rferl.org/a/iran-asiatic-cheetahs-environment-/31646781.html
https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20220109-iran-says-only-12-asiatic-cheetahs-left-in-the-country
Conversion therapy is now illegal in Canada
https://www.ctvnews.ca/canada/conversion-therapy-is-now-illegal-in-canada-1.5731911