Fluency News: Astronauts bound to a life without crime

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 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!

‍Neste episódio nós comentamos sobre os acontecimentos do Met Gala e, sim, sobre as roupas das celebridades que compareceram. Nós falamos sobre uma notícia vinda do Canadá com uma manchete incrível, e sobre a Tasmânia ser um dos primeiros locais no mundo a se tornar “carbono negativo”.‍

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!

Transcrição do episódio

Hello, everyone! Welcome back to Fluency News! Surprised to see a new episode today? We’re changing our update dates a bit, to make sure you get the best of the best each week. This way, you can get your news at the start of a new week, to keep yourself an informed citizen of the world.

I’m Scott Lowe, one of you English teachers here at Fluency Academy. It’s awesome you took time to join me today. As always, you can see the transcript of this episode and all of our sources by going to our content portal, fluencytv.com. There you’ll also find thousands of free lessons in all the eight languages Fluency Academy currently teaches. And it’s all free, so don’t miss out!

We’re going to start today’s episode with the Met Gala, that happened last weekend.

Organized and presided over by Anna Wintour since 1995, the Met Gala has become an annual celebration of fashion. It’s a charity event that is considered a fundraiser for the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Costume Institute, and it has traditionally been timed to mark the opening of its annual fashion exhibition.

The dress code for the event was “Guilded Glamour”. The Gilded Age is remembered by many as a time of opulence and joy in the United States, when there was rapid economic growth and glaring materialism. The attending celebreties ran with the theme, taking risks and wearing daring outfits.

“What’s wonderful about the Met is that people feel very fearless,” says Anna Wintour.

The evening was hosted by Blake Lively, Ryan Reynolds, Lin-Manuel Miranda, and Regina King, and they were joined by honorary co-chairs Anna Wintour, Tom Ford, and Instagram’s Adam Mosseri.

The tune of the night was set by Blakely Lively, whose color changing dress evoked the Statue of Liberty. She arrived at the event wearing a gleaming copper Versace gown, that later unfurled into a verdigris-toned train embroidered with the constellations of Grand Central Terminal.

Some used their outfits to make a point. Riz Ahmed said in a Vogue interview on the red carpet that his unbuttoned silk workwear shirt, tank top and trousers tucked into knee-high boots were “a homage to the immigrant workers that kept the Gilded Age going.”Though many wore gowns that channeled the countries’ history, monuments and skyline, no one did so more than Kim Kardashian. The reality-show star wore the famous Marilyn Monroe’s “Happy Birthday, Mr. President” nude dress ress.

The actual gold-beaded body hugger Monroe wore when she sang happy birthday to President John F. Kennedy 60 years ago, three months before her death.

Kardashian had to lose 16 pounds to fit into the dress, designed by Jean Louis and purchased in 2016 by the Ripley’s Believe or Not! museum in Orlando, Florida, for a whopping $4.81 million.

She only wore the fragile original dress for her walk up the Grand Staircase at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, changing into a replica after that, according to Vogue.

Você sabe quando usar whose, who ou whom? Essa é uma questão em que até nativos podem ter dificuldade, então não tem problema caso você não lembre sempre qual usar. Mas, aqui vai uma rápida explicação. Whose significa “de quem”, então deve ser usado quando você estiver falando de alguma coisa que pertence a uma pessoa. “Whom” deve ser usado para se referir ao objeto de um verbo ou preposição. Quando ficar na dúvida, tente usar esse truque: se você pode substituir a palavra por “he” ou “she”, use “who”. Se você pode substituir por “him” ou “her”, use whom.

Our second story of the day is one that has a… peculiar headline. Listen to this: Canadian astronauts are no longer free to rob and kill with abandon in space or on the moon. Yes, you heard that right. Now, if you’re as confused as I was, let me tell you what that’s all about.

Basically, the amendment means that if a Canadian commits a criminal offence while in space, they’ll be met by handcuffs once they return.

It also means, presumably, that Canadians can currently murder and rob all they want, provided that they do it while in orbit.

The technical lawlessness of space is a problem that has been identified by legal scholars for some time. The issue came to discussion in 2019, when a U.S. astronaut serving aboard the International Space Station was accused of committing history’s first-ever space crime.

Astronaut Anne McClain was accused by her estranged spouse, Summer Worden, of unlawfully using an ISS computer to access Worden’s online bank records, which Worden contended was a form of identity theft. The allegations were subsequently found to be false, and Worden now stands accused of lying to U.S. investigators.

When it comes to the International Space Station, criminal jurisdiction is bound by the 1998 treaty creating the structure, to which Canada is a signatory.

Article 22 of the treaty states that anybody aboard the station is subject to the criminal jurisdiction of their home country. But even then, there remains a messy gray area in the event that an astronaut commits a crime against an astronaut of a different country. In that case, the treaty simply advises the countries of the two astronauts discuss their “respective prosecutorial interests.”

Canada has actually become entangled in a legal scenario of this kind before, although it involved the legally ambiguous jurisdiction of an iceberg rather than space.

The Criminal Code amendment included in the 2022 budget was made specifically to prepare for Canada’s involvement in Lunar Gateway, a NASA mission to establish a permanent space station in lunar orbit.

The amendment explicitly states that Canadian criminal jurisdiction will apply to the lunar station itself, and any “means of transportation” to the station. And just in case, “on the surface of the moon.”

Isn’t this the most wonderfully weird story you heard all week?

Sufixos são um conjunto de letras que nós adicionamos ao final de uma palavra, pra formar uma nova palavra, com um significado levemente diferente. Como no português, existem muitos sufixos, demais para falar em um só episódio, e somente nessa história é possível identificar pelo menos uma dezena de palavras com sufixos. O mais comum que falamos aqui é o sufixo LY, que nós adicionamos para falar da maneira que uma coisa é feita. Explicitly, por exemplo, significa “explicitamente”, ou “feito de maneira explícita”. Outro sufixo dessa história é o Y, que apesar de ser só uma letrinha, é suficiente para dar característica de uma coisa. Messy, tem o sufixo Y depois de “mess”, para indicar que algo é “complicado”. Um último exemplo é a palavra lawlessness, que tem na verdade dois sufixos! LESS é um sufixo que nós adicionamos para dizer que falta alguma coisa. É o equivalente de “sem” em português. Por exemplo, “homeless” significa “sem moradia”, e “hopeless”, “sem esperança”. O sufixo NESS é usado para transformar um adjetivo em um substantivo. Assim: “kind” é um adjetivo, “gentil”. Se adicionarmos NESS, vira “kindness”, que é “gentileza”. Existem muitos outros sufixos, e eles são tão comuns que você deve usá-los com frequência, sem nem perceber! Depois que você compreende o sentido de alguns, se torna intuitivo entender e criar novas palavras.

Lastly in today’s episode, Tasmania has become one of the first places of the world to become not just carbon neutral but carbon negative by reducing logging, researchers say.

Scientists from the Australian National University (ANU) and Griffith University looked into the national greenhouse gas inventory and examined each state’s contribution.

They saw Tasmania had made a “remarkable achievement”.

“Tasmania has gone from being the emitter of carbon dioxide to now removing more than it is emitting to the atmosphere,” Griffith University researcher Brendan Mackey said.

“This is one of the first times on the planet that anybody has ever done this kind of reversal,” Professor David Lindenmayer from the ANU said.

Researchers then examined native forest harvesting and concluded the change in carbon footprint could be attributed to the reduction in native forest logging, meaning the forests would continue to grow, all the while “removing carbon from the atmosphere”.

Professor Mackey said the “big change” in Tasmania’s forest management happened around 2011 and 2012.

“That was when there was a significant drop in native forest logging in Tasmania … that’s when we saw this big change in the greenhouse gas inventory reports,” he said.

Professor Mackey said Tasmania already had a “very low” emission profile, with the state’s electricity largely coming from hydro energy.

“The main mitigation challenge for Tasmania is how it manages its forests,” he said.

He said “tree farms” or plantations would still help satisfy the demand for timber, without increasing the emissions.

Tasmanian Forest Products Association chief executive Nick Steel said the state had a “sustainable model of forestry”. In Tasmania, every single tree that is harvested is either replanted or regenerated for the future.

Professor Mackey said the change in forest management should be followed by other Australian states to cut emissions.

“It is vital we protect and enhance natural forest ecosystem carbon stocks and that the mitigation benefits of forest protection are properly accounted for and reported to help us achieve the deep and rapid cuts in emissions needed over the coming critical decade,” he said.

Você provavelmente sabe que madeira em inglês é “wood”, certo? Aqui nessa história, no entanto, nós temos uma palavra diferente. Essa palavra é timber. Na prática, timber é a madeira usada para construção, aquela que é plantada e colhida especialmente para essa função. Outra palavra que também pode ser usada para madeira é “log”. Nessa notícia também temos a palavra logging, que significa “exploração madereira”. Uma palavra curtinha, para um significado tão maior, não é?

And it’s with that positive story that we’re ending today’s episode, folks. There’s a new episode of Fluency News every week, so don’t forget to check back to stay informed about what’s happening all over the globe.

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, mandarim e coreano. Não fique de fora: aperte o link na descrição desse episódio e faça a sua inscrição 100% gratuita.

You can find the transcript of this episode and all of our sources by going to fluencytv.com. I’ll see you soon. Peace.

‍Stories‍

‍The Met Gala 2022
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/03/style/met-gala-fashion-best-and-worst.html
https://www.vogue.com/live/met-gala-2022-live-updates
https://apnews.com/article/2022-met-gala-live-updates-084f719d371e251fc545fd1ad49300d3
https://www.nytimes.com/live/2022/05/02/fashion/met-gala-2022‍

‍Canadian astronauts no longer free to rob and kill with abandon in space or on the moon
https://calgaryherald.com/news/canada/canadian-astronauts-2022-federal-budget/wcm/a55f9b10-dce3-4cff-9572-e24c0997b49e?s=09
https://www.npr.org/2022/05/02/1095861510/canadian-lawmakers-pass-amendment-allowing-prosecution-of-crimes-on-the-moon
https://futurism.com/the-byte/canada-illegal-crimes-space‍

‍Tasmania goes into carbon negative, with researchers saying native forests must be preserved
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-05-03/tas-carbon-negative-emission-levels-credited-to-stopping-logging/101032008