Fluency News #51

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 o Talibã, o Google sendo acusado de não pagar suficientemente seus funcionários e sobre “Orca” estar funcionando.

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! This podcast series is the perfect way for you to stay informed while improving your listening and comprehension skills.

We’re thrilled you’re joining us today! We’re going to start today’s episode with some updates on the Taliban situation. Before taking power, the group had made several claims and promises about how they would govern, but it seems like their promises are being broken, just a couple of weeks after the U.S. withdrew their forces.

Afghanistan’s Taliban rulers have contradicted public promises on rights, including by ordering women to stay at home, blocking teenage girls from school and holding house-to-house searches for former foes, a United Nations official said on Monday, September 13.

“In contradiction to assurances that the Taliban would uphold women’s rights, over the past three weeks, women have instead been progressively excluded from the public sphere,” High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet told the Human Rights Council in Geneva.

Taliban’s new Higher Education minister, Abdul Baqi Haqqani, said the new Taliban government, named last week, would “start building the country on what exists today” and did not want to turn the clock back 20 years to when the movement was last in power.

He said female students will be allowed to study in universities, but gender segregation and Islamic dress code will be mandatory. Women would be taught by women wherever possible and classrooms would remain separated, in accordance with the movement’s interpretation of Islamic sharia law.

“When there is really a need, men can also teach (women) but in accordance with sharia, they should observe the veil,” he said. Classrooms would be curtained off to divide male and female students where necessary, and teaching could also be done through streaming or closed-circuit TV.

Classrooms divided by curtains have already been seen in many places since the Western-backed government collapse and the Taliban seized Kabul last month.

The group has faced scrutiny for its government formation, which excluded women, members of religious minorities and members of Afghanistan’s ousted leadership. Taliban spokesperson Sayed Zekrullah Hashimi on Thursday said women should restrict themselves to giving birth only, and that there is no need to have women in positions of power.

“It is not necessary for a woman to be in the cabinet. A woman can’t be a minister, it is like you put something on her neck that she can’t carry. They should give birth and raise children according to Islamic ethics”, he said.

Adjetivos compostos são formados pela combinação de palavras que acabam por ter apenas um significado. Os termos, chamados de “compound adjectives”, são geralmente separados por um hífen. Nessa história, nós temos alguns exemplos, como “closed-circuit TV” e “Western-backed government”. Existem formas diferentes de formar os adjetivos compostos. Você pode unir duas ou mais palavras, sendo que essas palavras podem ser substantivos, adjetivos, números, advérbios e verbos no “Present Participle” ou “Past Participle”.

The new government formation sparked women-led protests that were met with whips and sticks by Taliban fighters.

The fighters also beat a number of journalists covering the demonstration. There are a number of distressing images of journalists displaying injuries sustained after being beaten by the Taliban.

At least two such images have surfaced, showing two men stripped to their underwear and standing with their backs to the camera. Their backs and legs are covered with what appear to be red welts and bruises.

Video journalist Nemat Naqdi and video editor Taqi Daryabi from the Afghan online news outlet EtilaatRoz said they were detained while covering a women’s protest against Pakistani involvement in Afghanistan and supporting women’s rights that took place on Wednesday.

“They were hitting me with extreme force that I really thought that this was the end of my life,” Naqdi told CNN. “They were using such violence that one was holding me by my head and face and another one was holding me by my waist. My hands and feet were tied and one of them was pushing my legs like a sling. I had a feeling that my neck may break, or my back may break,” Naqdi added.

“When the Taliban forces arrested us and took us to the police station, they continuously tortured me for approximately 10 minutes, even though I was not in state to remember the exact time. They hit me with whatever they could grab hold of,” Daryabi said.

“It is possible that from now on, the Taliban threaten and torture journalists. The continuation of their activities will be deemed as a danger to their government,” Daryabi added.

The extremist group had earlier claimed it would respect freedom of the press, but its actions indicate otherwise. A spokesman for the group has already warned people against taking to the streets in protest, and warned journalists that they should not cover any demonstrations.

A palavra “that” tem alguns significados diferentes, mas em notícias, é comum vê-la sendo usada como um pronome relativo. Omitir o pronome relativo é possível em muitos casos, e na fala informal do dia a dia, é isso que acontece com frequência. Na fala formal ou em textos, é mais comum manter o pronome, o que dá uma seriedade e formalidade à frase. Como saber se é possível omitir a palavra? O jeito mais fácil de saber, é lembrar que, em termos gerais, quando temos o sentido de “que” e não temos um verbo logo depois dele, podemos omitir. Na transcrição desse episódio, você vai encontrar marcado em negrito, alguns exemplos do pronome relativo “that” sendo usado. Você encontra a transcrição na descrição desse episódio em fluencytv.com.

In other news, a report showed Google underpaid thousands of international ‘shadow workers,’ violating labor laws around the world.

The New York Times and The Guardian reported that Google has been illegally underpaying thousands of temporary workers in dozens of countries and delayed correcting the pay rates for more than two years as it attempted to cover up the problem.

The tech giant’s compliance department discovered the mistake but chose not to immediately compensate the staff, and instead only corrected rates for new employees in the hopes of avoiding legal, financial, and reputational damage.

Google executives and attorneys at one point pursued a plan to come into compliance slowly and at the least possible cost to itself, despite acknowledging that such a move was not “the correct outcome from a compliance perspective” and could place the staffing companies it contracts with “in a difficult position, legally and ethically”.

Google admitted the failures and said it would conduct an investigation after being contacted by the Guardian.

Nessa história, nós temos o uso do tempo verbal Present Perfect Continuous. Esse tempo verbal é usado para indicar uma ação que começou no passado e não foi encerrada. Ele é formado pela forma presente do verbo “have”, o verbo “to be” conjugado no presente perfeito e o gerúndio do verbo principal. Ele é diferente do Present Perfect simples, que indica que a ação começou no passado, durou um tempo e foi finalizada, ou que a ação é permanente. Ele é formado pela forma presente do verbo “have”, o verbo “to be” conjugado no presente perfeito e o verbo principal conjugado no particípio passado.

In some great news, the world’s largest carbon dioxide-sucking plant “Orca” is now online in Iceland.

Carbon Dioxide in the air is at the highest level since tracking began in 1958, and is becoming one of the main reasons for day by day increasing global warming.

To tackle this difficult situation Climeworks, a Swiss start-up specialized in capturing carbon dioxide directly from the air has teamed up with Carbfix, to develop a plant that can suck 4000 tonnes of CO2 per year directly from the atmosphere.

This carbon dioxide sucking plant named “Orca”, after the Icelandic word “orka” meaning “energy”, is the world’s largest plant which will reduce emissions by around 870 cars per year, reports ScienceAlert.

The plant is composed of eight boxes about the size of shipping containers, each fitted with a dozen fans that pull in air. CO2 is filtered out, mixed with water, and pumped into deep underground wells, where over the course of a few years it turns to stone, effectively removing it from circulation in the atmosphere.

According to Climeworks, the technology can easily be replicated at different locations worldwide and on ever larger scales, in a flexible manner wherever ample renewable energy and storage conditions are available.

Alright, and with that positive and hopeful story, this episode comes to an end! Remember, it’s important to keep in contact with the language you’re learning, so heard on over to our content portal, fluencytv.com, to have access to free lessons in different languages.

E se você quer melhorar o seu nível de qualquer um dos 7 idiomas que ensinamos – inglês, espanhol, francês, italiano, alemão, japonês ou mandarim – aprendendo com os professores da FluencyTV, você pode se inscrever na nossa lista de espera.

Assim quando a gente abrir uma nova turma você vai ter uma chance ainda melhor de conseguir uma vaga! É só se inscrever clicando no link na descrição desse episódio.

Leva uns 15 segundinhos e vale super a pena! Assim você não arrisca perder a próxima turma e ficar meses esperando uma nova chance!

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

Sources:
Taliban says women can study in gender-segregated universities
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/9/12/taliban-say-women-can-study-in-gender-segregated-universities
https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/taliban-say-woman-can-study-university-classes-must-be-segregated-2021-09-12/
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-58537081
https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/world/south-asia/women-should-give-birth-they-cant-be-ministers-taliban-spokesperson/articleshow/86090247.cms?from=mdr
https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/un-rights-chief-rebukes-taliban-over-treatment-women-2021-09-13/
https://www.thehindu.com/news/international/taliban-say-girls-women-may-study-in-no-men-classrooms/article36412144.ece
Afghan Journalists Beaten By Taliban For Covering Women’s Protests
https://edition.cnn.com/2021/09/08/asia/afghanistan-women-taliban-government-intl/index.html
https://www.ndtv.com/world-news/afghanistan-news-taliban-afghan-journalists-beaten-by-taliban-for-covering-womens-protests-2534836
https://www.ctvnews.ca/world/i-thought-this-was-the-end-of-my-life-afghan-journalists-describe-savage-beatings-by-taliban-1.5582358
Google underpaid thousands of international ‘shadow workers,’ violating labor laws around the world, reports reveal
https://www.businessinsider.com/google-underpaid-thousands-of-temporary-workers-around-world-reports-2021-9
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2021/sep/10/google-underpaid-workers-illegal-pay-disparity-documents
World’s Largest Carbon Dioxide-Sucking Plant ‘Orca’ is now online in Iceland
https://craffic.co.in/worlds-largest-carbon-dioxide-sucking-plant-orca/
https://qz.com/2055951/climeworks-is-opening-the-worlds-biggest-carbon-removal-machine/
https://www.independent.co.uk/climate-change/news/carbon-sucking-factory-operation-iceland-b1916825.html