Week six: 歐洲難民潮

Hungarian reporter who tripped migrants apologises for her actions

The Hungarian video journalist who was caught on camera tripping up and kicking migrants at a refugee shelter has written a letter of apology.

Petra Laszlo was fired by her news organization, N1TV, after the footage emerged of her tripping up a man carrying a child while filming her report in Roszke.

Laszlo wrote her apology in a letter to Hungarian newspaper Magyar Nemzet. She wrote:

“I sincerely regret what happened. Only now have I been able to gather myself together enough to write about what happened. In fact I am in shock from what I have done and what was done to me.

“I was shooting with the camera when hundreds of migrants broke out, came through the police cordon, one of them rushed at me and I got scared. I was afraid when I saw the crowd coming towards me, and then something snapped in me.

“With the camera in my hand, I didn’t see who was coming towards me, I just thought that I was being attacked and that I had to protect myself. It’s hard to make good decisions at a time when people are in a panic and hundreds of people are rushing at you. I failed at that moment to make the right decision.
I’m very sorry about what happened and as a mother I especially regret that due to an unfortunate coincidence there happened to be a child crossing my way. I did not realize it at that time.
I was in a panic; when I watched the footage, I just could not recognize myself, like it had not been me.

“I sincerely regret what happened and I take responsibility for it. I’m not a heartless, racist, child-kicking cameraman.

“I do not deserve either the political witch-hunt against me or the nasty messages – and even death threats – I have since received. I’m just a woman, since then, an unemployed mother of a small child, who made a bad decision in a chaotic situation. I am truly sorry.”

 http://www.euronews.com/2015/09/11/hungarian-reporter-who-tripped-migrants-apologises-for-her-actions/

Structure of the lead:

• What: r has written a letter of apology.
• Where: not given
• When: not given
• Who:The Hungarian video journalist
• Why:was caught on camera tripping up and kicking migrants at a refugee
• How: not given

Vocabulary:

•  trip 絆倒
• migrant 移民者
• footage 鏡頭
• cordon 警戒線
• snap 捕捉
• panic 恐慌
•  unfortunate  不幸
• coincidence 巧合
•  heartless 狠心
•  racist 種族主義者

Week five: .全球購物狂歡節(光棍節)

Singles' Day: China splurges $9.3bn in 12 hours on world's biggest online shopping day

This year’s Singles’ Day – the country’s answer to Black Friday, which began as an ‘anti-Valentine’s Day’ binge for singletons – tramples 2014 record

Shoppers have spent more than $9bn (£6bn) in the first 12 hours of China’s Singles’ Day sales, topping last year’s total for the world’s biggest online shopping day.

Total gross merchandise volume, a measure of sales, matched the 2014 Singles’ Day figure of $9.3bn just after midday, the Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba said. “The 2015 sale has eclipsed last year’s final results in a little over half the time,” it said.

By about 10 pm local time, shoppers had splashed out almost $13bn, according to a company blog.

Earlier, Alibaba’s chief executive, Daniel Zhang, said “the whole world will witness the power of Chinese consumption” on Singles’ Day on Wednesday. 11 November is not a traditional Chinese festival but Alibaba has been pushing it since 2009, first marketing it as an “anti-Valentine’s Day” – 11/11 being a date heavy on ones – with hefty discounts to lure the country’s singletons and price-sensitive buyers.

Another of China’s main online retailers, JD.com, said it had completed more than 20m transactions by about 5pm. About an hour and a half later, one-day orders had passed the combined total of the five previous Singles’ Days, it tweeted.

Alibaba said its logistical division and its partners would use more than 1.7 million personnel, 400,000 vehicles, 5,000 warehouses and 200 planes to handle deliveries.

With sales hitting new highs year after year, Singles’ Day has become a lucrative business opportunity embraced by all online retailers in China, with competition between them turning increasingly fierce. China’s online population of 668 million is the world’s biggest.

The event has received vocal support from the government at a time when China’s economic expansion is slowing and Beijing is trying to transform the growth model into a more sustainable one driven by consumption.

Chinese premier Li Keqiang’s office phoned Alibaba chairman Jack Ma hours before the promotion began, “congratulating and encouraging the creation and achievement of the 11.11 event”, said a posting on a social media account of Tmall, the group’s business-to-consumer arm.

Buyers showed off their purchases on social media, with many lamenting that they had spent far too much money. “I can only afford to eat dirt for the next half year,” said a post on Sina Weibo, with an attached screengrab showing she had bought 42 items.

But some consumers also expressed concerns about fake products. “Good luck. Hope you guys will not get phoney products or things that turn out to be useless,” said a Weibo user.

Headquartered in the eastern city of Hangzhou, Alibaba does not sell products directly but acts as an electronic middleman, operating China’s most popular consumer-to-consumer platform, Taobao, which is estimated to hold more than 90% of the market.

Nasdaq-listed rival online marketplace JD.com reportedly filed a complaint with the government last week, accusing Alibaba of monopolising the market by restricting suppliers from participating in other operators’ promotion events on 11 November.

But Alibaba – listed on the New York Stock Exchange – shrugged off the allegations, asserting that it owns the Singles’ Day brand. “Today the chicken reported on the duck, accusing the duck of monopolising the lake,” said a spokeswoman for Alibaba’s promotional event, according to a Chinese media report.

Before the shopping spree, Alibaba mounted a television spectacular at Beijing’s Water Cube Olympic swimming venue, featuring Chinese and foreign celebrities including James Bond actor Daniel Craig, and Hollywood star Kevin Spacey in his role as President Frank Underwood from the Netflix series House of Cards.

In comparison with Singles’ Day, desktop sales for the five days from Thanksgiving until Cyber Monday in the US last year stood at $6.56bn, according to internet analytics firm comScore.

http://www.theguardian.com/business/2015/nov/11/china-singles-day-new-record-online-shopping-alibaba

Structure of the Lead：

• Who: Not given
• Where: China
• When: China’s Singles’ Day
• Why: Not given
• How: Not given
• What: Shoppers have spent more than $9bn (£6bn) in the first 12 hours of China’s Singles’ Day sales, topping last year’s total for the world’s biggest online shopping day.

Vocabulary:

• merchandise 商品
• executive 行政人員
• singletons 單身
• retailers 零售商
• tweet 鳴叫
• lucrative 賺錢
• monopolising 壟斷
• spectacular 壯觀
•  desktop  桌面

Week four: 長江船難

 Survivor: Chinese cruise ship capsized quickly during violent storm

Most of the passengers on the Eastern Star cruise ship had gone to bed. A violent storm struck and rain pounded the windows with such force that water seeped into the cabins, survivor Zhang Hui told Xinhua, China's state-run news agency.

The ship began tilting, Zhang told the agency, reaching an angle of 45 degrees at one point. Small bottles rolled off the table in his cabin.

"Looks like we are in trouble," he remembers telling a colleague.

When the ship with more than 450 people aboard overturned late Monday, he said, it happened so quickly he only had 30 seconds to grab a life jacket and get out of his cabin. He went into the dark and choppy waters of the Yangtze River during the middle of the storm, later confirmed to be a tornado.

"The raindrops hitting my face felt like hailstones. I tried to hold my breath, but water was forced into my mouth anyway," he told Xinhua.

Unable to swim, he hung onto the life jacket as he floated. He heard other voices in the water, but they soon faded. He saw the lights of a boat, but it passed, apparently not hearing his cries.

"Just hang in there a little longer, I told myself," Zhang said, according to the news agency.

Hours later, around dawn, he floated to shore and crawled to solid ground. He made it to a building, was taken to a hospital and called his family.

"I'm still alive," he told them, Xinhua said. His wife and 15-year-old son broke down upon hearing his voice, he said.

How did a river cruise capsize in China? McKenzieCNN says weather coould've played a role.

http://t.co/zS9IvffEgi http://t.co/a48rs3uFAz

— New Day (@NewDay) June 2, 2015

A massive rescue effort is underway to find anybody who might have survived the capsizing of the Eastern Star. The ship was on a pleasure cruise along a stretch of the Yangtze that winds through central China's Hubei province, authorities said. Most of the passengers were senior citizens.

China's state-run broadcaster CCTV reported Wednesday that 14 people had survived, 18 were confirmed dead and hundreds more were unaccounted for.

The other passengers and crew were feared trapped inside the ship, CNN's David McKenzie reported from the scene. Divers were combing compartments on board, Xinhua reported Wednesday morning.

The survivors included the ship's captain and chief engineer, who were taken into custody for questioning.

On scene of river cruise disaster in #china. Weather is hampering search and hundreds still missingpic.twitter.com/QcWfDP6Zxo

— David McKenzie (@McKenzieCNN) June 2, 2015

Video showed the rescue of an elderly woman who surfaced near the hull wearing a diving mask. Holding a rope, she walked up the hull into the arms of rescuers.

Divers plunged into the river and rescue workers gathered along part of the vessel's upturned hull that was sticking out of the water.

They used hammers to knock on the body of the ship, which was almost submerged, and heard responses from inside, a state-run local newspaper reported. Welders used blowtorches in an attempt to cut the hull open.

More than 1,000 armed police officers, equipped with 40 inflatable boats, were participating in the rescue effort, Xinhua said. Rescue efforts continued into the night.

Images of the upended ship evoked memories of the Sewol, the South Korean passenger ferry that sank last year, taking the lives of more than 300 people, most of them high school students. The captain of that ship was convicted of murder in April and sentenced to life in prison.

In this case, the majority of the 405 passengers on the cruise were between 50 and 80 years old, according to a list published by state media. The youngest was 3.

There were also 46 crew members and five travel agency workers on board, according to state media. All those on board were reported to be Chinese.

Unless many more people are rescued, the Yangtze River sinking will become the deadliest passenger ship disaster in Asia since the Sewol went down.

 http://edition.cnn.com/2015/06/02/asia/china-yangtze-river-ship-sinking/

Structure of the Lead：

• Who: Zhang Hui
• When: not given
• What:not given
• Why: A violent storm struck and rain pounded the windows with such force that water seeped into the cabins
• Where: not given
• How: not given

Vocabulary:

•  cruise (v.) 航遊於
•  choppy (adj.) 波掏洶湧的
• capsize (v.) 翻覆
•  unaccounted (adj.) 行蹤不明的
• compartment (n.) 間隔
• submerge (v.) 淹沒 覆蓋
• blowtorch (n.) 小型發焰裝置(焊接用)
• evoke (v.) 喚起 激起
• inflatable (adj.) 膨脹的
• rescue (v.) 援救