Lord of the Rings’ Peter Jackson is made Knight
Dec 31, 2009 English 1st Paragraph
New Zealand has made its most famous film-maker a knight in the reinstatement of the title for the first time in a decade. Peter Jackson, maker of the Oscar-winning Lord of the Rings trilogy, said the award was "better than the Oscars"…
Tags: Knight, Lord of the Rings, New Zealand, Oscar, Peter Jackson
Grow-your-own to replace false teeth
Dec 31, 2009 English 1st Paragraph
The British institution of dentures sitting in a glass of water beside the bed could be rendered obsolete by scientists who are confident that people will soon be able to replace lost teeth by growing new ones. Instead of false teeth, a small ball of cells capable of growing into a new tooth will be implanted where the missing one used to be…
My favourite things…
Dec 30, 2009 English 1st Paragraph
Raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens,
Bright copper kettles and warm woollen mittens,
Brown paper packages tied up with strings,
These are a few of my favourite things…
More information about the song on Wikipedia.
Read a brief description of the film on Simple English Wikipedia.
Tags: favourite things, film, Julie Andrews, song, Sound of Music, video
EU subsidies don’t save real farmers
Dec 29, 2009 English 1st Paragraph
Farmers’ anger had been simmering for some time. First they took their cows to Brussels, hoping to mark minds with a spectacular demonstration. The protests spread, moving from region to region across Europe, from Scotland to Wales, from Spain all the way to Romania.
Then last Thursday before dawn, young French farmers dumped 10 tonnes of hay in front of the president’s living quarters, the Elysée palace. They hoped the media coup would help getting political attention to their grievances, but they were quickly ousted by police forces armed with tear gas instead. Damien Greffin, president of the Ile de France region’s young farmers association, explained that such an act of dissent was a last resort in their attempts to get their plight noticed: "Farming is dying…
Chefs lead on unhealthy habits
Dec 29, 2009 English 1st Paragraph
Chefs appear to have more unhealthy habits than any other profession while those in advertising are near paragons of virtue, a survey suggests. The poll of 3,000 workers found chefs smoked the most and consumed two snacks of crisps or chocolate most days…
Tags: chef, diet, eating habits, farmer, unhealthy
Roman Polanski thanks supporters in open letter to French philosopher
Dec 29, 2009 English 1st Paragraph
Roman Polanski, the Oscar-winning film director under house arrest on charges of having sex with a 13-year-old girl, has expressed his gratitude to his supporters in an open letter to the French intellectual Bernard-Henri Lévy. In his first public comments on the case since he was placed in detention in September, the director said he had been "overwhelmed" by the messages of sympathy he had received from "across the world…
Tags: Bernard-Henri Lévy, letter, Roman Polanski
Geese point the way to saving jet fuel
Dec 29, 2009 English 1st Paragraph
Scientists have proposed an unusual method for cutting aircraft fuel consumption – they want to fly jumbo jets in formation like geese. The prospect of flotillas of airliners soaring across the sky in V-shaped flocks, like migrating birds, is startling. Nevertheless, research by aviation experts has shown that it could lead to major reductions in aircraft fuel consumption…
Tags: aircraft fuel, flying, geese
In New Way to Edit DNA, Hope for Treating Disease
Dec 29, 2009 English 1st Paragraph
Only one man seems to have ever been cured of AIDS, a patient who also had leukemia. To treat the leukemia, he received a bone marrow transplant in Berlin from a donor who, as luck would have it, was naturally immune to the AIDS virus…
Read this on the New York Times.
Tags: AIDS, bone marrow transplant, DNA editing
France may ban women from wearing burka in public
Dec 26, 2009 English 1st Paragraph
French women could be banned from wearing the full Islamic veil in public under legislation to be proposed by Nicolas Sarkozy’s ruling party next month. Jean-Francois Copé, parliamentary leader of the rightwing majority UMP, said a law banning face-covering in public places would be submitted to parliament early next year. Citing concerns over women’s freedom and "public order", he said a total ban was justified by growing fears over equality in France, home to Europe’s largest Muslim population…
Million Dollar Math Problem
Dec 26, 2009 English 1st Paragraph
In 2000, the Cambridge, Massachusetts-based Clay Mathematics Institute — a nonprofit organization devoted to popularizing mathematical ideas and encouraging their professional exploration — identified seven exceptionally difficult math problems, and offered a million dollars for the solution of each. One was the Poincaré Conjecture, a classic of topology that was formulated by Henri Poincaré in 1904. No one expected that this particular problem — or any of the six others — would be solved anytime soon…
Tags: Grigory Perelman, Mathematics, Poincaré Conjecture, topology
Eurostar: why the trains failed
Dec 26, 2009 English 1st Paragraph
After three days of travel chaos, Eurostar today announced that it had launched an immediate inquiry into the problems which left thousands of travellers stranded in France, England, Belgium and the Channel tunnel itself. A Eurostar spokesman said today that the problems were caused by very low temperatures in France and constant warmth inside the tunnel…
Click here to see an interactive description of what happened (Guardian).
Tags: Channel Tunnel, Eurostar, failure, train
Pennsylvania Walmart sued for videotaping people in bathroom
Dec 26, 2009 English 1st Paragraph
A Pennsylvania Walmart Supercenter videotaped employees and customers in a unisex bathroom, several former and current Walmart employees alleged in a lawsuit filed this week. Several employees discovered an “off-the-shelf” video camera in a store bathroom March 31, 2008, according to the court filing. The unisex bathroom, which also served as a changing room, was used by employees and customers. Customers and employees were not notifed of the surveillance, according to the court filing…
Tags: bathroom, sue, surveillance, Walmart
Jacques Chirac under investigation over corruption allegations
Dec 26, 2009 English 1st Paragraph
The former French president Jacques Chirac has been put under formal investigation for his alleged role in a "ghost jobs" corruption scam. He is to be questioned about accusations he gave fictitious posts with large salaries and expense accounts to friends and political allies during his time as mayor of Paris…
Tags: corruption, France, Jacques Chirac, trial
China unveils ‘world’s fastest train link’
Dec 26, 2009 English 1st Paragraph
Read this news story on Google News.
Tags: China, high speed train, public transport, transopt
L’île de Pâques veut se protéger du tourisme de masse
Dec 25, 2009 French 1st Paragraph
A 37 ans, Luz Zasso Poa est, depuis un an, maire de Hanga Roa, chef-lieu de l’île de Pâques. "Rapa Nui", corrige-t-elle, revendiquant le nom polynésien de l’île mythique, découverte par un navigateur hollandais un jour de Pâques, en 1722, et annexée par le Chili en 1888. Une île qui, en octobre, s’est prononcée massivement, par référendum, en faveur d’un contrôle renforcé des flux migratoires.
Lisez cet article sur Le Monde.fr
Tags: environnement, L'île de Pâques, tourisme
Dix crises humanitaires qui ont marqué l’année 2009
Dec 23, 2009 French 1st Paragraph
Médecins sans Frontières a publié une liste de dix crises humanitaire les plus grave de 2009, “dix situations auxquelles ont été confrontée ses équipes sur le terrain.”
Livres : Première condamnation pour Google
Dec 22, 2009 French 1st Paragraph
Le tribunal de grande instance de Paris a tranché ce vendredi : Google est condamné à verser aux éditeurs plaignants, dont il a reproduit sans autorisation des extraits de livres, la coquette somme de 300 000 euros à titre de dommages et intérêts. Le groupe La Martinière en demandait 15 millions.
Afin de se débarrasser de l’affaire, le géant américain misait sur l’incompétence juridique du tribunal français. Argument démonté par la 3ème chambre civile qui s’est estimée tout à fait compétente pour traiter ce litige…
Par Manuel Raynaud
Thousands freed from Channel Tunnel after trains fail
Dec 19, 2009 English 1st Paragraph
More than 2,000 people spent hours trapped inside the Channel Tunnel after five Eurostar trains broke down due to cold weather. The trains failed as they left the cold air in northern France and entered the warmer tunnel. Some passengers were evacuated via service tunnels to car trains, while others were kept on their trains. Many have faced gruelling 15-hour journeys.1
Read this news story on the BBC.
- The article includes an interview with British passengers who sharply criticise the French Eurostar operators. What do you think? [↩]
Tags: Channel Tunnel, Eurostar, trap, weather
Google Loses in French Copyright Case
Dec 19, 2009 English 1st Paragraph
ARIS — A French court ruled on Friday that Google infringed copyrights by digitizing books and putting extracts online without authorization, dealing a setback to its embattled book project. The court in Paris ruled against Google after a publishing group, La Martinière, backed by publishers and authors, argued that the industry was being exploited by Google’s Book Search program, which was started in 2005. The court ordered Google to pay over 300,000 euros, or $430,000, in damages and interest and to stop…
Read this article on The New York Times.
Tags: book, copyright, digitalisation, France, google, Google book project, online
YouTube video leads to Hollywood contract
Dec 19, 2009 English 1st Paragraph
A producer from Uruguay who uploaded a short film to YouTube in November 2009 has been offered a $30m (£18.6m) contract to make a Hollywood film. The movie will be sponsored by director Sam Raimi, whose credits include the Spiderman and Evil Dead films. Fede Alvarez’s short film "Ataque de Panico!" (Panic Attack!) featured giant robots invading and destroying Montevideo, the capital of Uruguay. It is 4 mins 48 seconds long and was made on a budget of $300 (£186)…
Read this article and watch the video on the BBC.
Tags: Hollywood, short film, YouTube
Tree Bed
Dec 15, 2009 Writing Workshop
Here is a an example of Shawn Lovell’s metalworks:
See if you can describe this work in 50-100 words.
Tags: metalworks, writing
Timbuktu's ancient salt caravans under threat
Dec 4, 2009 1st Paragraph, English 1st Paragraph
With a long, gurgling groan, Lakhmar fell awkwardly to his knees in the roasting hot sand outside the town of Timbuktu.
For the past six years he has been making the same gruelling trek across the Sahara desert to the salt mines of Taoudenni in northern Mali. But each journey is becoming more of a struggle. Lakhmar, a 10-year-old male camel with a metal ring in his flaring right nostril, left it to his owner, Boujima Handak, to explain their predicament…
Read this article (and watch the video) on the BBC.
Tags: camel, caravan, dry, Environment, global warming, rain, salt
Learning to love forest fires in Yosemite National Park
Dec 4, 2009 1st Paragraph, English 1st Paragraph
When southern California is consumed by fire, the state employs an arsenal of equipment and manpower to battle the inferno. The key priority is to save lives and homes. An increasingly familiar image of America’s Golden State is of water-bombing aircraft dousing the flames as they lick around million-dollar mansions on the hillsides.
But in Yosemite National Park, in central California, fire is viewed differently. The forest needs to burn to survive, although fire was once thought to be an enemy of the region’s giant sequoia trees…
Read this article (and watch the video) on the BBC.
Tags: Environment, fire, forest, video, Yosemite National Park
Kaboul, muffins et cheddar
Dec 2, 2009 French 1st Paragraph
Le bazar de Kaboul change de nom au fil des soubresauts géopolitiques qui agitent le pays. Aujourd’hui, Obama prête le sien à ce temple du made in USA, comme le décrit The Christian Science Monitor.
Lisez cet article sur courrierinternational.com
Tags: Afghanistan, Bazar, Etats Unis, Kaboul
Moins de 5 enfants séropositifs naissent par an en France
Dec 2, 2009 French 1st Paragraph
A l’occasion de la 22ème journée mondiale de lutte contre le sida, France Lert revient pour nous sur le préservatif féminin et la maternité des femmes séropositives. Directrice de recherche à l’Inserm, elle est la co-auteure avec Gilles Pialoux, chef du service des maladies infectieuses à l’hôpital Tenon à Paris, d’un rapport préconisant de « nouvelles méthodes de prévention »…
Tags: France, Prévention, Sida
