Daily_2013.01-03.doc

02.01.2013

FISCAL CLIFF

Fiscal cliff is a combination of planned government spending cuts and tax increases which must take place in the future because a temporary financial law has ended.

 
You can watch a short video explaining the fiscal cliff here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7xPMDANpuN0

'The fiscal cliff, as we've come to call it, amounts to a $700 billion combination of expiring Bush tax cuts and congressionally mandated spending cuts that could, if fully enacted, tip the economy back into recession.' WBUR 26TH NOVEMBER 2012

  

'Markets 'sensitive' in wake of US and Japan fiscal cliffs.' FARMING UK 26TH NOVEMBER 2012 

Fiscal cliff is the expression currently being used to describe an imminent financial scenario in the USA which potentially has very serious consequences for the country's economy and could possibly push it back into recession. Specifically, the fiscal cliff refers to both tax increases and spending cuts, which are due to coincide at the beginning of 2013. As well as planned reductions in welfare and defence budgets, personal and federal incomes will take a heavy blow because of the cessation of a raft of tax cuts, which were introduced under former president Bush's administration back in 2001.

Though fiscal cliff is mainly used to describe the impending situation in the USA, the expression has also been used in reference to other world economies, in particular Japan.

VOCABULARY

government – rząd
spending cut – cięcie wydatków
tax increase – podwyżka podatku
temporary – tymczasowy
financial law – prawo finansowe
expression – wyrażenie
imminent – pewny, nieunikniony
due – zaplanowany
to coincide – pokrywać się w czasie
welfare – opieka społeczna
defence – oborna (kraju)
a heavy blow – mocny cios
cessation – przerwa, zaprzestanie
a raft of tax cuts – tu: seria cięć podatkowych
former – były, dawny
impending – nadchodzący
 

source: macmillandictionary.com
img source: cbsnews.com

04.01.2013

FRIDAY JOKE: SKYDIVING

A man goes skydiving. After a fantastic free fall he pulls the rip cord to open his parachute but nothing happens. He tries everything but can't get it open.

Just then another man flies by him, going UP. The skydiver yells, "Hey, you know anything about parachutes? The man replies, "No, you know anything about gas stoves?

VOCABULARY
skydive – skok na spadochronie
skydiver – spadochroniarz

parachute – spadochron

free fall – wolne spadanie
rip cord – linka
to get sth open – otworzyć coś
just then – w tym momencie
to yell – krzyczeć
to reply – odpowiadać
gas stove – kuchenka gazowa

img source: goturkey.com

05.01.2013

2013 hasn’t quite begun but the new year is already shaping up well for California’s otters. The federal Fish and Wildlife Service announced last week that they will be free to swim where they wish, thanks to the official lifting of the “otter-free zone” off the coast of California.

Of course, the notion that there was ever something like an area where otters would not, could not, swim is basically just wishful thinking on humans’ part. After all, until the 19th century, otters swam from the western coast of Mexico all the way north to San Francisco. Unfortunately, the thick, soft fur that kept them warm was irresistible to fur traders and their numbers dropped to as low as fifteen two decades ago, notes the New York Times

Thanks to conservation efforts, there are now about 2,800 otters. Should their numbers rise above 3,090 they could even be taken off the endangered species list. A healthy otter population can help to replenish Southern California’s coastal ecosystem as otters’ presence is very good news for kelp forests, which provide a home for hundreds of species.

The otters have faced numerous obstacles including well-intentioned but misguided efforts to limit them to a specific “zone.” In 1987, the Fish and Wildlife Service tried to establish a separate population of otters in Southern California by moving 140 to San Nicolas Island. Doing so was meant to alleviate the concerns of fishermen and the U. S. Navy, which conducts training operations in the very waters the migrating otters swam into. Navy officials feared that, due to the otters’ protected status, they would have to conduct full-fledged environmental impact reviews before each training exercise and face penalties should any otters be killed.

But the otters simply swam where they would, back up to the central coast of California and to areas that had been designated “otter free zones” including Point Conception. As the executive director of the Otter Project, Steve Shimek, says in SFGate, “Trying to tell a marine mammal to stay on one side of an imaginary line across the water was a dumb idea.”

It took ten years for the Fish and Wildlife Service to issue a formal decision to eliminate the no-otter zone. Part of the agreement was that the Navy has been exempted from any penalties should otters be affected by its operations.

The Fish and Wildlife Service’s announcement is not the news everyone wanted to hear. Otters represent competition for shellfish and sea urchins. The latter are part of a multimillion dollar industry, with divers collecting sea urchins to sell to sushi restaurants.

The otters still need all the help they can get. Lillian Carswell of the Fish and Wildlife Service notes that the regrowth of the otter population is in a “point of stagnation,” due to more reports of sharks killing otters and “things we don’t understand.”

The rescinding of the otter-free zone is certainly good news, on top of President Obama’s decision to add more than 2,700 square miles off the Northern California coast to the national marine sanctuary system, doubling its size and protecting the area from oil and gas drilling permanently. Now the otters can do as they have for centuries and swim in the waters off the central coast of California.

06.01.2013

A New Digital Leash for Women Keeps Them From Crossing Borders and Escaping
 

The Saudi government has introduced an electronic tracking system that alerts male guardians when a woman strays too far from home.

The “wife tracker” or ‘digital leash’ as some refer to it, reduces women to the legal status of a minor, and is just the latest restriction on the movement of women — and of the women’s movement — in a culture ruled by harsh sharia law.

In Saudi Arabia, women and girls can’t currently vote, date, marry for love, use contraceptives, ride bicycles, talk to men on the phone, sing or dance in public. Unless chaperoned by a mahram (male guardian), girls — covered in black abayas — are carted around behind tinted windows to special women-only gyms, boutiques, malls, schools, and restaurants (where they eat in the “family section,” apart from single men). The Mutawwa’in, the religious police, fine or even imprison dissenters. Victims of domestic violence and rape are often punished with lashes. Isolation is so intense that some feel that society is split between “two different species.”

Just below the surface, desperation percolates. A study at King Saud University reported that out of 100 suicide cases, 96 involved women—many women, wrestling with restrictions on work, travel, and school, attempt suicide to escape Saudi Arabia’s strict society. The Saudi authorities actually instituted the SMS tracking system when one Saudi woman tried to flee to Sweden — the kind of escape most Western women take for granted. Male guardians monitor the women in their custody — wives, daughters, sisters — for any attempts to cross the border. They receive a text message alerting them of their female’s activity.

Surprisingly, Saudi Arabia did not even make The Daily Beast’s top 10 list of the worst places to be a woman. It was surpassed by Chad, where women are married off at age 11 without legal rights, by Afghanistan, where 90% of women are illiterate, by Yemen, where domestic violence is perfectly legal, and by Congo, where 1,100 women are raped every day.

Although the statistics are grim, there may be glimmers of hope in stories like that of Malala Yousafzai, who at just 11 years old braved Taliban threats to blog about the constraints on girls’ education in the Swat Valley of Pakistan. Her courage almost cost Malala her life when Taliban militants pulled her out of her school bus, and shot her in the head. Since her recovery, Malala has become a symbol for women’s education and rights across the globe. “Where in the Quran does it say that girls should not be educated?” Malala writes. “I have the right to play. I have the right to sing. I have the right to go to market. I have the right to speak up.”

In backward societies where girls never graduate from their minor status, Malala shows that speaking up can be a powerful way to move forward.

Saudi Portrait: Edward Musiak

Saudi men can now be alerted via text message if women try to escape from the country. The new digital leash on women is being resoundingly criticized over social media channels. “Hello Taliban, herewith some tips from the Saudi e-government!”, wrote one angry commenter, according to Al Arabiya. The new technology has reportedly been in place since last week, and was discovered after a husband was alerted by immigration authorities while traveling with his wife.

“Saudi men earlier had the option of requesting alert messages about their dependents’ cross-border movement, but it appears that since last week such notifications are being sent automatically,” explains the BBC.

Al Arabiya further explains that a recent escape attempt by a Saudi woman to Sweden may have prompted the creation of a high-tech digital leash. While “the right of exit” has been generally recognized as a fundamental human right, Saudi Arabia remains a deeply conservative country and denies women the right to travel without the consent of their male guardian.

It’s unclear whether social media protests will do any good. Last year, Manal al-Sharif sparked a global wave of support after posting a YouTube video of herself defying the controversial driving ban. The support spared her from 10 whip lashes after King Abdullah overturned the sentence, but the driving ban remains a contentious legal battle.

This new controversy is perhaps even more egregious since it deliberately targets women fleeing from danger or simply seeking more freedom. It’s an important lesson in the fact that technology can be wielded equally for empowerment or persecution.

07.01.2013

WHO INVENTED THE HOT-DOG?

A hot-dog is a sausage served in a sliced bun. It is usually served with mustard, ketchup, onions, mayonnaise, cheese, chilli and/or sauerkraut.

 

Johann Georghehner, a butcher from the German city of Coburg, in Bavaria, is said to be with inventing the “dachshund” or “little dog” sausage in the 17th century. Yet, it was still a sausage eaten with a knife and fork, no bun.
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