Week 5 - 神鬼獵人

The Revenant Was The Best Directed Movie Of 2015, The Oscars Got It Right

Honestly, it couldn’t have gone to anyone else. This year the Academy Award for Best Director went to Mexican director Alejandro Iñárritu for his exemplary work on The Revenant. It was a crowded field and anyone could have won, but at the end of the day the award once again went to Iñárritu. As incredibly easy as it would be to say that we didn’t see this coming, that simply would not be the case.
We really cannot say that we are surprised to hear that Alejandro Iñárritu won this year’s Oscar for Best Director. The Revenant strikes an absolutely perfect balance between technical complexity and beautiful simplicity. We can heap as much praise as we want upon the performances of men like Leonardo DiCaprio and Tom Hardy, but at the end of the day the most pivotal factor in the creation of a movie as raw and brutal as The Revenant is Alejandro Iñárritu. He’s the man who guides those who create the beautiful cinematography, and he’s the man who directs the perfectly acted scenes.

Honestly, just look at this brief moment from The Revenant to get the smallest understanding as to why Alejandro Iñárritu completely deserves the award for his historical epic this year:

Alejandro Iñárritu’s win makes an unreasonable amount of sense. While The Revenant tells an incredibly simple story, it does so in in equally incredibly complex manner. The job falls on Iñárritu to ensure that actors like Leonardo DiCaprio and Tom Hardy deliver believable yet nuanced performances while still maintaining the integrity of a true story. In the beautiful creation of The Revenant, Iñárritu utilized numerous techniques from his previous Oscar win Birdman that became his trademark style. However, unlike Birdman, the techniques he used took place not in a small, contained studio, but outside in a world that notoriously fought back against the production of this film.

I’ve said it before: the fact that a movie was difficult to make doesn’t make it worthy of an Oscar, but a director’s ability to hold everything together and create a work of art as wholly beautiful as The Revenant most certainly is deserving of Oscar recognition.

Of course, that’s the beautiful thing about the world of film: it really isn’t a black and white affair. Who do you think deserved to win this year’s Best Direct Oscar? Let us know what you think in the comments and keep the conversation going!

http://www.cinemablend.com/new/Revenant-Was-Best-Directed-Movie-2015-Oscars-Got-It-Right-115217.html

Week 4 - 台灣霸王寒流

Snow around Taiwan wows locals

2016/01/24 15:41:47

Taipei, Jan. 24 (CNA) Snow, which is rarely seen in Taiwan, an Asia-Pacific island crossed by the Tropic of Cancer, wowed people around the island Sunday with the appearance of the white stuff, from the capital Taipei in the north to Pingtung County in the south.


Under the influence of a strong cold air mass, many places around Taiwan -- even those located at an altitude of only 400 to 500 meters -- received a covering of snow or soft hail overnight, exciting the locals, who likely have never seen a silver world in real life since they were born.
Despite low temperatures, people were seen swarming to elevated areas, including Jiangziliaoshan (726 meters) in Keelung, Taipei's Yangmingshan, and Linkuo and Pinglin in New Taipei, to appreciate the natural beauty painted by snow.
According to the Central Weather Bureau, 27 weather stations in different parts of Taiwan registered their lowest temperatures Sunday.
The temperature in Taipei, northern Taiwan fell to 4 degrees Celsius, the lowest level ever detected in the capital in 43 years and the second-lowest since 3.2 degrees was recorded in 1972.
It was -3.1 degrees in Anbu in the Yangmingshan area, 5.8 degrees in Sua'o in northeastern Yilan County, and 4.2 degrees in Taoyuan's Xinwu -- all new lows for these places. In New Taipei's Banqiao, it was 3.8 degrees on Sunday morning the second-lowest level in the city's history.
The temperature in Taipei was forecast to dip further to 3 degrees Celsius late Sunday and early Monday, and to 4 degrees in central Taiwan and 6 degrees in the south, the bureau forecast.


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http://focustaiwan.tw/news/asoc/201601240008.aspx
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Structure of the Lead：

      WHO- not given

      WHEN- Jan. 24      WHAT-the lowest level ever detected in the capital in 43 years

      WHY-Under the influence of a strong cold air mass

      WHERE-Taiwan

      HOW-not given

Keywords:
elevated areas (n.) 高海拔地區

Week 3 - 牛津字典2015代表字

Oxford’s 2015 Word of the Year Is This Emoji

It's a historic moment of recognition for little images that have been gaining popularity since 1999

Oxford Dictionaries made history on Monday by announcing that their “Word of the Year” would not be one of those old-fashioned, string-of-letters-type words at all. The flag their editors are planting to sum up who we were in 2015 is this pictograph, an acknowledgement of just how popular these pictures have become in our (digital) daily lives:

“Although emoji have been a staple of texting teens for some time, emoji culture exploded into the global mainstream over the past year,” the company’s team wrote in a press release. “Emoji have come to embody a core aspect of living in a digital world that is visually driven, emotionally expressive, and obsessively immediate.”

Oxford University Press—which publishes both the august Oxford English Dictionary and the lower-brow, more-modern Oxford Dictionaries Online—partnered with keyboard-app company SwiftKey to determine which emoji was getting the most play this past year. According to their data, the “Face With Tears of Joy” emoji, also known as LOL Emoji or Laughing Emoji, comprised nearly 20% of all emoji use in the U.S. and the U.K., where Oxford is based. The runner-up in the U.S., with 9% of usage, was this number:

Caspar Grathwohl, the president of Oxford Dictionaries, explained that their choice reflects the walls-down world that we live in. “Emoji are becoming an increasingly rich form of communication, one that transcends linguistic borders,” he said in a statement. And their choice for the word of the year, he added, embodies the “playfulness and intimacy” that characterizes emoji-using culture.

Though this marks a historic moment of recognition for the pictures plastered throughout tweets and texts, Oxford has not added or defined any emoji in their actual databases. Nor, says a spokesperson for the publisher, do they have plans to do so at this point. The word emoji, however, has been in both the OED and Oxford Dictionaries Online since 2013.

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http://time.com/4114886/oxford-word-of-the-year-2015-emoji/

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Structure of the Lead：

      WHO- not given

      WHEN- Dec. 2015

      WHAT-Oxford’s 2015 Word of the Year

      WHY-not given

      WHERE-Oxford Dictionaries wed site

      HOW-not given

Keywords： 

digital (adj.) 數位的emoji  (n.) 表情符號emotionally expressive  表達情感LOL = lots of laugh 

Week 2 - 深圳廢土場崩塌

China landslide disaster caused by safety breaches

       A landslide in southern China that killed two people and left more than 70 people missing was caused by breaches of construction safety rules and was not a natural disaster, a government website quoted local authorities as saying.

An investigation by a team in Shenzhen directed by China's cabinet found the Dec. 20 disaster stemmed from waste construction material in a landfill site rather than a natural geological movement, a statement posted late Friday on the cabinet's website said.

"Those held accountable will be seriously punished in accordance with the law," the statement said.

The man-made disaster, which buried 33 buildings in an industrial park, has raised questions about China's industrial safety standards and lack of oversight that has led to fatal accidents, a by-product of the country's rapid growth.

At the Shenzhen industrial park, there is still some risk of more landslides at three separate places and professionals have been brought in to deal with the issue, Xinhua news agency on Friday quoted a Shenzhen official as saying.

"There are also dangerous chemical items that need to be identified and treated," Yang Shengjun, head of the Shenzhen Housing and Urban-Rural Development Bureau, was quoted as saying.

Yang said no air or water contamination has been detected yet, according to Xinhua.

The company managing the dump site, Shenzhen Yixianglong, was urged to stop work four days before the disaster, an executive with a government-appointed monitoring agency said on Thursday.

Xinhua earlier reported that the dump was being used 10 months after it was supposed to have stopped taking waste, earning Yixianglong some 7.5 million yuan ($1.16 million) in fees.

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http://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-landslide-idUSKBN0U901L20151226

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Structure of the Lead：

      WHO- China government, Yang Shengjun

      WHEN-Dec. 20 

      WHAT-A landslide in southern China that killed two people and left more than 70 people missing

      WHY-waste construction material in a landfill site

      WHERE-Shenzhen

      HOW-not given

Keywords： 

 waste construction material (n.) 廢棄建材
landfill site (n.) 垃圾掩埋場

Week 1 - 福斯汽車排氣造假

Volkswagen: The scandal explained

What is Volkswagen accused of?

      It's been dubbed the "diesel dupe". In September, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) found that many VW cars being sold in America had a "defeat device" - or software - in diesel engines that could detect when they were being tested, changing the performance accordingly to improve results. The German car giant has since admitted cheating emissions tests in the US.      VW has had a major push to sell diesel cars in the US, backed by a huge marketing campaign trumpeting its cars' low emissions. The EPA's findings cover 482,000 cars in the US only, including the VW-manufactured Audi A3, and the VW models Jetta, Beetle, Golf and Passat. But VW has admitted that about 11 million cars worldwide, including eight million in Europe, are fitted with the so-called "defeat device".     The company has also been accused by the EPA of modifying software on the 3 litre diesel engines fitted to some Porsche and Audi as well as VW models. VW has denied the claims, which affect at least 10,000 vehicles.In November, VW said it had found "irregularities" in tests to measure carbon dioxide emissions levels that could affect about 800,000 cars in Europe - including petrol vehicles.        However, in December it said that following investigations, it had established that this only affected about 36,000 of the cars it produces each year.This 'defeat device' sounds like a sophisticated piece of kit.Full details of how it worked are sketchy, although the EPA has said that the engines had computer software that could sense test scenarios by monitoring speed, engine operation, air pressure and even the position of the steering wheel.     When the cars were operating under controlled laboratory conditions - which typically involve putting them on a stationary test rig - the device appears to have put the vehicle into a sort of safety mode in which the engine ran below normal power and performance. Once on the road, the engines switched out of this test mode.The result? The engines emitted nitrogen oxide pollutants up to 40 times above what is allowed in the US.

What has been VW's response?

      "We've totally screwed up," said VW America boss Michael Horn, while the group's chief executive at the time, Martin Winterkorn, said his company had "broken the trust of our customers and the public". Mr Winterkorn resigned as a direct result of the scandal and was replaced by Matthias Mueller, the former boss of Porsche.     "My most urgent task is to win back trust for the Volkswagen Group - by leaving no stone unturned," Mr Mueller said on taking up his new post.      VW has also launched an internal inquiry.      With VW recalling millions of cars worldwide from early next year, it has set aside €6.7bn (£4.8bn) to cover costs. That resulted in the company posting its first quarterly loss for 15 years of €2.5bn in late October.     But that's unlikely to be the end of the financial impact. The EPA has the power to fine a company up to $37,500 for each vehicle that breaches standards - a maximum fine of about $18bn.    The costs of possible legal action by car owners and shareholders "cannot be estimated at the current time", VW added.

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http://www.bbc.com/news/business-34324772

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Structure of the Lead：

      WHO- Volkswagen

      WHEN- In September 2015

      WHAT-VW cars being sold in America had a "defeat device"

      WHY-not given

      WHERE-America

      HOW-not given

Keywords：

diesel (n.) 柴油

dupe  (v.) 欺騙

emissions test (n.) 排放量檢測

week 6 - 歐洲難民潮

Hungarian journalist sacked for kicking refugees plans to sue one of them

A camera operator for a Hungarian nationalist television channel who was filmed kicking and tripping refugees has said she plans to sue one of them and Facebook.

Petra László apologised last month, saying “something snapped in me” when she kicked two refugee children and tripped up a man carrying a child at the border area of Röszke.

However, in an interview with the Russian newspaper Izvestia, she has said she plans to take legal action against Facebook for allegedly refusing to remove threatening groups on the site and deleting groups that supported her.

László also said she plans to sue Osama Abdul Mohsen, one of the Syrian refugees she kicked, saying: “He changed his testimony because he initially blamed the police. My husband wants to prove my innocence. For him it is now a matter of honour.”

László was fired by N1TV after footage of the incident was posted on Twitter by Stephan Richter, a reporter for the German television channel RTL.

N1TV said László’s behaviour was unacceptable and her job had been terminated “with immediate effect”.

László also said she wanted to move her family to Russia because she felt unsafe in Hungary. She said: “We consider Russia and we think that we will begin to learn Russian. For us it is important to leave Hungary. We will decide after the trial.”

Meanwhile, Mohsen and his family are beginning a new life in the Spanish city of Getafe, near Madrid, after a Spanish football academy offered to help him rebuild his life and restart his career as a football coach.

The Syrian had been a coach for al-Fotuwa, a first-division football team in Deir Ezzor, before the civil war forced his family to flee their hometown.

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http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/oct/21/hungarian-camera-operator-petra-laszlo-kicking-refugees-legal-action

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Structure of the Lead

Who- Petra László ,  Osama Abdul Mohsen

When- 21,October,2015

What-  a journalist tripping refugees and now  suing one of them and Facebook

Where- the border area of Röszke

How- not said

Keywords:

 camera operator (n.) 攝影師

tripped up  (v.) 絆倒

allegedly (v.) 據稱

testimony (n.) 證詞

innocence (n.) 無辜,清白

footage (n.) 鏡頭 - footage of the incident 這事件的錄像

terminated (v.) 終止,辭退

week 5 - 全球購物狂歡節(光棍節)

Alibaba leads world's biggest online shopping spree

    Today, Single's Day primarily is a Chinese phenomenon. Almost all the marketing in done in Chinese and is aimed at the Chinese market for delivery there.

"It’s a question of the logistics associated with getting you your purchase,"  Alibaba’s Paul Kranhold said.

But even if American consumers aren't shopping during Singles Day, American companies are very busy selling.

“For them, it’s getting their brands inside China and focusing on this huge opportunity,”  Kranhold said.

The massive sales on Singles Day help to show the growing importance of China and its rising middle class as a critical global market.  China has an estimated 600 million to 700 million middle class consumers, and American companies have been quick to see the potential.

“It’s a huge global opportunity for them. It’s a massive chance for them to engage with the largest and fastest growing consumer class in the world,” Zakkour said.

It's also a market where buyers often reject locally made goods, giving U.S. companies an in.

“Chinese consumers demand authentic high-quality products as diverse as baby formula, luxury shopping bags and organic produce, because they cannot trust product safety and authenticity domestically in China,” said Frontier Strategy Group's Backaler, who authored China Goes West, a book about Chinese companies going global.

The event has had a ripple effect in brick and mortar stores in China, with some now holding their own Singles Day sales.

It's also a cultural event. There was a gala opening in Beijing and a huge, star-studded variety show broadcast on nationwide TV Tuesday night that included American actor Kevin Spacey, whose Netflix drama House of Cards is a huge hit in China.

Singles Day first started among university students in Nanjing in the 1990s, as a day for bachelors to gather with friends and meet new people.

The date, 11-11, was chosen because it's a grouping of 1's, or singles. It morphed to include women and be a general "meet possible mates" day.

Alibaba rebranded it as a day for unmarried people to buy items they wanted, and in 2009 launched massive online sales on the day.

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http://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/2015/11/10/singles-day-china-1111-sale-alibaba/75511104/

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Structure of the Lead：    
  WHO-  Alibaba   WHEN-    11/11/2015

  WHAT-  single's day shopping festival
  WHY-  (Not said)

  WHERE- China

  HOW- (Not said)

Key words:

brand (n.) 品牌

authentic (adj.) 正版的

diverse (adj.) 多樣的ripple effect 漣漪效應

brick and mortar stores 實體店