뉴스&스피킹(영자신문)
하루 10분이면 영어에 대한 두려움을 극복하고 누구나 유창하게 영어를 구사하실 수 있습니다.
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02.25 - Tuesday
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02.28 - Friday
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Vietnam Welcomes ‘Trump’ and ‘Kim’ In Hanoi, Vietnam Friday, cars stopped and tourists took a second look at what appeared to be North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and American President Donald Trump.
In front of the historic Metropole Hotel, “Kim” hugged "Trump”, and said, “Last time we did it in Singapore, which is kind of his territory. Now we are in my territory with my comrades.”
Wait a minute! Isn't their meeting to happen next week?
That's right. The man who looked like Kim is Howard X, an Australian man who has been impersonating the North Korean leader for some time. He has the same style of haircut and eyeglasses.
X was at the 2018 Olympics in South Korea. Singapore officials told him to stay away from Sentosa Island when the real Kim met with Trump last June.
Howard X was joined in Hanoi by Russell White, a Trump impersonator. Reporters with cameras surrounded the two men at the hotel briefly before employees asked them to leave.
Vietnam is to welcome the real Trump and the real Kim next week. The flags of Vietnam, the United States and North Korea line the streets in preparation for the meeting.
At a hair cutting shop on De La Thanh Street in Hanoi, people wanted to get styles similar to that of Kim or Trump.
Le Tuan Duong, its owner, said he had 200 customers in just two days. Duong said, “Kim’s style is a lot more popular among [his] customers.” He added Kim’s hair shows youth, while Trump’s suggests power.
The free haircut is available until February 28, when the summit ends.
In a coffee shop in the old city, Tran Lam Binh was painting colorful images of the two leaders. Binh said he started almost two weeks ago and hoped to finish 60 paintings in time for next week’s meeting.
Binh told the Vietnamese website VN Express, "I hope to invite the two leaders here and gift them my paintings.”
In a small shop nearby, Truong Thanh Duc was busy printing images of Kim and Trump on T-shirts. Duc planned to make about 500 shirts a day to sell for $5 each.
For those who do not want haircuts or images of the leaders on clothing, there are special drinks to mark the event.
Hanoi’s Standing Bar offers “Kim Jong Ale.” The alcoholic drink is said to be inspired by the water of Mount Paektu, the birthplace of Kim’s father, Kim Jong Il.
The nearby Unicorn Pub is serving a popular Korean drink of soju called “Rock It, Man.” The drink is mixed with pineapple and vanilla and named after the term Trump once used to call the North Korean leader, "Little Rocket Man."
The Tannin Wine Bar has “Peace Negroniations.” The mixed drink is made with soju, pink-grapefruit, vermouth and a drop of bitters. The bar’s operator told Reuters the bitters reminded him of Trump.
After their meeting in Singapore last June, Trump said the nuclear threat was over. But the president has since lowered expectations of a “complete denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula.”
Just this week, Trump told reporters in the Oval Office, “We’re going to have our meeting . . . As long as there’s no testing, I’m in no rush. If there’s testing, that’s another deal.”
I’m Caty Weaver.View -
Olympic Organizers Want Breakdancing for Paris 2024 Organizers of the 2024 Paris Olympics have called for breakdancing to be added as an official sport.
Paris organizers also proposed Thursday that climbing, surfing and skateboarding be included in the 2024 Paris Olympics. These three sports were already approved for inclusion in the 2020 Tokyo Olympics.
The International Olympic Committee (IOC) is the organization that decides which events to include. It is expected to decide on which sports to add in Paris after next year’s Tokyo Games.
The head of the Paris organizing committee, Tony Estanguet, announced the choices. The committee rejected proposals for several other sports, including baseball, karate and squash.
Estanguet said the choices were an attempt to produce a modern Olympics to inspirenew crowds and appeal to young people. Breakdancing is an example of a sport “which can be played anywhere and anytime in urban and other environments,” he said.
The four proposed sports “perfectly” represent Paris 2024's identity,” Estanguet added.
Organizers said inclusion of the four sports would not require additional competition space to be built in Paris. However, it would add 248 Olympic competitors, including 32 breakdancers.
In competitive breakdancing, “breakers” face off in “battles” against each other, either as individuals or teams. The battles give competitors the chance to show off their best dance moves. Breakdancers use a mix of physical and artistic skills that often combine elements from gymnastics or acrobatics.
Shawn Tay is the president of the World DanceSport Federation. He told the French Press Agency AFP he found the decision a great honor for the world of dance. He said it was a “humbling experience” to learn that for the first time, a form of dance is being considered for inclusion in the Olympic Games.
Breakdancing was included in the 2018 Youth Olympics in Buenos Aires in the form of head-to-head battles. Russia's Sergei Chernyshev, who competed under the name Bumblebee, won the first breakdancing gold medal for boys in the event. Japanese breaker Ramu Kawai won the top female honors.
Tony Estanguet said Paris organizers are also aiming to open up more events for the public to take part – both in Paris and virtually around the world. He said this could include organizing a public running race involving both Olympians and the public at the same time.
Organizers are also exploring connected technology that might let fans cyber compete against Olympians. That could include riding a stationary bike at home and comparing that performance to the cyclists competing in the Olympic races.
I’m Bryan Lynn.View -
Researcher: Technology Closely Follows Millions in Western China A Dutch researcher says technology is being used to closely follow the movements of more than 2.5 million people in western China.
Internet security researcher Victor Gevers recently released information about an operation in China’s far western Xinjiang area. Xinjiang is home to an ethnic minority population that is mostly Muslim.
He said he discovered a database of information collected by a Chinese company on people in the area. Gevers is the co-founder of GDI Foundation, a Netherlands-based not-for-profit that finds and informs organizations of online security issues.
The information included personal details like names, birthdates, places of employment and passport pictures. It also recorded real-time details such as the current position of individuals and places they had recently visited, Gevers said.
The database operation appears to have recorded people’s movements with facial recognition technology. The researcher said the information on people’s movements included about 6.7 million individual records during a 24-hour period. During January, the system followed more than 386 million “objects.” Numerous cameras were used to identify where people went.
Gevers said the company, called SenseNets, produces different artificial intelligence-based security systems. In addition to the collected information he found, he also discovered the company had left the database unprotected for months.
“This system was open to the entire world, and anyone had full access to the data,” Gevers told the Associated Press.
On Twitter, Gevers gave a breakdown on the ethnicity groups represented in the database. It showed that 55 percent of the individuals were identified as Han Chinese, the country’s ethnic majority. Twenty-eight percent were Uyghur, while 8 percent were Kazakh - both of which are Muslim ethnic minority groups.
Xinjiang is a huge, resource-rich area in China’s far west. It shares a border with eight countries, including Pakistan, Russia and Afghanistan. In recent years, China has put in place severe security measures in Xinjiang. Police checkpoints are widespread and spy cameras watch over large areas.
Officials have set up detention centers that China has described as “re-education camps.” Experts say more than 1 million people from Muslim minority groups are detained in camps across Xinjiang.
China’s government says the camps are aimed at preventing Islamic extremism and separatism. Rights groups, the United States and other countries have condemned the camps as forms of “arbitrary” detentions.
Government security and surveillance methods are used in other parts of China as well. But the measures seem far heavier in Xinjiang than in most other areas. Experts and human rights activists have noted Xinjiang may be a testing ground for methods that could be used in other parts of the country in the future.
The company that kept the database, SenseNets, was founded in the China’s southern city of Shenzhen in 2015, the Associated Press reported. It is majority-owned by Beijing-based NetPosa, a technology company specializing in video surveillance. The SenseNets website says the company has partnerships with police forces in Jiangsu and Sichuan provinces, as well as in Shanghai.
Officials from SenseNets did not respond to AP requests for comment on operation of the database.
Victor Gevers told the AP that after he released details of his discovery, he learned the system might be used as a surveillance tool against Xinjiang’s Muslim minority groups. This, he said, made him “very angry.”
“I could have destroyed that database with one command,” Gevers said. “But I choose not to play judge and executioner because it is not my place to do so.”
I’m Bryan Lynn.View -
Olympic Volunteers: Great Chance or Exploitation? Unpaid Olympic volunteers do almost everything: guide athletes around, welcome important people and help lost visitors. International Olympic Committee officials say the games could not be held without these volunteers. They are praised and thanked by presidents and prime ministers.
Even with billions of dollars to spend on the games, there remains the need for people who will work for free. The 2020 Tokyo Olympics and Paralympics will require an estimated 80,000 volunteers. And many Japanese people are seeking the chance to take part. About 200,000 have begun the process to gain a volunteer position this month.
The unpaid labor enriches Olympic advertisers, powerful television networks and the Switzerland-based International Olympic Committee. But there are critics of the situation.
“To me, it’s very clearly economic exploitation,” said Joel Maxcy, president of the International Association of Sports Economists and a professor at Drexel University in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
Maxcy described a situation in which volunteers create the product but “someone else is collecting nearly all of the money derived from those labor efforts.”
So why do people volunteer at the games? For one, it is exciting to be connected to the powerful Olympic brand and to get close to star athletes.
“I’m willing to work for free if I can get a chance to see and talk to Olympians from all over the world in person,” said Yutaro Tokunaga. The 26-year-old attended a recent program for volunteers. He said his employer is giving him five paid days off from work during the Olympics.
Masanobu Ishii is also seeking a volunteer position. He said he wanted to demonstrate the spirit of “omotenashi,” or Japanese hospitality. Some volunteers work the games from a sense of civic duty or to show their patriotism. Many older volunteers do not need more money.
Andy Schwarz is a California-based labor economist. He said some people would even pay for the chance to volunteer. “It’s easy to imagine the Olympics charging for the right to help if the honor were high enough,” he said.
Olympic volunteers usually pay their own hotel and transportation costs. They eat for free on the days they work. Their training is free and they are provided with official clothing that they can keep at no cost. In Tokyo, volunteers will get up to 1,000 yen daily, about nine U.S. dollars, to get to work on the city’s massive train system.
More than 65 percent of the volunteer candidates for the Tokyo Olympics are Japanese. About the same percentage are women.
A study done for the IOC about volunteers at the 2000 Sydney Olympics said their value was at least $60 million for 40,000 volunteers. Now, games organizers will use two times that number of unpaid workers.
Separately, the Tokyo city government will use another 30,000 unpaid volunteers.
Some say the volunteers represent the spirit of the games. They recall almost 50 years ago when Olympic athletes were unpaid amateurs. The IOC expresses pride in its volunteers. IOC member John Coates heads the inspection team for Tokyo. He strongly defended the use of unpaid help.
“They don’t have to (volunteer) if they don’t want to,” the Australian said. “They get trained, they get their uniforms. They are part of something very exciting. ... I don’t think there’s a case for paying volunteers.”
Almost everyone else working the Olympics gets paid. Many get paid a lot. Tokyo is spending at least $20 billion to organize the Olympics. Organizers have raised $3 billion in local advertisements. That is two times the amount of any other Olympics.
IOC members like Coates receive daily pay of between $450 to $900 when they are on Olympic business. They are also provided first class air travel and stays at top hotels.
IOC President Thomas Bach is officially described as a volunteer. But the organization gives him about $250,000 per year. The IOC’s total revenue in the 2013-2016 Olympic cycle was $5.7 billion. It says it returns 90 percent of its revenue to sports groups and national Olympic committees.
American network NBC is paying $7.75 billion for the rights to six Olympics beginning in 2022, an extension on a $4.38 billion contract.
Tracey Dickson studies volunteerism at Canberra University in Australia. She says there are many reasons for volunteering that are more than just “economics.” She said people like the friendships they make during the experience.
“I can understand the economic argument,” she said. “But if they were being paid, it would be a real job with real expectations.” She said a completely different feeling would be created if they were paid.
“If they are just employees well, they’re just another employee. There’s so much value in that feel-good factor,” she added.
The 2016 Rio de Janeiro Olympics had problems with unpaid workers. Organizers said about 30 percent of the volunteers failed to show up on any given day of the two weeks of competition.
Mary Robinson is the former president of Ireland as well as the former UN High Commissioner for Human Rights. She worries about using volunteers in places where there is a lot of poverty and paying jobs are needed.
Robinson is now serving with the Switzerland-based Centre for Sports and Human Rights, an organization established last year.
She says volunteers should not be used by organizations like the IOC that have enough money to pay people.
David Berri, a sports economist at Southern Utah University, said that organizers and Olympic officials should also work for free, or for less pay.
“If the volunteers were paid, there would be less money for everyone else,” he said. “The Olympics have learned people will work for free, so they take advantage of this.”
I’m Susan Shand. And I'm Jonathan Evans.View -
Putin Says Russia Could Target US if New Missiles Put in Europe President Vladimir Putin says Russia is prepared to target American “decision-making centers” if the United States sends new missiles to Europe.
The Russian leader spoke Wednesday during his state-of-the-nation address in Moscow. He said Russia would answer any U.S. move to deploy new missiles closer to Russia by stationing its own new missiles closer to America or by deploying faster missiles.
Putin said Russia does not plan to be the first to deploy new intermediate-rangenuclear missiles. But he warned of possible action against new U.S. nuclear missile deployments in Europe that would put the weapons much closer to Russia.
“They will only take 10-12 minutes to reach Moscow,” Putin said. “It’s a very serious threat to us, and we will have to respond.”
He said Russia could deploy new weapons of its own that would be designed to reach enemy targets just as quickly.
“Russia will be forced to create and deploy new types of weapons that could be used not only against the territories where a direct threat to us comes from, but also against the territories where decision-making centers directing the use of missile systems threatening us are located,” he said.
In his address, Putin also spoke about the U.S. plan to withdraw from the Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces Treaty, or INF. American president Ronald Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev signed the treaty in 1987. It banned the production, testing and deployment of land-based missiles with a range of 500 to 5,500 kilometers.
Intermediate-range weapons were seen as especially dangerous because they reach their targets much faster than long-range missiles. An attack with intermediate-range missiles would leave effectively no time for decision-makers to react, raising the possibility of a world nuclear conflict over a false launch warning.
The U.S. has accused Russia of violating the INF treaty by deploying a kind of missile that violates its limits.
Putin said the U.S. accusations were “unfounded” and were used to “justify(America’s) withdrawal from the treaty.” He added that the move will also give the U.S. the chance to build and deploy new missiles.
The president did not explain how or where Russia planned to deploy missiles with a shorter strike time. One possibility would be to put them on land of an ally near U.S. territory.
Russia could also deploy faster missiles on submarines, or use one of the hypersonic weapons it says it has been developing. Such weapons are called hypersonic because they operate at an extremely high speed. They can travel as fast as several times the speed of sound.
Putin said a new submarine designed to carry an underwater drone with nuclear strike capability - called Poseidon - would be launched this spring.
I’m Bryan Lynn.View