뉴스&스피킹(영자신문)

하루 10분이면 영어에 대한 두려움을 극복하고 누구나 유창하게 영어를 구사하실 수 있습니다.

  • Monday
    02.10
  • Tuesday
    02.11
  • Wednesday
    02.12
  • Thursday
    02.13
  • Friday
    02.14
  • Uyghur Woman Uses Social Media to Bring 'Justice and Freedom' to Father The last time Samira Imin had contact with her father was April of 2017. It was her father’s birthday. The two exchanged pictures and messages on the Chinese social messaging service WeChat.

    Weeks later, her father disappeared. He became one of over a million ethnic Uyghurs to be detained in so-called “re-education camps” in far western China.

    Today, the 27-year-old Imin is using social media to bring attention to her father’s case -- and the situation of others like him.

    The Uyghurs

    The Uyghurs are a Turkic ethnic group. Most Uyghurs are Muslim. The language they speak is related to Turkish and other Central Asian languages.

    About 12 million Uyghurs live in China’s Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region. Since early 2017, rights groups and other experts estimate that over 1 million Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities have been detained in camps across the area.

    China’s government has said Xinjiang faces a threat from Islamist militants and separatists. Officials have said they are seeking to end extremism and violence in the area through education.

    Former camp detainees have said they were forced to reject their way of life, religion and native language. They also describe abusive treatment and extremely poor conditions inside the camps.

    Samira Imin’s father, Iminjan Seydin, was a full-time professor of Chinese history at the Xinjiang Islamic Institute before his disappearance. The 54-year-old lived in Xinjiang’s capital, Urumqi, with his family.

    Imin describes her father as “a very liberal and advanced thinker.” He is not someone who should be a target for “re-education,” she added.

    After more than two years in one of the camps, Imin’s father was sentenced to 15 years in prison on charges of inciting extremism. He was punished for having published an Arabic language learning book back in 2014.

    Imin says her father received government permission before the book’s publication.

    Losing Contact

    The same year that her father’s book was published, Imin came to the United States. She studied biology at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.

    During most of her time as a student in the U.S., she kept in touch with her family mostly through WeChat. That became much more difficult, however, after 2017.

    Imin completed her studies in 2018. She told VOA she was “heartbroken” not to have her family there in Massachusetts to celebrate the event with her. By then, the Chinese government had taken away her parents’ passports, as it had done for thousands of other Uyghurs.

    After graduation, Imin began working as a medical professional at the teaching hospital of Harvard University.

    Life in Xinjiang

    Growing up in Urumqi, Imin was educated in the Chinese language. When she was young, Uyghur parents could choose whether to send their children to majority-Chinese or majority-Uyghur classrooms.

    “Sending me to Chinese school instead of Uyghur...was my parents’ choice in the hope of making me well-rounded person in a society where Chinese population (was growing) exponentially,” Imin told VOA.

    After Imin began attending college in eastern China, her father urged her to study medicine in the United States.

    Disappearance

    Iminjan Seydin spent his birthday in April 2017 doing required work in a rural part of Xinjiang. He was expected to return to his home and permanent workplace in Urumqi that summer.

    But in May, Chinese officials detained him. His detention came as part of an operation against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in Xinjiang.

    Imin asked her family for answers.

    “They just said, ‘the rural work program had been extended for another three years.’”

    At first, she believed family members. She trusted them, and she trusted her country. “I kept believing, she said, and then I was busy with my school.”

    Months passed, and there was still no news from her father. She was no longer able to safely ask her mother or younger brother about her father because of security concerns.

    The Chinese government closely controls all internet use in Xinjiang. Uyghurs who have not been put in one of the camps still face government extreme surveillance. They have little contact with the outside world.

    Social media activism

    Internationally, Uyghur activists have been successful at using social media to speak up for their people. A series of videos on TikTok by an American teenager went viral last November. They condemned China’s policy against the Uighurs. The videos, which were created to look like makeup lessons, have been played millions of times. TikTok, a Chinese-owned social network, temporarily blocked the teenager’s account. Her account was later restored.

    Late last year, Samira Imin heard from a friend living in Beijing that her father had received a 15-year prison sentence. Since then, Imin has joined hundreds of other Uyghur activists in being outspoken online about their people’s situation in China. She talks with members of the media in hopes of pressuring Chinese officials to release her father.

    She said, “I wasn't too active until I found out specifically about my father's case.” Now, she says, “I'm active on social media to ask for freedom and justice for my father.”

    I’m Jonathan Evans.

    And I'm Ashley Thompson.
    View
  • Health Experts Prepared to Deal with Coronavirus Epidemic The World Health Organization (WHO) said on Monday that the world has nearly 17,400 confirmed cases of the Novel Coronavirus. More than 99 percent of those cases were reported in China.

    Compare that to the number of people infected with influenza in the United States. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimates the flu has sickened between 19,000,000 and 26,000,000 people since October 1.

    CDC officials also report that up to 25,000 people have died because of an infection during the four-month period. Officials note that, in an average year, the flu kills up to 56,000 people nationwide.

    As of Sunday, there were 360 deaths from the coronavirus, mostly in China. There are currently 11 confirmed cases in the United States, but no deaths from the virus.

    Experts are well prepared

    Last October, the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security held an exercise to help prepare health experts for what is happening today. It was called Event 201. Johns Hopkins University worked in partnership with the World Economic Forum and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to organize the event.

    Event 201 brought together government experts, business leaders and representatives of non-governmental organizations. The purpose was to talk about how the world would react to a serious epidemic.

    Crystal R. Watson is a doctor and an Assistant Professor at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. She said the event was meant to help leaders prepare for what is happening now.

    “The purpose of the exercise...was to raise issues of preparedness and response for those leaders so they could start working on making sure that we can develop medical countermeasures, drugs and vaccines, quickly in a severe outbreak, that we can respond and take care of the people who become sick.”

    Life goes on in China and elsewhere

    News stories about the coronavirus note some of the steps governments and health officials have planned for many years.

    People flying to the United States from China now have to stop at one of seven airports. CDC workers are measuring the temperature of each passenger and looking for signs of breathing problems.

    Travelers who are coughing or have other symptoms may be taken to a hospital for more testing.

    One person who recently returned from China is Nick Caputo. He works for Sunrise International Education. He directs camps in China for students to learn about debate.

    Caputo was hoping to stay in China longer. But when the travel restrictions were announced, his company decided that he should return to the U.S. at once. He said, “That way I would have time to go through a self-quarantine and make sure I wasn’t infected before I ran my program here.”

    Schedule change for university life in China

    Craig Blacklock teaches English at Wenzhou-Kean University in Wenzhou, China. He says the university has changed the beginning of its spring term from February 9 to March 1. He said the school also is helping its teachers and employees get much-needed supplies and food.

    Blacklock told VOA that people around Wenzhou are taking temperatures and following the advice of the government to reduce the spread of the virus.

    How to protect yourself and others

    While governments are taking steps to limit travel and reduce infections, Crystal Watson thinks there are things private citizens can do.

    “The average person should also be just taking general measures to prevent infection with respiratory diseases. We are in the middle of cold and flu season as well and so - just good practices of covering your cough and sneeze, washing your hands very frequently, avoiding people who have a cough - and just trying to stay well in the midst of cold and flu season.”

    Serious cases get the most attention at first

    With the novel coronavirus, one that did not affect people until now, doctors often pay more attention to the serious cases.

    “We are still learning a lot about this new virus...one thing that happens early on in an outbreak, a novel outbreak like this is that you see there’s a bias toward seeing the more severe cases and death. So we’re seeing those now. But as we go through and gather more...data, we’re going to find that there are many more mild cases that are not being now detected. So we anticipate that that fatality rate will decrease significantly as this continues to spread.”

    The world is better prepared now

    Crystal Watson says that the world is better prepared now than it was over 15 years ago when faced with Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome, known as SARS.

    “There are definitely very important steps that the world has taken over the last 10 years to get better prepared. We can always do more, but I think people are taking this very seriously and responding in the best way that we can.”

    I’m Jill Robbins.
    View
  • Technology Companies, Health Officials Fight Coronavirus Misinformation Health officials and technology businesses are attempting to fight misinformation about the new, fast-spreading coronavirus.

    Social media has been a major source of false information since the virus was first identified last month in Wuhan, China.

    This week, the World Health Organization, or WHO, said that worldwide reporting on the crisis had led to “a massive infodemic.” The organization noted an explosion of information that has made it difficult for people to find trustworthy sources and dependable guidance.

    The misinformation included one claim on Facebook that drinking bleach can cure a coronavirus infection. Another stated, China’s Communist Party "will finally admit that the real source of the coronavirus is ‘a lab in Wuhan’ linked to its covert biological weapon programs."

    Another report falsely claimed that vaccines for the virus had already been manufactured. Several reports on social media massively overestimated the number of deaths. One video receiving a lot of social media attention reportedly showed an infected man vomiting blood on a train.

    Several fact-checking websites – such as Snopes, PolitiFact and FactCheck.org – are investigating the many coronavirus claims and rating them as either true or false.

    Facebook said in a statement it was “working to limit the spread of misinformation and harmful content and connecting people to helpful information.”

    Facebook’s head of health, Kang-Xing Jin, explained that the company was searching out information related to the virus and debunking false claims. When something is identified as false on Facebook or Instagram, he said, the company takes steps to “limit its spread.”

    Jin added that Facebook sends messages to its users who already shared or seek to share fact-checked content found to be false. The company is also working with WHO officials to increase the amount of truthful, official information about the virus.

    Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus is Director-General of the WHO. This week, he recognized the anti-misinformation efforts of Facebook and other services including Twitter, Tencent and TikTok.

    He also said that the WHO is working with Google “to make sure people searching for information about coronavirus see WHO information at the top of their search results.”

    Google announced it had activated one of its SOS Alerts to help fight misinformation in search requests. The company uses the alert system “to make emergency information more accessible during a natural or human-caused crisis.”

    The system provides users of Google’s search engine with special links to emergency information and the latest reports about the health crisis. The data comes from government sources, health organizations and trusted media.

    Google-owned YouTube said it was fighting misinformation by pushing official reports about the virus and trusted news sources to the top of its search results.

    On Twitter, people searching for information on the virus are shown a link that reads “Know the facts.” The link directs users to the coronavirus website of the United States government’s Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

    Several users of the social media video service TikTok – which is popular among teenagers – claimed to have the virus and made false statements about it. TikTok has said it is attempting to limit such content. In a statement, the company said its user guidelines “do not permit misinformation that could cause harm to our community or the larger public.”

    In some cases, medical doctors themselves are using social media services to fight misinformation. Rose Marie Leslie is a doctor at the University of Minnesota. She has shared personal videos on TikTok to debunk misinformation and provide actual facts about the coronavirus.

    “The thing about TikTok as a platform is any video can go viral whether or not somebody is giving out factual information,” she told The Associated Press.

    In many cases, Leslie added, people sharing content do not say where it came from. “My goal is to be able to give the facts in every single one of my videos,” she said. By the end of last week, Leslie’s videos had received more than 3 million views.

    I'm Dorothy Gundy.

    And I’m Bryan Lynn.
    View
  • Should Schools Ban Mobile Phones? Mobile phones have changed the way we communicate, but people disagree on whether the devices are useful tools for education.

    Students can be easily distracted by their phones during class.

    Are they listening to the teacher or texting their friends? Are they taking a picture of a quiz to cheat? Maybe they are playing a game, or watching a video, instead of paying attention.

    School officials, teachers and parents all are trying to find out the best way to supervise students’ use of mobile or cellphones.

    In the Canadian province of Ontario, officials are restricting phone use during teaching time. However, there are exceptions for classroom activities, health and other emergencies.

    France passed a law in 2018 banning the use of cellphones in schools for students up to age 15, the age when they go to high school.

    Last July, California Governor Gavin Newsom signed a new law. It says state public and charter schools can ban students from using smartphones in class and at school. It does not, however, say schools are required to completely ban the devices.

    The law asks school districts, charter schools and education offices to develop cellphone policies to prevent, or limit students’ use of the devices at school. There are exceptions, which include emergencies or issues related to health and well-being.

    One high school, in California’s Silicon Valley area, had a serious problem with students and their cellphones.

    Joanne Sablich, a French teacher, said students using their phones in class had been a real problem. They were “checking their phones and texting-- going on social media,” she said, and she would have to take the phone “over and over and over."

    The schools vice principal, Adam Gelb, said some students were spending as much as 11 or 12 hours a day on their phones.

    So, the administration turned to technology for answers. San Mateo High School now locks up cellphones during the day in a special container. Each student must put their phone away in a small bag with a magnetic lock. It is called a Yondr Pouch.

    At the end of the day, students unlock the bag with another device. The bag is being used in schools in both the United States and Europe. The cost for the equipment is around $20,000 a year for a school, or $12 for each student.

    Teacher Joanne Sablich is happy. She sees a difference in students’ behavior. She said they are “very engaged this year,” instead of just looking at their phones.

    Other schools are choosing simpler answers to the problem—they ban cellphones in classrooms. One of these schools is Forest Hills school district, near Grand Rapids, Michigan. School officials decided this school year to ban cellphones throughout the day, including at lunch.

    Dan Behm is the superintendent of the district. He told the publication Education Week the reason why district officials put the ban in place. They “wanted to provide a clean break for students and not have the frenetic energy that can happen if kids start texting each other or social-media posts start going,” Behm said.

    They tried the ban last year as a test. Behm said they found that students said they were less anxious when they were not so attached to their devices.

    Education Week found that more than 30 schools, and in some cases school districts, have put in place some kind of restrictions during the current or last school year. Districts across the country also have their own versions of phone restrictions both formal or informal.

    One district choosing not to ban cellphones is Saint Marys Area School District in the state of Pennsylvania. Brian Toth is the superintendent of the small rural district. He told VOA, each teacher can decide whether, and when, to restrict students’ cellphone use.

    Toth said students have grown up with cellphones, and “it is our responsibility to teach them proper use for tools within the classroom.” He added that schools are teaching about cellphones and how to use them with social media and the Internet.

    “It is part of changing education for kids,” he said. “As long as we teach them to use them responsibly.”

    The technology is here, Toth said, schools should use it to help students, and not fear it.

    I’m Anne Ball.

    And I'm Brian Lynn.
    View
  • Trump Claims Accomplishments amid Tension with Democrats American President Donald Trump delivered his yearly State of the Union address Tuesday. He gave credit to himself and his administration for what he called the “Great American Comeback.”

    Republicans welcomed Trump to the House of Representatives with the cheers of “four more years.” Ahead of his speech, the president appeared to reject the offer of a handshake from Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, a Democrat.

    Trump said Tuesday, “In just three short years, we have shattered the mentality of American decline and we have rejected the downsizing of America’s destiny...We are moving forward at a pace that was unimaginable just a short time ago, and we are never going back!”

    The nationally televised speech was delivered in the Democrat-controlled House of Representatives. Lawmakers in the House voted to impeach Trump for abuse of power and obstruction of justice late last year. The speech took place one day before the Republican-led Senate will likely vote to acquit him of the charges.

    Trump noted the nation's strong economy, low unemployment rates and rising stock markets in his three years as president. He said that he has delivered tax cuts and new trade agreements. He promised to continue to protect gun rights and said he aimed to name more conservative judges to the Supreme Court. And, he said he would not let “socialism destroy American health care.”

    During the hour-long speech, Trump introduced 13-year old Iain Lanphier. The young boy hopes to join the U.S. Space Force, a newly established branch of the military created under Trump.

    Sitting near Lanphier on Tuesday was his great-grandfather Charles McGee. He is one of the last surviving Tuskegee Airmen, a group of African-American pilots who fought in World War II. McGee received his general star from Trump just hours earlier.

    Trump also had a surprise for Janiyah Davis, a fourth-grader from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. She attended the State of the Union address with her mother. Trump announced a special scholarship to help her go to the school she wishes to attend. The move was meant to bring attention to the president’s support for an education movement known as school choice.

    Later in his speech, Trump asked his wife, first lady Melania Trump, to present the Presidential Medal of Freedom to conservative talk show host Rush Limbaugh. The medal is the country’s highest civilian honor.

    Trump also reunited a soldier with his family. Townsend Williams had been on his fourth deployment in the Middle East. His wife, Amy, and their two children were in attendance for the State of the Union but did not know Williams was there, too. Trump said, “Welcome home, Sergeant Williams” to the cheers of USA! USA! in the chamber.

    On foreign policy, Trump said, “We are supporting the hopes of Cubans, Nicaraguans, and Venezuelans to restore democracy.” He then introduced opposition leader Juan Guaido, who received loud applause from lawmakers in both political parties. Trump called Guaido “the true and legitimate president of Venezuela.”

    The president ended his speech saying, “The sun is still rising. God's grace is still shining. And my fellow Americans, the best is yet to come.”

    As Trump ended his address, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was seen tearing up a copy of the president’s speech. When asked by reporters why she had torn up Trump’s speech, Pelosi said, “It was the courteous thing to do, considering the alternative.

    Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer delivered the Democratic answer to the State of the Union. She noted the differences between the president’s words and actions taken by Democratic leaders.

    “When the President says the economy is strong, my question is, strong for whom?” Whitmer said. “Strong for the wealthy, who are reaping rewards from tax cuts they don’t need. The American economy needs to be a different kind of strong.”

    Hai Do wrote this story for Learning English. Ashley Thompson was the editor.
    View