Week7: Hong Kong

Hong Kong's street occupations have ended, but many demonstrators say this is only the beginning of their fight for free elections

Hong Kong authorities on Monday began tearing down the last of the city’s pro-democracy camps, bringing a quiet end to two and a half months of street occupations that constituted the most significant political protest in China since 1989’s Tiananmen Square uprising in Beijing.

By Tuesday, all three protest sites — in the Admiralty, Mong Kok and Causeway Bay districts — will be gone. The streets will be tidied up and returned to traffic, office workers and shoppers.

The protesters are leaving the streets with few tangible results. Beijing has rejected their insistence that Hong Kongers should have the right to freely elect the head of the city’s government without a pro-establishment committee first handpicking the candidates.

The Hong Kong government has also made it clear that it sees itself as a local representative of the central government, and is unwilling to convey the democratic aspirations of many of its people to Beijing.

Yet what has appeared out of the political hothouse of the tent cities is something with much more potential to undermine the Communist Party’s control over this wayward southern city, already culturally estranged from the mainland — and that is a generation of Hong Kongers who have defied Beijing, who have vowed to defy it again, and whose actions have generated a collection of resonant images that will inspire Hong Kongers for a long time to come.

After police used tear gas against protesters on Sept. 28, tens of thousands rallied to the streets. Right by the walls of the People’s Liberation Army barracks and the Hong Kong government’s headquarters, demonstrators unfurled umbrellas to protect themselves against police pepper spray. The poignant image of ordinary Hong Kongers standing up to a foe like China with nothing but these everyday items gave birth to the movement’s name: the Umbrella Revolution. By November, the protests had contracted. The weather turned petulant, the protest leadership sparred and splintered, and demonstrators camped in the streets began to wonder how long the governments in Hong Kong and Beijing were content to let them wait. Public opinion, too, turned against the protests, with commuters complaining of epic traffic snarls caused by barricaded thoroughfares — among them Hong Kong’s major arteries — and business owners in the occupied areas feeling the pressure of reduced takings.

In one of the last rites of defiance, more than 200 protesters, including leading democratic legislators, refused to leave the largest protest site as police and demolition crews approached it last week — except, those demonstrators said, under duress and in a police van. In a process that took hours and made for a dramatic scene, police escorted — and sometimes carried — protesters off the pavement, one by one, toward a waiting police bus.

Left behind in the streets, as the final demonstrators were shown out, were countless signs, chalked on the roads, posted on walls, hung as banners and even floated into the sky on balloons. They all promised the same thing: “We will be back.”

Here, in 30 photographs, is a record of Hong Kong’s political awakening, and proof that the threat to return to the streets is not an idle one.

(Source: http://time.com/3632739/occupy-hong-kong-umbrella-revolution-photo-essay/ )

Structure:
who: people in HK
what: Hong Kong authorities on Monday began tearing down the last of the city’s pro-democracy camps.
where: Hong Kong
when:Monday
why:severely affect traffic
how: teared down those camps and tents

Key words:

1. constitute: 構成，組成

2. tangible:明確的，明白的

3. handpick:精選
4. undermine:漸漸破壞
5. wayward:任性的，不定的
6. estrange:使疏遠
7. defy: 藐視，挑釁
8. resonant: 共鳴的
9. barrack: 軍營
10. unfurl: 展開
11. poignant: 嚴厲的，劇烈的
12. stand up to: 敢於面對
13. petulant: 暴躁的，易生氣的
14. spar: 拳鬥，爭論
15. splinter: 使破裂
16. epic: 史詩般的
17. rite: 儀式
18. defiance: 挑釁
19. escort: 護送

Week6: ISIS

ISIS Wants $1 Million for Journalist James Foley’s Body

After failing to ransom several U.S. and British hostages, ISIS is trying a disgusting new money-making scheme. Three sources tell BuzzFeed that the terrorist group is trying to secure $1 million for the remains of James Foley, the American journalist itbeheaded in August. The middlemen say ISIS wants them to reach out to the U.S. government or Foley's family, and they're willing to provide a DNA sample. "They ask for $1 million, and they will send DNA to Turkey, but they want the money first," said a former Syrian rebel fighter with ties to ISIS. "They will not give the DNA without the money."

Ransoming hostages can be a huge source of revenue for ISIS. Al Qaeda and its affiliates have raised $125 million in ransom payments in the last five years, according to the New York Times. Fifteen European hostages were released after their governments reportedly paid off ISIS, but the U.S. and Britain refuse to pay ransoms. Since Foley's death, ISIS has released videotape executions of American journalist Steven Sotloff, British aid worker Alan Henning, and American aid worker Peter Kassig.

A senior official in the Free Syrian Army who would be involved in negotiations worried that the effort would fall apart if it was made public, while simultaneously articulating why it makes no sense. "It will be like a shame for the U.S. government," he said. "People will ask why you brought the body but you didn’t bring him when he was alive."

( Source: http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2014/12/isis-wants-1-million-for-james-foleys-body.html)

Structure:

Who: ISIS

What: ISIS is trying to secure $1 million for the remains of James Foley.

Why: to increase their revenue

When: not given

Where: not given

How: They asked middlemen to reach out to the U.S. government or Foley's family for the ransom

Key words

1.          ransom:勒索贖金，贖金

2.          scheme:計畫，詭計，陰謀

3.          secure:獲得

4.          behead:斬首

5.          revenue:收益

6.          affiliate:分會，附屬機構

7.          simultaneously:同時

8.          articulating:明白的說

Week5: Ebola

Taiwanese man faces fine over false Ebola report

TAIPEI: A Taiwanese man faces a fine after telling doctors he had traveled to Africa and had symptoms of Ebola, sparking emergency quarantine measures at a hospital, officials said today.

The 19-year-old, who was not identified, could face a fine of up to TW$150,000 (US$4,800).

The man was hospitalized Friday at the Kaohsiung Veterans General Hospital in the south. He told doctors he was suffering from fever and diarrhea and had eaten bats during a recent trip to Nigeria.

The hospital immediately quarantined the man, meaning that other emergency cases had to be turned away, even though he did not have a fever at the time.

The event attracted widespread local media attention. The island’s Centres for Disease Control even released a statement calling on the public not to travel to West Africa unless essential, and not to eat wild animals if they did so.

But tests for Ebola were found Saturday to be negative and authorities also discovered that the man had never travelled abroad.

Doctors at the hospital said they feared he was mentally ill.

Asia has so far remained free from the Ebola virus ravaging parts of West Africa that has caused more than 6,100 deaths in less than a year.

(http://www.nst.com.my/node/60078)

Structure:

Who: a 19-year-old man

When: Friday

What: a man told doctors he had traveled to Africa and had symptoms of Ebola and asked for emergency quarantine measures

Where: Kaohsiung Veterans General Hospital

How: The hospital immediately quarantined the man

Key words:

1.          fine:罰金

2.          symptom:症狀

3.          quarantine:隔離，檢疫

4.          hospitalize:住院治療

5.          Kaohsiung Veterans General Hospital:高雄榮總醫院

6.          diarrhea:腹瀉

7.          turn away:拒絕

8.          Centres for Disease Control: 疾病管制署

9.          ravage:破壞，蹂躪