Questões de Inglês

India Mars Mission: New York Times apologises for cartoon

 

The New York Times newspaper has apologised for a cartoon on India's Mars Mission following readers' complaints that it mocked India.

 

    The cartoon showed a farmer with a cow knocking at the door of a room marked Elite Space Club where two men sit reading a newspaper on India's feat.

    The cartoon was carried with an article titled India’s Budget Mission to Mars.
    Last month, India successfully put the Mangalyaan robotic probe into orbit around Mars.
  The total cost of the Indian mission was put at 4.5bn rupees ($74m; £45m), which makes it one of the cheapest interplanetary space missions ever.

   Only the US, Russia and Europe have previously sent missions to Mars, and India succeeded in its first attempt - an achievement that eluded even the Americans and the Soviets.
   Andrew Rosenthal, editorial page editor of the New York Times, wrote in a Facebook post that a "large number of readers" had complained about the cartoon.

    "The intent of the cartoonist, Heng Kim Song, was to highlight how space exploration is no longer the exclusive domain of rich, Western countries," Mr Rosenthal said.
   "Mr Heng, who is based in Singapore, uses images and text - often in a provocative way - to make observations about international affairs. We apologise to readers who were offended by the choice of images in this cartoon."
    Mr Rosenthal said Mr Heng "was in no way trying to impugn India, its government or its citizens".

   The Mangalyaan robotic probe was launched from the Sriharikota spaceport on the coast of the Bay of Bengal on 5 November 2013.
  The satellite joins four other missions that are circling the planet: Maven (US), Mars Odyssey (US), Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (US) and Mars Express (Europe).
[…]
Disponível em: <http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-29502062>. Acesso em: 6 out. 2014.

 

A charge acima apresentada pelo jornal The New York Times causou polêmica por

Brittany Maynard, the terminally ill cancer patient whose viral YouTube video reignited the debate on assisted-suicide, ended her life on Saturday.

 

    Mrs Maynard and her husband moved from California to Oregon, where assisted-suicide has been legal since 1997.

    Oregon's Death with Dignity Act allows terminally ill residents to obtain lethal prescriptions from doctors.

    Since 1997, 1,173 people were granted lethal prescriptions and 752 patients used it to end their own lives.

   Mrs Maynard, 29, who was suffering from a terminal brain cancer, died at home after administering lethal drugs on Saturday.

    She died "in the arms of her loved ones," a spokesman for the campaign group Compassion & Choices said.

    Sean Crowley said Mrs Maynard was suffering from increasingly severe seizures and head and neck pains which had at times limited her ability to speak.

Disponível em: <http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-29876277>. Acesso em: 3 nov. 2014.

 

O texto trata do tema:

Vegetative patients show glimmers of consciousness

By Smitha Mundasad Health reporter, BBC News

 

    Scientists have uncovered hidden signatures in the brains of people in vegetative states that suggest they may have a glimmer of consciousness.

    Doctors normally consider these patients - who have severe brain injuries - to be unaware of the world around them although they appear awake.

     Researchers hope their work will help identify those who are actually conscious, but unable to communicate.

[…]

Disponível em: . Acesso em: 16 out. 2014.

 

De acordo com o texto, pesquisas mostram que algumas pessoas

Minister Norman Baker wants end to UK animal tests

By Brian Wheeler

Political reporter

 

The minister in charge of regulating animal experiments in the UK has said he wants to see an end to all testing.

[…]

Disponível em: <http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-28580792>. Acesso em: 31 jul. 2014.

 

Ao seguir a regra gramatical de conjugação de verbos, de acordo com o exemplo da manchete da reportagem acima, a frase “She ________ her dignity at any price” será completada da seguinte forma com o verbo “to pursue”.

Virtual People, Real Friends

by Anna Pickard (The Guardian)

 

The benefits of forming friendships with those we meet online are obvious, so why is the idea still treated with such disdain? 

Another week, another survey claiming to reveal great truths about ourselves. This one says that people are increasingly turning “online friends” into people they’d think worthy of calling real-life friends. Well, that’s stating the obvious, I would have thought! If there’s a more perfect place for making friends, I have yet to find it. However, when surveys like this are reported in the media, it’s always with a slight air of “it’s a crazy, crazy world!” And whenever the subject crops up in the conversation, it’s clear that people look down on friends like these. In fact some members of my family still refer to my partner of six years as my “Internet Boyfriend.” 

It’s the shocked reaction that surprises me as if people on the internet were not “real” at all. Certainly, people play a character online quite often – they may be a more confident or more argumentative version of their real selves – but what’s the alternative? Is meeting people at work so much better than making friends in a virtual world? Perhaps, but for some a professional distance between their “work” selves and their “social” selves is necessary, especially, if they tend to let their guard down and might say or do something they will later regret. 

Those people disapproving of online friendships argue that the concept of “friendship” is used loosely in a world driven by technology, in which you might have a thousand online friends. They make a distinction between “social connections” – acquaintances who are only one click away – and meaningful human interaction, which they say requires time and effort. They note that for many Facebook “friends,” conversation is a way of exchanging information quickly and efficiently rather than being a social activity. 

However, I’ve found that far from being the home of oddballs and potential serial killers, the internet is full of like-minded people. For the first time in history, we’re lucky to enough to choose friends not by location or luck, but by those who have similar interests and senses of humour, or passionate feelings about the same things. The friends I’ve made online might be spread wide geographically, but I’m closer to them than anyone I went to school with, by millions miles. They are the best friends I have. 

Obviously, there will be concerns about the dangers of online friendship. There are always stories buzzing around such as “man runs off with the woman he met on Second Life” or people who meet their “soulmate” online and are never seen again. But people are people, whether online or not. As for “real” friendship dying out, surely, is social networking simply redefining our notion of what this is in the twenty-first century? The figures – half a billion Facebook users worldwide – speak for themselves. And technology has allowed countless numbers of these people to keep in close contact with their loved ones, however far away they are. Without it, many disabled or household people might go without social contact at all. Call me naive, call me a social misfit, I don’t care. Virtual people make best real friends. 

Adapted from http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2009/jan/02/internet-relationships

According to the writer, how does she feel about having online friends?

What is the synonym of the idiomatic expression underlined below?

It’s clear that people look down on friends like these.