Chinese Lessons For First Graders

In France, demand for lessons in Chinese and Japanese now rivals traditional options Spanish and German. English is still tops.

By Aude Sérès
LE FIGARO/Worldcrunch

PARIS - Chinese class instead of football, Japanese instead of judo. For parents in France, the latest trend is to invest in their children's future by signing them up for Chinese lessons as soon as they reach pre-school.

In the latest indication for the growing popularity of Asian languages, so many parents are sending their children to learn Chinese or Japanese that the CNED (France’s national distance-learning center) has cancelled its traditional German language option for primary school children and replaced it with Chinese. About 100 children are signed up to the course, the same as those signed up for Spanish. As well as lessons, students get a compilation of documents on Chinese culture, and an exercise manual.

“For the last two years we’ve noted a 20% rise each year in the number of young children signed up,” says Ming Zhu, who is responsible for education in the cultural center. “Most often, these are French families making a strategic educational choice. The parents see the teaching as a factor that will contribute to their children’s future success.” But certain children are also instinctively enthusiastic about these languages from an early age. Manga culture and Japanese cartoons, video games, and even the figurines popular with young girls, are all factors attracting youngsters towards the Japanese culture.

Apple Suing Samsung for Copying

from http://breakingnewsenglish.com

Apple Inc. is suing Korea’s Samsung Electronics Co. for copying the design, look and even the packaging of its iPhone and iPad products. Apple alleges that Samsung’s Galaxy phones and tablet computers infringe the patents of its products. Included in the list of infringements are the use of the hand gestures used on Apple’s touch screens, the colour and shape of Samsung’s devices, and even the design of the boxes in which Samsung’s gadgets are sold. Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple, accused Samsung of violating Apple trademarks and patents. He included the Korean tech giant in a list of companies making tablets that would make 2011 the “Year of Copycats.” Steve Dowling, an Apple spokesperson, said the company had to protect its intellectual copyright.

Samsung executives are not happy at having to fight Apple in court. The two companies are dependent on each other in many ways. Samsung supplies many of the parts for Apple’s iPhone. A Samsung spokesperson said his company’s “development of core technologies and the strengthening of our intellectual property portfolio are keys to our continued success.” He added: “Samsung will respond actively to this legal action taken against us through appropriate legal measures to protect our intellectual property.” The courtroom battle is set to last months, perhaps years. A lot is at stake. Industry analysts predict tablet computers will soon overtake personal computers in global sales. Apple is determined the iPhone, introduced in 2007, and the iPad, which came in 2010, will continue as market leaders.

Shutting Out the Kids from the Family Fortune

by Robert Frank
Tuesday, May 10, 2011

provided by

Want to avoid raising spoiled kids?

Consider the Wellington Burt School of Wealthy Parenting.

Wellington R. Burt was a rich timber baron from Saginaw, Mich. He died in 1919 with a multimillion-dollar fortune -- one of America's largest at the time.

© The Saginaw News/AP

Wellington R. Burt

Yet rather than risk messing up his kids lives with a huge inheritance, he created an unusual will.

He stated that his fortune would be distributed to the family -- but only 21 years after his grandchildren's death.

His children and grandchildren weren't entirely deprived. Burt gave his "favorite son" $30,000 a year but the rest of his children got allowances roughly equal to those he gave his cook and chauffeur, according to the Saginaw News.

"I'm pretty sure he didn't like his family back then," said Christina Cameron, an heir and a great-great-great grandchild of Burt's.

Now that it's 21 years since the death of the last grandchild, the fortune is finally being turned over to Cameron and 11 others, including three great-grandchildren, seven great-great grandchildren and another great-great-great grandchild. The fortune is valued at more than $100 million. (She'll get a little more than $2.6 million, since those further up the family tree get more under a master agreement).

Saginaw County Chief Probate Judge Patrick McGraw said the estate is "one of the most complicated research projects" he's faced in his 12-year career in Saginaw.

Of course, skipping a generation is not unusual among rich parents who want to send a message to their kids (but somehow not their grandkids). Generation-skipping trusts and other estate-planning structures have been around for ages.

But Burt's will takes kid-skipping to a new, almost punitive level. Who knows, maybe his kids and grand-kids were better off for the lack of inheritance, or maybe the money would have allowed them to lead fuller, happier lives. We'll never know. It would be interesting to compare the lives of his new heirs with those who were shut out.

What do you think of Burt's School of Parenting?

Meditation Better Than Pain-Killers

Meditation can be better at relieving pain than the best pain-relieving drugs, according to a new report published in the Journal of Neuroscience. The study into the effects of the mind and pain was led by Dr Fadel Zeidan in the USA. The research looked at a technique called “focused attention,” which is a form of meditation where people focus their thoughts only on their breathing. Dr Zeidan said: “This is the first study to show that only a little over an hour of meditation training can dramatically reduce both the experience of pain and pain-related brain activation”. Zeidan added: “We found a big effect - about a 40 per cent reduction in pain intensity and a 57 per cent reduction in pain unpleasantness.”

The study involved a group of volunteers who had never meditated before. They attended four 20-minute classes to learn about focused attention. Before and after the meditation training, the researchers examined the participants’ brain activity using MRI (magnetic resonance imaging). During the scans, a heat device was placed on their leg to create pain. The MRI scans showed that after the meditation training, pain felt by every volunteer decreased from between 11 to 93 per cent. Zeidan compared these results to medicines, saying: “Meditation produced a greater reduction in pain than even morphine or other pain-relieving drugs, which typically reduce pain by about 25 per cent.”

-breakingnewsenglish.com

Waterboarding: Interrogation Or Torture?

Technique Dates Back To Spanish Inquisition And Has Been Used By World's Cruelest Regimes

By Alfonso Serrano(www.cbsnews.com)

CBS) Waterboarding, a controversial interrogation technique that simulates drowning, dates back to at least the Spanish Inquisition, and has been used some of the world's cruelest dictatorships, according to Human Rights Watch.

Forms of waterboarding vary but generally consist of immobilizing an individual on his or her back - head inclined downward - and pouring water over the face to induce the sensation of drowning.

Other techniques include dunking prisoners head-first into water, as was used by Chadian military forces in the mid 1980s. The Khmer Rouge, responsible for the deaths of approximately 1.5 million Cambodians during the 1970s, strapped victims on inclined boards, with feet raised and head lowered, and covered their faces with cloth or cellophane. Water then was poured over their mouths to simulate drowning.

Waterboarding, long considered a form of torture by the United States, produces a gag reflex and makes the victim believe death is imminent. The technique leaves no visible physical damage.

Republican presidential candidate John McCain, who was tortured as a prisoner of war in North Vietnam, considers waterboarding a form of torture. McCain has been quoted as saying that waterboarding is "no different than holding a pistol to his head and firing a blank."

After World War II, U.S. military commissions prosecuted several Japanese soldiers for subjecting U.S. soldiers to waterboarding, according to Human Rights Watch. In 1968, a U.S. soldier was court-martialed for water boarding a Vietnamese prisoner.

But in October 2006, Vice President Dick Cheney confirmed the United States had used the controversial technique to interrogate senior Al Qaeda suspects, and he said the White House did not consider waterboarding a form of torture.

In the aftermath of September 11, fewer than 100 terrorists have been held in the CIA's secret prisons, and fewer than one third of those have been subjected to what CIA Director Michael Hayden calls "special methods of interrogation," and what others called torture.

"The intelligence they produce is absolutely irreplaceable," Hayden said. "It's been crucial in giving us a better understanding of the enemy we face as well as leads on taking in taking other terrorists off the battlefield."

The CIA says it no longer uses waterboarding.

Cheney confirmed waterboarding was used to interrogate Khaled Sheikh Mohammed, the senior Al Qaeda operative now being held in Guantanamo Bay, adding that the use of the technique was "a no-brainer."

"The Bush administration continues to astonish," said Larry Cox, Amnesty International USA's executive director. "Its own State Department has labeled water boarding torture when it applies to other countries. Yet in President Bush's legal wonderland, water boarding is renamed an enhanced interrogation technique. President Bush continues to assert that his administration is complying with U.S. and international law, yet every available fact has proven the contrary."

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vocabulary:

interrogate- to ask (someone) questions in a thorough and often forceful way
simulate- to look, feel, or behave like (something)
immobilize- to keep (something or someone) from moving or working
imminent- happening very soon
gag reflex- normal reflex consisting of retching; may be produced by touching the soft palate in the back of the mouth
no brainer- a decision or choice that is very easy to make and requires very little thought

Is Marriage Becoming Old-Fashioned?

-http://www.english-online.at/news-articles

More and more Americans think that marriage is out-of date. According to a survey 40% of over 2,500 people asked said that marriage was a thing of the past and does not work in our society any more. When the same survey was conducted thirty years ago, only 11% of Americans thought that marriage was old-fashioned. Marriage is still important but not as important as it once was.

Of the people asked most of marriage’s supporters were seniors, 65 and older. Groups that thought marriage was obsolete included blacks and high-school graduates, as well as people from lower income groups.

Data collected in America has shown that people marry less, and when they do, they marry at a higher age. On average, women are 26 years old and men 28. For the first time in over fifty years there are more unmarried people than married ones in the age group between 25 and 34.

Many Americans think that having children is one of the reasons for marriage. But people get married for other reasons too. For the past centuries people married because they could survive better economically. They shared their money and had children who looked after them when they got old. Men went to work while women cared for the children and did the cooking.

Today more and more couples get married simply because they love each other. Financial stability no longer seems important any more. Young people are more serious about marriage because they often witness their parents separating.

More and more couples are living together without getting married. 29 percent of children under 18 live with parents who are divorced or have never married at all.

Americans today are becoming more liberal in defining what a family is. Most of them think that an unmarried couple living together with a child is a family and over 60% said that homosexual couples that have adopted a child are also a family.

===

vocabulary:

• according to = as reported by …
• adopt = to take someone’s child into your own home and bring it up
• care for = look after
• conduct = carry out
• couple = two people who are married or have a relationship with each other
• data = information
• define = describe
• divorce = to officially end a marriage
• economically = financially
• graduate = a person who has finished a school and has received a certificate or diploma
• included = also
• liberal = open-minded, tolerant
• lower income = without much money
• marriage = when two people are married
• marry = to become husband and wife
• obsolete = old fashioned, out-of-date
• on average = normally
• out-of-date = old fashioned, not modern
• senior = older person
• separate = split up, go away from each other
• serious = earnest, something is important
• share = to split up, divide
• society = people in general
• supporter = a person who is for something
• survey = a number of questions that you ask a lot of people in order to find out what they think about a certain subject
• survive = exist, live on in a difficult situation
• unmarried couple = two people who are not married
• witness = observe, see

China Protects its Language from English

-breakingnewsenglish.com


Chinese authorities have taken steps to protect its language from the increasing use of English and other languages. The People’s Daily Online website says, “with economic and social development, foreign languages are increasingly being used in all types of publications in China, including in newspapers, books, e-books and on the Internet”. China’s General Administration of Press and Publication (GAPP) said the invasion of English words and abbreviations in Chinese texts is “abusing the language”. Its website stated English has, "severely damaged the standard and purity of the Chinese language and disrupted the harmonious and healthy language and cultural environment, causing negative social impacts".

Officials from GAPP issued clear guidelines on how all Chinese publishers must now act, saying: “It is banned to mix at will foreign language phrases such as English words or abbreviations with Chinese publications, creating words of vague meaning that are not exactly Chinese.” This means abbreviations and acronyms that are currently widely used in Chinese publications, such as WTO, GDP and even IBM, must now be replaced with their Chinese equivalents. One editor at a Beijing publishing house said the translations would be time-consuming and confusing. He said: “I wonder how many people understand 'guoji shangye jiqi gongsi,’ when IBM is instantly recognizable.”