Week 7

Death toll climbs as Nepal rescuers search for missing hikers in Himalayas

Kathmandu, Nepal (CNN) -- The grim search for missing hikers and bodies buried under snow continued Saturday against the dramatic backdrop of Nepal's Himalayas, as officials confirmed that at least 39 people had died in an exceptionally heavy snowfall.
Rescue crews combed the high-altitude paths and passes of the popular Annapurna region, as well as the neighboring Manang district for trekkers missing for nearly a week.Nine stranded Israeli tourists were rescued Thursday, as well as three Canadians and four Indians who were pulled to safety, according to the Trekking Agencies' Association of Nepal.The group said it deployed helicopters to rescue hikers stranded by snow, floodwaters and avalanches unleashed along the popular Himalayan trekking trails by heavy snow Tuesday.Regional administrator Dinesh Kumar Thapaliya told CNN that 14 trekkers were now known to have died near the iconic 5,416-meter (17,770-foot) Thorung La Pass in Mustang district, the highest point of the popular 21-day Annapurna Circuit trek.The bodies include those of Israelis, Nepalis and Poles, he said.Even as the total death toll climbed from the 17 reported Wednesday, Thapaliya warned that there are chances of finding more people dead or lost around the pass.A Nepal army team made it up to 16,000 feet on Thursday -- still short of the pass -- on the side of the mountain where the 14 bodies were found.'This is the dangerous part'Friday's search efforts were concentrated on the other side of the pass, which falls in Manang district, "This is the dangerous part," Thapaliya said.There has been no contact with the remote area even by phone, he said.One Israeli was rescued from near the pass Thursday. Three trekkers have been confirmed as missing, two of them Indian and one Japanese.The pass is not the only area to see deaths due to the unseasonably heavy snow.The bodies of another five trekkers, four Canadians and an Indian, were found in Manang district, Thapaliya said. Three Nepali farmers also were killed.Farther west, five mountaineers -- two Slovaks and three Nepalis -- lost their lives in an avalanche Tuesday night near Nepal's seventh highest peak, Mount Dhaulagiri, officials said.Altogether, 326 people have now been rescued as of Saturday, more than half of them from Manang district, said Baburam Bhandari, chief district officer of Nepal's Mustang district.'Trekking is adventurous'
This is already one of the deadliest such tragedies in the history of Nepal, a nation of about 26 million known worldwide for its spectacular mountain ranges, including Mount Everest.Annapurna is far and away the most popular of its trekking areas, with some 90,000 trekking there in 2013, according to Narendra Lama, tourism officer of Annapurna Area Conservation Project."There have been incidents of trekkers being killed in snowstorms, landslides and avalanches in the past but not as many as this year," Lama said."But I do not think that this disaster will have a big impact since it is a natural disaster and not about a security situation," he said. "Trekking is adventurous in nature after all."October is the best month of the year to do the Annapurna Circuit trek, meaning more visitors than usual may have been in the area when unusually heavy snow caused by Cyclone Hudhud in eastern India came down Monday and Tuesday.Last year, about 20,000 foreign trekkers crossed the Thorung La Pass, almost 6,000 of them in October, according to Annapurna Conservation Area statistics.Many remote Nepali communities rely on foreign trekkers and mountaineers for income and employment, meaning a drop in visitors could hit local people hard.The deaths come only six months after tragedy last struck Nepal, on the slopes of Mount Everest.Then, a bruising avalanche of ice swept 16 Sherpas to their deaths. After the accident, which came right before the peak season in May, many Sherpas refused to climb and at least six companies that lead Everest expeditions called off their 2014 climbs.

http://edition.cnn.com/2014/10/18/world/asia/nepal-snowstorm/index.html?iref=allsearch

Structure of the Lead

      Who- The climbers who came from different countries.
        When- not given
        What- Himalayas was avalanche and claimed many lives.
        Why-  not given

        Where- In Nepal's Himalayas
         How-The rescue team found dead body.

Keywords
1. Unseasonably:(adv)不合時令的
2. Avalanche:(n)雪崩

Week 6

Jackie Chan’s son Jaycee arrested in Beijing drug bust with Taiwanese actor Kai Ko

Wu Nan
PUBLISHED : Monday, 18 August, 2014, 5:23pm

UPDATED : Tuesday, 19 August, 2014, 6:12pm

 

Jackie Chan's son, Jaycee Chan, and Taiwanese actor Kai Ko have both been detained by Beijing police for drug-related offences, police revealed last night.

Jaycee Chan, also known as Fang Zuming, was detained by Beijing police together with his friend, 23-year-old Taiwanese movie star Kai Ko Chen-tung, the Beijing News and Beijing Times newspapers reported on Monday.

In a  statement released on its official Weibo account on Monday evening, the Beijing public security bureau said that police officers detained a number suspects for drug use last Thursday in Dongcheng District, including a 32-year-old Hong Kong actor with the surname Chan and a 23-year-old Taiwan actor named Ko. These descriptions seem to match Jaycee Chan and Kai Ko. 

Urine tests on both Chan and Ko have returned positive results for marijuana, and both actors have confessed to using it, the police statement said. Police also recovered more than 100 grams of marijuana from Chan's home, it said. 

The police statement says Chan has been put under criminal detention for the suspected crime of "providing a shelter for others to abuse drugs," which carries a maximum prison term of three years if a suspect is convicted.

Ko, on the other hand, would receive the much less severe penalty of "administrative detention", which lasts up to 15 days.   

Two other local residents, a 36-year-old assistant and a 33-year-old suspected dealer, were also detained, according to the statement. 

Chan and Ko join a growing list of celebrities – including mainland, Hong Kong and Taiwanese actors – who have been arrested in Beijing’s widening campaign targeting celebrity drug abuse over the last few years. 

Chan,  the son of Jackie Chan, Hong Kong movie star and a current member of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference, won a nomination for best supporting actor by the mainland’s Hundred Flowers Awards for his popular role in the 2010 film, Mulan: Rise of a Warrior.

It has been reported that Jackie Chan has invested in land, property and in the film industry in China, as well as promoting mainland charities. Jaycee Chan has played some important roles in mainland-produced films, such asThe Ideal City directed by famous writer Hanhan in 2012.

The father and son duo have landed some lucrative advertising contracts in the mainland, too. In August 2008, they represented Yuan Ye tea brand launched by Coca-Cola. 

Ko, 23, the 2011 Taipei Golden Horse Film Festival Best New Performer winner, gained fame for his role in the film You Are the Apple of My Eye and drew wider popularity in China after he performed in 2013’s box office smashTiny Times, directed by celebrity writer Guo Jingming. Ko’s Sina Weibo account now attracts more than 32 million followers.

The People’s Daily online edition said that Ko had once appeared in an anti-drug public service advertisement in 2012 , in which he vowed never to use drugs. Jackie Chan was pointed as an anti-drug ambassador by China’s National Narcotics Control Commission in 2009.

In the past six months, several entertainment artists have been arrested for drug use, including mainland singer Li Daimo, director Zhang Yuan, actor Zhang Mo and screen writer Ning Caishen. In July, Hong Kong actor Roy Cheung was also arrested for using marijuana.

Last Wednesday, forty-two artist management agencies signed an anti-drug agreement with local police in Beijing, claiming that they would refuse to hire artists who used drugs in the future, in a bid by authorities to tackle drug-use within the entertainment industry.

One Beijing-based director said that he was investing in a film which was considering using Kai Ko as the lead actor. “We can no longer hire him, since he’s now been arrested for drug use,” he said.

“However, the anti-drug agreement contains discrimination. It should not become the only rule to deny an actor’s talents and chances,” he added, preferring not named.

The Beijing police could not be reached for comment on Monday.

http://www.scmp.com/news/china-insider/article/1576112/jackie-chans-son-jaycee-arrested-beijing-drug-bust-taiwanese?page=all

Structure of the Lead

      Who- Fang Zuming and Ko Chen-tung
        When- Tuesday, 19 August, 2014
        What-They went to drugs together.
        Why- not given
        Where-In Fang ‘s house
         How- Fang would get a maximum prison term of three years if a suspect is convicted and Ko would receive the much less severe penalty.
Keywords
1. bust:(n)逮捕
2. offence:(n)違法行為
3. marijuana:(n)大麻
4. confessed:(v)供認
5. administrative:(adj)管理的
6. Consultative:(adj)諮詢的
7. lucrative:(adj)賺錢的

Week 5

Ebola fighters are Time's 'Person of the Year'

By Eliott C. McLaughlin, CNN

December 10, 2014 -- Updated 2056 GMT (0456 HKT)

(CNN) -- Foday Gallah saw the sick child was distressed and felt he had to do something. So he picked the kid up to comfort him.

And with that act of kindness, the 37-year-old ambulance supervisor in Monrovia, Liberia, contracted Ebola himself.

"Of course, he got vomit all over him and that's how he got Ebola," said photographer Jackie Nickerson, who shot Gallah's image for Time's "Person of the Year" magazine cover, which honors those on the front line of the Ebola epidemic.

They're "the ones who answered the call," the magazine said on its website Wednesday morning.

Nickerson expanded on why Gallah was chosen for one of the magazine's five covers: "He's the shining example of what the right thing to do is. He's a shining example that we should all try to follow. He really did touch me with his story. I don't usually like to use the word hero, but I have to use it here."

According to the latest World Health Organization figures, about 6,300 people have died from the disease, mainly in West Africa. Health workers are still battling more than 11,000 confirmed cases in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone, and more than 6,000 suspected and probable cases loom, according to WHO.

Though those countries mark the epicenter of the outbreak, isolated cases have spread wider, penetrating other African countries, Europe and even the United States.

Time magazine's editors decided to honor the "unprecedented numbers" of doctors and nurses who responded when Ebola overtook an already-weak public health infrastructure, and Time Editor Nancy Gibbs outlined how governments were ill-equipped to respond, WHO "was in denial and snarled in red tape" and first responders were accused of crying wolf as the disease spread.

Yet many doctors and nurses, especially those from Doctors Without Borders and Samaritan's Purse, responded and worked alongside local physicians, nurses, ambulance drivers and burial teams, Gibbs wrote. Some were driven by God, while others did it for country and some simply had "the instinct to run into the fire, not away," she wrote.

"Ebola is a war, and a warning. The global health system is nowhere close to strong enough to keep us safe from infectious disease, and 'us' means everyone, not just those in faraway places where this is one threat among many that claim lives every day," wrote Gibbs.

She continued, "The rest of the world can sleep at night because a group of men and women are willing to stand and fight. For tireless acts of courage and mercy, for buying the world time to boost its defenses, for risking, for persisting, for sacrificing and saving, the Ebola fighters are Time's 2014 Person of the Year."

In addition to Gallah, the ambulance driver, Time highlighted on its cover four other Ebola fighters who worked on the ground in West Africa:

-- Dr. Jerry Brown is a Liberian surgeon who converted his hospital's chapel into one of the country's first treatment centers. The center's reception area, where Brown gets dressed, is a bare room, lit by a single bulb, Nickerson, the photographer, said.

-- Salome Karwah is an Ebola survivor who lost both parents to the disease and undertook the task of counseling patients in Liberia. Nickerson recalled how the Doctors Without Borders caregiver appeared to be a typical young woman, dressed nicely and a little nervous about being photographed. "But then, she put on her scrubs. ... She became very calm, a little bit introverted," the photographer said.

-- Ella Watson-Stryker is a Doctors Without Borders health promoter who has been in West Africa since March. The American was uneasy during the 10 minutes it took to shoot her photo, Nickerson said. "She was distracted, she wanted to do other things."

-- Dr. Kent Brantly became the first American infected while running a treatment center in Monrovia. Because he is a religious man, Time shot him at his church in Fort Worth, Texas. "Kent was working in West Africa doing a lot of hard, selfless work to help people out," photographer Bryan Schutmaat said.

mong the others considered for "Person of the Year" honors were Russian President Vladimir Putin, NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell and the protesters in Ferguson, Missouri. Other finalists included singer Taylor Swift, Chinese Internet tycoon Jack Ma, Apple CEO Tim Cook and Iraqi Kurdish leader Masoud Barzani.

Pope Francis received the title in 2013.

The magazine's readers voted for Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi to receive the title, but the Time editors' decision is based on their view of "the person or persons who most affected the news and our lives, for good or ill, and embodied what was important about the year."

Structure of the Lead

      Who- Heroes who combat Ebola
       When- December 10, 2014
       What-They are so brave t ha t they are willing to help others who have contracted Ebola.  .
       Why- not given
       Where-In Africa
        How- not given
Keywords

1.          Loom: (n)織布機

2.          Epicenter:(n)中心點

3.          Infrastructure:(n)公共建設

4.          Snarl:(v)咆嘯

5.          Scrub:(v)擦洗

6.          Introverted:(adj)內向的

http://edition.cnn.com/2014/12/10/world/time-person-of-the-year/index.html?hpt=hp_t3