Category: Articles of the week

Read time : 3 mins

Level : Intermediate

By JILL LAWLESS Associated Press

LONDON (AP) — Sci-fi epic “Dune” won five prizes and brooding Western “The Power of the Dog” was named best picture as the British Academy Film Awards returned Sunday with a live, black-tie ceremony after a pandemic-curtailed event in 2021.

New Zealand filmmaker Jane Campion was named best director for “The Power of the Dog,” becoming only the third woman to win the prize in the awards’ seven-decade history.

Lead acting trophies went to Hollywood star Will Smith and British performer Joanna Scanlan, as an event that has worked to overcome a historic lack of diversity recognized a wide range of talents — including its first deaf acting winner in Troy Kotsur for “CODA.” Continue reading

Read time : 2 mins

Level : Intermediate

By BERNAT ARMANGUÉ Associated Press

LVIV, Ukraine (AP) — The director of Ukraine’s largest art museum walked its hallways, supervising as staff packed away its collections to protect their national heritage in case the Russian invasion advances west.

In one partially empty gallery of the Andrey Sheptytsky National Museum, employees placed carefully wrapped baroque pieces into cardboard boxes. A few meters away, a group walked down the majestic main staircase carrying a giant piece of sacred art, the 18th century Bohorodchany iconostasis.
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Read time : 3 mins

Level : Advanced

By NOMAAN MERCHANT and VLADIMIR ISACHENKOV Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) — For two decades, Vladimir Putin has struck rivals as reckless, impulsive. But his behavior in ordering an invasion of Ukraine — and now putting Russia’s nuclear forces on high alert — has some in the West questioning whether the Russian president has become dangerously unstable.

In recent days, Putin has rambled on television about Ukraine, repeated conspiracy theories about neo-Nazism and Western aggression, berated his own foreign intelligence chief on camera from the other side of a high-domed Kremlin hall where he sat alone. Now, with the West’s sanctions threatening to cripple Russia’s already hobbled economy, Putin has ordered the higher state of readiness for nuclear weapons, blaming the sanctions and what he called “aggressive statements against our country.”
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Read time : 2 mins

Level : Intermediate

BEIJING (AP) — Police are punishing Chinese traders for cashing in by reselling scarce dolls of Olympics mascot Bing Dwen Dwen at up to 10 times retail price.

Buyers stood in line overnight in freezing weather and emptied store shelves after the Winter Games opened Feb. 4. News reports say factory employees were called back from their Lunar New Year holiday to make more panda mascots.

Three people in Beijing were sentenced to unspecified “administrative penalties” for reselling souvenirs at prices deemed too high, police announced. Punishment can include detention, fines and confiscation of goods.
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Read time : 3 mins

Level : Advanced

By MALLIKA SEN Associated Press

BEIJING (AP) — U.S.-born athletes have taken center stage at the Winter Olympics in Beijing — for the host country, that is, generating scrutiny of nationality-switching.

Eileen Gu, the prodigious — and, depending on who you ask, prodigal — freestyle skier who chose to compete for her mother’s native China over her native U.S., has drawn critical coverage that has at times veered into plain racism and misogyny.

But the likes of Gu and Jieruimi Shimisi — the Team China hockey goaltender (with no known Chinese heritage) formerly known as Jeremy Smith — are not the first to don the colors of a country where they were not born. Mutable nationality has a long history at the Olympics and, more generally, in the field of sports.
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