The world is shocked !

A heavily armed gunman killed 26 people, including 20 children from 5 to 10 years old, in a rampage at a Connecticut elementary school on Friday, one of the worst mass shootings in U.S. history.

The gunman - who according to a media report carried four weapons and wore a bulletproof vest - was dead inside Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, state police Lieutenant Paul Vance told a news conference.

Vance said authorities found 18 children and seven adults, including the gunman, dead at the school, and two children were pronounced dead later after being take to a hospital. Another adult was found dead at a related crime scene in Newtown, he said, bringing the toll to 28.

"Our hearts are broken today," President Barack Obama said in an emotional televised address to the nation.

"Evil visited this community today," Connecticut Governor Dannel Malloy told reporters.

Two law enforcement sources briefed on the investigation confirmed to Reuters the shooter had been identified as Adam Lanza, 20. Adam's brother Ryan Lanza was "either in custody or being questioned" at this hour, one of the sources said.

The New York Times reported that the gunman walked into a classroom where his mother was a teacher, shot his mother and then 20 students, most in the same classroom, before shooting five other adults and killing himself. One other person was shot at the school and survived, the Times said.

The holiday season tragedy was the second shooting rampage in the United States this week and the latest in a series of mass killings this year, and was certain to revive a debate about U.S. gun laws.

Chaos struck as children gathered in their classrooms for morning meetings at Sandy Hook Elementary in Newtown, a city of 27,000 in Fairfield County, about 80 miles northeast of New York City.

Police swarmed the scene and locked down the school, rushing children to safety, some of them bloodied. Distraught parents converged, frantically searching for their daughters and sons. Neighbors and friends wandered in shock, looking for information.

"It's hard to believe that anything like this could happen in this town," said resident Peter Alpi, 70, as he fought back tears. "It's a very quiet town. Maybe it's too quiet."

Hours later, Obama, wiping away tears and pausing to collect his emotions, mourned the "beautiful little kids between the ages of 5 and 10 years old" who were killed. He ordered flags flown at half staff at U.S. public buildings.

"As a country, we have been through this too many times," Obama said, ticking off a list of recent shootings.

"We're going to have to come together and take meaningful action to prevent more tragedies like this, regardless of the politics," Obama said in apparent reference to the influence of the National Rifle Association over members of Congress.

Obama remains committed to trying to renew a ban on assault weapons, White House spokesman Jay Carney said.

BLOODIED CHILDREN LEAVE SCHOOL

Vance said the shootings took place in two rooms of Sandy Hook Elementary School, which teaches children from kindergarten through fourth grade, roughly aged 5 to 10.

Witnesses reported hearing dozens of shots; some said as many as 100 rounds.

"It was horrendous," said parent Brenda Lebinski, who rushed to the school where her daughter is in the third grade. "Everyone was in hysterics - parents, students. There were kids coming out of the school bloodied. I don't know if they were shot, but they were bloodied."

Lebinski said a mother who was at the school during the shooting told her a "masked man" entered the principal's office and may have shot the principal. Lebinski, who is friends with the mother who was at the school, said the principal was "severely injured."

Lebinski's daughter's teacher "immediately locked the door to the classroom and put all the kids in the corner of the room."

Melissa Murphy, who lives near the school, monitored events on a police scanner.

"I kept hearing them call for the mass casualty kit and scream, ‘Send everybody! Send everybody!'" Murphy said. "It doesn't seem like it can be really happening. I feel like I'm in shock."

The toll exceed that of one of the most notorious U.S. school shootings, the 1999 rampage at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado, where two teenagers killed 13 students and staff before killing themselves.

A girl interviewed by NBC Connecticut described hearing seven loud "booms" while she was in gym class. Other children began crying and teachers moved the students to a nearby office, she said.

"A police officer came in and told us to run outside and so we did," the unidentified girl said on camera.

In Hoboken, New Jersey, police cordoned off a block in connection with the Connecticut shootings, but an officer told reporters there was no body inside, contrary to an earlier media report.

The United States has experienced a number of mass shooting rampages this year, most recently in Oregon, where a gunman opened fire at a shopping mall on Tuesday, killing two people and then himself.

The deadliest came in July at a midnight screening of a Batman film in Colorado that killed 12 people and wounded 58.

The Connecticut shootings appear certain to trigger renewed debate over U.S. gun laws. New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, founder of the advocacy group Mayors Against Illegal Guns, said it was "almost impossible to believe that a mass shooting in a kindergarten class could happen.

"We need immediate action. We have heard all the rhetoric before. What we have not seen is leadership - not from the White House and not from Congress," Bloomberg said. "That must end today."

In 2007, 32 people were killed at Virginia Tech university in the deadliest act of criminal gun violence in U.S. history.

In another notorious school shooting outside the United States, a gunman opened fire in 1996 in an elementary school in Dunblane, Scotland, and killed 16 children and an adult before killing himself.

The Gangnam Style

'Gangnam Style' the Year's 2nd Most Popular Google Search

Psy's global hit "Gangnam Style" was the second most popular search on Google this year. Google on Thursday said it tallied more than 1 trillion search terms from 55 countries this year, and pop diva Whitney Houston, who died in February, was the most popular search in 2012.

But "Gangnam Style" was the most-searched in Korea, Australia, Indonesia and the United Arab Emirates, demonstrating the soaring popularity of the song which also racked up more than 900 million views on YouTube. Not only is it the most-viewed video ever on YouTube, is also on its way to garnering more than 1 billion views.

Third was Hurricane Sandy, which wreaked havoc on the U.S. east coast in October, and fourth Apple's iPad 3, followed by online game "Diablo III," Duchess of Cambridge Kate Middleton, and the London Olympics.

In the area of home appliances, the iPad 3 was followed by Samsung's Galaxy S3. Samsung's Galaxy Note 2 tablet PC was the fifth most-searched appliance. Apple's iPad Mini and iPad 4 were also among the most frequently searched words on Google, but the iPhone 5 did not even make it into the top 10.

Just enjoy ;)

USA -Klausur , Analyzing a political speech

 'I Have a Dream' 

By The Rev. MARTIN LUTHER KING Jr.

(In einer Klausur wäre die Rede gekürzt ,zur Übung schadet es aber nicht die komplette Rede zu analysieren.)

I am happy to join with you today in what will go down in history as the greatest demonstration for freedom in the history of our nation.

Five score years ago, a great American, in whose symbolic shadow we stand signed the Emancipation Proclamation. This momentous decree came as a great beacon light of hope to millions of Negro slaves who had been seared in the flames of withering injustice. It came as a joyous daybreak to end the long night of captivity.

But one hundred years later, we must face the tragic fact that the Negro is still not free. One hundred years later, the life of the Negro is still sadly crippled by the manacles of segregation and the chains of discrimination. One hundred years later, the Negro lives on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity. One hundred years later, the Negro is still languishing in the corners of American society and finds himself an exile in his own land. So we have come here today to dramatize an appalling condition.

In a sense we have come to our nation's capital to cash a check. When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir. This note was a promise that all men would be guaranteed the inalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

It is obvious today that America has defaulted on this promissory note insofar as her citizens of color are concerned. Instead of honoring this sacred obligation, America has given the Negro people a bad check which has come back marked "insufficient funds." But we refuse to believe that the bank of justice is bankrupt. We refuse to believe that there are insufficient funds in the great vaults of opportunity of this nation. So we have come to cash this check -- a check that will give us upon demand the riches of freedom and the security of justice. We have also come to this hallowed spot to remind America of the fierce urgency of now. This is no time to engage in the luxury of cooling off or to take the tranquilizing drug of gradualism. Now is the time to rise from the dark and desolate valley of segregation to the sunlit path of racial justice. Now is the time to open the doors of opportunity to all of God's children. Now is the time to lift our nation from the quicksands of racial injustice to the solid rock of brotherhood.

It would be fatal for the nation to overlook the urgency of the moment and to underestimate the determination of the Negro. This sweltering summer of the Negro's legitimate discontent will not pass until there is an invigorating autumn of freedom and equality. Nineteen sixty-three is not an end, but a beginning. Those who hope that the Negro needed to blow off steam and will now be content will have a rude awakening if the nation returns to business as usual. There will be neither rest nor tranquility in America until the Negro is granted his citizenship rights. The whirlwinds of revolt will continue to shake the foundations of our nation until the bright day of justice emerges.

But there is something that I must say to my people who stand on the warm threshold which leads into the palace of justice. In the process of gaining our rightful place we must not be guilty of wrongful deeds. Let us not seek to satisfy our thirst for freedom by drinking from the cup of bitterness and hatred.

We must forever conduct our struggle on the high plane of dignity and discipline. We must not allow our creative protest to degenerate into physical violence. Again and again we must rise to the majestic heights of meeting physical force with soul force. The marvelous new militancy which has engulfed the Negro community must not lead us to distrust of all white people, for many of our white brothers, as evidenced by their presence here today, have come to realize that their destiny is tied up with our destiny and their freedom is inextricably bound to our freedom. We cannot walk alone.

And as we walk, we must make the pledge that we shall march ahead. We cannot turn back. There are those who are asking the devotees of civil rights, "When will you be satisfied?" We can never be satisfied as long as our bodies, heavy with the fatigue of travel, cannot gain lodging in the motels of the highways and the hotels of the cities. We cannot be satisfied as long as the Negro's basic mobility is from a smaller ghetto to a larger one. We can never be satisfied as long as a Negro in Mississippi cannot vote and a Negro in New York believes he has nothing for which to vote. No, no, we are not satisfied, and we will not be satisfied until justice rolls down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream.

I am not unmindful that some of you have come here out of great trials and tribulations. Some of you have come fresh from narrow cells. Some of you have come from areas where your quest for freedom left you battered by the storms of persecution and staggered by the winds of police brutality. You have been the veterans of creative suffering. Continue to work with the faith that unearned suffering is redemptive.

Go back to Mississippi, go back to Alabama, go back to Georgia, go back to Louisiana, go back to the slums and ghettos of our northern cities, knowing that somehow this situation can and will be changed. Let us not wallow in the valley of despair.

I say to you today, my friends, that in spite of the difficulties and frustrations of the moment, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream.

I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: "We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal."

I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at a table of brotherhood.

I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a desert state, sweltering with the heat of injustice and oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice.

I have a dream that my four children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.

I have a dream today.

I have a dream that one day the state of Alabama, whose governor's lips are presently dripping with the words of interposition and nullification, will be transformed into a situation where little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls and walk together as sisters and brothers.

I have a dream today.

I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plain, and the crooked places will be made straight, and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together.

This is our hope. This is the faith with which I return to the South. With this faith we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope. With this faith we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood. With this faith we will be able to work together, to pray together, to struggle together, to go to jail together, to stand up for freedom together, knowing that we will be free one day.

This will be the day when all of God's children will be able to sing with a new meaning, "My country, 'tis of thee, sweet land of liberty, of thee I sing. Land where my fathers died, land of the pilgrim's pride, from every mountainside, let freedom ring."

Tasks:

1.Point out what Martin Luther King Jr. says about the situation about Bblack people in the USA 100 years ago and in 1963. (Comprehension)

2.Analyse the structure of the speech and the stylistic devices which make the speech so powerful and identifiy some of the historical and Biblical allusions king uses. (Analysis)

3.What aspects of the American Dream can be found in Kings speech ? Comment on the speech refering to the American Dream then and now.

Genetic Engineering Klausur

Embryo genetic screening controversial - and successful

By Dan Vergano, USA TODAY

A "slippery slope" to "a world of eugenics," as bioethics authorities once worried, or a healthy life for a teenage girl?

Once at the center of a science controversy, Molly Nash, 15, represents the human answer to the debate over a genetic screening technique, " pre-implantation genetic diagnosis," (PGD) that made headlines a decade ago.

In Molly's case, her mother and father turned to PGD to pick out the embryo implanted to give birth to her brother, Adam, in an effort to save Molly's life.

"She's a typical teenage girl, she loves to dance, loves the theater," says nurse Lisa Nash of Denver, Molly's mom. "We never thought she would live to see 15."

A bone marrow transplant in 2000 cured Molly of "Fanconi´s Anemia", a rare illness that kills many of its victims before the age of 7. The cord blood cells transplanted into Molly came from her then newborn brother, Adam. Now 9, Adam was the first reported case of baby selected as an embryo in a fertility lab for birth because his immune system characteristics made him an ideal transplant candidate for his sister. For the Nashes, giving birth to another child with those matching characteristics offered the only chance to save their daughter.

"Adam knows he helped his sister, that's all. They're normal kids," says Lisa Nash.

Of all the corners of science, fertility procedures have one of the longest track records for stirring controversy. In 1978, the delivery of the first "test tube" baby, Louise Brown, in the United Kingdom gave birth to arguments that such procedures would harm children. Similarly, Adam Nash's birth raised worries at the 2002 President's Council on Bioethics meeting that pre-implantation genetic diagnosis (PGD) would lead to a widespread era of sex selection procedures at fertility clinics.

In particular, council members worried that embryos would be destroyed as families resorted to fertility clinic screening techniques to check embryos for hereditary diseases. In PGD, an embryologist plucks one or two cells from a few-day-old embryo, and destroys those cells in assays for Huntington's disease, cystic fibrosis, childhood cancer and many other ailments. In 2007, the most recently-available statistical year, about 5% of the 132,745 U.S. in-vitro-fertilization procedures included PGD, according to the American Society for Reproductive Medicine.

"Parents are coming to us from all over the world with many kinds of rare genetic diseases," says Oleg Verlinsky of the Reproductive Genetics Institute in Chicago, which did the immune system screening on Adam Nash before his birth. Since then, RGI has performed more than 250 such screenings, Verlinsky says, for children whose birth led to the treatment of an older sibling.

"Molly Nash is a wonderful story," Verlinsky says. "We worked so hard on her assay. The little girl was dying. Most patients come to us just for screening, but cases where parents come to you with an already-sick child are very hard."

Some bioethicists, such as former bioethics council chiefLeon Kass of the American Enterprise Institute, raised worries that children born from such procedures would feel unloved, if they see themselves as exploited. The council also asked the public to weigh concerns about an era of "designer babies" arriving trhough such techniques. The history of eugenics, where 30 U.S. states passed mandatory sterilization laws during the 1920's, in a bid to weed out the "unfit," hung heavily over the debate.

"People are certainly entitled to their opinions. But we were doing what was best for our family," says Lisa Nash. She has become an advocate for cord-blood banking from newborns as a result of her experience. "I'd urge people to really think about it early in their pregnancy."

Tasks:

1.Explain why the case of Molly Nash raised concern at the Council on Bioethics and point out what was done to save her life. (Comprehension)

2.Analyse how the article influences the reader´s opinion on PGD.(Analysis)

3.Do you think PGD ist good if it can save the life of a child? Write an argumentation about this topic.(Evaluation)

"Globalization Klausur" (EXERCISES)

(Analyzing lyrics)

“Globalization Blues”

A Song by Ray Korona©Ray Korona 2002

You can't hide in your bed;
You can't hide in your head.
They'll run over you; you'll be worse off than dead.
I'm talkin' globalization, globalization.
Drug dealing, money stealing globalization blues.

They say forget your suspicions;
Work in sweatshop conditions.
Sew some more sneakers and guard these munitions.
It's globalization, globalization.
People bashing, job smashing globalization blues.

They say your country's in debt
And you've got to pay.
If you want to eat then do what we say.
That's globalization, globalization.
Slave made, world trade globalization blues.

Since you can't get away
Better fight them today.
From Seattle to Prague, Manila Bay to LA,
It's globalization, globalization.
On the street, we're gonna beat the globalization blues.

Tasks:

1.Point out the problems of globalization.

2.Analyse the choice of words and the stylistic devices the author uses to convince the reader.

3.Is Globalization connected with social problems? Write an argumentation about this topic.

Globalization Blues (adapted from http://socialist.wordpress.com/)

In economy, it is widely believed that market forces will correct any economic mischiefing. Adam Smith called it the invisible hand: “a free competitive market ensures that those goods and services perceived as most beneficial, efficient, or of highest quality will naturally be those that are most profitable. Thus, self-interest striving for profit has the side-effect of benefiting everyone by increasing standards” (The Wealth of Nations, 1776).

This same assumption is taken by Globalisation’s promoters as the way the open economy benefits all countries today: In the long run, they argue, everybody will be better. In the other hand, globaliphobics insist that the rich countries are getting richer on the back of poor nations.

Indur M. Goklany[a science and technology policy analyst]points out, correctly, it is a myth that the advent of globalisation has been accompanied by a rise in poverty and inequality. Revision of UN, World Bank, and IMF data about GDP per capita, paired with distribution curves, shows that the percentage of the world’s population that is poor has actually fallen over the past two decades and inequality has declined at some extent. “The surprisingly persistent picture of globalisation as a process whereby the developed world exploits and immiserates the developing one is just wrong”(James Surowiecki).

However, the number of countries that had improved their standards of living is surprisingly small, and they are mainly in Asia. Economic growth is the base for improving the state of the world, but globalisation has not done a very good job of figuring out how to spread the benefits of that growth around the globe. The economies of sub-Saharan Africa and the former Soviet Union have not just stopped growing but shrunk over the past 15 years. Most of Latin America has seen only marginal economic growth since 1980, and even Asia’s little tigers (Indonesia, Malaysia, and Thailand) have spent much of the present century recovering from the damage wrought by the 1990s Asian financial crisis.

Most of these countries have seen their human development indicators improve, thanks to the diffusion of technology and health care. But outside of Asia (and a few places such as Botswana and Chile), the economic benefits of globalization have been hard to find, which is why there has been such a backlash against what has come to be known as the Washington consensus. It makes makes sense to attack globalization if there is evidence that rich countries are getting richer on the backs of the poor, but it should not surprising that people are made unhappy by the sight of others getting richer while they stay the same or actually get poorer.

Goklany suggests one response: “the problem is that there has been too little globalisation, not too much, and that what governments need to do is step out of the way and let the market be free. There is no doubting the virtue of the free market as a wealth-creation machine, and it is certainly the case that in many countries bad policies (often designed to protect established interests) have discouraged entrepreneurship and scared away capital. Nonetheless, here, too, the evidence is far more ambiguous than The Improving State of the World implies”.

China and India, which together are responsible for almost all of the reduction in poverty in the world in the past two decades are great success stories, but when it comes to understanding what they say about how to attain economic growth, they are complicated rather than simple stories. China is a long way from a true free-market economy, and it has followed almost none of the rules that the Washington consensus set down:

·         A huge number of its enterprises remain state-owned

·         the allocation of capital in the country remains largely determined by politics

·         the country’s capital markets are not truly open

·         there are limitations on foreign ownership

·         the currency is not convertible

In the case of India:

·         has got massive tariffs

·         strict legal restrictions on foreign ownership and on new businesses

·         it is an aggressive regulatory state

The point is not to return to the old days of protectionism and import-substitution industrialization but rather that we know a lot less than we thought we did, for example Chile and Botswana are two of the only non-Asian developing countries to enjoy meaningful, sustained economic growth since 1990. Chile, under the dictator Augusto Pinochet, implemented many free-market reforms, and the privatization of its social security system has made it the daring boy of free marketeers. But a good part of Chile’s richness comes from its copper holdings, which even Pinochet did not privatize. And Chile also limited the flow of volatile capital into its markets.

Is it the following of free markets rules or the deviations from them that it is the cause for Chile’s success? or is it the combination of the two? No one is sure. Botswana, similarly, has followed orthodox economic policies and has a limited state and low levels of corruption, all of which surely have something to do with its success. But Botswana also happens to have huge diamond supplies, which account for around 40 percent of its annual output. Botswana’s efficient economic policies have helped it to receive greater benefits from this, but this is hardly a model that other nations, unless they can back up their growth plans with massive diamond supplies, too.

So, until we can define better the factors that are helping countries to reap the benefits of globalisation or planetary economic growth, and then apply them to the countries that are being left behind, we will keep hearing about anti-globalisation, protectionism movements, and no truly be able to respond to them.

Task:

4.Compare the text to the song! How is globalization described ?

Are We On Our Way To a Big Brother Society?

Facebook Everywhere

By SAUL HANSELL

The most important bit of news at Facebook’s press conference yesterday was what they didn’t say out loud: Once the company gets the bugs out of its system for social ads on its own site, it will likely create a network to use its data to display advertising on other sites.

This could help solve the major dilemma of social networks: They have a lot of information about their users that can help advertisers find their best prospects. But users don’t respond well to ads on the network sites because they are so involved in reading about and communicating with their friends.

Two Facebook executives said yesterday that Facebook is indeed planning an ad network. They didn’t give details, and said the timing depends on how the first phase of the Social Ad system works.

Presumably, Facebook could offer two different sorts of ads. First, it could simply use its data about what users put on their profiles as part of a network that serves ads on other sites. Facebook claims that users have an incentive to tell the truth in their profiles because they are used mainly to communicate with their friends, not strangers. And so that data about age, location, education, work and interests can be quite reliable for advertisers.

Even more interesting, perhaps, Facebook may be able to append the implicit endorsement of friends to ads on this network. Imaging checking out the forecast on Weather.com, and you see a banner with a picture of your buddy Joe, saying Joe just bought a Canon digital camera from Amazon.com next to an ad for the latest Canon model. If someone else went to the same site, they might see an ad featuring a product recently endorsed by one of his or her friends.

There is no small number of technical challenges to make such a system work in high volume with the appropriate controls for private information. It doesn’t strike me as impossible however. It may well be creepy to some, just as Google’s ads on Gmail, which are linked to the topic of your conversations, make some users uncomfortable.

Still, one of the great races of our day is to see who will be able to find the best way to make money from placing ads on Web sites. Facebook’s combination of data about users and endorsements by friends make it a contender to watch.

TASK:

1.Point out the "dilemma of social networks".
2.Analyse how the article influences the reader´s opinion on social networks.
-Your choice-
either:
3a.Concerning to the questions "Are We  On Our Way To A Big Brother Society" , what do you think are the problems of the "social network generation" ? 
or:
3b. Write a letter to the editor. Comment on this article and also give your personal opinion on this topic.

The new/old president

Barack Obama

Barack H. Obama is the 44th President of the United States.

His story is the American story — values from the heartland, a middle-class upbringing in a strong family, hard work and education as the means of getting ahead, and the conviction that a life so blessed should be lived in service to others.

With a father from Kenya and a mother from Kansas, President Obama was born in Hawaii on August 4, 1961. He was raised with help from his grandfather, who served in Patton's army, and his grandmother, who worked her way up from the secretarial pool to middle management at a bank.

After working his way through college with the help of scholarships and student loans, President Obama moved to Chicago, where he worked with a group of churches to help rebuild communities devastated by the closure of local steel plants.

He went on to attend law school, where he became the first African—American president of the Harvard Law Review. Upon graduation, he returned to Chicago to help lead a voter registration drive, teach constitutional law at the University of Chicago, and remain active in his community.

President Obama's years of public service are based around his unwavering belief in the ability to unite people around a politics of purpose. In the Illinois State Senate, he passed the first major ethics reform in 25 years, cut taxes for working families, and expanded health care for children and their parents. As a United States Senator, he reached across the aisle to pass groundbreaking lobbying reform, lock up the world's most dangerous weapons, and bring transparency to government by putting federal spending online.

He was elected the 44th President of the United States on November 4, 2008, and sworn in on January 20, 2009. He and his wife, Michelle, are the proud parents of two daughters, Malia, 14, and Sasha, 11.

source: http://www.whitehouse.gov/about/presidents/barackobama

TASKS: 

Create a timeline showing the history of Obama.

Find passive sentences in the text and form the corresponding active sentences.

"Sometimes you have to go really high to see how small you are" -Great Job , Felix !

Here is what the news say (USA TODAY):

9:30PM EDT October 14. 2012 -

"Moments before stepping off a small metal platform near Roswell, N.M., on Sunday and plunging to Earth from 24 miles in space, Austrian sky diver Felix Baumgartner offered a few static-filled words for posterity.

"Sometimes you have to go really high to see how small you are," said Baumgartner, 43. Then he jumped, a diminishing white dot against an impossibly black sky.

With his leap from 128,000 feet, Baumgartner becomes a larger-than-life figure in aerospace history, joining the ranks of those who have pushed personal and technological limits as they tempted fate and tested science.

He reached 833.9 mph, or mach 1.24, which is faster than the speed of sound. No one has ever reached that speed wearing only a high-tech suit.

He fell at supersonic speeds on the same date in 1947 that test pilot Chuck Yeager broke the sound barrier in an aircraft.

Adding to his inevitable fame is the fact that the feat was streamed live on computers and smartphones around the world using more than 30 high-definition cameras arrayed on the ground as well as in and outside of his capsule. A two-hour BBC documentary will hit TV soon, and there surely will be the inevitable chats with talk show hosts and calls from admirers.

But so far none of that seems to be getting to Baumgartner's buzz-cut head.

Baumgartner's jump was possible partly due to an expensive operation packed with top scientists, but also to the pioneering work of adventurers past, says Margaret Weitekamp, a curator at the National Air and Space Museum focusing on popular culture and spaceflight.

"In many ways, Felix was standing on the shoulders of giants," she said. "Baumgartner himself will be advancing the science of how the human body responds to the upper atmosphere, just as many test pilots did before him."

The event seemed to be an irresistible blend of space derring-do and extreme sports insanity, particularly at the moment when Baumgartner could be seen standing on the edge of space in frightening HD clarity.

"I was actually scared at that point," said Clara Moskowitz, assistant editor at Space.com. "I know he captured the attention of a lot of people, because I had friends who have no interest in space emailing and texting me. This was a human being literally stepping into the unknown. It doesn't get more intense than that."

The Austrian skydiver's leap Sunday beat the record set by retired Air Force colonel Joe Kittinger, who in 1960 plunged out of an open basket from 102,800 feet. Kittinger served as a mentor to Baumgartner throughout the five-year project.

The mission, dubbed Red Bull Stratos after the Austrian energy drink company that sponsored the jump, also set records for highest manned balloon flight (113,740 feet in 1961) and fastest free fall (Kittinger at 614 mph).

Red Bull Stratos marks yet another aerospace advance by a private company, filling the void left by the massive state-sponsored space initiatives that once were the hallmark of American and Russian scientific programs. Elon Musk's SpaceX and Richard Branson's Virgin Galactic remain dedicated to putting civilians in space, and Stratos' mission was to test how humans and space suits would react to emergency exits at high altitude.

Baumgartner's jump was not without drama. He complained about a lack of heat in his helmet on the way up, which caused mission engineers to debate whether or not to bring him down in the capsule. Then, on the descent, the skydiver could be seen by an infrared camera as a tiny white dot against a black backdrop spinning wildly, precisely the situation the team was hoping to avoid as it could lead to a loss of consciousness or worse.

But Baumgartner got that spin under control, and minutes later landed gracefully on his feet in the dusty New Mexican desert. The sky diver immediately fell to knees. Cameras trained on his family – who had never been to the United States before – showed his parents, brother and his girlfriend cheering.

Baumgartner has been working his way up to this world record jump from the edge of space for the past few years, twice running into speed bumps.

Austrian promoter Daniel Hogan derailed the first mission when he sued Red Bull Stratos claiming he'd thought of the idea first. That suit was settled out of court last summer."

The British Empire

The British Empire
"The claim that the sun never set on the British Empire was not an empty boast. By the end of the nineteenth century the Empire included nearly a quarter of the earth's land surface and more than a quarter of its population. This imperial endeavour began with the foundation of the first English colony in America in 1607 and ended when British India became independent and was partitioned into Pakistan and India in 1947.

The thirteen American colonies, the so-called First Empire, were lost in the War of American Independence (1775-83). Commercial expansionism and the acquisition of new territories were the motives for the creation of the Second Empire, which  reached its zenith in the 19th century when Queen Victoria was proclaimed Empress of India in 1877. By then Burma, Ceylon and much of the West Indies had already been broughtunder British sovereignty and the Antipodes - Australia and New Zealand - had been colonized by British settlers. In 1867 Canada became the Empire's first self-governing dominion.
In the late 19th century, during Queen Victoria's reign, the Empire builders turned their attention to the 'dark continent' of Africa, although trade settlements had already existed in Gambia and on the Gold Coast for three centuries and the interior had already
 been penetrated by explorers and missionaries. In addition to the Union of South Africa, granted dominion status in 1910, many African Crown Colonies and protectorates were established and settled by British farmers. Since granting these countries their independence in the 1950s and 1960s, Britain has retained only few vestiges of imperial power: dependencies of the Crown such as Bermuda, Gibraltar, the Falkland Islands etc. The transformation of the British Empire into the Commonwealth began with the Statute of Westminster (1931), which refers to a free association of self-governing countries equal in rank and united by a common allegiance to the Crown."

Task:
Create a timeline showing the history of the British Empire !

Whirling, swirling, never blue How could you go and die what a lonely thing to do "Il adore", Boy George

He was a fixture on TV with roles ranging from "Sesame Street" to hosting the reality show "I'm a Celebrity … Get Me Out of Here!"

"COLOGNE, Germany -- German comedian, TV star and gay icon Dirk Bach was found dead in his hotel room Monday in Berlin. He was 51.

The cause of death was not immediately known, but a police spokesman said there was no evidence of foul play.

Self-trained, Bach started in the independent theater scene in his home city of Cologne before moving to television, where he became one of the most familiar and enduring faces on the small screen. The rotund actor and entertainer's national breakthrough came with the sitcom Lukas, on which he played a single dad who lives with his father and daughter. The show, which ran for five seasons, was hit with both audiences and critics. It was groundbreaking in German television in its depiction of homosexual characters and alternative lifestyles.

Other prominent roles including the Pepe on the German version of Sesame Street and, most recently, co-host of hit reality show I'm A Celebrity … Get Me Out of Here!

Bach used his immense popularity to raise awareness for many causes, particularly for the rights of gays and lesbians. One of the first openly gay German celebrities, he was an active fund raiser for AIDS charities and a prominent spokesman for equal rights legislation.

At the time of his death, Bach was in rehearsals for a theater production in Berlin."

source: http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/german-comedy-dirk-bach-dies-375366

Here is the song: Il adore by Boy George.

Anthony Porter

Britain -Introduction

Fill in the gaps :
The United Kingdom consists of ___ ,______ ,____ and ____ . Poeple often refer to it as the UK. The video especially deals with information about ___.
The population of Britain is over _______. The Prime Minister lives in ______ .The Head of state is ______ and lives in __________.
Other famous places in Britain are ______________ .
Over _________ of Britain is farmland and you can visit _________ there.
Britain is not one island there are ____ islands and you can reach France and Belgium with the __________ .

Homework:
Find out some information about the other parts of the UK (Write at least 30 words for each part.) !

The British system of government

Education in Britain -working with films

1.) When do children start visiting schools ?
2.)When do they go to secondary school ? When do they leave this school ?
3.)What do they take with 16 ?
4.)What does GCSE mean ?
5.)How many percent of students go to university ?
6.)Which school is presented in the video ?
7.) When does school start there ?
8.)How many students are in a secondary school class ?
9.)What subjects can you see in the video ?
10.)What is said about the afternoons ?
11.)What is said about independent schools ?
12.)What do Bristish students think about school ?



A typical school day : Describe Jamie´s school day in a full text!