EGE – CE INGLES PROFESIONAL 02

Before too many jokes do the rounds about France sulking over the Waterloo commemorations, let me add a couple of correctives.

It is true that Paris is sending only an ambassador to mark the last of Napoleon’s battles. But then, is that so surprising? After all, France lost. Does the UK crow about Yorktown?
More to the point, if France has little appetite to grovel over Napoleon’s last humiliation, no more did it strut over his considerably more numerous triumphs.
Marengo, Austerlitz, Friedland, Wagram: Over the last 10 years the anniversaries have come round like chimes. But apart from a bit of historical analysis here and there, the truth is that no-one in public life in France has ever made much of a deal of it. For all historians – from whatever country – Napoleon is someone to be argued over ad infinitum. In the last couple of years in Britain, two biographies – by Philip Dwyer and Andrew Roberts – have taken diametrically different views of the man. For Dwyer he is basically bad. For Roberts he is basically brilliant.

BBC

  Which of the following statements is true?

What can be inferred about the battle of Marengo?

German Chancellor Angela Merkel says she is “still convinced” that a Greek debt deal is possible.

She said she thought Greece could reach an agreement with its creditors – the EU, the International Monetary Fund and the European Central Bank.
Mrs Merkel also told the Bundestag that Germany was working hard to keep Greece in the euro, but said Athens had to follow through on reform commitments.
“I’m still convinced – where there’s a will, there’s a way,” she said.
“If those in charge in Greece can muster the will, an agreement with the three institutions is still possible.”
Mrs Merkel added: “In February there was an agreement – the Greek government pledged to carry out structural reforms, and that must be done.”
In February, she said, Greece had also “agreed to fulfil its commitments to bondholders.
She was speaking ahead of a meeting of eurozone finance ministers in Luxembourg on Thursday.
Greece has less than two weeks left to reach a debt deal or face defaulting on an existing €1.6bn (£1.1bn) loan repayment due to the IMF.

BBC

In the expression “Where there’s a will, there’s a way”, what does will refer to?

Which is the following statements is true?

Scientists have discovered a chemical in blood that indicates whether people will have declining brain function.

Looking for the earliest signs of Alzheimer’s disease, they analysed levels of 1,129 proteins circulating in the blood of more than 200 twins.

These were compared with data from cognitive-function tests over the next decade,in Translational Psychiatry.
And levels of one protein, MAPKAPK5, tended to be lower in those people whose brains declined.
MAPKAPK5 is involved in relaying chemical messages within the body, although its connection with cognitive decline is unclear.

Dementia cases are expected to treble globally by 2050, but there is no cure or treatment.
It can take more than a decade from the first changes in the brain to culminate in symptoms such as memory loss, confusion and personality change.
And drug companies believe they need to treat patients years before symptoms appear in order to protect the brain

BBC

MAPKAPK5…

In accordance to the text, what can be said about dementia?

Al-Muhandis points to the map, to a bridge over the Tigris River north of Baiji. “This bridge is on the main ISIS supply line between Baiji and Mosul. Every day for months now, fighters, equipment and ammunition move over this bridge. But until now the international coalition hasn’t hit it.”
Major General Anad, a 37-year veteran of the Iraqi Army, expresses the consternation one hears from many in Iraq these days, noting that it took the U.S. and its allies only 22 days to utterly defeat Saddam Hussein’s regime in 2003.
“When the United States wants to do something, it does it,” he tells me. “We fought them twice, in 1991 and 2003. They have incredible capabilities. If they were serious, they could crush ISIS.”
When I ask him his reaction to the news that the Obama administration will send more than 400 additional troops to train the Iraqi Army, supplementing the around 3,100 already here, he scoffs.”We don’t need training, we need weapons. To detect land mines we are using sticks, just like in World War One. The Americans have the latest technology for land mines. That’s the kind of help we need.”

CNN

Anad…

The bridge over the Tigris River…

Djibouti, a small country on the Red Sea, is already home to military bases from the US and France, the former colonial power, but China’s interest is now becoming increasingly apparent.
What makes this horn of Africa nation attractive to global military powers?
Djibouti’s status as a model of stability in an otherwise volatile region is one of its greatest assets.
It lies on the Bab el-Mandeb Strait, a gateway to the Suez Canal, which is one of the world’s busiest shipping routes.
Djibouti also provides a vital port for landlocked neighbour Ethiopia, even more important now as a railway between both their capitals is completed.
Chinese-led infrastructure projects – including the construction of air and maritime ports – are present here, just as they are elsewhere in Africa.
But it is Djibouti’s proximity to restive regions in Africa and the Middle East that makes it significant for the location of bases for the military superpowers.

BBC

According to the text, Djibouti…

What contributes to the attractiveness of Djibouti for global military powers?

The U.S. Army has released a draft solicitation that lays out the service’s latest plans to replace the M9 9mm pistol with the Modular Handgun System.

Army weapons officials plan to open the official competition next year with the goal of awarding a contract to a single gun maker for nearly 300,000 new pistols by 2018.

“We expect to release the final solicitation in 2016,” Col. Scott Armstrong, the head of Project Manager for Soldier Weapons, said in a June 17 press release from Program Executive Office Soldier.

“This will be followed by a phased down-select process that will run through 2017. When all is said and done, the XM17 will provide Warfighters with greater accuracy, target acquisition, ergonomic design. The new handgun will also be more reliable, durable and easier to maintain.”

This is the second draft solicitation the Army has released for its effort to replace the M9, a pistol Beretta USA has made for the U.S. military since the mid-1980s.

Military.com

The solicitation:

What advantages does the Modular Handgun System have?

Can movies think? This is a longstanding critical question, usually answered in the negative. Literature, the thinking goes, is uniquely able to show us the flow of thought and feeling from within, but the camera’s eye and the two-dimensional screen can’t take us past the external signs of consciousness. We can look at faces in various configurations of pleasure or distress, but minds remain invisible, mysterious, beyond the reach of cinema.

One of the many accomplishments of “Inside Out” — a thrilling return to form for Pixar Animation Studios after a few years of commercially successful submasterpieces — is that it demolishes this assumption. The movie, directed by Pete Docter, solves a thorny philosophical problem with the characteristically Pixaresque tools of whimsy, sincerity and ingenious literal-mindedness.

The story takes place mostly in the head of an 11-year-old girl named Riley, who has just moved with her parents from Minnesota to San Francisco.

The Guardian June 2015

According to popular thought , films…

Inside Out…

Bridal gowns are frilly frights no more, with chic, streamlined looks taking over. It was an Ethiopian expat who helped start this trend, writes Lindsay Baker.

As an arena of fashion, bridal wear is so loaded with cultural and style references – not to mention a baffling diversity of choices – that it can be difficult for a bride-to-be to decide exactly what kind of dress she really wants to wear.

The bride should follow her intuition, according to influential, New York-based bridal-wear designer Amsale Aberra, whose designs have helped shape what is considered chic in bridal styles over the past three decades. The designer, who has also created costumes for film and television, was the subject of a recent reality TV series in the US, Amsale Girls, and has become known for the ‘forever modern’ look of her gowns.

It was Amsale’s search for a gown for her own wedding day in 1985 that led her on the path of becoming a designer. “I got my start right after my own wedding,” she tells BBC Culture

BBC

What can be said about wedding dresses nowadays?

Amsale Aberra…

Not so long ago, a sailor navigating the cold waters of the northern Pacific Ocean might have had every chance of being confronted by a giant cow.This cow would have measured 10 metres long, and weighed between five and ten tonnes. And it would have been the most adept swimmer, spending its days cruising the seas, grazing on fields of grass growing underwater.
The cow in question was known as Steller’s sea cow. It is now extinct, having left this earth almost 250 years ago. But many people are unaware that such a huge and extraordinary creature once existed, or know its incredible story. And even today, scientists are still discovering fundamental insights into the life and history of this huge, lumbering, but almost mystical animal.
Steller’s sea cow didn’t look anything like the modern cows we rear for meat and milk. It belonged to a different group of mammals, known as the Sirenia, named after the mermaids of Greek mythology that were known as sirens.

BBC

  What can be said about the Steller’s sea cow?

What can be said about the cow’s ability to swim?

Amy Rogerson, 32, moved from England to Libya to be with her partner of one year.
Two weeks after the couple first started their relationship her new boyfriend had to fly back to Libya for work. “We’d said goodbye but he called me from the airport and we talked it over. Even after two weeks we knew that we wanted to commit, or at least commit to trying, so we decided to stay in touch.” Even that proved a challenge, though. “The internet connection wasn’t good enough for Skype,” recalled Rogerson, “and when [Libya’s leader] Colonel Gaddafi was in town, it was cut entirely.” After a year of long distance, and with her partner still in Libya, Rogerson left her job as an administrator and made the move to be with him. “We realised we needed an end in sight,” she explained. However, five years, one wedding, and four countries later, the couple again have found themselves in the same situation.

                                    BBC

How long have the couple been together?

By the end of the text:

India’s Supreme Court has told a Bollywood actor to apologise to a fan whom he slapped while he was shooting a film seven years ago.

Govinda said on Tuesday that he “respected” the top court and was waiting for its order.

Santosh Ray said Govinda had slapped him “without any provocation” while he was watching a film shoot in 2008.

Govinda, a former MP, was one of Bollywood’s top comedy stars in the 1980s and 1990s.

Mr Ray had sought criminal proceedings against the actor, but his lawyer later told the court that his client would be satisfied with an apology, reports say.

“I was just watching the shooting of a movie as I was his fan. But the incident left me shocked and I lost all respect for him,” he told The Hindustan Times newspaper.

On Monday, the court watched video recordings of the incident and asked Govinda to apologise to Mr Ray.

“We all enjoy your movies and you are a great actor but we cannot tolerate your action of slapping. You don’t need to do in actual life what you do on screen,” the court was quoted as saying by The Times of India newspaper.

“You don’t need to pay money for it. Even expressing regret is more than enough. Your prestige would not go down by expressing regret. Have a large heart and apologise,” the judges said.

Govinda told reporters on Tuesday that he did “not want to hurt anybody” and was waiting for the complete court order before deciding what to do.

BBC

The incident…

Mr. Ray…

Clinically speaking, a “good night’s sleep” is considered one that consists of seven to nine hours of quality, uninterrupted snooze time — barring the simple activities that wake us during the night like using the restroom, getting a glass of water or even turning over.

The American Academy of Sleep Medicine describes the experience of sleep as unfolding in four phases, culminating in REM (rapid eye movement) sleep. The stages repeat in order every 90 to 110 minutes on average. Stages 1 and 2 are characterized by a progression from light sleep through a gradual slowing of brain waves. Stage 3 is the period of sleep when we’re the most conked out. If you’ve ever had a hard time waking someone up, he or she was probably in this third stage of the sleep cycle. The fourth stage, REM sleep, is when our breathing rate quickens and our eyes move under our eyelids. This is the stage during which most people dream, especially when it occurs in the latter half of the night. We can also dream in the other stages of sleep, but scientists don’t have a good idea of how often or how much.

Studies show that dreaming is good for us. Rubin Naiman, a sleep and dream expert on the clinical faculty of the Arizona Center for Integrative Medicine, says, “Good dreaming contributes to our psychological well-being by supporting healthy memory, warding off depression, and expanding our ordinary limited consciousness into broader, spiritual realms.” A study at Harvard Medical School concluded that dreaming also helps us consolidate memories and retain information.

 www.huffingtonpost.com

A good night’s sleep means…

REM…

Have you ever noticed that your mood changes in a similar way at a particular time of year for reasons you can’t quite pinpoint? Maybe you often feel slightly on edge or blue during the week of Thanksgiving, even though nothing bad has happened (yet). Or you tend to feel anxious, irritable or vaguely ill at ease when fall turns to winter, which happens to be when your parents split up or your best friend moved away. The truth is, particular holidays, months or even seasons can carry emotional baggage that you may not recognize.

Each of us has emotional hotspots in time that are “irreversibly tied to our past,” according to Dr. John Sharp, a psychiatrist on the faculty of Harvard Medical School. “What’s happening is your mind is making sense of your experiences without your really thinking about it; it’s a form of pattern recognition.” In other words, it’s as if your subconscious is making a note to self, based on environmental factors or sensory conditions that trigger an association from the past.

Whether they’re obvious or hidden, these connections often involve memories of noteworthy events in our lives (such as moving to a new state or being in a horrible car accident or a frightening fire) or holiday-related family get-togethers. But they can also be tied to a particular loss (such as the death of a loved one or a devastating break-up or divorce) or to personal struggles (with finances or substance abuse, for example). “The emotions bleed across time from the past to the present,” Sharp explains.

 www.huffingtonpost.com

The article talks about:

According to Sharp…

NEW ASKAR REFUGEE CAMP, West Bank — Ashrakat Qattanani, 16, gave clear warning that she was up to something days before she swapped her schoolbooks for a knife and headed to a nearby Israeli military checkpoint. If I am killed, Ashrakat told her father, “Don’t cry for me, cry for Palestine.”

Hadeel Awwad, 14, betrayed no such thoughts. Her brother had been shot dead by Israeli forces two years before, but that had inspired her to want to become a doctor, so she could save lives. But close to the second anniversary of her brother’s death, Hadeel picked up a pair of scissors and with her cousin Nourhan, 16, walked calmly to a Jerusalem market.

The three teenagers are among the 15 women who have tried, or are accused of trying, to stab Israeli soldiers or civilians in the West Bank since an uprising began in October. Where previous outbursts of Palestinian violence predominantly involved men, women have accounted for about 20 percent of all Palestinian attackers in the last two months. and for perhaps the first time in this patriarchal society they are acting on their own, without consulting any male authorities.

On Tuesday, a 19-year-old university student, Maram Hasouna, was shot dead after she lunged at soldiers with a knife at a military checkpoint in the northern West Bank, the Israeli military said. Another young woman was taken in for questioning after she was found near Efrat, a Jewish settlement in the West Bank, with a knife in her bag, Israeli news media reported.

www.nytimes.com

Hadeel Awwad…

In the last two months…

Vernon’s adult fantasies (self-published under the Kingfisher pseudonym, to distinguish them from her middle-grade fantasies like the Dragonbreath series) fit perfectly within centuries of fairy-tale tradition, where charity and politeness always pay off, and rudeness or cruelty have serious consequences. And her deeper horror elements recall the darkest aspects of the Grimm brothers’ collected stories as well.

Rhea, like other Vernon heroes, is a worried but stolid focal point amid unpredictable weirdness. Forced to accept a marriage proposal from the nobleman Lord Crevan, she travels to his castle — where she learns she isn’t his first wife, and that his interest in her is predatory. There’s a little bit of Bluebeard in his DNA, but the story echoes other classics, as he sets her impossible tasks and she finds help in unlikely places

Stylistically, Seventh Bride is stripped-down and straightforward, wasting little space on elaborate scene-setting. That bluntness is appropriate to Rhea’s perspective as an uneducated peasant whose most significant experience of the world involves fighting a bullying swan for her daily lunch. So it’s a surprise that Bride most closely resembles Peter Beagle’s elegant, poetic novel The Last Unicorn, with its phantasmagoria of witches, nobles, sorcerers, and great powers. Vernon has Beagle’s knack for creating colorful, instantly memorable characters, and inhuman creatures capable of inspiring awe and wonder. For that matter, Vernon sometimes feels like Diana Wynne Jones’ heir, with her stories of aggrieved heroes trying to bull their way through comic magical chaos.

December 2015 www.npr.org

Rhea is described as…

Which adjective best describes “Seventh Bride”?