A UN agency rolled out a $ 214 million program Tuesday to help 16 needy places hit hard by high prices for food and oil, amid a crisis already making it hard for aid groups to provide enough food for the worlds hungry.
The World Food Program said almost 1 billion poor people around the world are struggling to survive amid the higher prices. The agency is trying to reach those in critical need of assistance in Africa, Asia and the Caribbean.
"Food prices are not abating, and the worlds most vulnerable have exhausted their coping strategies", said Josette Sheeran, the agencys executive director. "Our action plan is targeted and customized to help the most vulnerable meet their urgent needs.
"The plan will provide assistance to groups such as pregnant women, undernourished children and people living in urban areas affected most by the food crisis.
The Rome-based agency also hopes to cut transportation costs and help support farmers in countries where emergency food can be bought locally.
But the agency already faces "obstacles" in procuring food, particularly when trying to buy supplies locally, spokeswoman Brenda Barton said.
"At the markets we have been buying food it has become just too expensive", Barton told The Associated Press by telephone. And she added: "a lot of markets just dont have any food to buy."
Internet: (adapted).
Based on the text above, it can be deduced that
Josette Sheeran says that they have now succeeded in feeding the most deprived people.
Complete the sentence below with the right verb and adjective. “I know I can ___ a product that is ___ than what almost everybody else in the market is making.”
Working for on demand startups like Uber and TaskRabbit is supposed to offer flexible hours and higher wages, but many workers have found the pay lower and the hours less flexible than they expected. Even more surprising: 8 percent of those chauffeuring passengers and 16 percent of those making deliveries said they lack personal autoinsurance.
Those are among the findings from a survey about the work life of independent contractors for on-demand startups, a booming sector of the tech industry, being released Wednesday.
"We want to shed light on the industry as a whole," said Isaac Madan, a Stanford master s candidate in bioinformatics who worked with two other Stanford students and a recent alumnus on the survey of 1,330 workers. "People need to understand how this space will change and evolve and help the economy."
On-demand, often called the sharing economy, refers to companies that let users summon workers via smartphone apps to handle all manner of services: rides, cleaning, chores, deliveries, car parking, waiting in lines. Almost uniformly, those workers are independent contractors rather than salaried employees.
That status is the main point of contention in a recent rash of lawsuits in which workers are filing for employee status. While the survey did not directly ask
contractors if they would prefer to be employees, it found that their top workplace desires were to have paid health insurance, retirement benefits and paid time off for holidays, vacation and sick days - all perks of full time workers. Respondents also expressed interest in having more chances for advancement, education sponsorship, disability insurance and human relations support. Because respondents were recruited rather than randomly selected, the survey does not claim to be representational but a conclusion one may come to is that flexibility ofnew jobs comes with a cost. Not all workers are prepared for that!
SFChronicle.com and SFGate.com, May 20, 2015. Adaptado
Domestic violence victims denied justice: state of Roraima fails to investigate, prosecute abusers
June 21, 2017
The authorities in the Brazilian state of Roraima are failing to investigate or prosecute domestic violence cases, leaving women at further risk of abuse, Human Rights Watch said in a report released today. The serious problems in Roraima, the state with the highest rate of killings of women in Brazil, reflect nationwide failures to provide victims of domestic violence with access to justice and protection.
Killings of women rose 139 percent from 2010 to 2015 in Roraima, reaching 11.4 homicides per 100,000 women that year, the latest for which there is data available. The national average is 4.4 killings per 100,000 women—already one of the highest in the world. Studies in Brazil and worldwide estimate that a large percentage of women who suffer violent deaths are killed by partners or former partners.
Only a quarter of women who suffer violence in Brazil report it, according to a February 2017 survey that does not provide state-by-state data. Human Rights Watch found in Roraima that when women do call police they face considerable barriers to having their cases heard. Military police told Human Rights Watch that, for lack of personnel, they do not respond to all emergency calls from women who say they are experiencing domestic violence. Other women are turned away at police stations. Some civil police officers in Boa Vista, the state´s capital, decline to register domestic violence complaints or to request protection orders. Instead, they direct victims to the single “women’s police station” in the state – which specializes in crimes against women – even at times when that station is closed. Even when police receive their complaints, women must tell their story of abuse, including sexual abuse, in open reception areas, as there are no private rooms to take statements in any police station in the state.
Not a single civil police officer in Roraima receives training in how to handle domestic violence cases. Some police officers, when receiving women seeking protection orders, take statements so carelessly that judges lack the basic information they need to decide whether to issue the order. Civil police are unable to keep up with the volume of complaints they do receive. In Boa Vista, the police have failed to do investigative work on a backlog of 8,400 domestic violence complaints.
(Human Rights Watch. www.hrw.org/news/2017/06/21/ brazil-domestic-violence-victims-denied-justice. Adaptado)
De acordo com o terceiro parágrafo, um dos problemas enfrentados, na cidade de Boa Vista, pelas mulheres que sofrem de violência é que
Nobel Prize of Literature in 1954, American author and journalist Ernest Hemingway (1899-1961), published in 1940 a novel with the Spanish Civil War as its background. This work was called
It now seems to me that what matters most in the majority
of organizations is to have reasonably intelligent, hard-working
managers who have a sense of pride and loyalty toward their
organization; who can get to the root of a problem and are inclined
toward action; who are decent human beings with a natural empathy
and concern for people; who possess humor, humility, and common
sense; and who are able to couple drive with stick-to-it-iveness* and
patience in the accomplishment of a goal.
It is the ability to make positive things happen that most
distinguishes the successful manager from the mediocre or
unsuccessful one. It is far better to have dependable managers who
can make the right things happen in a timely fashion than to have
brilliant, sophisticated, highly educated executives who are excellent
at planning and analyzing, but who are not so good at implementing.
The most cherished manager is the one who says “I can do it,” and
then does.
Many business schools continue to focus almost exclusively
on the development of analytical skills. As a result, these schools are
continuing to graduate large numbers of students who know a great
deal about analyzing strategies, dissecting balance sheets, and using
computers — but who still don’t know how to manage!
As a practical matter, of course, schools can go only so far
in teaching their students to manage. Only actual work experience
will fully develop the kinds of managerial traits, skills, and virtues
that I have discussed here.
*the ability and determination to continue doing something despite difficulties.
Wegman, Knezevic, Bernstein. A reading skills book, 3.d
ed. Mac Graw-Hill Companies, Inc. (adapted).
Based on the text above, judge the items below.
Workers are expected to be faithful to their organizations.
Read the text below to answer the questions 11-15.
NASA Researchers Studying Advanced Nuclear Rocket Technologies
January 9, 2013
By using an innovative test facility at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala., researchers are able to use non-nuclear materials to simulate nuclear thermal rocket fuels - ones capable of propelling bold new exploration missions to the Red Planet and beyond. The Nuclear Cryogenic Propulsion Stage team is tackling a three-year project to demonstrate the viability of nuclear propulsion system technologies. A nuclear rocket engine uses a nuclear reactor to heat hydrogen to very high temperatures, which expands through a nozzle to generate thrust. Nuclear rocket engines generate higher thrust and are more than twice as efficient as conventional chemical rocket engines.
The team recently used Marshall’s Nuclear Thermal Rocket Element Environmental Simulator, or NTREES, to perform realistic, non-nuclear testing of various materials for nuclear thermal rocket fuel elements. In an actual reactor, the fuel elements would contain uranium, but no radioactive materials are used during the NTREES tests. Among the fuel options are a graphite composite and a “cermet” composite - a blend of ceramics and metals. Both materials were investigated in previous NASA and U.S. Department of Energy research efforts.
Nuclear-powered rocket concepts are not new; the United States conducted studies and significant ground testing from 1955 to 1973 to determine the viability of nuclear propulsion systems, but ceased testing when plans for a crewed Mars mission were deferred.
The NTREES facility is designed to test fuel elements and materials in hot flowing hydrogen, reaching pressures up to 1,000 pounds per square inch and temperatures of nearly 5,000 degrees Fahrenheit - conditions that simulate space-based nuclear propulsion systems to provide baseline data critical to the research team.
“This is vital testing, helping us reduce risks and costs associated with advanced propulsion technologies and ensuring excellent performance and results as we progress toward further system development and testing,” said Mike Houts, project manager for nuclear systems at Marshall.
A first-generation nuclear cryogenic propulsion system could propel human explorers to Mars more efficiently than conventional spacecraft, reducing crews’ exposure to harmful space radiation and other effects of long-term space missions. It could also transport heavy cargo and science payloads. Further development and use of a first-generation nuclear system could also provide the foundation for developing extremely advanced propulsion technologies and systems in the future - ones that could take human crews even farther into the solar system.
Building on previous, successful research and using the NTREES facility, NASA can safely and thoroughly test simulated nuclear fuel elements of various sizes, providing important test data to support the design of a future Nuclear Cryogenic Propulsion Stage. A nuclear cryogenic upper stage - its liquid- hydrogen propellant chilled to super-cold temperatures for launch - would be designed to be safe during all mission phases and would not be started until the spacecraft had reached a safe orbit and was ready to begin its journey to a distant destination. Prior to startup in a safe orbit, the nuclear system would be cold, with no fission products generated from nuclear operations, and with radiation below significant levels.
“The information we gain using this test facility will permit engineers to design rugged, efficient fuel elements and nuclear propulsion systems,” said NASA researcher Bill Emrich, who manages the NTREES facility at Marshall. “It’s our hope that it will enable us to develop a reliable, cost-effective nuclear rocket engine in the not-too-distant future."
The Nuclear Cryogenic Propulsion Stage project is part of the Advanced Exploration Systems program, which is managed by NASA’s Human Exploration and Operations Mission Directorate and includes participation by the U.S. Department of Energy. The program, which focuses on crew safety and mission operations in deep space, seeks to pioneer new approaches for rapidly developing prototype systems, demonstrating key capabilities and validating operational concepts for future vehicle development and human missions beyond Earth orbit.
Marshall researchers are partnering on the project with NASA’s Glenn Research Center in Cleveland, Ohio; NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston; Idaho National Laboratory in Idaho Falls; Los Alamos National Laboratory in Los Alamos, N.M.; and Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Oak Ridge, Tenn.
The Marshall Center leads development of the Space Launch System for NASA. The Science & Technology Office at Marshall strives to apply advanced concepts and capabilities to the research, development and management of a broad spectrum of NASA programs, projects and activities that fall at the very intersection of science and exploration, where every discovery and achievement furthers scientific knowledge and understanding, and supports the agency’s ambitious mission to expand humanity’s reach across the solar system. The NTREES test facility is just one of numerous cutting-edge space propulsion and science research facilities housed in the state-of- the-art Propulsion Research & Development Laboratory at Marshall, contributing to development of the Space Launch System and a variety of other NASA programs and missions.
Available in: http://www.nasa.gov
Considering the text, read the statements below.
I. Engines powered by expanded hydrogen work better than regular chemical engines.
II. A CERMET composite is made of ceramics, metal and graphite.
III. The Nuclear Cryogenic Propulsion Stage created the technology that took human crews to Mars.
According to the text, the correct assertion(s) is(are)
Choose the alternative that best completes the dialogue below. A. ____________ different types of penguins inhabit the South Pole? B. I don?t know. Ten, maybe. A. No, fifteen. And _____________ tall can they grow? B. I have no idea. One meter? A. That?s right. ___________ do they leave the South Pole? B. Probably in winter. A. Excellent. B. _________ are you asking me all these questions? A. Because I want to see if you did your homework!
