Развертывание заголовков в вводные абзацы в англо-американской прессе

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Приложение 1

Teenager dies in London street shooting

 

Police hunt two suspects after 19-year-old dies and another man injured after being gunned down in Clapton, east London.

 

A teenager has been killed and another man left injured by two men wearing bandanas who shot them on a London street.

Terrified witnesses described how three gunshots were fired on Hindrey Road in Clapton, east London, at 8.20pm on Saturday.

A 19-year-old man was rushed to hospital where he later died, and a 22-year-old man was understood to be in a stable condition, Scotland Yard said.

The pair had been sitting in a car at the time of the shooting, witnesses said.

Zach Carpenter, 18, saw two men wearing bandanas across their faces enter Hindrey Road before he heard three loud bangs.

One of the men was black with a red-and-white chequered bandana, while the other man was white and wearing a black bandana, he said.

Carpenter said: "I was walking home from the shop when I saw a black man and a white man walking down the main road and turn into Hindrey Road. After about 30 seconds I heard three loud bangs.

"It's unnerved me a bit because my family live nearby."

The Aberystwyth University student, whose family has lived in the area since he was 10 months old, said there were known feuds between gangs on rival estates.

"It's not so much a war, more of a feud between the Pembury and Nightingale estates and another one," he said.

Detectives from Operation Trident, which investigates gang-related crime, are searching for the two suspects, who were seen running from the scene towards the nearby Pembury estate.

One is black and the other light-skinned, possibly of Asian or Turkish appearance, police said, adding that there was as yet no clear motive for the shootings, and no one had been arrested.

"At this very early stage we must retain an open mind regarding the circumstances of the incident and any motive," a Scotland Yard spokesman said.

"Detectives from Trident are leading the inquiry and an incident room will open in the morning." A postmortem will also be carried out.

Hindrey Road remained cordoned off on Sunday as police officers patrolled the area.

A 70-year-old resident, who did not wish to be named, said she heard three gunshots.

"I heard the shots – one, two, three. I was on the phone to my son and he told me not to dare look out the house. It's been a lot better around here recently. There hasn't been anything like this for many years."

Another resident, who has lived in the area for more than 20 years, said: "With this happening now, I don't think people will feel safe. There have been shootings here before but this is the first murder."

Witnesses or anyone with information about the incident are asked to call police on 101 or Crimestoppers on 0800 555 111.

 

17 February 2013, The Guardian, UK news, p.11

 

Приложение 2

Berlin film festival honours eastern European movie-makers

Two low-budget films, one from Romania and the other from Bosnia, take top prizes for portrayals of post-communist life

 

Eastern European film-makers basked in the limelight at the weekend after two low-budget pictures snapped up the top prizes at Berlin's international film festival.

The Berlinale's first prize, the Golden Bear, was awarded to a quasi-documentary-style Romanian film, Pozitia Copilului, or Child's Pose, directed by Calin Peter Netzer, a standard-bearer for the critically acclaimed new wave of film-making in his country. Starring Luminita Gheorghiu in a fearsome performance, the film tells the story of a mother's desperate and often illegal attempts to save her son from prosecution after he knocks down and kills an impoverished teenager.

Netzer said it reflected the "moral malaise of Romania's corruption-ridden middle classes". It also fitted the festival's penchant for delivering contemporary social drama with a strong political message.

The Bosnian documentary drama An Episode in the Life of an Iron Picker, by Danis Tanovic, won two prizes, including the Silver Bear best actor award for Nazif Mujic, the real-life protagonist of the €17,000 budget film about a Roma couple excluded from life-saving medical treatment.

The best screenplay award went to Parde, or Closed Curtain, by the dissident Iranian directors Jafar Panahi and Kambuzia Partovi. Telling the tale of a group of people trapped in a house by a lake, it was made in secret after Tehran banned Panahi from film-making.

Accepting the award on behalf of himself and Panahi, who is under house arrest, Partovi said: "It is impossible to stop a thinker and a poet. Their thoughts bear fruit everywhere."

Paulina Garcia won a Silver Bear for best actress for her role in Sebastian Lelio's Gloria from Chile, an intimate portrait of a society trapped in its grim fascist past. Gold, a heartfelt documentary by Michael Hammon that intimately followed the lives of three Paralympians who competed in London 2012, might have gone away empty-handed but proved to be a favourite with the audience, taking them on an emotional rollercoaster ride with its medal-winning protagonists, a cyclist, a swimmer and runner, who appeared at its premiere.

Child's Pose and Iron Picker reflected the strong showing at this year's festivals by films from the former communist bloc, and highlighted the new frictions, divisions and widespread corruption that are rife in many parts of the region.

The current affairs magazine Der Spiegel said it was a credit to the festival, now in its 63rd year and with its roots in the cold war, that such low-budget films could pip much bigger players at the post.

The magazine's critic said: "€17,000 and amateur actors are enough to beat the arthouse productions with budgets in the millions at a major film festival when a moving story is told well and beautifully."

The critic added: "That is the message this Berlinale jury is sending to all the film-makers from eastern Europe, a region often ignored by Cannes and Venice, whose citizens are struggling with the social upheaval of post-communism."

Another well-received section of the festival, curated by the German Film Archive and New York's Museum of Modern Art, was The Weimar Touch, which focused on the loss to German cinema when the Nazis drove out many of its star directors in the 1930s. More than 30 films by persecuted directors illustrated how Hitler inadvertently "created Hollywood".

While it lacks the glamour of Cannes or Venice, the Berlinale – the first major European film festival of the year – has a reputation as the most democratic of the larger film festivals. While it enjoys a certain element of glamour, rolling out the red carpet this year for an impressive array of stars including Catherine Deneuve, Juliette Binoche, Nicolas Cage, Jonathan Pryce and even Status Quo, it also revels in its non-exclusive, public-friendly image, giving the public access to all 400-plus films.

 

17 Feb 2013, The Guardian, International, p.14

 

Приложение 3

Boy, 16, stabbed to death in Wandsworth

Teenager found in stairwell at block of flats in south-west London after a party, police say.

 

A 16-year-old boy was found stabbed to death in a stairwell at a block of flats in south-west London after a party, police said.

The boy was found on the ground floor of the block in Wandsworth at 1.30am on Sunday, Scotland Yard said. An undisclosed number of people have been arrested.

Detective Chief Inspector Nick Scola, of the Metropolitan police's homicide and serious crime command, said he wanted to speak to a group of between five and eight men seen running from the scene at Albon House, in Neville Gill Close.

"I believe the victim had attended a party in Albon House," Scola said. "I need to trace everyone at that party, and in particular I am appealing for any information about a group of between five and eight males seen running from the scene into the surrounding streets and possibly through King George's Park."

The boy's next of kin have been informed. Those arrested are in custody at police stations in south and central London.

Police cordoned off a stretch of road outside Albon House as forensics teams examined the scene.

 

17 Feb 2013, The Guardian, UK news, p.11

 

Приложение 4

‘Fast & Furious’ Stresses Social Side of Fandom

LOS ANGELES — Despite selling $1.8 billion in tickets, Universal’s “Fast & Furious” car-racing series is Hollywood’s equivalent of a second-class citizen.

 

It does not dazzle with computerized special effects like “Transformers”  or feature rising young stars like “The Hunger Games.” It lacks the cultural cachet of “Harry Potter.”

“We feel like underdogs most of the time,” said Vin Diesel, who leads the “Fast & Furious” cast.

What “Fast & Furious” does have — and it has gone largely unnoticed — is an astounding online following. Its Facebook page has 24.9 million “likes,” more than any active film series except “Avatar.” Mr. Diesel has 39 million Facebook fans; among actors, only Will Smith has more.

That kind of passion is making the next installment, “Fast & Furious 6,” one of the most anticipated movies of the summer. After an online promotional stunt coordinated by the studio to coincide with a Super Bowl ad, “Fast & Furious 6” is setting up one of the biggest box-office races of the year: Mr. Diesel and crew against “The Hangover Part III.”

Both movies open over Memorial Day weekend, the last weekend in May, one of Hollywood’s most important ticket-selling periods.

Consider what “Fast & Furious 6” stirred up on Super Bowl Sunday, Feb. 3. Among six movies that were advertised during the game, it generated the biggest burst of attention by far, beating “Iron Man 3” and “Star Trek Into Darkness.” In fact, “Fast & Furious 6” received more mentions in social media on that day than the other five films combined, according to Fizziology, a data collection company.

“We measured the various ways audiences talked about these films online, and ‘Fast 6’ blew everything else away,” said Ben Carlson, Fizziology’s president.

Since the Super Bowl, “Fast & Furious 6” has added about 844,400 “likes” to the series’s Facebook page, more than any other advertised film; the second biggest success was Disney and Marvel’s “Iron Man 3,” which has gained more than 350,000 new Facebook followers.

The “Fast & Furious 6” extended Super Bowl ad has been viewed more than 16 million times on YouTube. The equivalent “Iron Man 3” spot has about 3 million views.

Universal won the marketing battle in part by having “Fast & Furious 6” cast members promote the trailer on their social networks as soon as it ran during the Super Bowl.

“Flipping every lever at one time is something we have never done before,” said Michael Moses, Universal’s co-president for marketing. “It was very coordinated to create as big and thundering a moment as possible.”

The sudden roar around “Fast & Furious 6” reflects not only the unusual and overlooked strengths of the series, but also the value in Hollywood of cultivating an online fan base. Universal was able to light its Internet brush fire because it has spent years working to make fans feel a sense of ownership in the series.

“We can tell when it’s just a studio publicist blasting out marketing materials, and they don’t do that to us,” said Umberto Gonzalez, a contributor to the movie fan site Latino Review. “They involve the fans and listen to us.”

For instance, Neal H. Moritz, the franchise’s primary producer, and Justin Lin, who has directed four of the six movies, have included fans’ cars in the films. Mr. Diesel said the casting of Dwayne Johnson (a k a the Rock) in “Fast Five” was inspired by fan feedback. “If we take the time to listen, we will have a better movie,”  Mr. Diesel said.

Similarly, the return of a fan favorite, Michelle Rodriguez, in “Fast & Furious 6” is “the direct result of a fan campaign,”  Mr. Moses said. Ms. Rodriguez’s character, Letty, appeared to die in “Fast & Furious,” the fourth film.

18 Feb 2013, page B1, The New York Times

Приложение 5

In Russia, Ruins and Property Spared by Meteor, Side by Side

CHELYABINSK, Russia — The shock wave from a meteor that exploded above Siberia last week somehow sheared the roof off a brick and steel factory building while leaving a nearby glass facade unscathed.

 

In some high-rises in this city, the first modern urban community to have felt the breath of a cosmic close encounter, every window blew out on the top floor; elsewhere, the ground floors suffered.

More ominously, reports came in to local news media over the weekend of stranger phenomena: behind unshattered apartment windows, glass jugs were said to explode into shards, dishes to crack, electronics to die. Balconies rattled. One man said a bottle broke right in his hand.

Anna V. Popova was at home with her daughter when she saw the flash, then heard explosions, then found the windows of her enclosed balcony blown in; her neighbor, with identical windows, escaped without property damage.

“A lot of people suffered, not us alone,” Ms. Popova said, but added that there seemed to be randomness in whose property was damaged. “Who are we supposed to blame for all this? Nobody of course.”

Scientists believe the space rock that tore through the atmosphere on Friday morning and blew apart here was the largest to have entered the atmosphere since 1908 and that it was unusual as well for the scale of its effects: more than 1,200 people injured and broad property damage.

Indeed, the event is providing a first indication of the type of structural and infrastructural costs meteors can exact from a highly industrialized society. NASA scientists say a meteor of this size strikes the Earth about once every hundred years.

Shattered glass caused most of the damage and injuries here in Chelyabinsk, a sprawling industrial city of about a million people.

What shattered the glass, scientists say, was both the explosion as the meteor fragmented and the waves of pressure created as it decelerated. Such low-frequency waves — called infrasound — are sometimes detected by cold-war era nuclear blast sensors in remote parts of the Pacific Ocean or Alaska, according to meteor experts.

The waves can bounce off buildings and be stronger in some places than others; they can also resonate with glass, explaining why bottles and dishes might have shattered inside undamaged kitchens, as if crushed by the airy hand of the meteor itself.

“A shock wave is like a ball,” Aleksandr Y. Dudorov, director of the theoretical physics department at Chelyabinsk State University, said in an interview. “Throw a ball into a room and it will bounce from one wall to another.”

Russia has mobilized 24,000 emergency officials to inspect roads, railroads, hospitals, factories and military facilities. Most are undamaged, including 122 sites identified as particularly critical, including nuclear power plants, dams and chemical factories, and a space launching site called Strela.

Also Sunday, Russia’s consumer safety inspection agency, Rospotrebnadzor, released a statement saying the water in Lake Chebarkul, where a hole in the ice appeared on Friday, was not radioactive.

It was unclear why the agency released this finding only Sunday, or whether the tests were conducted to assuage popular concerns or out of any real official uncertainty over what happened on Friday. In any case, the agency said a mobile laboratory quietly dispatched to the lake tested for but did not discover cesium 137 and strontium 90, isotopes created in nuclear explosions.

Infrasound waves have not previously been studied in a cityscape, Richard P. Binzel, a professor of planetary science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and an author of a textbook on asteroids and meteorites, said in a telephone interview. But he noted that the apparent randomness of the damage was consistent with the way such waves function.

“A shock wave can be coming from a particular direction, and if you face that direction you are more susceptible,” Dr. Binzel said.

“One building might shadow another, or you may have a street that is optimally aligned to channel the wave, either in a fortunate or unfortunate way.”

Peter Brown, a professor of physics at the University of Western Ontario, wrote in an e-mail that an infrasound wave “is very efficient at traveling long distances,” and that “windows, structures or even glass jars susceptible to resonate at this frequency could be a factor to seemingly random damage at widely disparate locations.”

Dr. Brown studied a similar, though smaller, explosion of a meteor over the Pacific Ocean on Oct. 8, 2009, which also sent out low-frequency waves, though too remote to affect homes or industry.

They were, though, registered by a network of infrasound sensors established to monitor compliance with the international ban on nuclear tests, according to Dr. Brown.

Alekdander V. Anusiyev, the spokesman for the governor of Chelyabinsk region, characterized the damage here as without a discernible pattern. “It is impossible to say more glass broke in one part of the city or another,” he said. “Glass broke everywhere.”

The roof of the zinc factory that collapsed was reinforced with a lattice of steel beams and supported by concrete joists that are now broken, jutting upward with mangled re-bar protruding. Windows on a neighboring house blew in with such force that the frames went with them.

Yet a few yards away on Sverdlovsky Street, the cosmos spared a seemingly vulnerable Hundai dealership, a three-story cube sheathed in glass, with glistening display models inside. Not a window broke.

“People can consider Feb. 15 their second birthday,” the governor of Chelyabinsk, Mikhail Yurevich, told reporters, referring to the day of the meteor strike. “God directed danger away.”

 

18 Feb 2013, page A4, The New York Times

 

Приложение 6

David Cameron teams up with One Direction for music video... no, really

THE Prime Minister of Britain, David Cameron, has been recruited by the boyband One Direction, and –  before you all rush off to check your calendars – it's not April 1st.

 

Mr Cameron, following in the footsteps of Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, will make a cameo appearance in the pop heart-throbs video in aid of Comic Relief.

The PM appears in the official video for One Direction's chairty single, a cover version mash-up of Blondie's One Way or Another and the Undertones' Teenage Kicks. 
 
The cameo was filmed at his official residence of 10 Downing Street last year.

"Yes, he is in it," a charity spokesman said, but was unable to say what his role included.

Following his work with the band, Cameron sent out a tweet with a picture of himself and the 'Kiss You' boyband. 
 
"Enjoyed my cameo in @onedirection's vid for @comicrelief charity single," he wrote. "Glad to help with the filming location!"

Former prime minister Tony Blair starred alongside comic Catherine Tate for the charity fundraiser in the last months of his premiership in 2007. 
 
And Gordon Brown appeared in a comedy sketch with James Corden and boyband JLS in 2011 - after he was voted out of office in the 2010 general election.

A Downing Street spokeswoman added the government would cover the cost of VAT on sales of this year's single from the overseas development budget, making "a charitable donation that will be the equivalent of the VAT".

 

18 Feb 2013, Daily Express

 

Приложение 7

English teenagers 'worst in Europe' at languages

British teenagers are trapped in a "vicious circle of monolingualism", a report warned yesterday as figures showed English youngsters are among the worst in Europe at foreign languages.

 

Teenagers in 14 different European countries were tested on their ability to speak the first foreign language taught in schools, which for England was French.

In reading, writing and listening tests, English pupils were ranked bottom.

The study suggests youngsters are lagging far behind their European peers, with many unable to understand more than basic words or phrases.

Just 11 per cent of English pupils studying French were considered "independent users" in writing – the lowest in Europe for a first foreign language. In comparison, across all countries, two-fifths of students were at this level.

Only 9.2 per cent were ranked in the top category for French reading – again, the lowest in Europe for a first foreign language.

The highest performers overall, based on reading, listening and writing skills, were Sweden, Malta and the Netherlands, the research found.

But France, where students' English skills were tested, also performed badly, perfoming second-worst in all three disciplines.

The study, conducted as part of the European Survey on Language Competences (ESLC) was released on the same day a new report from the British Academy found that the UK's poor foreign language skills were hurting the economy.

The British Academy report said a "vicious circle of monolingualism" was taking place, as the dearth of necessary skills forced British employers to "sidestep language issues", removing incentives for new language students.

"It is clear that the UK still has a long way to go in order to catch up with our European neighbours and international competitors," said Professor Nigel Vincent, Vice-President of the British Academy. "Languages are vital for the health and wellbeing of the education and research base, for UK competitiveness, and for individuals and society at large."

It also found that the current focus on French, Spanish and German was too narrow to meet modern global business needs.

"Indications of future demand show that a growing number of languages will be needed as the UK expands its global connections and responds to new economic realities," it says. "These include not only world languages such as Mandarin, Arabic and Russian – but also Turkish, Farsi and Polish."

The ESLC study, conducted by the National Foundation for Educational Research, tested around 1,444 pupils in 53 schools in England.

Around nine in 10 pupils in England were considered "basic users" in their French reading, meaning at best, they could only understand short simple texts.

Some were only able to understand short passages a single phrase at a time, and others were not even at this level.

In listening, 93% of English pupils studying French were "basic users" - this means that they could understand simple phrases and expressions relating to areas such as personal information, shopping and geography.

Responding to the report, a Department for Education spokesman said: "We are addressing the chronic lack of attention paid to foreign languages in schools.

"It is vital young people start studying a language at an earlier age. That is why from next year we are ensuring that children learn a language from age seven.

"They can then build on that at secondary school – where the EBacc is reversing the decline in the number of pupils studying languages."