English in Madrid

Source: Wikipedia (Zeynel Cebeci) Statue commemorates wartime lovers separated for 60 years Italian prisoner of war and Ukrainian forced labourer were separated after falling in love during the second world war It may go down as one of the longest love affairs in history – and certainly one with the most inauspicious beginnings, starting as it did in a concentration camp more than 70 years ago in Austria. It was there that Luigi Pedutto met Mokryna Yurzuk. He was an Italian prisoner of war, she was a Ukrainian forced labourer with a young daughter born in the Nazi camp near the town of Sankt Pölten, northeastern Austria. She brought him food, he sewed hats and clothes to impress her in return. They fell in love, but when the camp was liberated in 1945, Yurzuk was sent back to Ukraine. Pedutto was not allowed to join her. Decades passed. Pedutto worked as a financier in Italy and Yurzuk as a collective farmer in Ukraine. Both married and had children, but never forgot their wart...

Drummers invite Helen Mirren to open gay festival – and shout at them again The organisers of a gay music festival whose noisy drummers received a royal ticking off from Dame Helen Mirren for disrupting her performance as the Queen have invited her back to shout at them again. Dame Helen Mirren offered an olive branch to a troupe of noisy drummers who disrupted her performance as the Queen – by taking it upon herself to promote their music festival for them. Dame Helen stormed out of the Gielgud theatre in London on Saturday dressed as the Queen to remonstrate with a troupe of samba-style musicians who had stopped outside the stage door while she was performing in The Audience, a play about the Queen.   Source: Daily Telegraph         Vocabulary :   a ticking off -   to disrupt -   to offer an olive branch -   a troupe -   to storm out of a place -   to remonstrate -   ...

Operation Puerto judge sparks outrage by ordering destruction of blood bags The Spanish anti-doping agency will launch a legal appeal after the judge in the Operation Puerto trial sparked outrage by ordering the destruction of more than 200 blood bags that could hold the secret to one of the biggest doping conspiracies in sporting history. Judge Julia Patricia Santamaria rejected a request by the World Anti-Doping Agency and the country’s national anti-doping organisation to hand over some 211 bags of blood and plasma and other documentary evidence seized by police seven years ago from the clinic of Dr Eufemiano Fuentes. Yesterday, she found Fuentes guilty of endangering public health by ­giving blood transfusions to elite cyclists and sentenced him to a one-year suspended jail term, but she frustrated anti-doping officials by ruling that all evidence relating to the case, right down to the computers used during the Operation Puerto investigation, would be destroyed. Invest...