English in Madrid

Source: Wikipedia ( Anders Hellberg ) Greta Thunberg named Time Person of the Year for 2019 Greta Thunberg, the Swedish schoolgirl who inspired a global movement to fight climate change, has been named Time magazine's Person of the Year for 2019. The 16-year-old is the youngest person to be chosen by the magazine in a tradition that started in 1927. Speaking at a UN climate change summit in Madrid before the announcement, she urged world leaders to stop us ing "creative PR" to avoid real action. The next decade would define the planet's future, she said. Last year, the teenager started an environmental strike by missing lessons most Fridays to protest outside the Swedish parliament building. It sparked a worldwide movement that became popular with the hashtag #FridaysForFuture. Since then, she has become a strong voice for action on climate change, inspiring millions of students to join protests around the world. Earlier this year, she was nomi...

Source: Wikipedia ( Thirunavukkarasye-Raveendran ) The Christmas lottery launderers   Winning tickets are sought out by crooks looking to avoid pay ing tax on their ill-gotten gains   In the hours after the winning numbers in Spain’s massive El Gordo Christmas lottery are drawn every December 22, discreetly dressed men and women carrying suitcases stashed with bank notes fan out across the country headed for bars, lottery outlets, and banks before the fortunate owners of the prized tickets cash them in . Acting on behalf of   wealthy clients, their mission is to buy their winning tickets: they pay cash, ask no questions, and offer a generous bonus on top. It’s a very simple way to help reduce their clients’ tax bill. “Everybody knows that the Christmas lottery has always been used to launder money,” says veteran tax inspector José María Peláez Marcos, adding that it is almost impossible for the authorities to detect this kind of fraud. “Lottery ticke...

Source: Wikipedia (Pere prlpz)   Violent clashes over Catalan separatist leaders' prison terms Chaos at Barcelona airport as protesters react to sentencing over 2017 bid   for independence  The Catalan independence crisis erupted again on Monday as police and protesters clashed at Barcelona airport hours after the Spanish supreme court jailed nine Catalan separatist leaders over their roles in the failed bid for secession two years ago. Protesters took to the streets , with many gathering at Barcelona’s El Prat airport after the court acquitted the nine defendants of the charge of violent rebellion but convicted them variously of sedition, misuse of public funds and disobedience. By late afternoon , thousands of protesters had answered a call from the Tsunami Democràtic movement designed to bring the airport to a standstill . Thousands set off by car, train and metro. When police closed the station, even more made the three-and-a-half hour journe...

Source: John McArthur on Unsplash * PLANE WRONG Extinction Rebellion protester boards plane at London City Airport and stops it taking off as eco-warriors bid to cause travel chaos AN Extinction Rebellion protester managed to ground a flight from London City Airport today - to the fury of the passengers on board . The Aer Lingus flight to Dublin this morning was on the runway and about to take off when a smartly dressed man stood up and gave a lecture on climate change. Filming himself on his phone, the man said: "I don't wish to travel with you, but I don't wish to get off ". He went on : "I'm extremely sorry for the inconvenience". Furious passengers responded saying: "You're not sorry at all ". As their flight was held up , travellers pleaded with crew to remove the bespectacled man from the plane. Continuing to address those on board, the man said: "We have two generations of human civilisation...

Source:  Pablo Varela on Unsplash What to do if you hate your boss "I actually loved my job but when you have a boss that hates what you do - or is just trying to undermine you - it really does kill your enthusiasm," says Craig (not his real name). At first , he liked his manager but that changed when he saw her shout at an assistant on the team. And things only went downhill from there. She would shout at him in the office and publicly undermine him at industry events. "At first it was the snide remarks ," he says. ' Soul destroying ' " Slowly and surely things started to change and the remarks became less snippy and more out-and-out aggressive, hostile and condescending." He says it became "soul destroying" going into work every day. "Your personal relationships suffer too," Craig adds. "When you work for a bad boss - someone who's just constantly belittling you - it lowers your self esteem...

Source:  Mauricio Artieda on Unsplash Plastic-for-tickets: Free travel for recycling in Rome Under the scheme, passengers accrue credit for every plastic bottle they recycle which can be used to purchase metro tickets. Travellers in Rome are being offered free metro tickets in exchange for plastic bottles as part of a scheme to make the city more environmentally friendly .  The plastic-for-tickets venture, launched by the Italian capital's public transport company ATAC, is currently running at three stations. But transport chiefs have said because the public response to the initiative has been positive, the plan is to extend it across the whole metro network until July 2020. Under the scheme, passengers can deposit plastic bottles at stations in exchange for a €0.05 credit that can be spent to purchase online tickets. They need to download an app onto their mobile phones which registers the number of tickets they have earned on the basis of the number of ...

Source: Wikipedia ( Menahem bar Abraham ibn Malik )   Spain gets 127,000 citizenship applications from Sephardi Jews A deadline for Jews living outside Spain to request Spanish nationality has expired with 127,000 applications, most of them from Latin America. Jews living in Mexico top the list , with about 20,000 requests, followed by Jews in Venezuela and Colombia. In 2015, Spain passed a law to atone for the medieval expulsion of Sephardi Jews from the country. In the 15th Century, Spain's Catholic monarchs, having defeated the Muslim Moors, forced Jews to convert or leave. Applicants have had to prove a family connection with medieval Spain - and in many cases, that proved difficult . In addition, they had to get their Sephardi origins certified by a solicitor in Spain.  Mass expulsion  Spanish Jews gave the Hebrew name "Sepharad" to the Iberian peninsula. So descendants of Jews from Spain and Portugal still describe themselves as Sephardi Jews...

Source:  Pixels (Tom Fisk) Amazon fires: Brazil sends army to help tackle blazes   Brazil's president has ordered the armed forces to fight record forest fires in the Amazon, amid international outrage over rising deforestation. President Jair Bolsonaro deployed soldiers in nature reserves, indigenous lands, and border areas beset by fires. The move is an apparent reversal from Mr Bolsonaro, who has been accused of emboldening miners and loggers . Other countries had threatened to target Brazil's economy if it did not act to stop the fires. France and Ireland had said they would not ratify a large trade deal with South American nations, and Finland's finance minister had called on the EU to consider banning Brazilian beef imports. In a televised address to the nation on Friday, Mr Bolsonaro said forest fires "exist in the whole world" and "cannot serve as a pretext for possible international sanctions". Many of the fires are th...

Source:  Markus Winkler on Unsplash ‘Gastronomic terrorism!’ How the cucumber has sliced Spain in two  Spain is gripped by the question of whether or not the vegetable is a vital ingredient of gazpacho soup  Wounds Jamie Oliver inflicted three years ago when he added chorizo to rice and called it paella remain raw , while hopes of an end to the war over whether onions belong in a tortilla de patatas seem as forlorn as ever . But as Spain endures a particularly sweltering summer, the debate has turned to the country’s best-known antidote to the heat and, specifically, the question of whether cucumber has any place in a deliciously cooling bowl of gazpacho. The row began, not unpredictably, on Twitter. At the end of July the Spanish comedian known as El Monaguillo (the altar boy ; real name Sergio Fernández Meléndez) conducted his own poll . “Really important survey,” he wrote. “Gazpacho with cucumber or without cucumber?” Of the 3,809 people who repli...

Source: You Tube (The Telegraph) Key Words: boris johnson first speech Good afternoon I have just been to see Her Majesty the Queen who has invited me to form a government and I have accepted I pay tribute to the fortitude and patience of my predecessor and her deep sense of public service but in spite of all her efforts it has become clear that there are pessimists at home and abroad who think that after three years of indecision that this country has become a prisoner to the old arguments of 2016 and that in this home of democracy we are incapable of honouring a basic democratic mandate And so I am standing before you today to tell you the British people that those critics are wrong The doubters , the doomsters , the gloomste rs – they are going to get it wrong again The people who bet against Britain are going to lose their shirts because we are going to restore trust in our democracy and we are going to fulfil the repeated promises of parliame...

Source: Pexels (Kindel Media)   Mother, daughter and boyfriend held in Madrid organ sale murder plot A Spanish mother is accused of conspir ing with her daughter and the daughter's boyfriend to murder her partner – and then reporting the plan to police . Officers say the mother, 52, and daughter, 20, went to police to accuse the boyfriend of fraud, after he had failed to carry out   the killing. It is alleged they gave him €7,000 (£6,270) to hire   a hitman to kill the mother's partner and sell his organs. All three were arrested for the plot. Police sources, quoted by Spanish media, say the plotters - all Spanish - signed a contract for the hit in March. But weeks passed, and finally the mother and daughter reported the boyfriend to police on 14 June. The boyfriend, 29, had claimed to be in Spain's CNI intelligence service, and had fake documents to that effect . Police say he had assured the mother and daughter that he could hire a colleague to ca...

Source: Zoltan Tasi on Unsplash Spain battles biggest wildfires in 20 years as heatwave grips Europe Health officials warn ‘ the worst is still to come ’, with temperatures expected to exceed 44C in some areas Firefighters battled wildfires at a scale not seen for 20 years in Spain and southern France was placed on unprecedented red alert as much of western Europe sweltered in an extreme early-summer heatwave on Thursday. With temperatures in northern Spain and southern France set to exceed 44C, governments urged their citizens to take the utmost precaution, warning that in some areas the worst was yet to come . The conditions led officials to raise the French extreme heat alert to red. The alert, signifying a “dangerous weather phenomenon”, was the first since the system was introduced in 2004 following a 2003 heatwave that led to 15,000 premature deaths. It was issued for the four southern départements of Hérault, Gard, Vaucluse and Bouches-du-Rhône. “All mem...