English in Madrid

Source:  Kayla Velasquez en Unsplash ' Fake news ' named Collins Dictionary's official Word of the Year for 2017  Orwellian coinage popularised by US President Donald Trump and his team during the presidential election campaign defines its moment, according to leading lexicographers  The term “fake news” has been named Collins' Word of the Year 2017. Usage of the term - which has often been used by US President Donald Trump - has risen by 365% since 2016. Defined as “false, often sensational, information disseminated under the guise of news reporting”, “fake news” will now be added to the next print edition of Collins Dictionary. Lexicographers, the people who compile dictionaries, found other politically relevant words had been significant over the last 12 months, including “antifa”, an abbreviation of “anti-fascist”, and “ echo chamber ”, which refers to those who share their opinions in environments, especially social media, where the only people who ...

Source: Wikipedia   Passenger's letter from doomed Titanic sells for record £126,000  Penning the letter a day before the disaster, the passenger writes: " If all goes well , we will arrive in New York (on) Wednesday". One of the last-known letters written on board the Titanic has sold at auction  for a record-breaking £126,000. The handwritten note was penned on 13 April 1912 - a day before the ship hit an iceberg and sank in a tragedy that killed more than 1,500 people. It was written on embossed Titanic stationery by first-class passenger Alexander Oskar Holverson, who was intending to post it to his mother in New York. The salesman had boarded the Titanic in Southampton with his wife Mary, who survived the disaster. She never remarried - and according to Encyclopaedia Titanica, she was buried with her husband in New York after dying of kidney failure in 1918 at the age of 41. In the letter, he says the couple "had good weather whi...

Source: Jocelyn Morales en Unsplash Discover the 90/10 Principle  It will change your life ( at least the way you react to situations). What is this principle? 10% of life is made up of what happens to you. 90% of life is decided by how you react. What does this mean? We really have no control over 10% of what happens to us. We cannot stop the car from break ing down . The plane will be late arriving, which messes up   our whole schedule. A driver may cut us off in traffic. We have no control over this 10%. The other 90% is different. You determine the other 90%. How? By your reaction. You cannot control a red light. but you can control your reaction. Don’t let people fo ol you; you can control how you react. Let’s use an example. You are eating breakfast with your family. Your daughter knocks over  a cup of coffee onto your business shirt. You have no control over what just happened. What happens next will be determined by how you react...

Source:  Estúdio Bloom on Unsplash Avocados: Spanish company launches low-fat variety From Instagram posts to morning smoothies , you cannot seem to escape the avocado in 2017. But the fruit could soon become even more popular after a Spanish company announced it is launching reduced-fat avocados for the first time. Isla Bonita claims their Avocado Light has up to 30% less fat than ordinary fruits. They also say it ripens faster, and oxidises - or goes that weird shade of brown - slower. The avocados are grown under special soil and climate conditions to provide the same nutritional benefits with less fat, according to the company's website. Avocados are a foodie hit for their rich and creamy texture caused by their high fat content - an average fruit has between 20-30g of fat. Most of this is monosaturated fat, which has been linked to the reduction of cholesterol and lowered risk of cancer and heart disease . But your morning avocado on toast could...

Source: Héctor J. Rivas on Unsplash UK's oldest postcard firm set to close When was the last time you sent a postcard? If the pronouncement of UK publisher J Salmon is anything to go by it 's likely   to have been a long time ago. The family-owned firm, which has been publish ing postcards and calendars since 1880, will close this December. The reason? It says instead of pen n ing a card , people are putting photos up on Facebook or Instagram or using WhatsApp to show friends and family at home just how much fun they're having. Brothers Charles and Harry Salmon, the fifth generation of the family to run   the firm , said the popularity of social media had had a huge   impact on the business. People are also tending to take shorter holidays, meaning they are likely to have arrived home long before their postcards, the brothers - joint managing directors of the firm - said. As a result the business was no longer viable, they said. " In...

  Source: Mathias Reding on Unsplash   Catalonia referendum: Spanish state poised to seize Catalan finances The Spanish government has given the regional government in Catalonia 48 hours to abandon "illegal" referendum plans or lose budgetary powers. Finance Minister Cristóbal Montoro said a mechanism had been approved for the state to take control of the autonomous region's finances. Madrid is seeking to stop the Catalan government spending public money on its planned independence referendum. The Catalans are defying a court order to suspend the 1 October vote. Catalan President Carles Puigdemont launched his campaign for a "Yes" vote on Thursday night in the town of Tarragona, telling a rally at a former bullring : "Vote, and in so doing bring light to darkness that has lasted for too many years." The crowd shouted back, "Independence", "We will vote" and "We're not afraid", AFP news agenc...

Source: Photo by Maksim Ivanov on Unsplash Spain's hotels fight back against fake food poisoning claims from Brits  Spanish hotels are turning to private detectives and the courts to repel a surge   in fake food poisoning claims by British holidaymakers that has already cost them millions of euros. The number of food sickness claims soared   to more than 10,000 during the 2016-17 tourist season, from around just 600 in 2015-16, said the head of Spain's hotel confederation CEHAT, Ramon Estalella. It estimates that more than 90 percent of the claims - usually made through small-claims management companies that promise payouts of several thousand pounds - are bogus . For years Britons have been the biggest group of tourists to Spain by nationality. Estalella said they are responsible for virtually all of the fake illness claims. The problem has arisen because British consumer law does not require claimants to produce any medical evidence of illness, and...

  Source: Federico Giampieri on Unsplash Brits accused of TERRORISM in Spain as hotel bed numbers slashed and tourists intimidated SPANISH activists have accused Brits of terrorism in Spain as the Balearic government brings in plans to curb the thousands of UK citizens spending MILLIONS in the region. Holiday hotspots like Mallorca and Ibiza are set to limit the number of holidaymakers to the islands as locals clash with visitors. The number of beds sold to tourists will now be CAPPED at a combined 623,624 on the popular islands of Mallorca and Ibiza as boozy British groups are accused of causing mayhem around coastal towns. New plans will cut that number to 120,000 over the next few years and 70% of the beds assigned will be in Mallorca. Anyone breaking the laws will be fined up to €400,000. Tourism minister Álvaro Nadal has said he is urging lawmakers to protect visitors from “those who perpetrate and instigate acts against tourism”. He said: “R...

Source: Nathan Dumlao on Unsplash Drinking a cup of coffee may add nine minutes per day to your life  It has become a national pastime but our obsession with drinking coffee could be having unexpected health benefits and even increasing our lifespan by up to nine minutes a day, new research suggests .  Two new studies , including the largest ever conducted into coffee drinking, have found that imbibing even a single cup a day reduces the risk of dying early from any cause, and dramatically cuts the chance of death from digestive problems.  People who consumed just one 350ml cup each day slashed their risk of dying early by 12 per cent over 16 years, while three cups reduced the risk by 18 per cent. Prof Sir David Spiegelhalter, Winton Professor for the Public Understanding of Risk at the University of Cambridge, calculated that, if causal, it meant a cup of coffee a day extended the average life of a man by three months and a woman by a month. “Pro-r...

Source: Wikipedia (AngryJulieMonday)   Gangnam Style is no longer the most-played video on YouTube  Psy's Gangnam Style is no longer the most-watched video on YouTube. The South Korean megahit had been the site's most-played clip for the last five years . The surreal video became so popular that it "broke" YouTube's play counter, exceeding the maximum possible number of views (2,147,483,647), and forcing the company to rewrite its code. But the song has now been overtaken by another music video - Wiz Khalifa and Charlie Puth's See You Again . The heart-wrenching ballad has now been streamed 2,895,373,709 times; beating   Psy's current count of 2,894,426,475 views. Adding it up , that means See You Again has been streamed for a total of 21,759 years. If one person was to listen to each of those streams consecutively, they'd have to have started during the glacial peak of the last Ice Age. The song was written for the action mo...