Migrant crisis: Grim find of bodies in Austria lorry

AUGUST 27, 2015 -BBC NEWS

The bodies of between 20 and 50 migrants have been found in a lorry abandoned in a motorway lay-by near the Austrian border with Hungary, authorities say.

Austrian police say they think the people inside were already dead when the truck crossed into Austria. The lorry has been towed away for forensic examination. Police say they should be able to give more information on the number of bodies on Friday morning. The grim find comes as a summit focusing on migration takes place in the Austrian capital, Vienna.

Tens of thousands of migrants from conflict-hit states in the Middle East and Africa have been trying to make their way to Europe.

Austria's Chancellor Werner Faymann said the tragedy showed once again "how necessary it is to save lives by combating criminals and people traffickers".

The vehicle - a refrigerated lorry with Hungarian license plates - was found parked off the A4 motorway between Parndorf and Neusiedl am See, according to Burgenland police chief Hans Peter Doskozil. The vehicle was there from around 06:00 local time (04:00 GMT) on Thursday morning, Mr. Doskozil said. But Hungarian cameras had identified that the truck was on the Hungarian side of the border, very close to Austria, at 09:00 on Wednesday, he said, so it must have been driven across the border in the intervening time.

The decomposing state of the bodies would suggest that they had been dead for one and a half to two days, the police chief added, suggesting that the victims must have already been dead when the lorry crossed into Austria. On Thursday afternoon the truck was towed away to undergo forensic examinations in Nickelsdorf. Police will give a further news conference at 11:00 on Friday, when they should be able to say how many people have died. They do not yet know whether women and children are among the victims, or how they died.

“Isolation”, “consolidation” and “self-reliance” are different

terms used among Moscow´s political and business elite to

mean the same thing. In the face of international sanctions

occasioned by its support of the rebels in eastern Ukraine and its

[5] earlier annexation of Crimea, Russia is preparing to pull inward

and face a long period of diplomatic antagonism and economic

hardship. That process appears to be accelerating. On August

6th the Kremlin responded to Western pressure by announcing

that it will ban agricultural import from countries imposing

[10] sanctions on Russia.

By increasing his support of the rebels last month, Mr. Putin

has shown that he values his own understanding of Russia´s

historic destiny more than the economic well-being of his

country and its global reputation. He is making a risky bet that

[15] challenging the architecture of the post-cold-war order will reap

its own rewards and compensate for a drop in living standards.

Despite the crisis, such problems have not yet hurt Mr. Putin.

Indeed he is more popular than ever and his propaganda

apparatus is proving to be highly effective.

[20] Mr. Putin may be sending in Russian troops on the pretence

of a “humanitarian” operation. According to NATO, 20,000

Russian soldiers have amassed at the Ukrainian border. Even if

troops do not cross the border, the confrontation between

Russia and the West looks set to continue through the rule of

[25] President Vladimir Putin and, perhaps, beyond.

Which of the options completes the sentence correctly?

Snake “not guilty of killing Cleopatra”

[1] The story that Cleopatra, ancient queen of Egypt, was killed by a snake bite has been rejected as
“impossible” by University of Manchester academics.
Egyptologists and snake experts have combined to examine the plausibility of the tale of the queen
being killed by a cobra hidden in a basket of figs.
[5] They believe a snake big enough to kill the queen and two maids would not have been small enough
to be concealed.
They also challenge the credibility of three consecutive fatal bites.
Cleopatra, who died at the age of 39 in 30BC, was a ruler of Egypt who became embroiled in power
struggles within the Roman empire.
[10] But her story and her death have become part of popular legend, portrayed in fictional form from
Hollywood epics to Carry On films and television comedy. [...]
From Roman sources onwards, her death has often been attributed to a poisonous snake or “asp”,
with the queen using the fatal bite as a way of ending her own life.
But Egyptologist Joyce Tyldesley and Andrew Gray, curator of herpetology at Manchester Museum,
[15] say the supposed culprit – a cobra – would have been too physically big to be concealed in the way that has
been portrayed.
They are typically 5-6ft long and can grow to 8ft (2.5m), and the Manchester experts reject the idea
such a snake could be hidden in the way suggested.

Even if such a snake had been smuggled in to Cleopatra, they say it would have been very unlikely
[20] that it could have killed Cleopatra and two of her servants in quick succession.
“Not only are cobras too big, but there’s just a 10% chance you would die from a snake bite: most
bites are dry bites that don’t inject venom,” said Mr Gray.
“That’s not to say they aren’t dangerous: the venom causes necrosis and will certainly kill you, but
quite slowly.
[25] “So it would be impossible to use a snake to kill two or three people one after the other.”
“Snakes use venom to protect themselves and for hunting – so they conserve their venom and use it
in times of need.”
Dr Tyldesley, author of Cleopatra: Egypt’s Last Queen, is a contributor to a free online course – a
Mooc – about ancient Egypt made by the university.
[30] The course, A History of Ancient Egypt, is being launched next week and will study Egypt from
before the pharaohs through the relationships with Greece and Rome and ending with Cleopatra.
(Disponível em: <http://www.bbc.com>. Acesso em: 2 nov. 2015. Adaptado.)

Malala Yousafzai was born on July 12, 1997, in Mingora, Pakistan. For the first few years of her life, her hometown remained a popular tourist spot that was known for its summer festivals. However, the area began to change as the Taliban tried to take control.

Yousafzai attended a school that her father, ZiauddinYousafzai, had founded. After the Taliban began attacking girls’ schools in Swat, Malala gave a speech in Peshawar, Pakistan, in September 2008. The title of her talk was, “How dare the Taliban take away my basic right to education?”

In early 2009, Yousafzai began blogging for the BBC about living under the Taliban’s threats to deny her an education. In order to hide her identity, she used the name Gul Makai. However, she was revealed to be the BBC blogger in December of that year

With a growing public platform, Yousafzai continued to speak out about her right, and the right of all women, to an education. Her activism resulted in a nomination for the International Children’s Peace Prize in 2011. That same year, she was awarded Pakistan’s National Youth Peace Prize. Unfortunately, it also resulted in the Taliban issuing a death threat against her. On October 9, 2012, a gunman shot Malala when she was traveling home from school.

The shooting left Malala in critical condition, so she was flown to a military hospital in Peshawar. A portion of her skull was removed to treat her swelling brain. To receive further care, she was transferred to Birmingham, England. She survived, and has continued to speak out on the importance of education. She was nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize in 2013, and again in 2014.

Tattoo Regret? A Topical Removal Cream May Help

Tats all, folks: A Ph.D. student has developed a cream that targets cells, not pigments, to get rid of unwanted ink. Hannibal Hanschke/Reuters

Today, before getting inked, one must have a serious think so as to avoid tattoo remorse. In the future, though, you may not have to worry about laser removal, or surgery, or a touch-up tattoo for those inky regrets anymore, though. Alec Falkenham, a Ph.D. candidate at Halifax, Nova Scotia‘s Dalhousie University, has developed a painless tattoo removal cream that causes tats to gradually fade away.

The application of the cream, which he hopes will eventually become commercially available, involves none of the inflammation, redness, blistering or scarring side effects that traditional tattoo removal procedures can have, either. He believes the procedure might even be anti-inflammatory. All you have to do is apply the topical cream to your skin.

Unlike lasers, which target the pigments in tattoos, the Bisphosphonate Liposomal Tattoo Removal (BLTR) cream targets macrophages, immune system cells that work to rid foreign agents from your body. When you tattoo your body, you are injecting ink deep into the dermis—and the macrophages recognize tattoo ink as ―foreign‖ invaders. Some of these macrophages absorb the ink and then carry it to lymph nodes, where both cells and ink are destroyed.

Snoopy describes himself as a ________________ dog.

[1] The study of game aesthetics is a very

recent practice, spanning less than two

decades. Unlike game studies in mathematics

or the social sciences, ........ are much older,

[5] games became subject to humanistic study

only after computer and video games became

popular. This lack of persistent interest might

seem odd, but only if we see traditional

games and computer games as intrinsically

[10] similar, ........ they are not. We might try to

explain this lack by noting that games are

usually seen as trivial and lowbrow by the

aesthetic and theoretical elites ........ cultivate

the analysis of artistic media objects:

[15] literature, the visual arts, theatre, music, etc.

But this does not explain the fact that

aesthetic studies of games are now not only

possible, but even encouraged and supported

with funding. What happened to cause this

[20] change?

A possible explanation could be that digital

games, unlike traditional games or sports,

consist of non-ephemeral content (stored

words, sounds and images), which places

[25] them much closer to the ideal object of the

Humanities, the work of art. Thus, they

become visible and textualizable for the

aesthetic observer, in a way the previous

phenomena were not.

[30] However, this sudden visibility, probably

also caused by the tremendous economic and

cultural success of computer games, produces

certain blind spots in the aesthetic observer,

especially if he/she is trained in textual/visual

[35] analysis, as is usually the case. Instead of

treating the new phenomena carefully, and as

objects of a study for which no methodology

yet exists, they are analyzed with tools that

happen to be at hand, such as film or

[40] narrative theories. Therefore we need to

outline and promote a methodology for the

aesthetic study of games, which, given the

current nascent state of the field, will

doubtlessly give way to more sophisticated

[45] approaches in the years to come.