Английский язык. Перевод, межкультурная коммуникация и интерпретация языка СМИ. Учебное пособие

Senior U.S. lawmakers and leading software, movie and music industry groups have urged the Bush administration not to sign a bilateral agreement until Moscow stamps out copyright piracy.

St Petersburg Times, 14.07.06

US ADMINISTRATION PUSHES

FOR CIVILIAN NUCLEAR PACT

By Susan Cornwell, Reuters

WASHINGTON – The administration of U.S. President George W. Bush hopes to send a pact on civilian nuclear cooperation with Russia to the U.S. Congress in the next month, but a congressional aide said there would be strong resistance to the deal.

Concerns over Iran, which Washington accuses of trying to build an atomic bomb, could scuttle administration hopes that the deal would take effect by the time Bush leaves office in January.

The Bush administration says the nuclear deal with Russia could help solve the Iran problem by clearing the way for Washington to cooperate with Russia’s offer to host an international uraniumenrichment center that would supply nuclear fuel to countries like Iran.

President Vladimir Putin says the proposed fuel bank would discourage Iran and other countries from developing nuclear facilities that could be used for covert weapons programs.

«We can’t isolate ourselves from Russia and then expect that these are the proposals that are going to be the solution to the Iranian nuclear program», a senior U.S. State Department official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

«If there is an interest in the U.S. in investing in this consortium that Russia is establishing, getting U.S. industry involved in that whole international enrichment center, this [nuclear] agreement would be a useful baseline for that sort of cooperation», the official said.

A 123 agreement, so-called because it falls under section 123 of the U.S. Atomic Energy Act, is required before countries can cooperate on nuclear materials, such as storing spent fuel, or work together on advanced nuclear reactor programs.

At a summit last month in Sochi, Bush and Putin agreed to sign a nuclear cooperation deal «in the near future». The Bush administration is now going through the U.S. interagency process leading to the president’s signature.

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Bush would have to send the deal to Congress «in the next month or so» to give lawmakers time to consider it before they adjourn this year, the senior official said. «If we’re to get it done, it will have to be soon», the official said.

Once the agreement is sent to lawmakers, it would go into force if Congress did not pass a disapproval resolution within 90 legislative days.

But the US House of Representatives is already on record as saying the United States should shun civilian unclear cooperation with Russia because of Moscow’s aid in building Iran’s plant at Bushehr and supplying it with fuel. A similar bill with some 70 co-sponsors is pending in the Senate.

If Bush signs the deal but does not submit it to lawmakers, that leaves it in limbo – perhaps for the next president, who will take office in January, to send to Capitol Hill.

Some critics suspect the agreement is legacy-building by a White House in its last few months in office.

«A nuclear-cooperation agreement should be icing on a cake of trust and accomplishment with regard to nonproliferation. Instead, there’s no cake», said Henry Sokolski, director of the Washingtonbased Nonproliferation Policy Education Center.

The Saint-Petersburg Times, May 6 2008

U.S., RUSSIA TO BOOST NUCLEAR TIES

By Yuriy Humber, staff writer

Moscow – Russia will host joint field exercises with the United States on nuclear safety issues by the end of 2006, the Federal Atomic Energy Agency said Wednesday.

The move is one of a series of measures to boost nuclear security cooperation between the two countries, as agreed on by agency chief Sergei Kiriyenko and U.S. Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman, the agency said in a statement.

Although signed by the two officials at the end of June, the measures were made public Wednesday, just two days before a meeting between Presidents George W. Bush and Vladimir Putin in St. Petersburg. Experts said the exercises, among other measures, suggested the presidents would move toward an overarching agreement that would kick-start wholesale cooperation between the two countries’ nuclear industries.

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«Such an agreement would lift restrictions on any cooperation in the nuclear sphere between Russia and the United States», an agency spokesman said Wednesday.

Cooperation with the U.S. nuclear industry could help Russia earn billions of dollars in atomic power station construction and fuel supply and reprocessing contracts. Some estimates put the global value of the nuclear storage and processing sector alone at $ 20 billion.

Ecologists and opposition politicians cried foul this week after it became apparent that such an agreement could theoretically allow the transportation of spent fuel from the U.S. to Russia for processing and storage. «This would turn the country into a waste basket», Yabloko official Sergei Mitrokhin said at a news conference Wednesday.

As part of the cooperation on nuclear safety, both the United States and Russia would be «maintaining an aggressive timeline» for repatriating spent nuclear fuel from third-party countries, the atomic energy agency’s statement said.

An agency spokesman denied, however, that the cooperation would extend Russia receiving U.S.-made fuel for reprocessing and storage. «U.S. fuel uses a different sort of uranium, which our facilities do not process», the spokesman said.

Meanwhile, Washington and Moscow look set to embark on a historic field exercise «focused on a search for radioactive materials and the elimination of consequences resulting from a nuclear or radiological emergency», the agency said.

The move flows out of the 2005 Bratislava Checklist, a nuclear safety deal signed by Russia and the United States in February 2005.

«It’s the first time that the militaries of both countries will work together on ways to tackle the possible theft of nuclear materials», said Alexander Pikayev, a Moscow-based nuclear expert.

St Petersburg Times, 14.07.06

7.2.Политические системы и партии

(Political systems and Parties)

INSANITY DEFENSE

By Chris Floyd

That the United States, once touted as the «world’s greatest democracy», is now ruled by a presidential dictatorship is a fact beyond any

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serious dispute. Indeed, except for a bare majority in the Supreme Court – which will disappear with the retirement or demise of the aging Justice John Paul Stevens, who wrote the Court’s stinging rejection of Bush’s kangaroo military tribunals this week – the nation’s political establishment seems to have accepted this revolutionary system with remarkable docility, even as its lineaments are further exposed week by week. The Bush Administration no longer bothers to hide the novel theory of government upon which its rule is based, but declares it openly, in court, in Congress, everywhere.

The theory holds that the president has the arbitrary right to ignore any law that he feels is an unconstitutional infringement of his power – and a law is automatically unconstitutional if the president feels it infringes on his power. This neatly squared circle makes Congress irrelevant and removes the judiciary from the loop altogether. Thus, the only effective instrument of power left in the land is the «unitary executive»: the fancy modern name that the legal minions of President George W. Bush have given to the ancient concept of «tyranny».

The true nature of this presidential dictatorship has been laid bare in a harrowing new book from reporter Ron Suskind, «The One Percent Doctrine». Suskind, who once coaxed the regime’s defining ethos from an arrogant Bushist – «We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality» – paints a portrait of an administration drunk on lawless power, a junta operated from the shadows by the grim and literally heart-dead husk called Vice President Dick Cheney and his long-time companion in skulduggery, Defense Secretary Don Rumsfeld.

As Suskind notes, it was Cheney who enunciated the certifiably paranoid principle that governs the regime’s behavior: If there is even a 1 percent chance that some state or group might do serious harm to the United States, then America must respond as if that threat were a certainty – with full force, preemptively. Facts, truth, law are unimportant; the only thing that matters is the projection of unchallengeable power. «It’s not about our analysis, or finding a preponderance of evidence», Cheney said. «It’s about our response».

This is plainly madness. Whether the insanity of the «doctrine» is genuine – i.e., a pathological panic reaction by gutless, pampered fatcats scared of the slightest murmur from the dusky tribes out there, beyond the iron gates and razor wire of privilege – or if, more likely, it is simply the chosen rationalization for a gang of predators tired of the few restraints that constitutional government has placed on their lust

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for loot and domination, the end result is the same: The most powerful country in the history of the world is being run by moral degenerates in thrall to a lunatic policy.

Suskind’s book is full of chilling passages, such as one about the pointless tortures inflicted, at Bush’s explicit suggestion, on Abu Zubaydah, a mentally ill al-Qaida flunky. His capture in March 2002 was trumpeted as a «major victory» in the war on terror, the bagging of a «top terrorist operative». But interrogators quickly realized that he was just a low-level factotum with multiple personality disorder and no knowledge of al-Qaida operations or strategy. So the administration had to create another reality. Told that Zubaydah had revealed nothing of value under ordinary interrogation, Bush first whined to CIA boss George Tenet («You’re not gonna make me lose face on this, are ya?»), then pointedly asked: «So, do these harsh techniques work?» He was referring to the «torture memos» drawn up at his order by the White House legal team – Machiavellian documents which declared that anything less than deliberate murder or permanent maiming should no longer be regarded as torture, The Washington Post reports.

Bush’s sinister nod and wink were clearly understood. The wretched Zubaydah was «waterboarded», beaten repeatedly and threatened with death. He was battered with white noise and deprived of sleep, and his medication was taken away. His broken mind snapped completely. He began spewing out whatever his tormentors wanted to hear, fantastic tales of plots aimed at targets all over America – meat for countless «terror alerts» whenever the political situation called for a nice, juicy scare to goose the rubes.

But perhaps the most revealing moment in Suskind’s book is a brief vignette that captures the quintessence of Bush’s callous disregard for the American people – and the regime’s strange, preternatural calm in the face of imminent attack. In August 2001, while Bush dawdled on his Texas dude ranch, the entire national security system was, in Tenet’s words, «blinking red» in expectation of a major terrorist strike. On Aug. 6, a CIA official brought the infamous «Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S.» memo to Crawford and read it out personally to the president. In response, he got nothing but a snide dismissal: «All right, you’ve covered your ass now».

That was it. Bush had nothing else to say about this stark threat of impending slaughter. He had no questions, no advice, no commands– just smirking contempt. Even if we give Bush every benefit of the doubt, even if we put the most charitable construction possible on his

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behavior, the very best you could say of his reaction is that it represents a bloodcurdling degree of depraved indifference and criminal negligence worthy of Nero.

Beyond this «best-case» scenario, you tumble into an abyss of ever-darker implications, a deep murk that may never be dispelled. But what we know, what is plain as day, is bad enough: Tyranny has come – aggressive, remorseless, murderous, mad.

St Petersburg Times, 14.07.06

NATIONALISM RAISES ALARM IN BRITAIN

Agence France Presse

LONDON – Up to a quarter of voters in England may back the farright British National Party (BNP) in local elections next month because they are tired of the country’s main political parties, a new study showed.

Feelings of «powerlessness and frustration» prompted the rise in support for the nationalistic group, according to the study by the Joseph Rowntrce Reform Trust, which was revealed by the BBC on Monday.

It is due to be released officially next week, the British broadcaster said.

Professor Peter John of Manchester University, one of the report’s authors, said the research suggested many voters in white working-class areas felt their concerns were being ignored by the governing Labour Party and the main opposition Conservatives and Liberal Democrats.

«They think they have been let down by the main parties», he told BBC radio.

«I think if I was in the main parties, I would be worried about this – that 1 have not talked about an issue which one of my core constituencies thinks is important», John said.

But the professor stressed that the levels of underlying support for the BNP uncovered by his research would not necessarily translate into votes.

News of the research followed a warning by Employment Minister Margaret Hodge that disillusioned while, working class voters were deserting Prime Minister Tony Blair’s Labour Party for the BNP.

She said as many as eight out of 10 white families in her Barking constituency in east London admitted that they were tempted to vote for the far-right group in forthcoming council elections on May 4.

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«That’s something we have never seen before, in all my years. Even when people voted BNP they used to be ashamed to vote BNP. Now they are not», Hodge told the Sunday Telegraph weekly in an interview.

St Petersburg Times, 18.04.06

7.3. Судебная система

ипрактика, преступления

(Legal system practise, crime)

БЕЗ ПРАВА НА ОШИБКУ

Суд обязал немецкого гинеколога до 18 лет оплачивать содержание ребенка, который появился на свет по его вине. Согласно материалам дела, врач предложил пациентке гормональное противозачаточное средство, которое оказалось неэффективным. Чтобы ухаживать за появившимся на свет младенцем, «пострадавшая» была вынуждена уйти с работы. Кроме того, отец ребенка, с которым к моменту зачатия женщина общалась около шести месяцев, вскоре ушел из семьи. Суд немецкого города Карлсруэ признал врача виновным и обязал его ежемесячно выплачивать истице 600 евро до достижения ребенком 18 лет. На компенсацию алиментов может рассчитывать и бывший партнер «пострадавшей».

Хроника, 24.11.06 (По материалам Die Welt)

КУСАЮЩИЙСЯ РОКЕР

Лидер рок-группы Guns ‘N’ Roses Эксел Роуз был задержан полицией Стокгольма за нападение на охранника отеля, во время которого, предположительно, укусил его за ногу. Это произошло после того, как группа, отыграв концерт, отдохнула в одном из ночных клубов шведской столицы. Когда Роуз возвращался под утро в свой отель, он затеял в холле ссору с женщиной и напал на охранника, который пытался вмешаться в происходящее. Во время потасовки музыкант также нанес ущерб имуществу отеля, в котором проживал. По словам пресс-секретаря полиции Стокгольма, Эксел Роуз был сильно пьян.

Хроника, 30 июня 2006 (по материалам CNN)

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ОРУЖИЕ

Петербургская милиция проводит операцию по приему оружия у населения. Средства на это мероприятие были выделены городской администрацией. Подобная операция проводится в северной столице уже в седьмой раз и, по словам защитников правопорядка, в значительной степени способствует борьбе с преступностью.

Хроника, 30 июня 2006 (по материалам vesti.ru)

ОШИБКА

В Палермо вор по ошибке ограбил свою жену. Грабитель, на мотоцикле выхватил на ходу сумочку у прохожей, которая, как выяснилось, оказалась его супругой. Женщина не сразу выпустила сумочку из рук, и мотоциклист проволок ее по асфальту. Теперь преступнику предстоят объяснения не только с полицией, но и с женой.

Хроника, 7 июля 2006 ( по материалам РИА «Новости»)

ПЕРЕПУТАЛ КЛУБЫ

Суд по правам человека Канады отклонил иск жителя Ванкувера Ральфа Стоппса против женского фитнес-клуба Just Ladies Fitness, руководство которого запретило ему посещать свое заведение. Стоппс назвал эти действия сексуальной дискриминацией. По его словам, он хотел посещать этот клуб только потому, что он расположен рядом с его домом. Однако суд не внял этим доводам, поскольку еще ближе к дому Стоппса находится фитнес-клуб для мужчин. Как отмечается в постановлении суда, удовлетворение иска могло «иметь неблагоприятные последствия для посещающих этот клуб женщин».

Хроника, 1.12.2006 (По материалам Reuters)

ТЮРЕМНЫЙ ТУРИЗМ

Имя экс-главы ЮКОСа Михаила Ходорковского в рекламных целях используют санкт-петербургские бизнесмены. Одна из крупных туристических фирм города «А-ТУРС» рекламирует свои услуги слоганом «Почувствуй себя Ходорковским!» Предлагаемый клиентам спецтур стоимостью $ 500 включает в себя посещение известной питерской тюрьмы «Кресты» и ночевку в настоящей ка-

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мере. При этом руководители фирмы не получали у семьи бизнесмена разрешения на использование его имени в рекламе.

Хроника, 1.12.2006 (По материалам «Эхо Москвы»)

See also: МОБИЛЬНИКИ – НА РАСПРОДАЖУ (в разделе 8. Эконо-

мика (Economics)).

ЛИДЕР «МЭД КРАУД» ПОЛУЧИЛ 3,5 ГОДА

Такой приговор вынес вчера Пушкинский районный суд Руслану Мельнику, признанному виновным в создании экстремистской группировки «Мэд Крауд». Три с половиной года Мельник проведет в колонии-поселении.

Суд также признал его виновным в разгроме ресторана «Макдональдс», в организации и участии в нападениях на граждан Армении, Китая, выходцев с Кавказа. Все преступления были совершены в многолюдных местах – значит, он осознавал публичный характер своих действий.

Столь небольшой срок лидер «Мэд Крауд» получил потому, что суд учел то обстоятельство, что некоторые преступления он совершил в несовершеннолетнем возрасте. Видимо, приняли во внимание, что парень рос без отца

Метро, 06.12.06 (По материалам ИНТЕРФАКС)

«ХОНДУ» УГНАЛИ ВМЕСТЕ С РЕБЕНКОМ

Подставное ДТП едва не обернулось трагедией: на заднем сиденье автомобиля, который хотели похитить злоумышленники, находился трехлетний малыш.

Инцидент произошел вчера утром на перекрестке Учительской улицы и Светлановского проспекта. В остановившуюся у светофора «хонду» сзади врезались «жигули». Молодая женщинаводитель выскочила из машины. В этот момент злоумышленники вскочили в ее авто и рванули с места. В «хонде» находился сын женщины.

Получив сигнал, милиция объявила по городу план «Перехват». И уже через семь минут автомобиль был обнаружен на улице Брянцева у 63-го отдела милиции. Видимо, злоумышленники, обнаружив в машине ребенка, не решились продолжить преступный замысел.

Метро, 06.12.06 (По материалам ИА ФОНТАНКА)

8

Экономика (Economics)

MATSUSHITA TO PRODUCE IN RUSSIA

Agence France Presse

Tokyo – Japanese electronics giant Matsushita will produce flatpanel TV sets in Russia and Brazil this year to meet growing demand there, a report said.

The major business daily Nihon Keizai Shimbun also said that Matsushita Electric Industrial Co., famous for its Panasonic brand, will substantially strengthen its sales network for such TVs in India.

In September Matsushita will start producing liquid crystal display TVs in Russia, making it the first Japanese firm to make flat-panel TVs there, the daily said.

The production will be entrusted an electrical equipment maker in the city of Kaliningrad, to which Matsushita will supply key components from Jap; for local assembly, the report said.

It added that output was targeted 50,000 LCD TVs with sales estimated 120,000 units in Russia for the year March 2007, including imports fro Japan.

The target for the following year w be raised to 250,000 units to secure a 1 cal market share of 10 percent.

St Petersburg Times, 18.07.06

MEDVEDEV SAYS STATE IS NOT THE BEST MANAGER

Reuters

First Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev said late Friday that the state was not the best manager of assets but that it must preserve control in key strategic sectors.

Medvedev, 40, is chairman of state-controlled gas giant Gazprom and considered by some as a possible successor to President Vladimir Putin, who must by law step down in 2008.

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