Watson’s World News no. 4/2012
April 25, 2012 Leave a comment
Brad and Angelina’s Kids Want Them to Marry
September 28, 2011 Leave a comment
One Big Happy Family
America’s most famous celebrity couple, Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie, are not married.
Five years ago, Pitt said that he would not marry Jolie until gay marriage was legalized throughout the United States.
The two fell in love when they worked together on “Mr. and Mrs. Smith” and he was still married to Jennifer Aniston.
Gay marriage is still only legal in 7 states and Brad and Angelina are still unmarried.
They have 6 children, 3 of whom are biologically theirs and 3, from different countries around the world, they have adopted.
The oldest is Maddox, a Cambodian
boy Jolie adopted in 2002, when she was still married to actor Billy Bob Thornton. Then she adopted Zahara, an Ethiopian girl, in 2005. By that time, her and Pitt had begun dating, and he agreed with the adoption.
In 2006, she gave birth to a girl they named Shiloh. In 2007, they adopted a 3 year old Vietnamese boy who they renamed Pax. Then, in 2008, Jolie gave birth to twins, a boy and a girl named Knox and Vivienne.
They are still unmarried but Pitt, the star of “Fight Club” and “Seven”, said recently that their children are pressuring* them to change that.
“I’ve said that we would not be getting married until everyone in this country has the right to get married. We live in this great country that is about freedom. It is defined by our freedom and equality* and yet we allow* this discrimination to go on every day and that’s not what we’re about. That’s not what makes us great… but the kids are putting on the heat.* They really are. They are putting on the heat,” he said on a TV show recently.
Vocabulary:
pressure – tlačit na
equality – rovnost
allow – dovolit
put on the heat – tlačit
Question for discussion:
Should they marry?
Faster Than the Speed of Light
September 28, 2011 Leave a comment
Since Albert Einstein published his theory of relativity (E=Mc2)in 1905, scientists have accepted the speed of light ( almost 300,000 kilometers per second) as the fastest speed possible.
Now, scientists at the CERN (European Center for Nuclear Research) laboratory in Switzerland believe they may have timed* a neutrino (a subatomic, electrically neutral particle*) going faster than that.
If true, it would be an amazing development,* bringing humanity a giant step closer to interstellar* travel. Unfortunately, even the scientists at CERN are skeptical. “The feeling that most people have is this can’t be right, this can’t be real,” said James Gillies, a CERN spokesman.
However, they have been checking* the results for months and not found any errors. So, they have asked other scientists to try and either confirm or refute* their results. Unfortunately, there are only two other laboratories in the world which have the equipment to do such experiments.
Vocabulary:
time – změřit (trvání, čas)
particle – částice
development – vývoj
interstellar – mezihvězdný
check – ověřovat
refute – vyvrátit
Question for discussion:
How would this change the world?
