I believe that reading is the key to improving your English – for IELTS or any other reason.
You must read regularly and notice the language.
These short reading exercises give you the chance to do this. If you use them regularly and seriously – I guarantee that your English will improve.
George Osborne unveiled a £140 billion emergency scheme to try to avoid a second credit crunch caused by the ongoing chaos in the eurozone
The Bank of England is to offer money to high-street banks to kick-start mortgage and small business lending to prevent loans being rationed for many families and entrepreneurs, the Chancellor announced.
It comes after sharp rises in the costs of mortgages and other loans in recent months as banks struggle to raise money in the midst of the single currency crisis.
Sir Mervyn King, the Bank of England Governor, said that the “industrialised world has thrown everything bar the kitchen sink” at the global economic meltdown but that even “bolder action” was now required.
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Doctors and NHS managers will be banned by law from denying older patients treatment simply on the grounds of their age, ministers will announce.
Nurses and carers will also face a legal duty to consider the “well-being and dignity” of the elderly. The legal ban on age discrimination in public services will come into force in October, the Coalition will confirm.
It follows a series of shocking reports showing that older people often suffer sub-standard care and uneven treatment in the NHS and the social care system
“We know that older people are not always treated with the dignity and respect they deserve because of ageist attitudes – this will not be tolerated,” Paul Burstow, the Care Minister, said.
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The Polish city in which England are based for the finals of Euro 2012 was at the centre of a growing race row on Thursday with the Holland captain, Mark van Bommel, warning Uefa that he will lead his team off the pitch if they are abused during matches after an alleged incident occurred at a training session.
Black players in the Dutch squad were subjected to “monkey chants” from supporters of Wisla Krakow during open training at the Polish club’s stadium on Wednesday, according to the midfielder.
Uefa and the Dutch football association played down the row but on Thursday Van Bommel warned: “It’s a real disgrace, especially after getting back from Auschwitz, that you are confronted with this. We will take it up with Uefa and if it happens during matches we will talk to the referee and ask to leave the field.”
When questioned by Dutch journalists, some of whom claimed not to have heard the abuse, Van Bommel added: “You need to open your ears. If you heard it and did not want to hear it then that is even worse.”
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She has spent 60 years putting duty above all else, and tonight the Queen stoically pressed on with her Jubilee engagements despite the Duke of Edinburgh being taken to hospital just hours earlier. The Prince of Wales summed up the mood of a nation last night as he thanked the Queen for “making us proud to be British”.
The sovereign put duty first, as she has done for the past 60 years, and pressed on with her Jubilee engagements despite the Duke of Edinburgh being taken to hospital a few hours earlier.
Her resolve was not lost on the 500,000 people who gave her a deafening reception at the end of last night’s Diamond Jubilee concert outside Buckingham Palace.
For someone who has seen so much during her reign, she still seemed taken aback by the sheer volume of the welcome as she took to the stage wearing a dazzling gold dress sewn with crystals that glittered in the lights as she waved to the crowd.
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The Queen is celebrating 60 years as monarch. Her husband, Prince Philip, is known as the Duke of Edinburgh. Her son, Prince Charles, is the Prince of Wales, and will become king when the Queen dies. Her home in London is Buckingham Palace. The Queen is 86 and the Duke of Edinburgh is 90.
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On a most British of days – right down to the weather – more than a million people line the Thames to pay tribute to the Queen on her Diamond Jubilee. Has there ever been a more robust, a more determined or a more downright stubborn display of support for the Queen?
On a day when the weather could not have been more cruel, more than a million people turned out regardless to line the Thames and give the Sovereign the biggest, albeit the soggiest, party of her 60-year reign.
Try explaining to the rest of the world why dozens camped overnight in pouring rain and bone-chilling cold for a passing glimpse of a tiny 86-year-old woman in the distance and it may be difficult finding where to start.
But no one knows better than the Queen that, for people who stood 20 deep in places on the river bank, the chance to say they saw her on her Diamond Jubilee weekend was what the day was all about.
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Visitors to the Olympic Games who do not have a Visa card should be prepared to bring cash when attending venues this summer.
Visa, one of London 2012’s official sponsors, has requested that the 27 existing cash machines located in Olympic sporting venues be switched off during the Games. It will replace these machines, which currently accept all UK cards, with eight machines that will accept only Visa cards.
Ron Delnevo, director at the UK Payments Council, said that machines would be switched off at ExCeL, Earls Court, North Greenwich Arena, Wembley Arena, Wembley Stadium, Wimbledon, Old Trafford, St James’s Park, and City of Coventry Stadium.
He said that visitors who ran out of cash would “have to resort to using Visa debit or credit cards as no other cards will be acceptable at any of the 2012 venues”. Most UK bank debit cards have Visa, but many foreign tourists could be affected.
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Spain is facing the gravest danger since the end of the Franco dictatorship as the country is frozen out of global capital markets and slides towards an epic showdown with Europe.
“We’re in a situation of total emergency, the worst crisis we have ever lived through” said ex-premier Felipe Gonzalez, the country’s elder statesman.
The collapse in Spanish tax revenues is replicating the pattern in Greece. Fiscal revenues have fallen 4.8pc over the last year, and VAT returns have slumped 14.6pc. Debt service costs have risen by 18pc.
The country is caught in a classic deflationary vice: a rising debt burden on a shrinking economic base. “Once you get into such a negative feedback loop, you can move beyond the point of no return quickly,” he said.
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Apple chief executive Tim Cook has admitted that television is “an area of intense interest for us” in comments that are likely to fuel speculation that the company plans to make TVs.
“We’re not a hobby kind of company, as you know,” Mr Cook said of Apple’s current TV offering. “We’ve stuck in this.”
The company’s efforts have so far been restricted to Apple TV, a gadget that the user plugs into their TV to be able to download content from iTunes and YouTube. Although sales have been climbing, the past 12 months has seen speculation mount that Apple has ambitions to revolutionise the TV business by making its own sets.
“We are going to keep pulling the string and see where this takes us,” Mr Cook said of its future TV plans. Asked during an interview at the All Things Digital Conference in California on Tuesday night whether Apple will produce a TV, Mr Cook said: “You were right. I’m not going to tell you.”
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William Hague issued an ultimatum to Russia last night to intervene in the Syrian crisis before it was too late, warning that the massacre of at least 108 people, including 32 young children in Houla, had taken the country to the brink of civil war.
Speaking shortly before boarding a flight to Moscow for meetings with his counterpart Sergei Lavrov on Monday, the Foreign Secretary said that Russia now faced a stark choice between using its leverage with the Assad regime or risking its last bastion of influence in the Middle East descending into chaos.
Urging Moscow to put its full weight behind the six-point United Nations plan for Syria brokered by the former secretary general Kofi Annan, he said: “The Russians have a great deal of leverage over the Syrian regime.
“We’ve had many differences of view over Russia at the Security Council, but Russia does support the Annan plan and so I hope Russia will redouble its efforts to get the Assad regime to implement that plan,” he said.
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Los Angeles has become the largest city in the United States to ban the use of plastic bags in supermarkets. The bags will be phased out at 7,500 shops over the next year in what environmentalists claimed as a major victory.
The city council voted in favour of the ban but backed away from a proposal to phase out paper bags as well. Customers will instead be charged 10 cents (6p) for each paper bag.
An estimated 2.3 billion single-use plastic bags are used and discarded in the city each year, according to one of the environmental groups that campaigned for the ban.
Ed Reyes, city council member, said the ban was “great for the environment, great for the future, and great for our beaches and our ocean. It’s a win for everybody“.
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There are no more pharaohs any more. One by one, the men who would rule over Egypt’s 80 million people arrived at their polling stations, posed for the cameras, and with self-consciously modest smiles walked to the back of the queue.
Now men like Amr Moussa, used to receiving sheikhs and monarchs with due pomp and ceremony as head of the Arab League, and Mohammed Morsi, whose Muslim Brotherhood have waited decades for their chance at power, had to wait behind their fellow citizens, like everybody else.
There were few overt signs of celebration on this, the first of two days of voting in Egypt’s presidential elections, at how everything had changed.
There was enthusiasm that voters would get to choose their leader for the first time in 5,000 years of glorious history, but no whoops or fireworks.
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Four climbers have been killed on Everest and another is missing during a 36-hour period that ranks among the deadliest in the 59 years since the world’s highest peak was first scaled.
The dead climbers were from Germany, South Korea, China and Canada. They were killed in separate incidents on the 8,848-metre mountain after a spell of fine weather was interrupted by high winds late on Saturday. Most are believed to have been making their descent from the summit.
Eberhard Schaaf, a 61-year-old doctor from Aachen, in Germany, who was part of Eco Everest, an expedition to remove rubbish left by previous climbers, collapsed and died of altitude sickness. Ang Tshering Sherpa, from Asian Trekking, the organiser of the trip, said that Mr Schaaf’s body was still lying on the mountainside.
Song Won-Bin, a 44-year-old South Korean, also collapsed from altitude sickness on Saturday. He fell off a cliff close to an area known as The Balcony, near the summit. A Korean news agency said that he was climbing as part of a school reunion team from the central Korean city of Daejeon
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The whole of society is guilty of “sanctioning violence” against the elderly by everyday prejudices, viewing them as an expensive burden, England’s most senior Roman Catholic cleric has warned.
In a rare public intervention, Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor said that there was a “subtle and silent” process of “dehumanising” older people at work through common attitudes.
He said a loss of “reverence” for humanity meant that some of the most vulnerable people in society are now routinely viewed as a “problem” or “threat”.
And he said that political decisions to cut back on vital care services amounted to denying older people’s fundamental right to life.
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General Motors said it will stop advertising on Facebook, even as the social networking website prepares to go public.
A source familiar with the matter told Reuters the car maker had decided Facebook’s adverts had little impact on consumers.
The decision by GM, the third-largest advertiser in the United States, marks the first highly visible crack in Facebook’s strategy and underscores doubts about whether advertising on Facebook works better than traditional media.
“This does highlight what we are arguing is the riskiness of the overall Facebook business model,” said Brian Wieser, Internet and media analyst at Pivotal Research Group
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George Osborne accused Angela Merkel of damaging Britain’s economic interests after she speculated that Greece would leave the euro.
Speaking after he arrived in Brussels for meetings with other European finance ministers about the worsening eurozone crisis, Mr Osborne implied that the German chancellor was destabilising the global economy.
“The eurozone crisis is very serious and it’s having a real impact on economic growth across the European continent, including in Britain, and it’s the uncertainty that’s causing the damage,” said Mr Osborne, the Chancellor.
Earlier Mrs Merkel had warned that Greece may be forced to leave the euro if it refused to implement spending cuts agreed with the European Union. Raising the spectre of a Greek exit, she said “solidarity for the euro” was threatened by the ongoing political crisis in Athens.
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German chancellor Angela Merkel suffered an electoral setback yesterday as opposition to European austerity measures spread across the continent.
In Spain police launched a show of force to contend with widespread demonstrations against harsh economic conditions. And in Italy the interior minister threatened to deploy troops to protect tax offices after demands for tax returns led to several violent attacks in recent months.
At home, Vince Cable, the Business Secretary, also expressed concern over the euro crisis spreading to Italy and Spain. He said: “The problem would affect us if it spread, if you had these contagion effects in Italy and Spain, and Mr Barnier [the European Union Commissioner] has expressed optimism that those firewalls have now been created, and we must hope he’s right, because if they’re not, then of course it has a massive impact on our trade … our banks are quite substantially exposed to those countries.”
The German chancellor may be tempted to rethink her approach after her allies in the country’s largest state, North Rhine-Westphalia, lost 9 per cent of the vote in their worst showing since the Second World War. The result left her in a weaker position for her first meeting tomorrow with François Hollande, the socialist president-elect of France, who has demanded that the EU adopt higher-spending policies to battle the recession.
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Financial markets have taken fright after Greece took another step towards leaving the euro by rejecting “barbarous” international bail-out deals.
Stock markets around the world fell sharply as fears grew that Greece was moving towards a euro exit following Sunday’s general election, where parties rejecting internationally-imposed austerity measures made major gains.
Alexis Tsipras, the head of Greece’s radical Left-wing Syriza party, said that the result “nullified” bail-out deals with the European Union and International Monetary fund.
Adding to the sense of panic over the eurozone, European Union leaders yesterday said they would hold an emergency summit later this month to discuss the latest phase of the European debt crisis.
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François Hollande became the first Socialist French President for over 20 years on Sunday night and the moment of his victory over Nicolas Sarkozy to declare a fight back against Germany’s austerity policies.
Accepting his mandate as French president, Mr Hollande threw down the gauntlet to Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, who has made austerity policies a condition of euro membership.
“Europe is watching us. The moment that I was announced president, I am sure in many European countries there was a relief, hope at the idea that at last austerity is no longer inevitable, and my mission is to give to European construction the dream of growth,” he said.
His words, just after inflicting a humiliating defeat on Mr Sarkozy, previously the Chancellor’s closest ally, are a call to arms against the economic policies that Germany has enshrined in a eurozone “fiskalpakt” treaty
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Sir Mervyn King has attacked Britain’s banks for bringing the country to the brink of ruin and demanded urgent reform to spare “our grandchildren” a similar fate.
The Governor of the Bank of England has blamed the banks for the recession and stressed that an overhaul of the financial system, including the separation of retail banking from “risky investment banking“, was essential “to make our economy safer”.
The comments will pile pressure on the Chancellor not to cave into the banking lobby and to press ahead with planned legislation to ringfence retail banking by 2015.
“We don’t build nuclear power stations in densely populated areas, nor should we allow essential banking services and risky investment banking activities to be carried out in the same ‘too important to fail’ bank,” Sir Mervyn said on Wednesday. “It is vital that Parliament legislates to enact these proposals sooner rather than later.”
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Extra border staff are to be deployed to tackle the immigration crisis after the Home Secretary was hauled in by the Prime Minister to explain the “unacceptable queues”.
Damian Green, the immigration minister, announced that up to 80 back office staff would be made available to provide reinforcements at Heathrow airport just hours after Theresa May was called in by David Cameron.
In many cases they will form part of rapid deployment “hit squads” who can be sent at short notice to anywhere in the airport as queues build up. But the change of heart was dismissed by Mark Serwotka, the general secretary of the Public and Commercial Services Union.
The new staff will be available immediately and will work throughout the summer, Mr Green, who on Monday downplayed the immigration problems, said
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Poor teachers could be paid less than competent colleagues under government plans to improve standards of state education.
Ministers want to link pay to performance in the classroom as part of a new drive to improve results and attract the best graduates into the profession.
A cross-party group of MPs today says that a new payment by results system is needed to stop the worst teachers hiding behind a “rigid and unfair” national salary structure.
Last night, Nick Gibb, the schools minister, disclosed that Michael Gove, the Education Secretary, had already asked the School Teachers’ Review Body, which analyses national pay rates, to “make recommendations on introducing greater freedoms and flexibilities in teachers’ pay, including how to link it better to performance.
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MP means Member of Parliament. There are 650 MPs elected to represent different parts of the country called “constituencies”.
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Britain is suffering the longest peacetime slump in a century, economists said on Wednesday as figures confirmed a double-dip recession.
The Office for National Statistics (ONS) surprised the City by announcing that the economy shrank by 0.2 per cent in the first quarter of 2012, the second consecutive fall. The unexpected news meant that Britain has suffered a longer and deeper decline than every other advanced economy.
According to Michael Saunders, a Citigroup economist, Britain is now suffering “the worst recession recovery cycle of the last 100 years” with the exception of the period of the Second World War.
The ONS said the contraction meant that the economy was 4.3 per cent smaller than it was before the financial crisis, which began in 2007. Every other economy in the Group of Seven advanced countries except Italy is now closer to its pre-crisis level than Britain. Several G7 economies including the US, Germany and Canada are now bigger.
Background
The G7 is a group of what used to be the 7 largest economies in the world: US, Japan, Germany, France, UK, Italy, and Canada. Now China is bigger than all except the US.
The Office of National Statistics (ONS) is the official UK body that collects and publishes data on the economy and other matters. It is independent of the government.
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Apple’s latest profits smashed Wall Street’s expectations as demand for the iPhone and iPad surged.
Profits in the first three months of the year reached $11.6bn (£7.2bn), 94pc higher than in the same quarter of last year and dwarfing the $9.4bn that analysts had forecast.
The iPad and the iPhone once again shone as Apple found new buyers of the gadgets across the world. iPhone sales soared 88pc to 35.1m, while those for the iPad more than doubled to 11.8m.
The results were enough to drive Apple shares 5pc higher in extended trading in New York. Analysts said the performance will go a long way to ease a cluster of concerns that had seen Apple’s shares fall 12pc in the past fortnight.
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Wall Street is used to refer to the financial centre in New York in the same way that “The City” refers to this area in London. It is the name of a street, but it is used to describe a business activity.
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Hundreds of thousands of pounds in donations have poured in after a runner collapsed and died minutes from the finishing line in the London Marathon.
Claire Squires, 30, from North Kilworth, Leicestershire, fell to the ground on Birdcage Walk. Paramedics were unable to save her and she died at the scene. The cause of her death is not yet known.
She was running to raise money for Samaritans. Last night it emerged that Ms Squires’s older brother, Grant, died in 2001 aged 25 after taking heroin and anti-depressants. Ms Squires, who was 20 at the time, paid tribute to her brother at the inquest.
Her mother, Cilla, has been a volunteer for the charity for 24 years. Before setting off Ms Squires, who was a hairdresser, had written: “I’m running the London Marathon for Samaritans because they continuously support others.”
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The Samaritans are a charity that helps people who are depressed. They give people a chance to talk to someone. In the London Marathon many people run to raise money for charity.
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Marine Le Pen secured the highest score for the far-Right in French presidential election history on Sunday, in a third-place finish that will present a major challenge to the two mainstream candidates Nicolas Sarkozy and Francois Hollande, left in the race
According to official forecasts, the 43-year-old daughter of the founder of the National Front (NF) secured between 18.2 and 20 per cent of the vote, performing even better than Jean Marie Le Pen’s shock result in 2002, when he won 17 per cent. At her press conference on Sunday night she burst into a rendition of La Marseillaise in front of delirious supporters waving the national flag.
“Whatever happens over the next two weeks, the battle for France has only just begun,” she said.
“We have exploded the monopoly of the two [main] parties of banks, finance, of multinationals, of resignation and abandonment, and carried higher than ever before the hopes of national ideas.”
Background
French presidential elections take place over two rounds, with the two leading candidates from the first round fighting head-to-head in the final round. The leader of the right-wing party the National Front, Marine Le Pen, is the daughter of the original founder of the party. The party is against immigration, the EU, and international trade. It wants to protect France from the world!
La Marseillaise is the French national anthem.
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Britain’s relationship with the European Court of Human Rights was put on notice last night after the court halted deportation proceedings against the radical Islamist cleric Abu Qatada. David Cameron vowed to force him out of the country “no matter how difficult” after Abu Qatada’s lawyers challenged the removal process.
“I am absolutely clear, the entire Government is clear, and frankly I think the country is clear, that this man has no right to be in our country,” the Prime Minister said last night.
Mr Cameron said: “He is a threat to our security, he has absolutely no further call on our hospitality and he should be deported. That is what we are determined to achieve, no matter how difficult it is, no matter how long it may take.”
The row erupted on the eve of a conference in Brighton intended to curb the court’s influence on Britain after a series of rulings that have infuriated senior government ministers.
Background
Abu Qatada is in Britain illegally. He is wanted by Lebanon for terrorist offences. The British government has been trying to deport him for a long time, but the European Court will not ally it in case he does not get a fair trial in Lebanon. This matter has been going on for years!
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The head of Scotland Yard said yesterday that racist officers would find him an “implacable enemy”.
Bernard Hogan-Howe, the Metropolitan Police Commissioner, who is to give evidence before a committee of MPs today told a radio phone-in that his force had responded vigorously to accusations of racism.
But the Independent Police Complaints Commission said it was so concerned by the allegations surrounding the Met that it planned closer scrutiny of all such cases.
The watchdog told the Met to refer all racism allegations made since the beginning of this month to it. The commission is running five independent investigations into allegations of racism by Met officers or staff.
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Scotland Yard is the name of the headquarters of the Metropolitan Police (London police force).
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A new treatment for prostate cancer can rid the disease from nine in ten men without debilitating side effects, a study has found, leading to new hope for tens of thousands of men.
It is hoped the new treatment, which involves heating only the tumours with a highly focused ultrasound, will mean men can be treated without an overnight stay in hospital and avoiding the distressing side effects associated with current therapies.
A study has found that focal HIFU, high-intensity focused ultrasound, provides the ‘perfect’ outcome of no major side effects and free of cancer 12 months after treatment, in nine out of ten cases. Traditional surgery or radiotherapy can only provide the perfect outcome in half of cases currently.
Experts have said the results are ‘very encouraging’ and were a ‘paradigm’ shift in treatment of the disease. It is hoped that large scale trials can now begin so the treatment could be offered routinely on the NHS within five years.
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More than half of Britain is now in drought, the Environment Agency has warned, as the UK faces its most severe water shortage since 1976
More than 35 million people are now living in drought-affected areas, with water shortages today declared across the Midlands and South West.
Parts of the country are already drier than they were in the summer of 1976, when Britain experienced its worst drought for more than 100 years.
The drought of 1976 led to standpipes being installed in residential streets, water supplies to businesses being rationed and schools having to close early. The Environment Agency says similar measures are unlikely to be enforced this summer, but warns the dry conditions will damage the environment and lead to widespread water restrictions.
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North Korea fired a long-range rocket on Friday morning but it reportedly broke apart immediately after the launch.
The multi-stage rocket was fired at 7.39am from a new launch facility in the north-east of the country, although US sources were quoted on CNN as saying that the vehicle suffered some sort of failure in its third stage separation and fell into the sea between the Korean peninsula and China.
South Korea has dispatched at least two warships and helicopters to the area where the rocket is believed to have crashed and is attempting to locate and recover debris that will enable them to determine more about North Korea’s missile capabilities.
There are concerns, however, that this could bring the South Korean forces into close contact with North Korean units tasked with recovering the rocket. These waters have seen violent clashes in recent years, not least the sinking of the South Korean corvette Cheonan in March 2010, with the loss of 46 of its 104 crew.
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