never_givin_up (Learning_English) все записи автора

 Papers focused on serious journalism
 

Broadsheet format:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/ - The Daily Telegraph (est. 1855) / The Sunday Telegraph (est. 1961) – owned by David and Frederick Barclay – Very

conservative.
 
http://www.ft.com/home/europe - Financial Times (est. 1888) – owned by Pearson PLC. A business-oriented daily. Economically liberal.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/ - The Sunday Times (est. 1822) – owned by Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation. Centre-Right.

Berliner format:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/ - The Guardian (est. 1821) / The Observer (est. 1791) — owned by the Scott Trust; The Guardian switched to Berliner size on 12 September 2005, followed by its sister Sunday paper The Observer on 8 January 2006. Left Wing.

Compact format:

http://www.independent.co.uk/ - The Independent (est. 1986) / Independent on Sunday (est. 1990) – Daily compact from May 2004, Sunday paper from October 2005. Centre-left, liberal views.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/ - The Times (est. 1785) – Daily compact from November 2004. Owned by Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation. Centre-Right Wing.

Middle-market papers:

http://www.express.co.uk/home - Daily Express (est. 1900) / Sunday Express (est. 1918) — owned by Richard Desmond's Northern and Shell plc; broadsheet until 1977, now published in the compact format. Conservative.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/home/index.html - Daily Mail (est. 1896) / The Mail on Sunday (est. 1982) — owned by Lord Rothermere's Daily Mail and General Trust plc; broadsheet until 1971, now published in the tabloid format. Conservative.

http://www.metro.co.uk/ - Metro (est. 1999) — owned by Daily Mail and General Trust plc; distributed free; working towards national status, wide availability in the major cities makes it the UK's 4th highest circulation paper. The Metro enjoys high circulation among users of public transport, with newspapers placed on trains and buses and distributors operating near stations.

Tabloids:

http://www.dailystar.co.uk/home/ - Daily Star (est. 1978) / Daily Star Sunday.

http://www.people.co.uk/ - The People (est. 1881) — owned by Trinity Mirror.

http://www.mirror.co.uk/ - The Daily Mirror (est. 1903) / Sunday Mirror (est. 1915) — owned by Trinity Mirror. Pro-Labour.

http://www.dailystar.co.uk/sport/ - The Daily Sport / The Sunday Sport.

http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/ - The Sun (est. 1964) / News of the World (est. 1843) — owned by News Corporation. Right-wing and populist.

http://www.morningstaronline.co.uk/index.php - The Morning Star (est. 1930) — a socialist newspaper owned by the People's Press Printing Society (an independent readers' co-operative).

never_givin_up (Learning_English) все записи автора

Many countries celebrate Valentine's Day on February 14th. This modern-day holiday is a celebration of love which gets its name from a Roman priest, Valentine, who secretly performed wedding ceremonies for Christian couples in the 3rd century.
Weeks before the fourteenth of February, shop windows are decorated with red paper hearts, red streamers and boxes of chocolates. Heart-shaped cakes and sweets are baked and gifts such as perfume and jewellery are promoted by department stores. Red roses are ordered from florists, dinner reservations are made and presents are bought in preparation for Valentine's Day. Even cards and small gifts are made by young children at school.
On Valentine's Day, many people wear something red, since it is considered to be the colour of love. Gifts, wrapped in shiny paper and red ribbons, are exchanged, women receive bouquets of flowers and people express their feelings to their loved ones. In the evening, many couples choose to dine at romantic restaurants while others enjoy spending time together at home.
Valentine's Day is a time to let people know how much you love and appreciate them. It is a day that makes everyone feel romantic and happy.

By Express Publishing

Owly_the_Owl (Learning_English) все записи автора

 LADY GODIVA

Some 900 years ago an extraordinary occurrence took place on Market Day in the English midlands town of Coventry.

Two monks at St. Albans Abbey in Hertfordshire first recorded this amazing story in Latin. Roger of Wendover wrote of it in the twelfth century and Mathew Paris in the early thirteenth century. As the Abbey stood at an important road junction, it would seem that the monks may have heard the story from travellers who were on their way from the Midlands to London.

The astonishing tale that has come down to us through the centuries, is that sometime in the eleventh-century a proud, pious lady rode through Coventry on Market Day completely naked, covered by nothing but her long hair!

Was this true? Apparently so!

Who was this pious medieval streaker?Earl Leofric was one of the all-powerful lords who ruled England under the Danish King Canute.

Leofric was a tyrant, he tyrannised the Church and did not hold the same religious convictions as his wife, nor her fondness for the Midlands and its populace.  

Fevinn (Learning_English) все записи автора

During the first World War, troops from Winnipeg (Manitoba, Canada) were being transported to eastern Canada, on their way to Europe, where they were to join the 2nd Canadian Infantry Brigade. When the train stopped at White River, Ontario, a lieutenant called Harry Colebourn bought a small female black bear cub for $20 from a hunter who had killed its mother. He named her 'Winnipeg', after his hometown of Winnipeg, or 'Winnie' for short.
Winnie became the mascot of the Brigade and went to Britain with the unit. When the Brigade was posted to the battlefields of France, Colebourn, now a Captain, took Winnie to the London Zoo for a long loan. He formally presented the London Zoo with Winnie in December 1919 where he became a popular attraction and lived until 1934.
The bear was also very popular with Christopher Robin, son of author A.A. Milne. It was his favourite animal at the Zoo, and he often spent time inside the cage with it. The bear was Christopher Robin's inspiration for calling his own teddy bear Winnie.....Winnie the Pooh (this teddy bear started out with the name of Edward Bear). The name Pooh originally belonged to a swan, as can be seen in the introduction of Milne's 'When We Were Very Young'.
 

A.A. Milne started to write a series of books about Winnie the Pooh, his son Christopher Robin, and their friends in the 100-Acre-Wood. These other characters, such as Eeyore, Piglet, Tigger, Kanga and Roo were also based on stuffed animals belonging to Christopher Robin. The characters, Rabbit and Owl, were based on animals that lived, like the swan Pooh, in the surrounding area of Milne's country home, Cotchford Farm in Ashdown Forest, Sussex. It is this area on which the 100-Acre-Wood was based.
'Winnie-the-Pooh' was published by Methuen on October 14th, 1926, the verses 'Now We are Six' in 1927, and 'The House at Pooh Corner' in1928. All these books were illustrated in a beautiful way by E.H. Shepard, which made the books even more magical. The Pooh-books became firm favorites with old and young alike and have been translated into almost every known language. A conservative figure for the total sales of the four Methuen editions (including When We Were Very Young) up to the end of 1996 would be over 20 million copies. These figures do not include sales of the four books published by Dutton in Canada and the States, nor the foreign-language editions printed in more than 25 languages the world over!

The Pooh-books had also been favourites of Walt Disney's daughters and it inspired Disney to bring Pooh to film in 1966. In 1977 'the Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh', the first feature-length animated film of Pooh was released. In 1993, the Walt Disney Company acknowledged that Pooh Bear is second only to Mickey Mouse in their portfolio of the most-loved and trusted characters known to millions of people all over the world. By 1996, after the second release of 'the Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh', the Bear of Very Little Brain had proven to be more popular than any other Disney character. In 1997, twenty years after the release of the first feature-length animated film, Disney released 'Pooh's Grand Adventure', picking up where Disney's 22nd Masterpiece left off. In February 2000 Disney released the third Winnie the Pooh movie called 'The Tigger Movie', this time with the leading part for Tigger.

never_givin_up (Learning_English) все записи автора

The Everglades are a huge wetlands area covering about 10,000 square kilometres in south Florida. More than half of the area is part of the Everglades National Park. The Native American name for the Everglades is Pa-May-Okee, which means "Grassy Water".
The Everglades were created about 10,000 years ago, at the end of the last Ice Age. Melting ice raised the sea level and caused flooding which in turn produced gigantic marshes and swamps.
The Everglades are home to many species of wetland birds, such as herons and pelicans, as well as alligators, crocodiles and snakes.

by Express Publishing

never_givin_up (Learning_English) все записи автора

With well over 600,000 words, English has a larger vocabulary than any other language – but many of these words have been 'borrowed' from other languages.
English has German and French roots, so a lot of its vocabulary is similar to words in these language. Many words have been formed from Latin and ancient Greek, especially for new inventions, such as television and helicopter.
Words from hundreds of other languages have been taken into English, too, often with slight changes in their spelling and pronunciation. Of course, other languages sometimes borrow English words in return.
The following is just a small selection of 'English' words and the languages they came from:
 - tea (Chinese)                  - coffee (Turkish, from Arabic)
- pizza (Italian)                   - potato (native American)
- robot (Czech)                  - rodeo (Spanish)
- caravan (Persian)            - commando (Afrikaans)
- kayak (Eskimo)                - boomerang (Aus. Aborigine).