English Recordings

The public furor over the financial crisis of 2008-09 is a case in point. For years, stock prices and real estate values had climbed. The reckoning came when the housing bubble burst. Wall Street banks and financial institutions had made billions of dollars on complex investments backed by mortgages whose value now plunged. Once proud Wall Street firms teetered on the edge of collapse. The stock market tanked, devastating not only big investors but also ordinary Americans, whose retirement accounts lost much of their value. The total wealth of American families fell by ＄11 trillion in 2008, an amount equal to the combined annual output of Germany, Japan, and the UK.
In October 2009, President George W. Bush asked Congress for ＄700 billion to bail out the nation's big banks and financial firms. It didn't seem fair that Wall Street had enjoyed huge profits during the good times and was now asking taxpayers to foot the bill when things had gone bad. But there seemed no alternative. The banks and financial firms ad grown so vast and so entwined with every aspect of the economy that their collapse might bring down the entire financial system. They were "too big to fail"
No one claimed that the banks and investment houses deserved the money. Their reckless bets (enabled by inadequate government regulation)had created the crisis. But here was a case where the welfare of the economy as a whole seemed to outweigh considerations of fairness. Congress reluctantly appropriated the bailout funds.
Then came the bonuses. Shortly after the bailout money began to flow, news accounts revealed tat some of the companies now on the public dole were awarding millions of dollars in bonuses to their executives. the most egregious case involved the American International Group, and insurance giant brought to ruin by the risky investments of its financial products unit. Despite having been rescued with massive infusions of government funds (totaling ＄173 billion ), the company paid ＄165 million in bonuses to executives in the very division that had precipitated the crisis. Seventy-three employees received bonuses of ＄1 million or more.
News of the bonuses set off a firestorm of public protest. This time, the outrage was not about ten-dollar bags of ice or overpriced motel rooms. It was about lavish rewards subsidized with taxpayer fund to members of the division that had helped bring the global financial system to near meltdown. Something was wrong with this picture. Although the U.S government now owned 80 percent of the company, the treasury secretary pleaded in vain with A.I.G's government-appointed CEO to rescind the bonuses. "We cannot attract and retain the best ahd the brightest talent" the CEO replied, "if employees believe their compensation is subject to continued and arbitrary adjustment by the U.S treasury" He claimed the employees' talents were needed to unload the toxic assets for the benefit of the taxpayers, who, after all, owned most of the company.

What kind of Japanese Men do you like?
あなたの好きな日本のmenを教えて下さい

Today, I’m going to write about Japanese men - that is to say, I'm going to write about Japanese noodles (麺), as opposed to the Japanese male(男性).
今日は日本の麺についてお話します（日本の男性Menについてではありませんので悪しからず）。

I think that ramen is the most popular men in Japan since there are more restaurants specialising in ramen than there are specialising in any other men.
先ず、全ての麺類店のなかでもっともその店舗数が多いことから、「ラーメン」が日本で一番人気のある麺類なのではないかと思います。

Ramen originated in China, but it has undergone various modifications and so can now be said to be Japanese.
「ラーメン」は中国発祥ですが、様々なアレンジが加えられて今では日本の麺類になっています。

According to Wikipedia, it is called "日式拉麺/Japanese noodles" in China and Taiwan.
ウィキペディアによると、中国や台湾では「日式拉麺」と呼ばれているそうです。

Even though most Japanese people like it, I don’t (like it) very much.
ほとんどの日本人に愛されているにもかかわらず、私は「ラーメン」があまり好きではありません。

So, my friends say that I’m an eccentric person.
そのため、友人から変人呼ばわりされています。

By the way, my favorite Japanese men is udon, a thick, white noodle made from wheat.

In particular, I like "カレーうどん/karēudon" which is an udon in a thick curry (flavoured) soup.
とろりとしたカレー汁とうどんの組み合わせである「カレーうどん」がとりわけ好きです。

Naturally, it is not a traditional Japanese food, but you can get it at almost all udon and soba restaurants.
もちろん「カレーうどん」は伝統的な日本の料理ではありませんが、ほとんどのうどん（そば）屋で食すことが出来ます。

Soba is a noodle made from buckwheat and is, like udon, one of the most famous traditional Japanese men.
「そば」はそば粉から作る麺であり、「うどん」と並んで最も名の知れた伝統的な麺類です。

We Japanese eat it at the end of the year and it is called "年越しそば/toshikoshisoba".
日本人は大晦日に「年越しそば」と称してこの麺料理を食べます。

For some reason, udon and soba are generally served at the same restaurant.
また、どういう訳か「うどん」と「そば」は同じお店で提供されることが多いように思います。

Incidentally, the men used in 焼うどん/yakiudon is actually udon, while the men used in 焼きそば/yakisoba is not soba at all but a Chinese men similar to ramen.
ちなみに、「焼きうどん」の麺は「うどん」そのものですが、「焼きそば」の麺は「そば」ではなく「ラーメン」のような中華麺です。

Somen is a vermicelli-like thin noodle which we nearly always eat chilled.
「そうめん」はバルミセッリのように細い麺で主に冷やして食されます。

When I was a school student, I was often made to eat it during summer vacation and so got sick and tired of the sight of it every year.
私は小学生のころ夏休みになると「そうめん」を頻繁に食べさせられていたので、毎年見るのも嫌になっていました。

While the men, I have talked about so far, can be found everywhere in Japan,"すば/suba" is unique to Okinawa.
今までご紹介した麺類は全て日本中で一般的なものでしたが、「すば」は沖縄独特の麺類です。

"すば/suba" is an Okinawan wheat noodle which doesn’t contain buckwheat and is classified as a Chinese noodle.
「すば」はそば粉ではなく小麦から作られる沖縄の麺であり分類上は中華麺です。

However, it is served in a Japanese soup stock, so it tastes like udon, rather than ramen.
しかし、日本の出汁が使われるため「ラーメン」よりも「うどん」に近い味わいです。

Future historians will be in a unique position when they come to record the history of our own times. They will hardly know which facts to select from the great mass of evidence that steadily accumulates. What is more， they will not have to rely solely on the written word. Films， videos， CDs and CD-ROMS are just some of the bewildering amount of information they will have. They will be able， as it were， to see and hear us in action. But the historian attempting to reconstruct the distant past is always faced with a difficult task. He has to deduce what he can from the few scanty clues available. Even seemingly insignificant remains can shed interesting light on the history of early man.
Up to now， historians have assumed that calendars came into being with the advent of agriculture， for then man was faced with a real need to understand something about the seasons. Recent scientific evidence seems to indicate that this assumption is incorrect.
Historians have long been puzzled by dots， lines and symbols which have been engraved on walls， bones， and the ivory tusks of mammoths. The nomads who made these markings lived by hunting and fishing during the last Ice Age which began about 35，000 B.C. and ended about 10，000 B.C. By correlating markings made in various parts of the world， historians have been able to read this difficult code. They have found that it is connected with the passage of days and the phases of the moon. It is， in fact， a primitive type of calendar. It has long been known that the hunting scenes depicted on walls were not simply a form of artistic expression. They had a definite meaning， for they were as near as early man could get to writing. It is possible that there is a definite relation between these paintings and the markings that sometimes accompany them. It seems that man was making a real effort to understand the seasons 20，000 years earlier than has been supposed.

We have learnt to expect that trains will be punctual. After years of conditioning， most of us have developed an unshakable faith in railway timetables. Ships may be delayed by storms； flights may be cancelled because of bad weather， but trains must be on time. Only an exceptionally heavy snowfall might temporarily dislocate railway services. It is all too easy to blame the railway authorities when something does go wrong. The truth is that when mistakes occur， they are more likely to be ours than theirs.
After consulting my railway timetable， I noted with satisfaction that there was an express train to Westhaven. It went direct from my local station and the journey lasted mere hour and seventeen minutes. When I boarded the train， I could not help noticing that a great many local people got on as well. At the time， this did not strike me as odd. I reflected that there must be a great many local people besides myself who wished to take advantage of this excellent service. Neither was I surprise when the train stopped at Widley， a tiny station a few miles along the line. Even a mighty express train can be held up by signals. But when the train dawdled at station after station， I began to wonder， It suddenly dawned on me that this express was not roaring down the line at ninety miles an hour， but barely chugging along at thirty. One hour and seventeen minutes passed and we had not even covered half the distance. I asked a passenger if this was the Westhaven Express， but he had not even heard of it. I determined to lodge a complaint as soon as we arrived. Two hours later， I was talking angrily to the station master at Westhaven. When he denied the train's existence， I borrowed his copy of the timetable. There was a note of triumph in my voice when I told him that it was there in black and white. Glancing at it briefly， he told me to look again. A tiny asterisk conducted me to a footnote at the bottom of the page. It said： 'This service has been suspended.'

We are less credulous than we used to be. In the nineteenth century， a novelist would bring his story to a conclusion by presenting his readers with a series of coincidences —— most of them wildly improbable. Readers happily accepted the fact that an obscure maidservant was really the hero's mother. A long-lost brother， who was presumed dead， was really alive all the time and wickedly plotting to bring about the hero's downfall. And so on. Modern readers would find such naive solution totally unacceptable. Yet， in real life， circumstances do sometimes conspire to bring about coincidences which anyone but a nineteenth century novelist would find incredible.
When I was a boy， my grandfather told me how a German taxi driver， Franz Bussman， found a brother who was thought to have been killed twenty years before. While on a walking tour with his wife， he stooped to talk to a workman. After they had gone on， Mrs. Bussman commented on the workman's close resemblance to her husband and even suggested that he might be his brother. Franz poured scorn on the idea， pointing out that his brother had been killed in action during the war. Though Mrs. Busssman fully acquainted with this story， she thought that there was a chance in a million that she might be right. A few days later， she sent a boy to the workman to ask him if his name was Hans Bussman. Needless to say， the man's name was Hans Bussman and he really was Franz's long-lost brother. When the brothers were reunited， Hans explained how it was that he was still alive. After having been wounded towards the end of the war， he had been sent to hospital and was separated from his unit. The hospital had been bombed and Hans had made his way back into Western Germany on foot. Meanwhile， his unit was lost and all records of him had been destroyed. Hans returned to his family home， but the house had been bombed and no one in the neighbourhood knew what had become of the inhabitants. Assuming that his family had been killed during an air raid， Hans settled down in a village fifty miles away where he had remained ever since.

The word justice is usually associated with courts of law. We might say that justice has been done when a man's innocence or guilt has been proved beyond doubt. Justice is part of the complex machinery of the law. Those who seek it undertake an arduous journey and can never be sure that they will find it. Judges， however wise or eminent， are human and can make mistakes.
There are rare instances when justice almost ceases to be an abstract concept. Reward or punishment are meted out quite independent of human interference. At such times， justice acts like a living force. When we use a phrase like 'it serves him right'， we are， in part， admitting that a certain set of circumstances has enabled justice to act of its own accord.
When a thief was caught on the premises of large jewellery store on morning， the shop assistants must have found it impossible to resist the temptation to say 'it serves him right.' The shop was an old converted house with many large， disused fireplaces and tall， narrow chimneys. Towards midday， a girl heard a muffed cry coming from behind on of the walls. As the cry was repeated several times， she ran to tell the manager who promptly rang up the fire brigade. The cry had certainly come form one of the chimneys， but as there were so many of them， the fire fighters could not be certain which one it was. They located the right chimney by tapping at the walls and listening for the man's cries. After chipping through a wall which was eighteen inches thick， they found that a man had been trapped in the chimney. As it was extremely narrow， the man was unable to move， but the fire fighters were eventually able to free him by cutting a huge hole in the wall. The sorry-looking， blackened figure that emerged， admitted at once that he had tried to break into the shop during the night but had got stuck in the chimney. He had been there for nearly ten hours. Justice had been done even before the man was handed over to the police.

-(2012.2.10)< The Sky on my way home>-
• Hello, how have you been? How are you today?
• Today I’ll talk about the sky that I saw on my way home.
• I took these pictures on my way home late this afternoon.
• Sure I know it’s a really dangerous thing to take pictures when I drive.
•Maybe if the police saw me, I would get a fine.
• But when I drove my car on the way home, I happened to see the sky through my car window glass.
• Then I had to take a picture of it with my phone-camera even though I was driving.
• It was a moment during which the sun concealed itself behind the clouds.
(=It was a moment during which the sun hid behind the clouds. It couldn't hide forever.)
• The second picture is a picture of "Konan" who is my younger sister`s dog.
• Late this afternoon, when I returned home I stopped by her house, and I was received[greeted] with wild[immense] enthusiasm from him (Konan).
You just got to love him. He's so cute with his eyes I just had to take a video of him.
• You just got to love him. He's so cute with his eyes I just had to take a video of him.
• He is a really smart dog. Oh, the video below is "Konan"`s talent show.

Sports like tennis, basketball and football are multi-billion pound industries today, but what are their origins and how did they become the sports we play today?
It’s difficult to say exactly when football started, but there is scientific evidence of a game in the 2nd and 3rd
centuries BC in China called ‘Tsu' Chu’, where the players had to kick a leather ball through a 30–40 cm hole into a small net. But the major development of football was in the Middle Ages. At that time, there was no limit on the number of players and very few rules, and matches were often very noisy and violent. In fact, between 1314 and 1667 the authorities tried to ban football more than 30 times. The rules of football date back to 1660 in a book of sports where it talked about a pitch, goals and the basic positions for players.
The game of tennis probably started with French monks as a form of entertainment in the 11th or 12th century. At first, players hit the ball with their hands, then later with a glove until finally they used a racquet. The first ball was wooden, followed by a leather ball and later the bouncy rubber ball used today. Tennis was very popular in Europe in the 14th century, especially in France. The name tennis probably comes from the French word tenez, meaning ‘take’. At one time in England, tennis was so popular that the Pope tried to ban it. The modern rules of tennis date back to 1882.
Basketball started in the USA in 1891 when a teacher, James Naismith, had to invent a game for his school’s athletes in winter. He used two fruit baskets, which he hung 10 feet up, and a football. As there was no hole in the basket, every time a player put the ball in the basket they had to climb up and get it out. Later they used a net with a metal ring and in 1906 they started opening the net to let the ball fall through. Because of its simple equipment, indoor play and simple rules, basketball became popular very quickly. Probably the most famous basketball team is the Harlem Globetrotters, who are famous for their basketball acrobatics and funny
routines.
These three games are some of the most popular games in the world today, with football as the most popular with over three billion fans.

Hong Kong, China (CNN) – The bigger they are, the harder they fall. That's the tenet behind the Skyscraper Index which tracks a link between construction booms of tall buildings and economic busts over the past 140 years.

Some say the facts are bizarrely coincidental. Others say the numbers don’t lie. But if true, the latest Skyscraper Index report from Barclays Capital suggests both China and India are due for economic doom because of their current skyscraper boom.

In no mincing of words, BarCap adds that China is the world’s “biggest bubble builder.”

The country already has half the world’s existing buildings higher than 240 meters – the minimum height for skyscrapers.

But China is not stopping there. It’ll add another 66 in the next six years. That’ll nearly double its current collection from 75 to 141. You see, China has 53% of the 124 skyscrapers currently under construction around the world. (And if you think they can’t do it, think again. China has challenged itself to put up a 30-story building in just 15 days. It’s set to open January 18.)

As for India, the world’s second most populous nation only has two skyscrapers, both in the financial capital of Mumbai. But that’s going to change quickly.

In the next five years, 14 more skyscrapers will shoot up around India. That includes the Tower of India, the world’s future second-tallest tower. (The current number two is the Taipei 101 in Taiwan.)

Andrew Lawrence is the man behind the Skyscraper Index. The Director of Property Research at Barclays Capital here in Hong Kong explains the index like this: “Skyscraper construction is characterized by bursts of intense activity with easy-to-get credit, rising land prices and excessive optimism. But by the time those skyscrapers are finished, the economy has slipped into recession."

And with China and India pushing skywards over the next several years, history’s boom and bust cycle suggests their economies may then crash back to the ground sometime near the end of this decade.

Just look to the past. In 1930, New York’s Empire State building, pictured above left in 1938, opened as the world’s tallest skyscraper rising 381 meters high. That was just as the Great Depression began to darken the U.S. economy. That lasted for more than 10 years.

In 1997, the Asian financial crisis hit just after the 452-meter Petronas Towers in Malaysia opened to take the crown of world’s tallest building.

Most recently in 2009, the Burj Khalifa opened and remains the world’s tallest skyscraper at just over 828 meters. And guess what, that event coincided with Dubai nearly going broke and heralded the Great Recession that we’re all trying to claw back from now.

And there are many more examples. So as China and India build higher and higher, there’s reason to be that much more leery of two looming financial fallouts in Asia.

We’re likely familiar with the adage “Build it and they will come”. But the person who penned that likely wasn’t thinking of economic meltdown.

(CNN) -- The special court investigating the 2005 assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri announced Wednesday it will try the four accused killers in absentia.

The trial chamber of the Special Tribunal for Lebanon, headquartered in the Netherlands near The Hague, said it concluded that "all reasonable steps have been taken to secure the appearance of the accused and to notify them of the charges against them."

The efforts included multiple attempts by Lebanese authorities to find the four men at homes and workplaces, the chamber said. It also noted that the identities of the four men and their indictments received "massive publicity" in Lebanon, making it clear the men were being sought.

The chamber did not announce a date for the trial, but it will be at least four months away.

The United Nations-backed tribunal indicted the four men in June 2011 and made their identities public in July.

Hariri was killed in February 2005 when a bomb struck his motorcade in Beirut. The blast ripped apart his armored car and destroyed the motorcade, killing 21 other people and wounding 231.

All four suspects are charged with conspiracy aimed at committing a terrorist act.

The indictment says the alleged ringleader was Mustafa Amine Badreddine, while another man, Salim Jamil Ayyash, allegedly headed the "assassination team," responsible for physically carrying out the attack.

They are also charged with committing a terrorist act by means of an explosive device; two counts of intentional homicide with premeditation by using explosives; and attempted intentional homicide with premeditation by using explosives.

Hussein Hassan Oneissi and Assad Hassan Sabra were responsible for preparing a false claim of responsibility, the indictment says. They are charged with being accomplices to the same four counts.

Investigators used mobile phone data to place Ayyash and other members of the assassination team near locations where Hariri was in the days prior to his death, the indictment says. Similar data placed the men near points along the route of Hariri's convoy on the day of the bombing.

Mobile phone data placed Ayyash in the same area as a vehicle showroom from which the van used in the fatal bombing was purchased, the indictment says. Ayyash called Badreddine twice from the same area, it says.

About 75 minutes after the attack, Oneissi and Sabra made a total of four calls to the Beirut offices of the Reuters news agency and Al-Jazeera television to claim that a fictional group was behind the bombing, the indictment says.

Sabra told Al-Jazeera where to find a videocassette with the claim of responsibility and Oneissi watched to make sure it was picked up, the indictment says. One of the men later called the news network and "demanded with menace" that it broadcast the video.

Prosecutors say all four men are supporters of Hezbollah, the Lebanese Shiite militant group, and that Badreddine and Ayyash are related to one of its founders.

Responding to the indictment last year, Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah said it contained no direct evidence against the men.

"The text (of the indictment) is based on circumstantial evidence whose credibility is contested," he said. "This makes us more convinced that what is happening is highly unjust and politicized, and this is unfair to the suspects."

Prosecutors concede in the indictment that the charges are based heavily on circumstantial evidence, but they argue that such information can be stronger than direct evidence because it does not rely on things like potentially faulty witness accounts.

Hariri's supporters say the businessman-turned-politician was killed because of his opposition to Syria's longtime military presence in his country, and his death led to popular protests, nicknamed the "Cedar Revolution," that led Damascus to withdraw its troops.

Syria has denied accusations that it was behind the bombing.