Active+Reading


 * Active reading strategy **

Strategy : Active Reading
When you are reading a document in detail, it often helps if you highlight, underline and annotate it as you go on. This emphasizes information in your mind, and helps you to review important points later. Doing this also helps to keep your mind focused on the [|material]and stops it wandering. This is obviously only something to do if you own the document! If you own the book and find that active reading helps, then it may be worth photocopying information in more expensive texts. You can then read and mark the photocopies.

** Read the article below and use active reading strategies. Make sure to add links to any vocabulary words that you don't understand. **

** Article 1: **
ISMAILIA, Egypt (Reuters) – Egypt said on Sunday it was reopening its shores to tourists at a popular Red Sea resort after a series of shark attacks over the last two weeks, which killed one person and injured four. Three Russians and a Ukrainian suffered severe injuries when they were attacked off Sharm el-Sheikh, and on December 5 a 70-year-old woman snorkeler died after a shark tore a piece out of her thigh and severed her forearm. "We have allowed the beaches to reopen on condition hotel owners adhere to new controls to ensure the safety of foreign tourists while diving or swimming," South Sinai Governor Mohamed Abdel Fadil Shousha told reporters. The controls include continuous sea patrols by boat and the establishment of watchtowers along the shoreline from which professional divers equipped with binoculars can monitor against any shark attacks. Tourists will be required to remain within designated swimming areas and refrain from feeding sharks, Shousha said. The killing was the first death from a shark attack in Egypt since 2004. Officials had just lifted a ban on swimming in the area imposed after the first attacks. A whitetip seen minutes before the first attacks on two of the Russians was later identified as the shark photographed when the German woman was attacked five days later, Elke Bojanowski, an expert on the Red Sea's whitetip sharks, said on Thursday. An international team of scientists was interviewing witnesses, studying the environment and gathering data from local divers to understand the shark's behavior. Speculation has centred on the practice of luring sharks with bait, or chum, to film them, causing them to associate humans with food, or a depletion of fish stocks that could force them to seek alternative food sources. Sousha said the shark attacks were likely provoked by a ship that threw dead sheep overboard while passing through the Red Sea, whetting the sharks' appetites.

=Article # 2=

TEHRAN (Reuters) - An Iranian woman sentenced to stoning has not been freed, a prosecutor said on Friday, calling a rumor of her release that brought short-lived joy to sympathizers around the world a "lie." "Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani is in detention and any news based on her release from the Tabriz prison is a sheer lie," Moussa Khalilolahi, prosecutor in the city of Tabriz, northwestern Iran, told the official IRNA news agency. "No change has been made to her legal status ... The file is following its normal and legal procedures," he said. Ashtiani's sentence to be stoned for adultery -- the only crime which carries that penalty under Iran's Islamic sharia law -- was suspended after an international outcry by both Western countries and some others that have warm relations with Iran. The European Union called it "barbaric," the Vatican pleaded for clemency and Brazil, which has tried to intervene in Iran's standoff with the West over its nuclear program, offered Ashtiani asylum. She still faces possible execution by hanging for complicity in the murder of her husband. Talk of Ashtiani's release appears to have been sparked by photographs of her at home released to the international media on Thursday by state-run Press TV ahead of an interview with her to be broadcast later on Friday. Rumors spread quickly on the Internet, with thousands of joyful messages appearing on the Twitter website after the International Committee Against Stoning, based in Germany, said "sources in Iran" had word of her freedom. CONFESSION But Press TV later said that instead of showing her freedom, its documentary shows Ashtiani at home describing the murder of her husband. The program will be aired at midnight (2030 GMT) on Friday. "Press TV ... arranged with Iran's judicial authorities to follow Ashtiani to her house to produce a visual recount of the crime at the murder scene," it said on its website.

=Article 3=

=Are Americans as Poor as They Feel?=

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 * [[image:http://l.yimg.com/a/p/fi/31/19/19.jpg caption="bloomberg_businessweek_logo.jpg" link="http://us.lrd.yahoo.com/SIG=111bo4gie/**http%3A//www.businessweek.com/"]] ||
 * bloomberg_businessweek_logo.jpg ||


 * It depends on what they buy. While some big-ticket expenditures have skyrocketed, the relative cost of many necessities has dropped.**
 * **More from [|BusinessWeek.com]:**

• [|What Americans Are Really Paying for the Things They Buy Most]

• [|The World's Most Expensive Cities 2010]

• [|The U.S. Economy: Stuck in Neutral] || For many Americans, thinking back to the days of 99¢ gas and 50¢ cups of coffee, it may be cathartic to grumble about how expensive life has become, especially during the current economic downturn. The reality, however, is that a lot of things aren't as expensive as we think—and many things actually cost less in relative terms. [|[Click here to check savings products and rates in your area.]] A look at the cost of living between 1980 and 2010 shows that nominal income rose more than overall consumer prices (nominal income is income not adjusted for inflation). The price of many day-to-day expenses such as food and even energy increased at a slower pace than overall consumer prices, which means their relative costs are lower, while some big-ticket items, such as education and health care, became more expensive, causing a shift in spending. In 2009 the average household spent $49,067 on such expenses as housing, transportation, food, and entertainment—less than in 2008 but up by $3,692 (in 2009 dollars) since 1984—according to data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics Consumer Expenditure Survey. To analyze how costs have changed, //Businessweek.com// compared the average price of some basic consumer expenditures today with the same expenses back in 1980, the year the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics began its ongoing consumer spending survey. Price data came from reports by the BLS and the nonprofit research group Council for Community and Economic Research, as well as other sources. The results show that the relative price of such necessities as groceries and fuel decreased over the past 30 years, while the price of big-ticket items, such as health care and education, more than doubled. Also, many households added expenses for media and technology, such as computers and Internet and cell phone service, which add up to more than $1,000 per person per year, on average, reported //The New York Times//. One factor driving the shift in costs: productivity. Barry Bosworth, senior fellow of economic studies at the Brookings Institution, says relative prices are down for such items as electronics, which have had rapid productivity gains over the decades. Education has been one of the biggest contributors to spending increases. Since 1980 the average cost of college tuition and room and board more than doubled in real dollars (jumping nearly 500 percent in nominal dollars), to $20,435 in 2008 per year, according to the National Center for Education Statistics. The rise can be attributed to several factors, including declining state funding for public universities over the last decade, institutions' failure to educate more students with fewer resources, and spending on new technology and such services as student counseling, says Sandy Baum, an independent policy analyst for the College Board and professor of economics at Skidmore College. The increase may seem steep, but Bosworth says the returns on college education have also increased: In 1980 the average college graduate earned 30 percent more than a high school graduate, and prior to the recession, the premium had expanded to more than 60 percent, according to a paper by the National Bureau of Economic Research. [[|See Universities That Pay Off the Most]] The emphasis on education also indirectly affected the cost of living, argue Harvard Law School professor Elizabeth Warren and writer Amelia Warren Tyagi in The Two-Income Trap (Basic Books, 2003). As good school districts attracted demand for homes in a community, home buyers engaged in bidding wars that drove up home prices. Many bought homes they could not afford. In real dollars, the median existing home price in 2006 was up about 40 percent from 1980 levels, according to data from the National Association of Realtors. The gap has narrowed as values have dropped nearly one-fourth from peak levels. Spending on homes, rentals, and vacation properties increased to 20.5 percent of total expenditures in 2009, from 15.9 percent in 1984, BLS data shows. "When home values were rising rapidly, it was possible to borrow some of the equity to support consumption," says Bosworth. "The result was an increase in consumption that outpaced the growth in incomes." Another cost that has increased significantly: health care. Health insurance more than doubled to 3.6 percent of the average annual spending (slightly more than they spent on electricity) between 1984 and 2009, according to the BLS. The average annual premium for single coverage this year is $5,049, according to data from the Kaiser Family Foundation. Some factors driving up premiums: rising costs for physician and clinical services, hospital inpatient spending, and hospital outpatient spending, as well as increased use of services, according to a 2008 report by PricewaterhouseCoopers. [[|See How to Raise Money for Medical Expenses]] Of course, whether life has become more or less expensive relative to income depends how much one consumes. "Household income, even adjusted for inflation, has increased, which would suggest that well-being has improved," says Scott Hoyt, senior director of consumer economics at Moody's Analytics. The consumer price index—which includes food and beverage, housing, apparel, transportation, medical care, recreation, education, communication, and other goods and services—grew nearly 160.4 percent, to 214.537, from 1980 to 2009, according to BLS data. In the same period, median household income in nominal dollars increased 181 percent, to $49,777, U.S. Census Bureau data show, or 8 percent in real dollars. BLS data indicate that while high-income earners saw the biggest increase in that period, average income rose for middle-income earners too. Warren and Tyagi write that compared with the 1970s, more families now have two full-time incomes, but the change in lifestyle led to new needs, such as a second car and day care. After an average two-income family makes its house payments, car payments, insurance payments, and child care payments, it can have less money left over, even though there is a second full-time earner in the workplace, they say. Financial obligations (mortgage, rent, consumer debt payments, automobile lease payments, and property tax payments) rose to 17.02 percent of disposable personal income in 2010's second quarter, from 15.45 percent in 1980, reaching a high of 18.86 in 2007, according to Federal Reserve data. Financial obligations represent a larger portion of income in many households, but the ratio is affected by high-income earners. "From the mid-1980s through the middle of this past decade, consumers loaded up on loans. Household debt rose far more rapidly than household income," Hoyt states in a Moody's Analytics report. "Credit-card use expanded rapidly, and technological innovations gave more consumers access to credit, including subprime borrowers." Car ownership jumped 14.3 percent, to 1.91 vehicles per household, from 1983 to 2009, according to a report by the U.S.Energy Dept.. Also, new technologies such as computer hardware and software, Internet service, and cell phone service rose from near zero to 2 percent of total spending, according to the BLS. [[|See What Your Car Says About You]] Food as a proportion of total expenditures decreased to 13 percent in 2009, from 15 percent in 1984, the BLS says. The CPI for food grew less than overall prices. From 1980 to 2010, the average price in real dollars for one pound of coffee dropped 55.9 percent, to $3.70, BLS data show. The price for one pound of ground beef dropped 31.7 percent (inflation adjusted), to $2.72, according to Council for Community and Economic Research. In 2010, the price of agricultural commodities has been rising, but retail prices for food do not increase in tandem with commodity prices. A 10 percent change in the commodity price for coffee, for example, is likely to result in a 3 percent change in the retail price, according to a report by the U.S. Agriculture Dept. Other categories with spending decreases include energy—although prices are volatile. BLS data show that in inflation-adjusted dollars, 2009 real spending on natural gas was 21.2 percent below 1984 levels and spending on gasoline fell 9 percent. Also, apparel and services such as dry cleaning fell to 4 percent of total annual expenditures, from 6 percent in 1984, according to the BLS. In the downturn, expenditures have been cut and savings have increased, yet Bosworth notes that the U.S. "is still an extraordinarily rich society where Americans maintain outsize consumption 'needs' relative to other societies." Even as prices fluctuate, how much one spends can depend less on what individuals need than on what they want. When you look at the price tags on consumer goods, it would seem that costs have skyrocketed over the last 30 years. If you adjust for inflation, however, the relative cost of items such as food, manufactured goods, and energy has fallen since 1980, while prices for other necessities such as housing, education, and health care have increased significantly. Moreover, consumers have taken to new services that carry bills they didn't have to pay in the 1980s: Payments for Internet access, cable TV, and cell phones together total more than $1,000 per year in bills for many Americans, according to a February report in The New York Times. Businessweek.com compared national average prices in 1980 and 2010 for 35 products and services that range from milk and bread to haircuts and doctor's visits. Comparative figures are based on numbers provided by the Council for Community and Economic Research's ACCRA Cost of Living Index, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics Consumer Expenditure Survey, and other pricing-data sources
 * One New Cost: The Web**
 * Premium for College Education**
 * Medical Cost Nightmare**
 * Increasing Financial Obligations**
 * More Cars, More Computers**
 * What Americans Are Really Paying for the Things They Buy Most **
 * Three Decades of Price Changes**