Business news

Listen to the business news to practise and improve your listening skills.

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Preparation

Transcript

The first item in the news today is the recent elections that took place across the country. This was a crucial vote, which may see a dramatic change in how the country develops over the coming years. Overall, a 54.5 per cent voter turnout was registered. This represents an increase of 11 per cent over the previous election and six per cent above the average for the past 50 years. There has also been a slight change in demographics, with an increase in youth turnout in the 18- to 24- and 24- to 29-year-old brackets. Despite this increase, young people are still less likely to vote than older people; 84 per cent of voters in the 70 plus age group came to the polling stations.

Moving on, the global digital powerhouse ONK today posted quarterly results which were above forecast. Back in March, Tim Bolling, CEO, issued a profit warning over fears that there would be losses following the recall of their leading product, the 40d device. In fact, the company posted quarterly revenue of US$14.8 billion which represents an increase of 11 per cent from the same quarter a year ago. They also announced that they had sold 21 million 40d devices over the quarter. The company has provided the information that with this level of revenue, there will be a gross margin of 34 to 35 per cent, ultimately leading to a US$1.20 per share cash dividend awarded to shareholders.

And in our final news item we ask, will we soon be saying goodbye to coins and notes forever? The nationwide trend of using cashless payment options is increasing. There are a number of reasons for this development. A key reason for this is a growing interest in reducing the number of items people need to leave their homes with. As almost everyone carries a smartphone with them, and many people also have smartwatches, the ability to pay for things using one of these two technologies is particularly appealing. More and more retailers are accepting cashless payments and in some cases they've stopped accepting cash altogether.

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Task 2

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Discussion

Write a short overview of statistics, figures or trends that you are familiar with.

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Language level

B2 - Upper intermediate

AMLO's economic policy President Andrés Manuel López Obrador presented "the new economic policy in the coronavirus times"where it is mentioned that the fall of the neoliberal model was provoked by the COVID-19 pandemic which is why you think create a new model that is based five principles that are related;democracy, justice, honesty, austerity and well-being, each of these principles were defined.In order to boost this growth, it is necessary to strengthen microeconomics as it is very important for that money base to exist the State must comply with promoting development so that there are projects driven by himself.

In my country, the increase in femicides is increasing, each time more cases of murders of women are heard in the news, in 2020 it increased by 7.7%. From January to June of this year there have been 489 femicides, 7 to 10 women are murdered per day. These numbers are too sad ):

I will talk about violance against women in Mexico, numeric data of this year are awesome. According with the secretary of public security, between January and April of 2020 recording 33,240 crimes against women, He said that 58% are for malicious injuries, other 16% culpable injuries and finally 3% crimes against women´s life and integrity. It´s important to say that to have a increase feminicides when the quarantine start. Mexico has one of the higuest feminicide rates in the world. This social problem has been recurrent problem in the life of mexican families, and the fault accion for erradicate this promblem on the part of the goverment is a serious problem

U.S. military spending increased this year for the first time since 2010. The Donald Trump Administration increased investment in Defense by 4.6% over the previous years to USD $649 billion , 36% of the world total, which grew to an all time high. Washington and its strategic rival Beijing add for the first time more than half of the global investment in Defense, according to the data published by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI).

The Internal forced displacements in Syria has been approximately 41 million in 2016, and it is estimated that there have been 25.4 million refugees in the same year, the conditions for this civil war are inhumane, in 2016 there has been approximately 370,000 deads and 95,000 missings . The conflict is so severe and complicated that it is doubtful to find solutions, and foreign intervention and of terrorist groups only makes the problem bigger.

Let me tell you about the volatility of Tesla shares, taking as a reference the time from the lowest point of this morning's value (10:25 am) to the final rising value (12:10 pm), as well as the time with the highest value at the beginning (8:40 am) The shares at the beginning time had a value of 444.97 dollars, after one hour it is indicated that this value increased to 447.49 dollars so that to finish these actions achieved a value of 450.47 dollars however if we compare them with the value of the earliest available hour it is indicated that there has been a decrease of approximately 0.42 percent with only 4 hours.

To be honest this one was the most difficult until now, talk about statistics and this kind of thing it’s new for me. I could hardly understand when I first heard the audio and read the transcript. But let’s try.I’ll write about Christianity Christianity the world’s biggest religion with 2.1 billion of adherents according with 2010 researchers (representing 31 per cent of earth’s population) but it’s subject to lose this rank to Islam religion in the next few years. The population of Islam are rising a lot while the Christian population it’s growing gradually. In 2050 they expect the Christian population to be 2.9 of the population and Islam population to be 2.8 which it’s a very close number considering the difference between both now. (Christianity 2.1 / Islam 1.something)

Let me tell you about the COVID-19 situation in my country, whereas I can't come up with any other idea and this theme is the hottest topic around the world. So, we have over 145 000 cases of coronavirus, + 2582 per day. It's almost our national anti record, so the situation is far from the end. I'm happy to know, that over 65000 recovered despite it's a dangerous virus and over health care system is far from ideal (mildly speaking). Of course, there is sad news too, 3023 people are dead. It's a bitter blow for the country and a huge grief for their families. The situation is complicated by the fact that the academic year in schools and universities has restarted. And I'm really worried about that because I have two kids and one of them attends school and the younger one attends kindergarten. I hope we can escape this danger and we try to be careful. And I wish all of you to be safe and healthy. Cheers!

It's interesting to note that more and more people have begun to invest their savings in the stock market, specially in emerging coutries around the world where general interest rates have been dropping continuously. Despite of several positive outcome to economy, in some way government might be concerned as many these new investors haven't been properly educated to analyse and choose investments and prepared for the stock market ups and downs.