2841(ин.яз
.).pdfречь и т.д. Каждый из этих речевых жанров имеет свои композиционные и речевые особенности, которые в сочетании с общими признаками публицистического красноречия образуют некоторые канонизированные особенности стиля публичных речей. Будучи разновидностью литературно-письменной речи, язык оратора сохраняет особенности письменной речи, например развернутые синтаксические структуры, распространенные словосочетания, лексические повторы, перечисления и т.п. При этом язык публичных речей наделен многими особенностями устной речи, например краткими и эллиптичными предложениями, разговорными словами, оборотами и т.п. Эмоциональность ораторской речи обусловлена не только содержанием речи и ее конкретной формой, но и стилем живой, звучащей речи, обращенной непосредственно к слушателям. Поэтому она может быть уверенной и страстной, торжественной и пафосной, деловой и суховатой, казенной и канцелярской, меланхолической и монотонной.
Для привлечения внимания слушателей используются такие стилистические средства как повтор, инверсия, антитеза, риторический вопрос, вопросно-ответная структура высказывания. В качестве стилистических средств изобразительности и выразительности используются тропы, сравнения, гиперболы, аллегории, эвфемизмы, пословицы, поговорки, крылатые слова, цитаты.
В качестве примеров текстов газетно-публицистического стиля приведены статьи из газеты “New York Times”.
Задание 1. Прочитайте текст. 1) Определите, к какому типу текста он относится. 2) Сравните языковые средства, которые используют автор и эксперты. Чем можно объяснить различный выбор ими языковых средств? 3) Выполните реферативный перевод статьи.
In a Changing Antarctica, Some Penguins Thrive as Others Suffer By ANDY ISAACSON
Published: May 9, 2011
ROSS ISLAND, Antarctica — Cape Royds, home to the southernmost colony of penguins in the world, is a rocky promontory overlaid with dirty ice and the stench of pinkish guano. Beyond the croaking din of chicks pestering parents for regurgitated krill lies the Ross Sea, a southern extension of the Pacific Ocean that harbors more than one-third of the world’s Adélie penguin population and a quarter of all emperor penguins, and which may be the last remaining intact marine ecosystem on Earth.
The penguin colony is one of the longest-studied in the world. Data on its resident Adélie penguins was first acquired during the 1907-9 expedition of Ernest Shackleton, the eminent British explorer, whose wooden hut stands preserved nearby.
“This is penguin nirvana,” David Ainley, an ecologist with the consulting firm H. T. Harvey and Associates who has been studying Ross Sea penguins for 40 years, said on a morning in January. “This is where you want to be if you’re a pack ice penguin.”
Of the species that stand to be most affected by global warming, the most obvious are the ones that rely on ice to live. Adélie penguins are a bellwether of climate change, and at the northern fringe of Antarctica, in the Antarctic Peninsula, their colonies have collapsed as an intrusion of warmer seawater shortens the annual winter sea ice season.
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In the past three decades, the Adélie population on the peninsula, northeast of the Ross Sea, has fallen by almost 90 percent. The peninsula’s only emperor colony is now extinct. The mean winter air temperature of the Western Antarctic Peninsula, one of the most rapidly warming areas on the planet, has risen 10.8 degrees Fahrenheit in the past half-century, delivering more snowfall that buries the rocks the Adélie penguins return to each spring to nest
— and favoring penguins that can survive without ice and breed later, like gentoos, whose numbers have surged by 14,000 percent.
The warmer climate on the Antarctic Peninsula has also upended the food chain, killing off the phytoplankton that grow under ice floes and the krill, a staple of the penguin diet, that eat them, by as much as 80 percent, according to a new study published this month in The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
But in the Ross Sea a reverse trend is occurring: Winter sea ice cover is growing, and Adélie populations are actually thriving. The Cape Royds colony grew more than 10 percent every year, until 2001, when an iceberg roughly the size of Jamaica calved off the Ross Sea ice shelf and forced residents to move 70 kilometers north to find open water. (The iceberg broke up in 2006, and the colony of 1,400 breeding pairs is now recovering robustly.) Across Ross Island, the Adélie colony at Cape Crozier — one of the largest known, with an estimated 230,000 breeding pairs — has increased by about 20 percent.
Climate change has created a paradise for some pack ice penguin colonies and a purgatory for others, but the long-term fate of all Adélie and emperor penguins seems sealed, as relentless warming eventually pulls their rug of sea ice out from under them. Some scientists attribute the recent sea ice growth in the Ross Sea to the persistent ozone hole, a legacy of the human use of chlorofluorocarbons that cools the upper atmosphere over the continent, increasing the temperature difference with the lower atmosphere and equator, and over the last 30 years has delivered significantly brisker westerly winds in the summer and autumn. The warming of Earth’s middle latitudes is having a similar effect, increasing that temperature difference and sending stronger winds that push sea ice off the coast and expose pockets of open water, called polynyas, that give nesting Adélie penguins easier access to food.
Meanwhile, consumers’ appetite for Chilean sea bass (Antarctic and Patagonian toothfish) may also be benefiting Ross Sea penguins, as fishing fleets from southern nations converge on one of the last remaining refuges of the fish. A fishery in the Ross Sea that opened in 1996 and was certified sustainable in December by the Marine Stewardship Council, could ultimately serve Adélie penguins by reducing competition for Antarctic silverfish, a sardinesize fish that the penguins and toothfish enjoy. Dr. Ainley and colleagues have reported seeing fewer killer whales in the southern Ross Sea since 2002. The whales feed on toothfish, and fewer sightings suggest that the fishery is already altering the ecosystem.
Researchers witnessed Ross Sea penguin colonies thrive during the 1970s when commercial whaling removed 20,000 Antarctic minke whales, also a food competitor of Adélies, from the penguins’ wintering area. Adélie populations eventually leveled off after 1986, after an international moratorium on whaling began (and remained static until the more recent influences of climate change). Japanese whaling of minkes resumed right after the moratorium was instituted, purportedly for science, a claim that conservation groups dispute and that has incited a confrontation in the Ross Sea between the Japanese fleet and the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, an antiwhaling vigilante group.
“It has become difficult to separate whether the increase is due to climate change or fewer toothfish,” Dr. Ainley said. “Both factors seem to be working at the same time.”
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On a chilly morning in January, the Cape Royds colony was clustered across the dark volcanic rock in crèches: month-old chicks, furry and pear-shaped with tummies full of krill, huddled near their parents as adolescent penguins, still too young to breed, acted “like teenagers trying to figure out the social scene,” in Dr. Ainley’s assessment. Their cuddly appearance is misleading, it turns out, a projection of human sentiment. “They’re really nasty to one another,” Dr. Ainley said, “and if you try to pick one up you’ll have your hands full.”
Climate models predict that the winds and sea ice will continue to increase in the Ross Sea for the next 30 to 40 years, at which time the region is expected to experience a tipping point, as rising temperatures and the waning effect of the ozone hole, now getting smaller, transform the climate into the kind now seen in the Antarctic Peninsula.
Already, that process is under way. The average summer temperature at McMurdo Station, the American research base on Ross Island, has inched up 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit in the past 30 years, records show, more than the global average. Scientists conducting long-term studies of lakes in the McMurdo Dry Valleys, Antarctica’s largest ice-free area, report that after a decade of cooling, some lakes in the Taylor Valley are now gaining heat. During this past research season the scientists recorded unprecedented lake levels caused by higher glacial runoff.
On Beaufort Island, north of Ross Island, glaciers have retreated over the rocky coastline farther than they have in 30,000 years, scientists estimate, a time before the last ice age. The receding ice has opened up more nesting habitat for the resident Adélie penguin colony, which has expanded to 55,000 breeding pairs from 40,000 in the last decade.
As the sea ice retreats, researchers expect that Adélie penguins living in the Ross Sea will be forced to shift their range farther south toward the pole. In a study between 2003 and 2005, Dr. Ainley and colleagues from PRBO Conservation Science, Stanford University, NASA and the British Antarctic Survey used geolocation sensor tags to track penguins from Cape Royds and Cape Crozier to better understand their migration patterns. Published last year in the journal Ecology, the study revealed how the penguins depart their nesting grounds in February, at the end of the austral summer, and head north on foot and ice floes to flee the protracted darkness of the Antarctic winter. They appear to stop on the sea ice about 300 miles from the boundary with open water, where they stay to forage and fatten before doubling back south to their island breeding sites ahead of the creeping northern night — an 8,000-mile journey.
By carbon-dating mummified penguin remains, researchers have been able to construct a long-term history of the Adélie in Antarctica, indicating that throughout the last ice age penguins changed their migration routes and colony locations in response to advances and retreats of the sea ice. However, their range appears to have never extended farther south of where it is currently, for the simple reason that Adélie penguins appear to need light — if only twilight — to forage and navigate, and as comfort against predators.
“Emperor and Adélie penguins have an obligatory association with sea ice,” Dr. Ainley said. “As the sea ice goes, these species will go.”
The Ross Sea is projected to be the last place on Earth where sea ice will endure. But as the annual winter sea ice boundary retreats farther south, pack ice penguins may ultimately find themselves trapped behind a curtain of polar night for which they have no hardwired strategy.
Indeed, Dr. Ainley speculates, Adélie penguins face possible extinction not merely by a loss of habitat — but by an unshakable fear of darkness.
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Задание 2. Прочитайте статью. 1) Определите, к какому типу текста она относится. 2) Проанализируйте состав информации в речи автора и в прямой речи. Выпишите языковые средства, подтверждающие наличие каждого из найденных видов информации. Предложите свой вариант их перевода, учитывая стилистические нормы русского языка.
To Tug Hearts, Music First Must Tickle the Neurons
Milton Glaser
By PAM BELLUCK Published: April 18, 2011
The other day, Paul Simon was rehearsing a favorite song: his own “Darling Lorraine,” about a love that starts hot but turns very cold. He found himself thinking about a three-note rhythmic pattern near the end, where Lorraine (spoiler alert) gets sick and dies.
Related
• Between the Lines, Where Music’s Soul Resides (April 19, 2011)
Yannick Grandmont for The New York Times TEMPO AND DYNAMICS
Daniel J. Levitin of McGill University in Montreal researches the effects of music on listeners.
“The song has that triplet going on underneath that pushes it along, and at a certain point I wanted it to stop because the story suddenly turns very serious,” Mr. Simon said in an interview.
“The stopping of sounds and rhythms,” he added, “it’s really important, because, you know, how can I miss you unless you’re gone? If you just keep the thing going like a loop, eventually it loses its power.”
An insight like this may seem purely subjective, far removed from anything a scientist could measure. But now some scientists are aiming to do just that, trying to understand and quantify what makes music expressive — what specific aspects make one version of, say, a Beethoven sonata convey more emotion than another.
The results are contributing to a greater understanding of how the brain works and of the importance of music in human development, communication and cognition, and even as a potential therapeutic tool.
Research is showing, for example, that our brains understand music not only as emotional diversion, but also as a form of motion and activity. The same areas of the brain that activate when we swing a golf club or sign our name also engage when we hear expressive moments in music. Brain regions associated with empathy are activated, too, even for listeners who are not musicians.
And what really communicates emotion may not be melody or rhythm, but moments when musicians make subtle changes to those musical patterns.
Daniel J. Levitin, director of the laboratory for music perception, cognition and expertise at McGill University in Montreal, began puzzling over musical expression in 2002, after hearing a live performance of one of his favorite pieces, Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 27.
“It just left me flat,” Dr. Levitin, who wrote the best seller “This Is Your Brain on Music” (Dutton, 2006), recalled in a video describing the project. “I thought, well, how can that be? It’s got this beautiful set of notes. The composer wrote this beautiful piece. What is the pianist doing to mess this up?”
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Before entering academia, Dr. Levitin worked in the recording industry, producing, engineering or consulting for Steely Dan, Blue Öyster Cult, the Grateful Dead, Santana, Eric Clapton and Stevie Wonder. He has played tenor saxophone with Mel Tormé and Sting, and guitar with David Byrne. (He also performs around campus with a group called Diminished Faculties.)
After the Mozart mishap, Dr. Levitin and a graduate student, Anjali Bhatara, decided to try teasing apart some elements of musical expression in a rigorous scientific way. He likened it to tasting two different pots de crème: “One has allspice and ginger and the other has vanilla. You know they taste different but you can’t isolate the ingredient.”
To decipher the contribution of different musical flavorings, they had Thomas Plaunt, chairman of McGill’s piano department, perform snatches of several Chopin nocturnes on a Disklavier, a piano with sensors under each key recording how long he held each note and how hard he struck each key (a measure of how loud each note sounded). The note-by-note data was useful because musicians rarely perform exactly the way the music is written on the page — rather, they add interpretation and personality to a piece by lingering on some notes and quickly releasing others, playing some louder, others softer.
The pianist’s recording became a blueprint, what researchers considered to be the 100 percent musical rendition. Then they started tinkering. A computer calculated the average loudness and length of each note Professor Plaunt played. The researchers created a version using those average values so that the music sounded homogeneous and evenly paced, with every eighth note held for an identical amount of time, each quarter note precisely double the length of an eighth note.
They created other versions too: a 50 percent version, with note lengths and volume halfway between the mechanical average and the original, and versions at 25 percent, 75 percent, and even 125 percent and 150 percent, in which the pianist’s loud notes were even louder, his longest-held notes even longer.
Study subjects listened to them in random order, rating how emotional each sounded. Musicians and nonmusicians alike found the original pianist’s performance most emotional and the averaged version least emotional.
But it was not just changes in volume and timing that moved them. Versions with even more variation than the original, at 125 percent and 150 percent, did not strike listeners as more emotional.
“I think it means that the pianist is very experienced in using these expressive cues,” said Dr. Bhatara, now a postdoctoral researcher at the Université Paris Descartes. “He’s using them at kind of an optimal level.”
And random versions with volume and note-length changes arbitrarily sprinkled throughout made almost no impression.
All of this makes perfect sense to Paul Simon.
Задание 3. Прочитайте статью. 1) Определите, к какому типу текста она относится. 2) Проанализируйте композицию текста. Отличается ли она от традиционной композиции русскоязычной статьи? 3) Определите коммуникативное задание текста. Выпишите языковые средства, на которых основано ваше мнение.
Libya EffortIs Called Violation of War Act By CHARLIE SAVAGE
Published: May 25, 2011
WASHINGTON — Several lawmakers from both parties on Wednesday accused President Obama of violating the War Powers Resolution by continuing American participation in
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NATO’s air war in Libya without Congressional authorization, but they struggled with the question of what Congress can or should do about it.
Related
Daunting Task for NATO in Libya as Strikes Intensify (May 25, 2011) Related in Opinion
As NATO Claims Progress in Libya, a U.S. Deadline Is Put to the Test (May 21, 2011) At Deadline, U.S. Seeks to Continue War in Libya (May 13, 2011)
At a hearing of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, several members attacked Mr. Obama for failing to withdraw United States military forces from conflict after the expiration of a 60-day deadline for hostilities that have not been approved by Congress. The Libyan operation reached that deadline, which was imposed by the war powers law of the Vietnam era, on Friday.
“The president is not a king, and he shouldn’t act like a king,” said Representative Dan Burton, Republican of Indiana. Representative Brad Sherman, Democrat of California, said the administration was treating lawmakers as “irrelevant” by failing to acknowledge that the deadline had passed or to explain itself.
“It’s time for Congress to step forward,” said Mr. Sherman. “It’s time to stop shredding the U.S. Constitution in a presumed effort to bring democracy and constitutional rule of law to Libya.”
Still, he added that he thought Congress should probably approve continuing the Libyan operation.
The Obama administration has said it believes it is acting consistently with the resolution, although it has not explained why it thinks so.
Congress enacted the War Powers Resolution in 1973, overriding President Richard M. Nixon’s veto, in an effort to restore its eroding role in deciding whether the country becomes involved in significant armed conflicts.
Since then, many presidents, citing their power as commander in chief, have bypassed a section that says they need prior Congressional authorization to deploy forces into hostilities, except if the country is under attack. But there is far less precedent of presidents’ challenging another section that says they must terminate any still-unauthorized operations after 60 days. In 1980, the Justice Department concluded that the deadline was constitutional.
Among those critical of the administration’s move, there was no clear consensus on how to react. Representative Chris Gibson, Republican of New York, proposed an overhaul of the war powers act that would prohibit presidents from using money to deploy the military into hostilities without prior permission from Congress, except in the case of an imminent attack on the United States or Israel or because of a treaty obligation. Representative Justin Amash, Republican of Michigan, proposed cutting off money for the Libya operation unless lawmakers authorized it.
Several other lawmakers spoke favorably of a proposal introduced this week by Senators John Kerry, Democrat of Massachusetts, and John McCain, Republican of Arizona, that would in effect end the debate by expressing legislative support for the Libyan operation.
Still others voiced uncertainty about whether Mr. Obama was exceeding his legal authority in Libya, noting that many presidents in recent generations have initiated hostilities without prior authorization, and that Congress had not stood up to them.
“There are no black-and-white answers here,” said Representative Howard L. Berman of California, the ranking Democrat on the committee. He also suggested that whether the 60-day
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deadline had elapsed might turn on the details of the United States’ current contribution to the NATO campaign.
“Could one argue that periodic drone strikes do not constitute introducing forces into hostilities since the strikes are infrequent” and “there are no boots on the ground?” Mr. Berman asked.
The Obama administration has described the American contribution as limited — supporting NATO allies, along with the intermittent use of drones to fire missiles at ground targets. Still, speaking in London earlier this week, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton portrayed the American contribution in robust terms.
“Even today, the United States continues to fly 25 percent of all sorties,” Mrs. Clinton said. “We continue to provide the majority of intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance assets.”
Задание 4. Прочитайте статью. 1) Определите, к какому типу текста она относится. 2) Определите ее коммуникативное задание. 3) Выполните реферативный перевод.
Explosion at Apple Supplier Caused by Dust, China Says By DAVID BARBOZA
Published: May 24, 2011
SHANGHAI — An explosion that killed three workers and injured 15 others last week at a Chinese factory that supplies products to Apple was caused by combustible dust, according to a preliminary investigation by the local authorities.
Reuters TV/Reuters
The explosion, which occurred Friday in the southwestern city of Chengdu, led to the partial shutdown of a plant operated by Foxconn, one of the world’s biggest contract electronics makers and a major supplier to companies like Hewlett-Packard, Dell, Sony and Apple.
The shutdown created worries about supply disruptions for some Apple products, including the iPad, which experts say was being produced at the Chengdu plant. The aftermath of the explosion is also the latest problem facing Foxconn, which last year experienced a rash of worker suicides at several of its Chinese facilities.
Apple and Foxconn, a division of the Hon Hai Group of Taiwan, issued statements after the explosion last Friday saying that they regretted the tragic accident and that the cause of the blast was under investigation.
City officials in Chengdu said the explosion had been caused by combustible dust in an air duct at a polishing workshop.
Foxconn and Apple each declined to say which products were being produced at the Chengdu facility. Foxconn is one of Apple’s biggest suppliers, and the Chengdu complex is a relatively new factory, with 80,000 employees.
IHS iSuppli, a research group, said Monday that the explosion at the Chengdu facility could result in the loss of production of 500,000 Apple iPad 2 tablet computers during the second quarter of this year. IHS iSuppli said that while most of the iPad 2 production was taking place at another Foxconn plant, in the southern Chinese city of Shenzhen, that factory might not be able to compensate for the disruption in Chengdu.
Foxconn has been moving aggressively over the last year to expand its operations in central and western China to keep up with production demands and to recruit more workers from the poorer inland provinces.
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Apple has a longstanding relationship with Foxconn, which struggled last year to cope with a rash of worker suicides. Some labor rights groups say they believe the suicides were the result of harsh working conditions at Foxconn.
Foxconn, however, insists it treats its workers well. After the suicides, it hired counselors and installed large nets on some buildings to prevent suicides.
Apple later praised Foxconn’s efforts, saying the company had “definitely saved lives.” But Apple, like other global companies, has to deal with continuing problems that crop up in China’s huge factory zones. Apple, which has a strict code of conduct for its global suppliers, audits plants every year and publishes its findings.
Last year, Apple said its audits found that nine supplier factories in China had hired workers below the age of 16, the legal working age, and that other plants had falsified audit materials and even coached workers on how to respond to questions from auditors. Apple also said in its report that at a supplier factory in the city of Suzhou, 137 workers were exposed last year to the toxic chemical n-hexane, causing adverse health effects.
The Apple “Supplier Responsibility Report,” however, did not specifically name Foxconn for labor violations.
Some labor rights activists say Foxconn’s working conditions are poor and that Apple and Foxconn have failed to address complaints by workers.
On Monday, a Hong Kong-based labor rights group called Students and & Scholars Against Corporate Misbehavior said that it had noted a problem with “aluminum dust”in Foxconn’s Chengdu plant last March, when it issued a report on the company’s working conditions there.
The group said workers at the Chengdu factory had complained this year that “the ventilation of the department is poor. Workers polish the iPad cases to make them shiny. In the process, there is lots of aluminum dust floating in the air. Workers always breathe in aluminum dust even though they put on masks. When workers take off their cotton gloves, their hands are covered with aluminum dust.”
After the statement was released by the group, Foxconn issued its own statement saying it was “unfortunate” that the Hong Kong group was seeking to “capitalize on the tragic accident” with a statement that misrepresented “Foxconn’s commitment to the health and safety of our employees.”
Задание 5. Прочитайте статью. 1) Проанализируйте состав информации.
2)Выпишите языковые средства, характерные для каждого из видов информации.
3)Определите коммуникативное задание текста. 4) Выполните реферативный перевод.
Payment Method Bypasses the Wallet By CLAIRE CAIN MILLER Published: May 23, 2011
SAN FRANCISCO — Square, the mobile payments start-up, has tried to make cash obsolete by giving small businesses, like farm stands and cafes, a way to turn their cellphones or tablet computers into credit card terminals. Now Square is trying to make wallets obsolete, too, by upending the way that consumers pay for purchases.
Square's new apps allow consumers to pay their bills without swiping a credit card. But the company has competition.
On Monday, Jack Dorsey, Square’s co-founder and chief executive, announced a way for shoppers to pay by simply giving their name to the merchant. Mr. Dorsey, who also co-founded
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Twitter, said customers would use a new feature on Square’s iPhone or Android apps, called Card Case, to make payments. Merchants would use one called Register to ring up and track purchases.
Using cellphones to ease offline purchases is a crowded corner of tech investment. Most companies are tackling one aspect of purchasing, like mobile payments or coupons. But Mr. Dorsey is thinking big. He wants Square to be involved in every step of the transaction process by replacing cash registers, loyalty cards and paper receipts. “We think it should be one system,” he said.
The start-up faces formidable competition. Square’s goal is to replace cash registers and point- of-sale terminals and the companies that make them, like Verifone. Square is also taking on the many start-ups that offer cellphone loyalty cards, like Foursquare, and competing with Google, Apple, PayPal and major credit card companies and banks to provide mobile payments.
Square’s new payment services are available at only 50 merchants in New York, San Francisco, Washington, St. Louis and Los Angeles.
Shoppers can use the Card Case app to search for those businesses, pay their bill and store receipts. A shopper opens the app, which looks like a brown leather wallet, clicks to open a tab at a store and then gives the merchant his or her name. The shopper’s credit card number is already stored with Square. Merchants see a photo of the Square user so they can confirm it is the same person.
With the Register feature, merchants can appeal to nearby shoppers who have the Square app by posting deals or menus. They can also store receipts digitally and track customer behavior.
Some shoppers said they were uneasy trusting Square with their credit card information when all it takes to pay is a name, not a plastic card.
According to Square, the photos and the fact that people can only pay if they and their phones are nearby adds a level of protection. For purchases more than $50, shoppers also have to enter a personal identification number as they do at an automated teller machine. Mr. Dorsey compared it to Amazon.com and Apple’s iTunes, which store credit card numbers so people can easily make purchases with their e-mail address and password.
Square joins a host of tech companies, phone carriers, banks and credit card issuers that are trying to replace wallets by letting people use their phones to pay. Most of the efforts are in the early testing stages. Unlike Square, most of the others plan to use a technology called nearfield communication, or N.F.C., through which phones communicate information like credit card numbers to the merchants.
Initially, the company most in Square’s sights is Verifone, whose point-of-sale terminals and software are in 70 percent of businesses in the United States. In an interview before Square’s announcement, Doug Bergeron, Verifone’s chief executive, said that Square would not catch on for payments because people will prefer N.F.C. technology and have security concerns about using Square.
Задание 6. Прочитайте статью. 1) Определите, к какому типу текста она относится. 2) Проанализируйте состав информации. Отличается ли он от состава информации, характерного для русскоязычного текста этого типа? Если отличается, выпишите языковые средства, подтверждающие это отличие, и укажите вид информации, который они оформляют. 3) Предложите свой вариант перевода статьи.
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Economy Grew at 1.8 % Rate in First Quarter By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published: May 26, 2011
WASHINGTON — High gasoline prices, government budget cuts and weaker-than-expected consumer spending caused the economy to grow only weakly in the first three months of the year.
The economy expanded at an annual rate of 1.8 percent in the January-to-March quarter, the Commerce Department said Thursday. That figure matches the government’s first estimate a month ago.
Consumer spending grew at just half the rate of the previous quarter. And a surge of imports widened the United States trade deficit.
Most economists think the economy is growing only slightly better, at a 2.5 percent annual rate, in the current April-to-June quarter. Consumers remain squeezed by gas prices, scant pay increases and a depressed housing market.
For the entire year, they think the economy will grow around 3 percent. That would be little changed from the 2.9 percent growth in 2010.
Also on Thursday, the Labor Department said more people applied for unemployment benefits last week, the first increase in three weeks. The number of people seeking benefits rose by 10,000 to 424,000, more than analysts were expecting. Economists were more optimistic about the overall economy when the year began. They had assumed that a cut in workers’ Social Security taxes, which raised take-home pay, would boost consumer spending. And new business tax breaks were expected to encourage business spending.
But political upheaval in the Middle East and North Africa sent energy prices soaring. The result was that consumers had to pay more for gas, leaving less money to spend on other items.
The government’s revised estimate for gross domestic product — the economy’s total output of goods and services — showed consumer spending growing at an annual rate of just 2.2 percent. That’s sharply down from an initial estimate of 2.7 percent.
Consumer spending, which accounts for 70 percent of economic activity, had grown at a much faster 4 percent rate in the October-to-December period.
The revision of the gross domestic product estimate showed that the government sector is dragging on growth. Government spending fell at an annual rate of 5.1 percent. The federal government and state and local governments have cut spending to battle budget deficits.
Economists expect government spending to remain weak. Congress will probably slash spending to try to shrink $1 trillion-plus budget deficits.
Exports grew faster than previously estimated last quarter, at a brisk 9.2 percent rate. But imports grew even faster — at a 9.5 percent rate — causing the United States trade deficit to widen. A higher trade deficit subtracts from economic growth.
Spending by companies on equipment and software grew at a solid rate of 11.6 percent. Economists expect that to continue as companies take advantage of one-year tax write-offs for such purchases.
David Wyss, chief economist at Standard & Poor’s in New York, said he thinks the economy will grow at an annual rate of 2.5 percent in the current quarter. Mr. Wyss said he expects growth to strengthen slightly to around 3 percent in the second half of this year.
In part, that’s because the manufacturing supply disruptions in the United States caused by the Japanese earthquake and nuclear crisis in March should ease, and auto plants and other factories get back to full production.
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