Tuesday, August 28, 2012

Oil catastrophe in Venezuela


Today is the fourth day of the enormous fire at Venexuela’s biggest oil refinery. The devastating fire has already killed 48 people, and the president of Venezuela has declared three days of national mourning.  The fire started as a gas leak, which lead to an explosion. The fire started in two storage tanks, and the energy minister promised that the fire would be out in a couple of hours. But, instead another tank was set on fire shortly afterwards. “We must announce that a third tank... is on fire,” said Energy and Oil Minister Rafael Ramirez on Monday morning. Many people have questioned the maintenance of the facility. A gas leak should simply not happen at an oil refinery! However, the president of Venezuela, Hugo Chavez denied that facility is in a poor condition, and to the journalists that implied it, he said: “Lack of maintenance? Who could possibly say this? Only someone who is irresponsible.”

                                      The Amuay refinery produces 645,000 barrels of oil every day

The fire is also causing major environmental damages. 209 homes and 11 businesses close to the refinery has been affected, and many people have been forced to leave their houses and belongings. The fire and smoke is also letting out a lot of pollution and dangerous toxins into the atmosphere and water, causing problems for both the local people and wildlife. Even when the fire has stopped, there will be a lot of work left to clean up after the fire. However, president Hugo Chavez has promised that the refinery will be working again two days after the fire has been put under control. This morning he also said that the fire has now been reduced with 75%

This picture was taken only four hours ago.

Dictionaries


Hey!

We would like to recommend some useful aids on the internet that are really helpful when you write English, especially if you are not a native English speaker. This is written by me and my friend Ewa, visit her blog at: www.englishewa.blogspot.com  !

We tried out many different dictionaries, and we found two that we really liked. Both of them are easy to use and understand, and they had good explanations of words. The two dictionaries we chose are http://dictionary.cambridge.org , and http://www.thefreedictionary.com .

The first one was the one we liked the most. It has many different explanations of the word you search for, with examples. We also liked the design of the website, because it is very well structured. You find what you look for immediately. It is also possible to choose between different varies of English, like British English, American English and Business English. There is also a Spanish – English/English – Spanish dictionary, which is great for us who learn Spanish in school.

The other one was also quite good, but I don’t think that it is just as good structured than the first one.  It contains fewer explanations and options.

We have also checked out Britannica online, and it seems like it has a lot of common with Wikipedia. But, it looks better and more credible, and we will probably use it for school.
 

Monday, August 27, 2012

Living in Norway




This is definately Norway for me. The beautiful nature, the fjords combined with the mountains, and the beautiful landscape is so typical Norwegian. We have so much different, from the far north, were the northern lights shine in the winther, to Oslo in south. The picture above is from a place called Geirangerfjorden. Extremely many tourists visit the place every year. I have actually never been there myself, and I believe that many other Norwegians have never been there either. I think that is a pretty typical Norwegian thing, we like to talk about our beautiful nature, but we have not seen a lot of it in real life ourselves!

Many people say that Norway is on of the countries that it is best to live, but I don't know. I haven't got anything to compare it to! I have never lived any other places than here. But, I guess it is a pretty good place to live. We get free helth care and education, which is really expensive in many other countries. The crime rates are pretty low, some people don't even lock their doors, while in Spain, there are bars on all windows and doors. Also, most of Norwegians live very clse to nature. even the capital, Oslo, lays really close to the woods and the sea. That is probably the reason why nearly every Norwegian have, or have access to, a cabin. We love our cottages, even though some of them haven't even got electrisity or water! I guess Norway is a pretty good place to live in, after all.