Carmen: The British pub is said to be “the heart of England”. There are around fifty thousand public houses, or pubs, in the UK.
This is the Crown, a pub in the village of Charlton on Otmore in Oxfordshire. Pub names like “The Crown” and “The Prince of Wales” are very popular and celebrate the royal family.
The pub is a place to meet friends. But they are very different from a café as pubs serve alcohol.
At one point everyone drank beer. The water wasn’t very good so it was safer to drink beer than water. People often called this “small beer”.
Barmaid: Can I get you anything?
Carmen: No small, or large beer for me thanks.
In the past, the local pub was the centre of the community. Gossip and business deals happened right here in the pub.
The Crown is more than a hundred years old. The landlord, Mark Franklin, grew up in the village.
Carmen: Can I give you a hand with the polishing?
Mark: Yes you can.
Carmen: So Mark tell me how important is the pub for the community?
Mark: The pub is very important to the community because it’s the main meeting point for the village.
Carmen: So who comes here?
Mark: People come here from all walks of life, old and young. They meet here for darts nights and quiz nights.
Carmen: Great, so how has the pub changed over the years?
Mark: The pub has changed in the way we do food here now and we show satellite TV.
Carmen: Well many pubs like this in rural areas have closed. Do you think the Crown will stay open?
Mark: I hope the pub will stay open because I feel it’s the heart of the village. Would you like a drink?
Carmen: Oh yes please. This is thirsty work.
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But there’s is a big difference between the rural village pub and pubs in towns and cities. There are many different types of pubs.
There are traditional pubs, famous for games like darts. And gastro pubs. These are pubs that serve expensive food.
There are also pubs that are owned by large companies. These pubs, wherever you are in the UK, all look very similar.
And then there are bars that look a bit like pubs. Like this one.
They seem to be having a good time. But drinking too much has become a problem in the UK.
When people drink a lot and get very drunk very quickly, this is called binge drinking. Binge drinking is increasing in young people.
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There are several organisations that try to help young people with their drink problems. Glenda Lee works for Turning Point.
Carmen: So Glenda, tell me, do you see many young people with alcohol problems?
Glenda: We do, Carmen, we see more young people coming to us for help.
Carmen: So what kind of problems does drinking too much alcohol create?
Glenda: Drinking too much alcohol can lead to violence, accidents, to unprotected sex, to addiction and the possibility of death.
Carmen: Is it getting worse?
Glenda: Yes, the problem is getting worse. We’ve seen an increase in the past four years of young people and young adult drinking and especially binge drinking.
Carmen: So what are you doing about it?
Glenda: One thing that Turning Point is doing about it is a product called a binge pack. Inside is information about drinking, about how much is too much. We have a condom to encourage safe sex – and that’s a binge pack.
Carmen: Going to the pub is an important part of British culture. And drinking too much has become a problem. But going to the pub doesn’t mean you have to drink alcohol… I’m going to have a nice cup of tea!
Ashlie: This was Stephen’s idea. He loves clubbing, but this really isn’t my kind of music! I don’t know why I put up with him sometimes.
Stephen: What’s wrong, Ash? Surely you must like this. It’s great! I’m just getting warmed up!
Ashlie: Oh Stephen I can hardly hear you. What did you say?
Stephen: I said the music’s great. Why aren’t you dancing?
Ashlie: You must be joking, it sounds like a car alarm. It’s giving me a headache. I can’t stand this kind of music.
Stephen: Oh, but dance music’s much better...
Ashlie: You know I’m going to speak to the DJ.
Stephen: Ashlie! What are you doing? You’ve cleared the dance floor. This is a dance club, not some pop venue.
Ashlie: Well, I couldn’t listen to that noise anymore.
Stephen: Come on. Let’s get out of here before people start complaining!
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Ashlie: Listen - we’ve tried live music, a club and a pub and I’ve just had a message from Sally and she says there’s a party at her friend’s house. Come on, let’s get a taxi. You don’t have to get up early tomorrow, do you?
Stephen: No, but we won’t know anyone there. Are you sure we can we just turn up? Are they going to let us in?
Ashlie: Yes - I’m sure - we’ll just tell them you’re with me. Come on, I’ve got to look up her address.
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Stephen: Hey guys, all right...
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Stephen: This is such a great house for a party.
Ashlie: Yes, it is, isn’t it? Except someone’s just turned up that terrible music. We haven’t been very lucky tonight, have we?
Stephen: For once I agree with you. I thought coming to a house party would be better than a club. You know, we could chat, meet some really cool people but this is awful.
Ashlie: Right – that’s it. We’ve spent the whole night complaining about music. Come on, we’re off!
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Stephen: I can’t believe it. We were looking for the perfect night out and look where we ended up.
Ashlie: Oh, I’ve got an idea. Why don’t we make our own music!
London has the best nightclubs in the world and there are plenty of great clubs for you to choose from. From the biggest superclubs, to intimate boutique clubs; London clubbing is like no other in the world. Visit world reknowned London Club Ministry of Sound and if you like West End clubs then Piccadilly Institute is a new super club. New Years Eve 2011 Parties and Clubbing and great London student nights.
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Ashlie: That should do it. The Yorkshire Grey in half an hour... I’m here in Covent Garden and we’re going on a night out. It’s the very centre of London – a place where lots of people come to meet up and hit the town. Now, Stephen should be here any minute. Stephen: Hi Ash. Sorry I’m late. Have you heard from Caroline and Carl? Ashlie: Yes, they’re at the Yorkshire Grey. Just round the corner. Come on. Stephen: You alright? Ashlie: How are you? Stephen: Hi Carline – how’ve you been? Caroline: Yeah good – so great to see you. Carl: How are you? How’s things? Ashlie: Really good. You? Carl: Yeah – good thanks. Ashlie: Go on then Stephen – get us some drinks. Stephen: Ok – what will you have? Ashlie: I’ll have a sparkling water and what are you having, Caroline? Caroline: Er, a glass of white wine. Ashlie: And a glass of white for Caroline. Ooh and get us some crisps, salt and vinegar. Stephen: And how about you Carl? What can I get you? Carl: Thanks Stephen, I’ll have a pint of lager. Ashlie: Come on then. Let’s go and sit down. Carl: I’ll give you a hand.
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Stephen: Hi there. Can I have a sparkling … Stephen: Sorry - Hi Phil? This really isn’t a good time. I’ll call you back in er...10 minutes? OK. Yeah. Right. Um, can I have a sparkling water, a glass of white wine, a coke, a pint of lager - and a packet of salt and vinegar crisps, please? Barmaid: There’s the lager, a sparkling water, a cola and a packet of salt and vinegar crisps.... Is there anything else? Stephen: That’s it thanks. Barmaid: That’s nine ninety, please. Stephen: Here you go, 10 pounds. Keep the change.
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Ashlie: Here they are. You guys took your time. Stephen: Big queue at the bar. There you go. Ashlie: Thank you. Ashlie: So, what’s the plan for tonight then? Stephen: Well, we could go to another pub? Or we could… Phil called. I said I’d call him back. Ashlie: Ah - I’ll give him a ring. His band might be playing tonight. I’ll just pop outside. I’ll be back in a sec. Caroline: What sort of music is it? Stephen: Do you know what … it’s a bit … it’s not my kind of thing… Ashlie: Right guys. Listen. Phil’s band are playing tonight in Brixton and if we leave now we’ll make it just in time. Carl: OK then, lets go. Ashlie: Come on then, let’s get a taxi.
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Ashlie: Wow, they’re so cool! Stephen: Hmmm. Singer: Thank you very much. We’re the Rum Shebeens. Goodnight. Ashlie: They were excellent. They were so good! Stephen: Ah - I’m not sure about the music. It’s not exactly my kind of thing. You can’t really dance to it, can you? You know what guys, I think we should go dancing. I know a great place. Carl: Actually, it’s getting quite late. Stephen: Oh, come on. Carl: Sorry, I’ve got to go to work in the morning. Caroline: Me too, Stephen. I’m sorry. We’ll get a taxi home. Stephen: OK, nevermind. It looks like it’s just me and you, kid! Ashlie: Well, actually Stephen, it is late and... Stephen: Oh come on, don’t be so boring. I want to dance. Ashlie: Oh, alright, then. See you later guys! Caroline: Have a good night. See you later! Ashlie: See you! Carl: Bye. Stephen: Have a good night – take care! Ashlie: Right then. Where are you taking me? Stephen: You’re going to love it.
It's Columbus Day, and CNN Student News commemorates the occasion by exploring the history of this holiday. We also consider how the U.S. economy might impact next year's presidential election. We offer some students' thoughts on how to stop bullying. And we meet a runner whose personal goal is more than 200,000 miles away.
Victoria Montenegro was abducted as a newborn by a military colonel. She testified last spring in the trial over baby thefts. This is a report taken from The New York Times on October 8, 2011 by Alexei Barrionuevo. The article makes reference to the Oscar-winning Argentine film "The Official Story," which we post after the article with subtitles in English (as released in the USA in 2004)
BUENOS AIRES - Victoria Montenegro recalls a childhood filled with chilling dinnertime discussions. Lt. Col. Hernán Tetzlaff, the head of the family, would recount military operations he had taken part in where “subversives” had been tortured or killed. The discussions often ended with his “slamming his gun on the table,” she said.
It took an incessant search by a human rights group, a DNA match and almost a decade of overcoming denial for Ms. Montenegro, 35, to realize that Colonel Tetzlaff was, in fact, not her father — nor the hero he portrayed himself to be.
Instead, he was the man responsible for murdering her real parents and illegally taking her as his own child, she said.
He confessed to her what he had done in 2000, Ms. Montenegro said. But it was not until she testified at a trial here last spring that she finally came to grips with her past, shedding once and for all the name that Colonel Tetzlaff and his wife had given her — María Sol — after falsifying her birth records.
The trial, in the final phase of hearing testimony, could prove for the first time that the nation’s top military leaders engaged in a systematic plan to steal babies from perceived enemies of the government.
Jorge Rafael Videla, who led the military during Argentina’s dictatorship, stands accused of leading the effort to take babies from mothers in clandestine detention centers and give them to military or security officials, or even to third parties, on the condition that the new parents hide the true identities. Mr. Videla is one of 11 officials on trial for 35 acts of illegal appropriation of minors.
The trial is also revealing the complicity of civilians, including judges and officials of the Roman Catholic Church.
The abduction of an estimated 500 babies was one of the most traumatic chapters of the military dictatorship that ruled Argentina from 1976 to 1983. The frantic effort by mothers and grandmothers to locate their missing children has never let up. It was the one issue that civilian presidents elected after 1983 did not excuse the military for, even as amnesty was granted for other “dirty war” crimes.
“Even the many Argentines who considered the amnesty a necessary evil were unwilling to forgive the military for this,” said José Miguel Vivanco, the Americas director for Human Rights Watch.
In Latin America, the baby thefts were largely unique to Argentina’s dictatorship, Mr. Vivanco said. There was no such effort in neighboring Chile’s 17-year dictatorship.
One notable difference was the role of the Catholic Church. In Argentina the church largely supported the military government, while in Chile it confronted the government of Gen. Augusto Pinochet and sought to expose its human rights crimes, Mr. Vivanco said.
Priests and bishops in Argentina justified their support of the government on national security concerns, and defended the taking of children as a way to ensure they were not “contaminated” by leftist enemies of the military, said Adolfo Pérez Esquivel, a Nobel Prize-winning human rights advocate who has investigated dozens of disappearances and testified at the trial last month.
Ms. Montenegro contended: “They thought they were doing something Christian to baptize us and give us the chance to be better people than our parents. They thought and felt they were saving our lives.”
Church officials in Argentina and at the Vatican declined to answer questions about their knowledge of or involvement in the covert adoptions.
For many years, the search for the missing children was largely futile. But that has changed in the past decade thanks to more government support, advanced forensic technology and a growing genetic data bank from years of testing. The latest adoptee to recover her real identity, Laura Reinhold Siver, brought the total number of recoveries to 105 in August.
Still, the process of accepting the truth can be long and tortuous. For years, Ms. Montenegro rejected efforts by officials and advocates to discover her true identity. From a young age, she received a “strong ideological education” from Colonel Tetzlaff, an army officer at a secret detention center.
If she picked up a flier from leftists on the street, “he would sit me down for hours to tell me what the subversives had done to Argentina,” she said.
He took her along to a detention center where he spent hours discussing military operations with his fellow officers, “how they had killed people, tortured them,” she said.
“I grew up thinking that in Argentina there had been a war, and that our soldiers had gone to war to guarantee the democracy,” she said. “And that there were no disappeared people, that it was all a lie.”
She said he did not allow her to see movies about the “dirty war,” including “The Official Story,” the 1985 film about an upper-middle-class couple raising a girl taken from a family that was disappeared.
In 1992, when she was 15, Colonel Tetzlaff was detained briefly on suspicion of baby stealing. Five years later, a court informed Ms. Montenegro that she was not the biological child of Colonel Tetzlaff and his wife, she said.
“I was still convinced it was all a lie,” she said.
By 2000, Ms. Montenegro still believed her mission was to keep Colonel Tetzlaff out of prison. But she relented and gave a DNA sample. A judge then delivered jarring news: the test confirmed that she was the biological child of Hilda and Roque Montenegro, who had been active in the resistance. She learned that she and the Montenegros had been kidnapped when she was 13 days old.
At a restaurant over dinner, Colonel Tetzlaff confessed to Ms. Montenegro and her husband: He had headed the operation in which the Montenegros were tortured and killed, and had taken her in May 1976, when she was 4 months old.
“I can’t bear to say any more,” she said, choking up at the memory of the dinner.
A court convicted Colonel Tetzlaff in 2001 of illegally appropriating Ms. Montenegro. He went to prison, and Ms. Montenegro, still believing his actions during the dictatorship had been justified, visited him weekly until his death in 2003.
Slowly, she got to know her biological parents’ family.
“This was a process; it wasn’t one moment or one day when you erase everything and begin again,” she said. “You are not a machine that can be reset and restarted.”
It fell to her to tell her three sons that Colonel Tetzlaff was not the man they thought he was.
“He told them that their grandfather was a brave soldier, and I had to tell them that their grandfather was a murderer,” she said.
When she testified at the trial, she used her original name, Victoria, for the first time. “It was very liberating,” she said.
She says she still does not hate the Tetzlaffs. But “the heart doesn’t kidnap you, it doesn’t hide you, it doesn’t hurt you, it doesn’t lie to you all of your life,” she said. “Love is something else.”
Before the fall season on Broadway swings into high gear, a specialiazed critic checked back in with two of last season's Tony-winning hits to see how they are holding up and filed the following review.
