 | | | | | | | |
| Words in the News
Monday 15 July 2002
Vocabulary from the news. Listen to and read the report then find explanations of difficult words below.
| |
|
| |  | | |
Assassination attempt on French President
Summary: The man who fired a shot at President Chirac of France has spent the night in a secure psychiatric unit where police are hoping to question him. Across France, the reaction to the apparent assassination attempt has been quiet. This report from Hugh Schofield.
| | |
|
| | The News | |
| | | Perhaps it was because of the national holiday, but it took the country several hours on Sunday to wake up to the fact that there had been an attempt on the life of the head of state.
In Mr Chirac's traditional Bastille Day television interview, broadcast live just after the end of the military parade, the subject of the shooting was not even raised.
By Monday, some of the press has sniffed the scent. The left-wing daily, Liberation, splashes its front cover with the headline "In The Line of Fire". But for several other papers, it's a secondary item to be relegated below the content of the president's interview, in which he in fact had very little that was new.
The contrast is stark with the British press, where lurid parallels are drawn with the classic thriller, The Day of the Jackal, about a fictitious attempt on the life of General Charles de Gaulle. In fact, there is very little of The Jackal about the suspect Maxime Brunerie.
What the papers report is that he was an extreme right-wing fanatic with psychological delusions, and a low calibre hunting rifle - a far cry from the cold-blooded professional tracking his prey through the crosshairs.
Hugh Schofield, BBC
| | |
|
| | The Words
| |
| | | to wake up to the fact
to realise that something has happened
| | |
| | | sniffed the scent
became aware that there was a story
| | |
| | | a secondary item
a piece of news that is not very important
| | |
| | | relegated
reduced in importance
| | |
| | | The contrast is stark
there is a very big difference
| | |
| | | lurid parallels are drawn
spectacular comparisons are made
| | |
| | | ficticious
not real, created for a story
| | |
| | | the suspect
the person who police think did the crime
| | |
| | | an extreme right-wing fanatic
a person whose political views are very anti-socialist and who is prepared to take illegal action in support of those views
| | |
| | | tracking his prey
hunting his victim
| | |
|
|
| | Read more about this story | |
| | Other Words in the News archives | |
|
