VOA ARTICLES IN EASY ENGLISH. 1

Dear students, it is very important for you to read such relatively easy texts to boost your vocabulary and grammar, to say nothing about enrichment of your general knowledge. Do it as much as possible, preferably on the daily basis. You may as well visit the website at www.voanews.com/specialenglish. to pick up whatever you want. But do not rush to listen. First read the articles thoroughly. What you need most now, I suppose, is to read but not listen.

I will regularly provide with such file in different areas, not too long so that you can finish it during one visit to this website.Be patient, and best success!

Your Teacher Tan                         
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Warren Buffett Gives Huge Gift to Gates Foundation

In the past, investor Warren Buffett was known for making money, not giving it away.  On June twenty-sixth, Mister Buffett changed all that when he announced a huge gift to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.  Mister Buffett said he would give away about eighty-five percent of his stock in Berkshire Hathaway, the company he has built for more than thirty years.

The value of the gift is based on the price of Berkshire stock.  It is currently estimated at about thirty-seven thousand million dollars.  Mister Buffett says he plans to give a total of ten million class B shares in his company to the Gates Foundation.  Five percent of those shares will be given each year starting this month. This year’s gift is about one point five thousand million dollars.

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation was formed in two thousand.  Bill Gates is well known as the world’s wealthiest man.  He started and is the largest shareholder of Microsoft, the largest computer software company in the world. The Gates Foundation currently holds more than twenty-nine thousand million dollars.  It gave away about one point three thousand million dollars last year.  The foundation mainly gives money to solve world health problems, ease poverty and increase technology among people in developing countries. Mister Buffett announced his gift at the New York City Public Library. He said he believed in giving something back to society.  He said he thought the Gates Foundation could do a better job of giving his money away than he could.  He said he thought Bill and Melinda Gates could take on large projects that could help all of humanity.

Mister Buffett’s gift is unusual not only for its size.  It also comes with several conditions.  First, either Bill or Melinda Gates must remain alive and active in running their foundation.  The foundation must continue to be a non-profit group that does not pay taxes.  And, the foundation must spend five percent of its total money each year, including all of Mister Buffett’s yearly gift.Mister Buffett has also promised large gifts to four other foundations established by him and his wife.

Warren Buffett is one of the world’s most successful investors.  Berkshire Hathaway is a holding company, designed to hold stock of other companies. 
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Housing Market Slows in U.S.

On Wednesday, the United States Federal Reserve chose to keep its target interest rate unchanged at five-point-two-five percent.  The Federal Open Market Committee said a main reason for its decision was the slowing housing market. The housing industry is one of the most important parts of the United States economy.  Economists consider it an important sign of the country’s economic health.

The number of new building permits for new private housing is one of the Leading Economic Indicators.  The Conference Board, a major business group, publishes this measure to estimate the future direction of the economy.  The government says about one million seven hundred thousand building permits were given out in August.  This is a two percent drop from July.  But, it is a twenty-two percent drop from August of last year.The National Association of Home Builders represents the home building industry. 

It estimates that the total number of new houses built will decrease by about twelve percent this year and next year.As fewer new homes are being built, existing homes are going unsold for longer periods of time.  The government reports that the number of existing homes remaining on the market has increased by almost forty percent in the last twelve months.  At the same time, home ownership remains high at almost sixty-nine percent of American families.

The large supply of houses on the market has helped keep interest rates for home loans below six and one half percent.  And average prices for new and existing homes have even dropped a little.  Home building is closely linked to many other parts of the economy.  Home building affects labor, manufacturing and the financial industries.  Businesses providing building materials are an example.  Huge stores like Home Depot and Lowes depend on homebuilders and homeowners to buy tools, supplies and other goods. 

Ownership shares in these companies have dropped in value by more than ten percent this year.Most experts expect declining home sales to slow the economy in the near future.  They estimate economic growth in the second half of the year to be between two and three percent. _________________________ 

Duties Bill Dropped as U.S. Prepares for Economic Talks With China

The United States and China plan to hold high-level meetings two times each year to discuss economic issues.  The talks, called the U.S.-China Strategic Economic Dialogue, will be the first of their kind.  The first meeting is expected before the end of the year.  The agreement was announced last week during a visit to China by Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson.  Mister Paulson will lead the American side.  China's top negotiator will be Vice Premier Wu Yi.  She noted that President Bush proposed the talks to President Hu Jintao in a telephone call in August.  Probably the top issue facing the negotiators will be the conflict over the Chinese yuan.  Until July of last year, China directly set the exchange rate of the yuan against the dollar.  Since then, China has tied the rate to a small group of foreign currencies, including the dollar and the euro. 

The immediate effect was a two percent rise in value.  The yuan has slowly risen further in the past year, but only by an additional two percent or so.  That is too little for many American businesses, especially manufacturers.  They say China's policies have kept the cost of Chinese goods unfairly low on world markets.  Many experts also blame what is seen as a highly undervalued yuan for huge United States trade deficits with China.But the Bush administration opposed a bill in the Senate to punish China for not letting markets set the value of the yuan.  The bill called for an import tax of almost thirty percent on Chinese goods.  Two senators, Democrat Charles Schumer of New York and Republican Lindsey Graham from South Carolina, proposed the bill.  They announced Thursday that they would drop the legislation.  But they said they would work on a new bill early next year to pressure China.  Recently the value of the yuan has risen faster.  News reports say China is believed to be making policy changes to let this happen. 

A central bank official told Reuters on Friday that the bank had no new policy statement about the yuan.Secretary Paulson, during his visit last week, urged China to put market-based reforms in place.  He said China’s economy is expanding too quickly for government controls to be enough.  Mister Paulson did business in China when he led the investment bank Goldman Sachs.  He has visited China about seventy times. 

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Bush Signs Law to Strengthen Pension Plans

In August, President Bush signed a bill making major changes to retirement plans operated by companies. These pension plans provide defined payments and services, called benefits, to retired workers.  The new law gives workers a better chance to get the retirement benefits they have earned. The new law requires most private companies that provide pensions to have enough money to pay for one hundred percent of benefits for workers who retire.  Companies have seven years to fully fund their pension plans. 

The air travel industry has an extra ten years to do so.The new law also makes it easier for workers to save money in other kinds of retirement plans.  Defined contribution plans do not offer guaranteed benefits.  Instead, employees, and usually their employers, add money to an investment plan that is not taxed.  When workers retire, they can withdraw money from the plan.  One example is the four-oh-one-K plan.  Part of the new pension law makes it easier for employers to offer investment advice to employees with four-oh-one-K plans.The new law also makes permanent a law that increases the amount of money that people can put into an Individual Retirement Account, or I.R.A.  Workers can save money in I.R.As tax-free until retirement.Experts say many current pension plans do not have enough money to provide the benefits promised to workers. 

Total pension deficits are estimated at between three hundred and four hundred fifty thousand million dollars.The Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation rescues pensions of failed companies or businesses that cannot meet their plan’s requirements.Earlier this week, the P.B.G.C. took over the pensions of almost two thousand workers and retirees for Oneida Limited, a maker of cooking tools.  The P.B.G.C. says it pays monthly benefits to almost seven hundred thousand retirees in about three thousand six hundred pension plans.  Experts say the new pension law shows how much retirement has changed in America.  In the past, most employees expected to retire from a job they held for most of their working life. 

Today, workers need pension plans that can be moved from one employer to another.  ____________________________ 

European Union Fines Microsoft -- Again

The European Commission ruled Wednesday that Microsoft is still using its powerful market position illegally.  The top European Union official for competition policy ordered a fine of more than two hundred eighty million euros.  The amount is almost three hundred sixty million dollars.  Microsoft said it would appeal in court.In March of two thousand four, the commission ordered Microsoft to release technical information about its Windows operating system.  At that time, the commission fined the company almost five hundred million euros. The order was meant to permit competitors to create software that can operate with Microsoft products. 

It is estimated that more than ninety percent of personal computers in the world use Windows.Brad Smith is Microsoft's top lawyer.  He released a statement from the company headquarters in Redmond, Washington, after the fine was announced. 

Mister Smith says Microsoft has already provided thousands of pages of technical documents.  He says the March two thousand four decision was not clear and that clarity is the real issue.  Mister Smith says Microsoft finally received a clear definition of the requirements this April and has already met nearly all of them.  He says the company has "over three hundred employees working around the clock" to finish by July twenty-fourth.  And he says it is hard to understand the huge fine when, in his words, "the agreed-upon finish line is just days away."Neelie Kroes is the European Union commissioner for competition policy. 

She says the two thousand four decision was completely clear.  She noted that a European court had ordered Microsoft more than eighteen months ago to release the information without delay. Mizz Kroes said Microsoft did not even come close to providing complete information as demanded.  This is the first time the European Union has fined a company for failing to meet an anti-trust decision.  If Microsoft does not satisfy the commission by July thirty-first, it faces possible fines of three million euros per day.  That is almost four million dollars. Bill Gates and his friend Paul Allen started Microsoft in nineteen seventy-five.  Microsoft earned just under three thousand million dollars in profit in the period from January through March of this year.
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Congress Acts to Limit Internet Gambling by Americans

Congress has voted to ban most financial exchanges that involve gambling on the Internet by people in the United States.  The measure threatens to cut the business of several foreign companies.  Almost every American state has lottery games.  Casinos, often operated by Native American tribes, are also common.  And a number of states permit other forms of gambling, such as placing money on horse races.Some forms of electronic gambling based in established centers, like a casino, are legal under federal, state or local laws.  But gambling for money on the Internet is in most cases illegal in the United States. 

The new legislation led to a big drop in the value of shares in PartyGaming and some other Internet gambling companies.  PartyGaming of Britain is the largest online gambling company based on stock value.  Almost eighty percent of the money it earns comes from the United States.  Congress passed the act as part of an unrelated bill on port security.  President Bush is expected to sign the bill soon.  The Internet gambling act would ban the processing of electronic payments from the United States for online gambling purposes.  It would affect credit card companies, banks and other businesses.Researchers at Christiansen Capital Advisors estimate that Internet gambling worldwide reached twelve thousand million dollars last year.  They estimate that almost twenty-three million people gambled online, including about eight million in the United States. Internet gambling is a fast-growing industry.

The American Gaming Association says the number of gambling Web sites is estimated at well over two thousand.  These offer sports betting, casino games and other activities.Representative Jim Leach of Iowa proposed the new legislation.  He says many American families have been affected by large losses from Internet gambling.  He says it is also a national security concern because it can be used to finance criminal and terrorist activities.Some countries, however, see the act as a way to keep foreign companies out of the American gambling market.  In two thousand three, the Caribbean nation of Antigua and Barbuda brought a dispute to the World Trade Organization.  Antigua said American restrictions on Internet gambling went against W.T.O. rules on free trade.  At first the W.T.O. took the side of Antigua, but the issue has not yet reached a final settlement.And that's the VOA Special English Economics Report, written by Mario Ritter.  I'm Steve Ember. 

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