Hi and welcome to this latest lesson about the news in English it's an
advanced English lesson we're going to look at a current news story and I'm
going to explain to you all of these terms in red as we go along in today's
lesson we are going to look at what appears to be an extraordinarily brazen
act committed by Saudi Arabia according to Turkish government sources the Saudis
executed a journalist Jamal Khashoggi in the Saudi consulate
on Turkish soil in Istanbul according to sources
khashoggi had a pre-arranged appointment at the consulate to get some papers
which would allow him to marry his Turkish fiancee he went there on October
the 2nd leaving his fiancee waiting outside and he would never see the light
of day again this story first emerged in newspapers closely linked to the Turkish
regime of turkish President Erdogan the newspaper reports indicated that Turkish
intelligence sources had audio recordings which strongly suggested that
khashoggi had been tortured and then dismembered so a brazen act is one
committed in an obvious way and without any real shame so it's when you do
something that you should be ashamed of but you're not and you just go and you
do it and you don't seem to care if people find out the expression he would
never see the light of day again we knew this expression never see the
light of day again to mean either that a person was never seen again or
occasionally that an argument or theory has fallen out of fashion and is no
longer popular the word dismembered a gruesome horrible word if a body is
dismembered than it is cut up into pieces as though you were cutting a
piece of a meat so the audio recording strongly
suggested that khashoggi had been tortured and then dismembered inside the
consulate not long after the Turkish president called his counterpart the
Saudi King Salman and demanded answers the Saudis promptly sent a team to
investigate the crime themselves the Turks demanded that they also be allowed
to investigate initially they were fobbed off with the Saudis saying that
they could conduct a brief visual inspection only this offer was turned
down flat by the Turks who wanted to conduct a forensic examination of the
premises this would involve using luminol a chemical which can uncover
blood that is entirely invisible to the naked eye
since then Saudi Arabia has apparently tried to pass off the killing and will
continue on the next slide on this slide the Turkish president's counterpart is
his equivalent in another country so the president of Turkey is the head of state
the person in charge in Turkey and in Saudi Arabia the head of state is the
King Salman so initially they were fobbed off if you fob somebody off this
is a phrasal verb and it means you try to stop somebody from doing something
you try to offer them something poor rather than what they really want to
stop them being able to get what they really want the offer initially was
turned down flat by the Turks the expression to turn something down flat
means that you don't consider it think about it and go oh maybe it's absolutely
no no way Jose not happening turned down flat a forensic examination this word
forensic means to means in extreme detail so
a forensic examination would mean a very detailed examination of the premises in
this case including forensic scientists who are trained to spot the smallest
trace of a crime the expression the naked eye simply means the eye without
any kind of help so knows no microscope or telescope or anything like that it
means just looking with your eye as it is without any help if you try to pass
something off to pass off the killing then you pretend that something is true
when you try to pass something off an important phrasal verbs so Saudi Arabia
tried to pass off the killing as the work of rogue agents certainly that was
the story that Donald Trump seems to have been fed however nobody that
follows events in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia believes that such an action
could have taken place without the consent of the Saudi Crown Prince and
real power behind the throne Mohammed bin Salman the plot took a further twist
a couple of days ago when a security agent implicated in the killing died in
a suspicious car accident in Riyadh suspicious that is according to the
Turkish newspaper that reported the news so what now it appears that there has
been considerable reputational damage to the crown prince who is being strongly
criticized so rogue agents if somebody is rogue than they are outside of the
normal system of control a rogue agent or an agent who has gone rogue has acted
without orders from his bosses when somebody is fed a story this is a native
English expression meaning that this was the story that somebody was given and
when we say that somebody was fair story we strongly imply that the story
that they were given is untrue the expression the power behind the throne
means the person that is really in charge so King Salman sits on the throne
and is in theory in charge but most people believe that the crown prince who
is the heir to the throne the person that will one day become King Mohammed
bin Salman is the real person with the real power at the moment in Saudi Arabia
the expression the plot took a further twist means there was yet another
development or event in this story if a security agent is implicated in the
killing then this means that it has been strongly suggested that this agent was
one of the people responsible for this murder reputational damage this is a
collocation a collocation in English is when two words appear together more
often than you would expect by simple random chance and the collocation or
reputational damage adjective reputational noun damage means that
people now think less of the crown prince than they did before his
reputation has been damaged the old guard of Saudi politics already had the
knives out for him after he launched a huge purge of people that he claims are
corrupt including the arbitrary detention of a huge number of
businessmen in a hotel he has also curbed some of the activities of the
religious police which will not have gone down well in some quarters this
news has been a big embarrassment for both Britain and America who rely on
Saudi Arabia to buy enormous amounts of arms from them these arms are being used
in a vicious war in Yemen and the Western powers have turned the blind eye
to this but this brazen killing has really upset the applecart
and makes it more difficult for both President Trump and the British
government to brush off critics at home if you have the knives out for somebody
then it means that you want something bad to happen to somebody that you are
waiting for them to fail that you are willing them to fail and you're hoping
that they will fall from power soon arbitrary detention is another
collocation just like reputational damage was a collocation adjective
arbitrary noun detention this maids detention detention means being kept
somewhere against your will arbitrary in this case means without any
kind of process from a court of law he just decided that he was going to do
this the expression to not go down well in some quarters simply means with some
people or in some areas of society if you turn a blind eye to something a
blind eye you ignore it if something upsets the apple cart then it changes
the order of things it changes dramatically the way things are if you
brush off your critics then you it's another way of saying that you don't
really pay much attention to them you're like brush them off go away we don't
really care what you think so I hope you enjoyed this video if you
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