AUGUST 9, in the wake of the Watergate break-in and cover-up, President Nixon resigns from office, the first president to do so, and is succeeded by Vice President Gerald R. Ford.

1976 JULY 20 and SEPTEMBER 3, unmanned Viking 1 and II spacecraft successfully land on Mars.

**JUIY 4, the United States celebrates the restoration of the Statue of Liberty, a gift from the people of France in 1886.

1987 DECEMBER 8, at a summit meeting in Washington, D.C., President Reagan and Soviet General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev sign a treaty eliminating an entire class of intermediate-range and shorter-range nuclear missiles.

1993 DECEMBER 8, President Bill Clinton signs the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), establishing free trade between the United States, Canada, and Mexico.

 

Vocabulary notes

Settlement - поселение

Abundant - обильный

Persecution - преследование

tax revenues – налоговые поступления в казну

interfere - вмешиваться

refuge - убежище

toleration - терпимость

prosperity - процветание

Disguised - замаскированные

Rebellion – восстание, бунт

Besiege - осаждать

Alliance - союз

Troop - войско

Ban - запрещать

Invade – вторгаться, оккупировать

Slavery - рабство

Abolish - отменять

to declare war – объявлять войну

surrender - сдаваться

acquisition - приобретение

conscription – воинская повинность

Assassinate – покушаться на жизнь

Amendments – поправки (конституционные)

Tribe - племя

Incandescent - раскаленный

Armistice - разоружение

mutual aid - взаимопомощь

Government

Introduction

The United States is a federal union of 50 states, with the District of Columbia as the seat of the federal government. The Constitution outlines the structure of the national government and specifies its powers and activities, and defines the relationship between the national government and individual state governments. Power is shared between the national and state (local) governments. Within each state are counties, townships, cities and villages, each of which has its own elective government.

Article 1 of the Constitution defines the legislative branch and vests power to legislate in the Congress of the United States. The executive powers of the President are defined in Article 2. Article 3 places judicial power in the hands of one Supreme Court and inferior courts as Congress sees necessary to establish.

The Constitution

The American Constitution is the oldest written constitution in force in the world. The authors of the Constitution built in a provision for amending the document when political, social or economic conditions demanded it. Twenty-seven amendments have been passed since ratification. The first 10 amendments to the Constitution, called the Bill of Rights, assure individual rights and freedoms.

The Constitution divides the powers of the government into three branches - the Executive, headed by the President; the Legislative, which includes both houses of Congress (the Senate and the House of Representatives); and the Judicial, which is headed by the Supreme Court. In this system of a "separation of powers" each branch operates independently of the others. The Constitution limits the role of each branch, through a system of checks and balances, to prevent any one branch from gaining undue power.

The Executive Branch

The chief executive of the United States is the president, who together with the vice-president is elected to a four year term. As a result of a 1951 constitutional amendment, a president may be elected to only two terms. The president's powers are formidable but not unlimited. As the chief formulator of national policy, the president proposes legislation to Congress and may veto any bill passed by Congress. The president is commander-in-chief of the armed forces.

The executive branch of the Government is responsible for enforcing the laws of the land. The Vice President, department heads (Cabinet members), and heads of independent agencies assist in this capacity.

The executive branch includes 15 executive departments, the Executive Office of the President and numerous other independent agencies. The day-to-day enforcement and administration of federal law is in the hands of the various executive departments, created by Congress to deal with specific areas of national and international affairs. The heads of the departments, chosen by the President and approved by the Senate, form a council of advisers known as the President's Cabinet.

The Legislative Branch

The legislative branch - the Congress - is made up of elected representatives from each of the 50 states. The Constitution sets up a bi-cameral body known as the U.S. Congress to raise and to spend national revenue and to draft laws. It is the only branch of U.S. government that can make federal laws, declare war and put foreign treaties into effect.

Members of the House of Representatives are elected to two year terms. Each member represents a district in his or her home state. The number of districts is determined by the census, which is conducted every 10 years. Senators are elected to six year terms, staggered so that one third of the Senate stands for election every two years. The Constitution provides that the vice-president shall be president of the Senate. He or she has no vote, except in the case of a tie.

The Senate chooses a president pro tempore to preside when the vice-president is absent. The House of Representatives chooses its own presiding officer -- the speaker of the House. The speaker (Nancy Pelosi, D-CA) and the president pro tempore (Senator Robert C. Byrd, D -WV) are members of the political party with the largest representation in each house.

To become a law, a bill must pass both the House and the Senate. After the bill is introduced in either body, it is studied by one or more committees, amended, voted out of committee, and discussed in the chamber of the House or Senate. If passed by one body, it goes to the other for consideration. Once both bodies have passed the the same version of a bill, it goes to the president for approval.

The Judicial Branch

The judicial branch is headed by the U.S. Supreme Court, which is the only court specifically created by the Constitution. In addition, Congress has established 13 federal courts of appeals and 95 federal district courts. The president has the authority to appoint federal judges as vacancies occur, including justices of the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court meets in Washington, D.C., and the other federal courts are located in cities throughout the United States.

The federal courts hear cases arising out of the Constitution, federal laws and treaties and maritime cases; cases involving foreign citizens or governments; and cases, in which the federal government is itself a party. With minor exceptions, cases come to the Supreme Court on appeal from lower courts. Most of these cases involve disputes over the interpretation and constitutionality of actions taken by the executive branch and of laws passed by Congress or the states.

State Government

Like the national government, state governments have three branches: executive, legislative, and judicial; these are roughly equivalent in function and scope to their national counterparts. The chief executive of a state is the governor, elected by popular vote, typically for a four-year term (although in a few states the term is two years). Except for Nebraska, which has a single legislative body, all states have a bicameral legislature, with the upper house usually called the Senate and the lower house called the House of Representatives, the House of Delegates, or the General Assembly. In general, matters which lie entirely within state borders are the concern of state governments. These include internal communications; regulations relating to property, industry, business and public utilities; the state criminal code; and working conditions within the state. Within this context, the federal government requires that state governments not adopt laws which contradict or violate the Constitution or laws and treaties of the United States. Any developing programs are now often developed on a cooperative basis between the two levels of government.

Local Government

Types of city governments vary widely across the nation. However, almost all have some kind of central council, elected by the voters, and an executive officer, assisted by various department heads, to manage the city's affairs. The city directly serves the needs of the people, providing everything from police and fire protection to sanitary codes, health regulations, education, public transportation and housing. Cooperation with both state and federal organizations is essential. The county is a subdivision of the state, usually -- but not always -- containing two or more townships and several villages.

 

Political Parties

Today, there are two major political parties in the United States, the Democratic and the Republican.

The Democratic Party evolved from the party of Thomas Jefferson, formed before 1800. The Republican Party was established in the 1850s by Abraham Lincoln and others who opposed the expansion of slavery.

The Democratic Party is considered to be the more liberal party, and the Republican, the more conservative. Democrats generally believe that government has an obligation to provide social and economic programs for those who need them. Republicans are not necessarily opposed to such programs but believe they are too costly to taxpayers. Republicans put more emphasis on encouraging private enterprise in the belief that a strong private sector makes citizens less dependent on government. Both major parties have supporters among a wide variety of Americans and embrace a wide range of political views.

 

Vocabulary notes

legislative branch – законодательная власть

executive powers – исполнительная власть

judicial power – судебная власть

ratification - утверждение

undue - несвоевременный

veto - запрет

elect - избирать

amend - дополнять

criminal code – уголовный кодекс

council - совет

obligation - обязательство

Languages

 

The United States does not have an official language; nevertheless, English (specifically, American English) is the language used for legislation, regulations, executive orders, treaties, federal court rulings, and all other official pronouncements. Additionally, one must demonstrate an ability to read, write, and speak English to become a naturalized citizen. Many individual states and territories have adopted English as their official language.

Although the United States currently has no official language, English has long been the de facto national language, which is spoken by about 82% of the population as a native language. 96% of the population speaks English "well" or "very well".

Spanish is taught in various regions as a second language, especially in areas with large Hispanic populations such as the Southwestern United States along the border with Mexico, as well as Florida, the District of Columbia, Illinois, New Jersey, and New York. In Hispanic communities across the country, bilingual signs in both Spanish and English may be quite common. Furthermore, numerous neighborhoods exist (such as Washington Heights in New York City or Little Havana in Miami) in which entire city blocks will have only Spanish language signs and speaking people.

In addition to Spanish-speaking Hispanic populations, younger generations of non-Hispanics in the United States seem to be learning Spanish in larger numbers due to the growing Hispanic population and increasing popularity of Latin American movies and music performed in the Spanish language. Over 30 million Americans, roughly 12% of the population, speak Spanish as a first or second language, making Spanish easily the country's second-most spoken language.

Chinese, is the third most-spoken language spoken in the United States, almost completely spoken within Chinese American populations and by immigrants or the descendants of immigrants, especially in California. Over 2 million Americans speak some variety of Chinese.

French, the fourth most-common language, is spoken mainly by the native French, Haitian or French-Canadian populations. It is widely spoken in Maine, New Hampshire and in Louisiana, a former colony of France, where it is still used with English as the state's de facto official language.

People of German ancestry make up the largest single ethnic group in the United States and the German language ranks fifth.

Italian, Polish, and Greek are still widely spoken among populations descending from immigrants from those countries in the early 20th century, but the use of these languages is dwindling as older generations die out. Starting in the 1970s and continuing until the mid 1990s, many people from the Soviet Union and later its constituent republics such as Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, and Uzbekistan have immigrated to the United States, causing Russian to become one of the minority languages in the United States.

Tagalog and Vietnamese have over one million speakers in the United States, almost entirely within recent immigrant populations.

There are also a small population of Native Americans who still speak their native languages, but these populations are dropping and the languages are almost never widely used outside of reservations. Hawaiian, although having few native speakers, is still used at the state level in Hawaii along with English. Several states and territories are officially or de facto bi- or trilingual:

· Hawaii (English and Hawaiian)

· Louisiana (English and French legally recognized, although there is no official language)

· New Mexico (English and Spanish de facto)

· American Samoa (Samoan and English)

· Guam (Chamorro and English)

· Northern Mariana Islands (English, Chamorro, and Carolinian)

· Puerto Rico (Spanish and English)

Vocabulary notes

Generation - поколение

Descendants - потомки

Variety - разнообразие

Ancestry - предки

Dwindle - убывать

Minority - меньшинство

Bilingual - двуязычный

Constituent - компонент

Neighborhood - соседи

Community - сообщество

Nevertheless – тем не менее

Legislation - законодательство

Regulation - контроль

Adopt – принимать (закон)

Former - бывший

de facto – на деле, фактически

 

RELIGION

Introduction

The United States government keeps no official register of Americans' religious status. In a private survey conducted in 2001, 76.7 percent of American adults identified themselves as Christian. Various Protestant denominations accounted for 52 percent, while Roman Catholics, at 24.5 percent, were the largest individual denomination. Other faiths in America include Judaism (1.4 percent), Islam (0.5 percent), Buddhism (0.5 percent), Hinduism (0.4 percent), and Unitarian Universalism (0.3 percent). Fourteen percent described themselves as agnostic, atheist, or as simply having no religion.

 

Roots of Religions

Europeans com­ing to the New World brought their own reli­gions with them. Indeed, it was for the freedom to practice these beliefs that many people came to the New World. These communities flour­ished, and the resulting religious variety helped give rise to a highly unique and important con­tribution to world religions—the most funda­mental commitment to religious pluralism and freedom.

Religious differences still existed, however, and they were often reflected by region. As different as these groups were, though, they all derived from a Judeo-Christian cultural and historical background.

American territorial gains in the nineteenth cen­tury added Spanish and French lands and peoples. Between the Napoleonic wars and World War I, waves of immigration brought English, Scots and Irish, Italians and Greeks, Germans and Poles, Swedes and Russians. Immigration to the U.S. changed the mix of religious groups, but America's overall heritage remained prima­rily European, and primarily Judeo-Christian.

New groups of immigrants from Asia and Latin America brought their cultural and religious values to the U.S., significantly fueling the growth of Islam and having an im­portant impact on American Catholicism.

 

Present Day Religious Affiliation

After more than 200 years as a nation, religion in America is a complex picture, here are some basic facts and numbers:

- 163 million Americans (sixty-three percent) identify themselves as affiliated with a spe­cific religious denomination.

- Roman Catholics are the single largest de­nomination with some sixty million adher­ents.

- Members of American Protestant churches total some ninety-four million persons.

- There are more than 300,000 local congre­gations.

- There are more than 530,000 total clergy.

- The U.S. has some 3.8 million religiously identified or affiliated Jews (an additional two million define themselves as primarily culturally or ethnically Jewish). Judaism continues to be a religion of substantial importance in the U.S., with persons of Jewish faith and culture making extensive and wide ranging contributions in all walks of American life. More Jews live in the United States than in any other country, including Israel. There are three major branches of Judaism in this country: Orthodox, Reform and Conservative.

- There are an estimated 3.5 to 3.8 million Muslims. Islam is the most rapidly growing religion in the U.S.

- In any given week, more Americans will attend religious events than professional sporting events.

- In terms of personal religious identification, the most rapidly growing group is atheists/ agnostics (currently about eight million).

In fact, radio and television broadcasting have become a major element of contemporary American religion. Major network broadcast­ers are increasingly likely to have programs with a visible religious content. The explosion of cable and direct broadcast television outlets —many Americans can select from more than one hundred television channels—means that even "minor" or non-traditional denomina­tions or faiths have been able to establish their electronic presence.

 

Vocabulary notes

Survey - опрос

Adult - взрослый

Denomination – религиозная конфессия, секта

Agnostic - агностический

flour­ish - процветание

con­tribution - вклад

derive - извлекать

heritage - наследство

prima­rily – главным образом

value - ценность

significantly - существенно

impact - влияние

affiliate - присоединяться

adher­ent – приверженный

congre­gations – религиозное братство

clergy - духовенство

Orthodox -православный

Muslim - мусульманский

Rapidly - быстро

Contemporary - современный

Broadcasting - радиовещание

Content - содержание

Faiths - верование

Attend - посещать

Jews - евреи

Geography

The United States is the fourth largest country in the world, after Russia, Canada, and China. There are fifty (50) states: 48 contiguous states and Washington D.C., located in the central portion of North America plus the states of Alaska (49th) and Hawaii (50th), both joined in 1959.

Area (50 states and District of Columbia only):

Total: 9.631.418 sq km
Land: 9.161.923 sq km
Water: 469,495 sq km

SIZE COMPARISONS:

The United States is...

• about one-half the size of Russia,

• slightly smaller than China.

BOUNDARIES:

• 48 states: Canada on the north;

Atlantic Ocean on the east; Mexico and the Gulf of Mexico on the south; and Pacific Ocean on the west

• Alaska: Arctic Ocean on the north;

Canada on the east; Pacific Ocean on the south; and Arctic Ocean, Chukchi Sea, Bering Sea, and Bering Strait on the west

• Hawaii: Pacific Ocean

LAND USE (1992):

Cropland-25.8%

Rangeland-26.9%

Forestland-26.6%

Pastureland-8.5%

Urban, mountain, and other-12,5%

COASTLINE: 19,929 kilometers,

including Alaska and Hawaii

INLAND WATERWAYS: 41,009 kilometers of navigable inland channels,

excluding the Great Lakes

Terrain:
Vast central plain, mountains in west, hills and low mountains in east; rugged mountains and broad river valleys in Alaska; rugged, volcanic topography in Hawaii

LONGEST RIVER: Mississippi-Missouri - 5,936 kilometers

DEEPEST LAKE: Crater Lake in Oregon - 580 meters

Elevation extremes:

HIGHEST PDINT: Mount McKinley in Alaska - 6,198 meters above sea level

LOWEST POINT: Death Valley in California - 86 meters below sea level

LARGEST STATE: Alaska

SMALLEST STATE: Rhode Island

NORTHERNMOST CITY: Barrow, Alaska

SOUTHERNMOST CITY: Hilo, Hawaii

EASTERNMOST CITY: Eastport, Maine

WESTERNMOST С1П: Atka, Alaska

Ports and harbors:

Anchorage, Baltimore, Boston, Charleston, Chicago, Duluth, Hampton Roads, Honolulu, Houston, Jacksonville, Los Angeles, New Orleans, New York, Philadelphia, Port Canaveral, Portland (Oregon), Prudhoe Bay, San Francisco, Savannah, Seattle, Tampa, Toledo

Natural resources:

Coal, copper, lead, molybdenum, phosphates, uranium, bauxite, gold, iron, mercury, nickel, potash, silver, tungsten, zinc, petroleum, natural gas, timber

Natural hazards:

Tsunamis, volcanoes, and earthquake activity around Pacific Basin; hurricanes along the Atlantic and Gulf of Mexico coasts; tornadoes in the midwest and southeast; mud slides in California; forest fires in the west; flooding; permafrost in northern Alaska, a major impediment to development

People

Population: 298,444,215 (July 2006 est.)

Ethnic groups:

White 81.7%, Black 12.9%, Asian 4.2%, Amerindian and Alaska native 1%, native Hawaiian and other Pacific islander 0.2%, others 10% (2003 est.)
Note: a separate listing for Hispanic is not included because the US Census Bureau considers Hispanic to mean a person of Latin American descent (including persons of Cuban, Mexican, or Puerto Rican origin) living in the US who may be of any race or ethnic group (white, black, Asian, etc.)

 

The continental United States stretches from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean and from Canada to Mexico and the Gulf of Mexico. Separated by Canada, it touches the Pacific and Arctic Oceans. Hawaii occupies an archipelago in the Pacific, southwest of North America. The commonwealth of Puerto Rico, the largest and most populous U.S. territory, is in the northeastern Caribbean. Deciduous vegetation and grasslands prevail in the eastern U.S., transitioning to prairies, boreal forests, and the Rocky Mountains in the west, and deserts in the southwest. In the northeast, the coasts of the Great Lakes and Atlantic seaboard host much of the country's population. With a few exceptions such as the territory of Guam and the westernmost portions of Alaska, nearly all of the country lies in the western hemisphere.

Beyond the coastal plain, the rolling hills of the Piedmont end at the Appalachian Mountains. The Rocky Mountains, at the western edge of the Great Plains, extend north to south across the continental U.S., reaching altitudes higher than 14,000 feet (4,270 m) in Colorado. Between the Appalachian and Rocky Mountains, the Interior Plains and Great Plains are relatively flat, fertile farm land. The Mississippi-Missouri River, the world's fourth longest river system, runs mainly north-south through the heart of the country. Active volcanoes are common throughout the Alexander and Aleutian Islands and the entire state of Hawaii is built upon tropical volcanic islands. The supervolcano underlying Yellowstone National Park in the Rockies is the continent's largest volcanic feature.