Jennifer: Hello and welcome to 6 Minute English from BBC Learning English. I'm
Jennifer and with me today is Rob.
Rob: Hello there.
Jennifer: Now, Rob, are you a fan of roast chicken?
Rob: Definitely. There’s nothing better than a lovely roast chicken on a Sunday,
with all the trimmings, of course!
Jennifer: Indeed. The trimmings are the foods that accompany the chicken. Here in
the UK, people traditionally eat roast potatoes and vegetables with their
chicken, as well as stuffing.
Rob: Stuffing is a mixture of breadcrumbs and herbs which is stuffed, or
pushed, inside the roast chicken. And it is delicious!
Jennifer: Well, you might be surprised to learn that today’s story is about stuffing
roast chickens with something rather different… But first, a quiz question,
I think!
Rob: It wouldn’t be 6 Minute English without a quiz question, would it?
Jennifer: Here goes. The chicken is thought to be the closest living relative to an
extinct species – that’s a species which no longer exists, or has died out.
Now, which species is it?
a) The dodo
b) The tyrannosaurus rex
c) The pterodactyl
Rob: Well I’m going to say the dodo, because it looks a bit like a chicken.
Jennifer: As usual, we’ll find out if you’re right at the end of the programme. Let’s
return to our story now, which is all about a failed attempt at drug
smuggling in Nigeria.
Rob: Hang on! I thought you said today’s programme was about stuffing roast
chickens?
Jennifer: It is. Our story is about a Nigerian man, living in Brazil, who was
struggling to earn a decent living.
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Rob: So, in other words, he didn’t earn a lot of money.
Jennifer: The man had been working as a mechanic in Brazil, but decided he could
earn more money if he smuggled drugs to sell back in his native country
of Nigeria.
Rob: If you smuggle goods in or out of a country, you bring them in without
the authorities’ knowledge. Drug smuggling is, of course, illegal.
Jennifer: Let’s listen to the first part of a report by BBC correspondent Leana Hosea.
How did the mechanic try to smuggle drugs into Nigeria?
Insert
A Nigerian mechanic has been caught by the Drug Enforcement Agency in Lagos airport,
Nigeria, attempting to smuggle $150,000 worth of cocaine in roast chickens.
Investigators say they found over 2.5kg of the unusual stuffing, wrapped up in tin foil,
egg-shaped packages.
Rob: So that’s where the roast chickens come in. The mechanic tried to
conceal, or hide, the cocaine inside the chickens.
Jennifer: He was very inventive, or creative, as he hid the drugs in egg-shaped
packages.
Rob: It’s certainly risky, though. So why did he try to bring $150,000 worth of
drugs into Nigeria?
Jennifer: Well, it seems he had a plan for the money. Here’s the second part of
Leana Hosea’s report: listen out for what he planned to do with the money.
Insert
They called it a remarkable seizure, saying they never expected to find thousands of
dollars’ worth of drugs in roast chickens. The suspect had flown in from Brazil, where he
had been allegedly struggling to make a decent living for years. A spokesman for the
National Drug Law Enforcement Agency says this was the suspect's retirement plan,
and he had been hoping to start a business with the drug sales.
Rob: The money was part of the man’s retirement plan. A retirement plan is
something you arrange to do when you retire, or stop working. It often
involves saving lots of money.
Jennifer: He wanted to start a business, but the drugs were seized, or taken, by
authorities before he got the chance.
Rob: We also heard in the report that the seizure of the drugs was remarkable,
or unusual, because the authorities didn’t expect so many drugs to be
hidden.
Jennifer: Smugglers are using increasingly imaginative ways to conceal their drugs.
Rob: Recently the Nigerian authorities have found drugs hidden in the lining of
suitcases, in wigs and even in a doctor’s stethoscope!
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Jennifer: Let’s listen to the final part of the report now. What are the Nigerian
authorities using to help spot the drug carriers?
Insert
Nigeria is a major transit point for drugs, but the authorities have made efforts to
improve security after a Nigerian man was discovered on a plane to Detroit, attempting
to explode a bomb in his underpants three years ago. The Nigerian authorities say
airport body scanners have helped identify more than one hundred drug carriers last
year.
Rob: The authorities have used body scanners to help spot the drug
smugglers. Body scanners are machines which can detect whether you are
carrying any illegal substances.
Jennifer: It’s really an ongoing battle, but they are trying to improve security,
particularly at airports.
Rob: Thankfully the drugs hidden inside the chickens did not make it into the
country this time.
Jennifer: Indeed. Now, speaking of chickens, we need to wrap up the quiz before
the end of the programme. The chicken is the closest relative to an extinct
species. Is it:
a) The dodo
b) The Tyrannosaurus Rex
c) The Pterodactyl
Rob: I said the dodo – am I right?
Jennifer: You were actually wrong I’m afraid, but good reasoning! The chicken is
actually the closest living relative of the gigantic and terrifying dinosaur,
the tyrannosaurus rex!
Rob: I’ll never look at a chicken, or eat a chicken, in the same way again!
Jennifer: We’ve just got time to recap some of the vocabulary we’ve heard in
today’s programme.
Rob: The words we heard were:
stuffing
extinct
smuggle
conceal
inventive
retirement plan
seized
remarkable
Jennifer: Join us again for more 6 Minute English from bbclearningenglish.com. Bye
for now!
