"It's awful to see small and midsized business owners crying and begging you to pay them because they have no money for food."

An article about how ordinary Spanish villagers find themselves working voluntarily to pull their villages out of debt.
Phrases and vocabulary:
work off a debt: to pay a debt by working.
bankruptcy: quiebra, bancarrota
to do their share: to contribute
drastic measures: medidas drásticas
stretchers:  portable beds to carry patients to hospital,  camillas
power grid: red eléctrica
bailed out: rescatado
rundown, a rundown sports centre: a building in bad condition, in a neglected state

shameless scoundrels: sinvergüenzas

to breathe a sigh of relief: sentir alivio

unpaid bill, a million euros in unpaid bills: facturas sin pagar

Fluorescent Dye Lights Up Cancer Cells

I saw this piece of news a while back and I remember thinking  "Wow"  then I saw it more recently and I still felt the same way so I thought to myself  "Let me share it with the kids".  

A very basic explanation of the situation is - to light up the bad cells the investigators worked from the basis that the majority of these bad cells had a tendency to attract folic acid.  So folic acid was mixed with a fluorescent substance and injected into the patient who is then monitored with a camera during surgery.

A really simple article with an easy-to-understand video, take a look.

Here is the interesting vocabulary from the article:

envisioned: imagine as a future possibility

to varying degrees: in different levels (en varios grados, niveles)

to branch and wind their way: to break off in different directions (ramificar y serpentear)

Vocabulary from the video:

Shedding light, to shed light on the matter: (a CAE collocation I am sure) to bring information to the subject which makes it clearer.

to take a significant step

to enable

to target other forms of cancer: to make other forms of cancer your objective

stark, the contrast is stark:  obvious, evident, well defined

Dull and Boring, often said about my classes!

Kids often ask me what dull means, so when I saw this article I thought it might be a way to remember the meaning.

Useful phrases:
to pair: to become a couple in this case a couple of towns.  We also use the word to twin, a twin town.
quirky roadsigns: odd, unusual
profess to be: claim to be
keen to: really want to do something,  eager to do something
cash in on: a phrasal verb meaning to make money or receive some kind of benefit from a situation
stop someone in their tracks: to make someone stop immediately drawing their attention towards something.
brainchild (this word comes up in Laser do you remember?): invento, idea genial, idea original

But what does dull mean?  Here is a simple listening link.
Do you know the English word "dull"?  Dull is the opposite of "bright".  Often means "uninteresting".  We can talk about dull weather, which means cloudy weather. We can talk about......

"This was how it used to be in the old days before money was involved."

As it might be imminent that Greece comes out of the Euro, watch this short video about how these poor people are struggling to cope.

Useful language

from X to Y, from handicrafts to food

handicrafts:  artesanía

a bartering system: A system of swapping items without money

a grassroots initiative: an idea that came from the ordinary people.  This would be good to use in Advanced.

to spawn: It has spawned other bartering systems around the country. To cause the system to spread, to multiply. In this context (impulsar)

soaring unemployment: rising

reenergize: to give more energy to something

a glimmer of hope: a tiny shining light of hope

A face with two ages

As summer approaches here is a cautionary article about the effects of the sun.

Useful vocabulary:

sagging: loose, not tight (caída, que no está tersa)

taut: tight not loose (tenso)

unblemished: not marked or distorted (puro, impecable)
sought: the past of seek, to look for
to raise awareness: to let people know what is going on.
sales rep: sales representative, someone whose job is to sell company products
regard something as being (ING): They don´t regard their job as being an outdoor job.
perceive something to be (INFINITIVE): They don´t perceive their job to be an outdoor job.
to trigger: to set something in motion, to start it moving
smoking-induced wrinkles: a nice compound adjective which shortens the phrase - wrinkles which have been produced by smoking.

"Every little piece of plastic manufactured in the past 50 years that made it into the ocean is still out there somewhere,"

The Great Pacific Garbage Patch

An article about the giant soup of plastics floating in the Pacific. Apart from the intrinsic value of being informed about environmental problems, I am sure that, in one form or another, a question on this matter will  arise in the CAE exam. I am going to look for other environmentally based articles to give you ideas and vocabulary etc. Meanwhile read this article and the following article linked here.  They are both pretty easy to read and the second one is especially informative.
Below are some useful phrases for the first article:

growing at an alarming rate
debris / a vast expanse of debris:  detrito oceanic
flotsam: restos flotantes
a build up of plastics in the seas: a growth of plastics...
leash: una correa
to barf: American English to vomit.
to cut back on: a good phrasal verb meaning to reduce the amount of something.

Not all garbage ends up at the dump. A river, sewer or beach can't catch everything the rain washes away, either. In fact, Earth's largest landfill isn't on land at all.

"We need to turn off the taps at the source. We need to educate people on the proper disposal of things that do not break up, like plastics," she says. "Opportunities for recycling have to increase, but, you know, some people buy three bottles of water a day. As a society, we have to get better at reusing what we buy."

Useful phrases for the second article:
The second article is written in more of a chatty style to attract attention. It is very informative.  Read it carefully.

The floating junk yard sloshed into the public spotlight / slosh: the slap or splash of liquid
thanks to growing media coverage
despite the oft-cited claim that: despite the fact that it is often claimed that..
This is an example of using a noun phrase instead of a verb phrase, which I believe is valued in CAE writing.  It makes it sound more advanced.
ghost fishing: abandoned nets that float around and catch animals on their own
to entangle: enredardse
to mistake something for something or somebody for somebody else: confundir algo con algo
swallow plastic bags mistaking them for jelly fish
plentiful : abundante
wreak havoc: causar estragos
an increasingly evident link between plastic trash on land and plastic trash at sea

Reuse, Reduce, Recycle

An easy to understand video (an American girl´s school project) describing exactly what we were talking about in 1ºeso.  There are loads of passives which the Trinity examiner will want to see and the content and phrases below are equally valid for any article about recyling at any level.

Interesting phrases:
Going green: to become environmentally friendly.
Ignorance is bliss: Being really happy because you don´t know what is going on.
Another phrase we did in 2ºEso which means more or less the same is "out of sight out of mind"
plus another one for maybe advance level "what the eye does´t see the heart does´t grieve over"
purchases are made: things are bought
to purchase: to buy
consumption: consumo
landfill site: a hole in the ground where all our waste gets dumped
biodegrade, decompose
junk mail: the letters and publicity that come through the post that you haven´t asked for.
opt out from mailing lists: ring up companies to tell them you don´t want this junk mail anymore.
switch to electronic statements and bills: receive your banking information by email and not paper.
She asks:"What if teachers gave extra points to students who used both sides of the paper for homework etc?" Interesting idea eh 1ºeso!!