Card №1 Task Give the main idea of the text. When women run the economy

Task 1. Give the main idea of the text.
Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered 10% rises in pensions and the minimum wage to cushion Russians from inflation, but denied the country’s economic problems were all linked to the war in Ukraine.
With annual inflation near 18% last month, the Kremlin leader acknowledged that 2022 would be a “difficult” year for the Russian economy.
“When I say ‘difficult’, it doesn’t mean all these difficulties are connected to the special military operation,” Putin told a televised meeting of the State Council in Moscow. “Because in countries that aren’t conducting any operations - say, overseas, in North America, in Europe - inflation is comparable and, if you look at the structure of their economies, even more than ours.”
His comments ignored the fact that rising inflation in Western economies is in part a direct consequence of Russia’s war in Ukraine, which has driven up prices for energy and food around the world.
The pension increase comes into effect from June 1, while the minimum wage hike kicks in on July 1.
https://www.cnbc.com/2022/05/25/russia-ukraine-live-updates-.html
Task 2. Describe the following graph.
The number of books read by men and women at Burnaby Public Library from 2011 to 2014.

Task 3. Speak on the topic: International Business Organizations.
Card №23
Task 1. Give the main idea of the text.
Mastercard is piloting new technology that lets shoppers make payments with just their face or hand at the checkout point.
The company on Tuesday launched a program for retailers to offer biometric payment methods, like facial recognition and fingerprint scanning. At checkout, users will be able to authenticate their payment by showing their face or the palm of their hand instead of swiping their card.
The program has already gone live in five St Marche grocery stores in Sao Paulo, Brazil. Mastercard says it plans to roll it out globally later this year.
“All the research that we’ve done has told us that consumers love biometrics,” Ajay Bhalla, Mastercard’s president of cyber and intelligence, told CNBC.
“They want making a payment at a store to be as convenient as opening their phone.” About 1.4 billion people are expected to use facial recognition technology to authenticate a payment by 2025, more than doubling from 671 million in 2020, according to a forecast from Juniper Research.
How does it work? To sign up on Mastercard, you take a picture of your face or scan your fingerprint to register it with an app. This is done either on your smartphone or at a payment terminal. You can then add a credit card, which gets linked to your biometric data.