Category: Life Style

America’s Affair With Plastic Money and How Credit Card Issuers Treat Consumers Differently

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Read time : 3 mins

Level : Intermediate

By Ram Chakradhar

When it comes to credit card usage, spending habits, and saving money, men and women behave differently. The study also shows varied treatment of credit card issuers based on gender. You may be surprised to learn that men were more likely to have their credit card limit reduced than women during the pandemic.

Key Findings

Men were 1.5 times more likely to have their limits reduced than women. 82% of the men are less careful about their credit card dues than 71% of women. Men also carry over balance every month than women. When applying for a new credit card, men’s primary reason is a balance transfer, while women do it for spending rewards. Both agree that high-interest rates and annual fees are the biggest annoyance.Forbes Advisor, a financial comparison site, studied 2,005 American adults’ credit card usage, spending habits, frustration, and Covid-19 pandemic impact. The survey shows that 53% of the men saw their credit card limit reduced in the past two years compared to 37% of women. Continue reading

Red-hot summer job market awaits US teens as employers sweat

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Read time : 3 mins

Level : Advanced

(AP Photo/Robert F. Bukaty)

By PAUL WISEMAN and MAE ANDERSON AP Business Writers

WASHINGTON (AP) — Mary Jane Riva, CEO of the Pizza Factory, has a cautionary message for her customers this summer: Prepare to wait longer for your Hawaiian pie or calzone.

The Pizza Factory’s 100 West Coast locations are desperately short of workers. With about 12 employees per store, they’re barely half-staffed — just when many more Americans are venturing out to restaurant chains like hers.

“The days of 15-minute orders,” Riva said, “may not be happening anymore.”

Talk to other employers in America’s vast hospitality sector — hotels, restaurants, public pools, ice cream parlors, pick-your-own strawberry farms — and you’ll hear a similar lament. They can’t fill many of their summer jobs because the number of open positions far exceeds the number of people willing and able to fill them — even at increased wages.

Some help may be coming: School’s out for summer, cutting loose millions of high school and college students for the next three months. Riva, for one, is hoping to field more job applications from students seeking summertime spending money. Continue reading

En plein air: NYC aims to keep outdoor lifestyle post-virus

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Read time : 3 mins

Level : Advanced

(AP Photo/John Minchillo, File)

By BOBBY CAINA CALVAN Associated Press

NEW YORK (AP) — As COVID-19 ravaged New York City, virus-wary denizens locked out of indoor public places poured into the streets, sidewalks and parks. They dined with friends in outdoor sheds hastily erected by restaurants, and went to health classes, concerts and even therapy sessions on streets closed to traffic.

Now as the city continues on its path of recovery, the pandemic could be leaving a lasting imprint on how the city uses its roadways: More space for people and less room for cars. Continue reading

In election misinformation fight, ‘2020 changed everything’

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Read time : 4 mins

Level : Advanced

(AP Photo/Jenny Kane, File)

By AMANDA SEITZ Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) — Beth Bowers grew up in the 1960s and 1970s with parents who marched in protests, wrote letters to members of Congress and voted in elections big and small.

Her father, a World War II veteran, and her mother, an educational counselor, did not use social media sites in their lifetimes. But Bowers is sure they would be disheartened to see how easily falsehoods about the U.S. elections are disseminated online to millions and millions of people.

That’s why the Evanston, Illinois, mom spends a few hours each week scouring Facebook groups for conspiracy theories or lies as part of a nationwide volunteer effort to debunk misinformation about voting.

“The good thing about this work is, it’d be so easy to become incredibly cynical and hopeless, but I think we feel like this is something we can do and make a difference,” Bowers, 59, said in a phone interview. Continue reading

Got a dime? Businesses seek Treasury help with coin shortage

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Read time : 3 mins

Level : Intermediate

(AP Photo/Jenny Kane)

By FATIMA HUSSEIN Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) — Got a dime you can spare? Coins are in short supply — again.

Retailers, laundromats and other businesses that rely on coins want Americans to empty their piggy banks and look under couch cushions for extra change and “get coin moving.”

A group of trade associations that represent individual businesses including banks, retail outlets, truck stops, grocery stores and more is asking the Treasury Department for more help convincing Americans to get coins back in circulation.

The consequences of the circulation slowdown hit people who don’t have an ability to pay for items electronically, they say. Continue reading

Iconic tapestry of Picasso’s `Guernica’ is back at the UN

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Read time : 2 mins

Level : Intermediate

By EDITH M. LEDERER Associated Press

UNITED NATIONS (AP) — The iconic tapestry of Pablo Picasso’s “Guernica,” which is considered by numerous art critics as perhaps the most powerful anti-war painting in history, returned to its place of honor at the United Nations on Saturday after a year-long absence that angered and dismayed many U.N. diplomats and staff.

The tapestry of the painting, woven by Atelier J. de la Baume-Durrbach, was re-hung Saturday outside the Security Council, the U.N.’s most powerful body charged with ensuring international peace and security. Since February 2021, the yellow wall where it had hung had been empty.

The tapestry was commissioned in 1955 by former U.S. vice president and New York governor Nelson Rockefeller and offered to the U.N. on loan in 1984.
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Housework or sleep? Study says it depends when you were born

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Read time : 3 mins

Level : Intermediate

(AP Photo/Scott Bauer).

By MIKE SCHNEIDER Associated Press

When Gen Xer Amy Rottier went shopping for her young children two decades ago, she drove to a mall and browsed for what she needed. Her millennial daughter, Helen, who is studying for a doctorate and doesn’t have children, buys anything she needs with a click on her iPad.

The women, ages 50 and 25, respectively, illustrate the pace of change from one generation to the next in what people do in an average day. The changes were revealed in a study released last week by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Generation X women were more likely to do housework, care for children, read for pleasure and do lawn work, the study found. Millennial women were more inclined to exercise, spend leisure time on computers, take care of their pets and sleep.
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In kids’ book, Sotomayor asks: Whom have you helped today?

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Read time : 3 mins

Level : Intermediate

By JESSICA GRESKO Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) — “Whom have I helped today?” That’s the question Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor tells kids she asks herself every night before she goes to sleep.

Her new children’s book, “Just Help! How to Build a Better World,” challenges kids to ask how they will help, too. The book comes out Tuesday and is Sotomayor’s third book for young readers.

In the book, children help in a variety of ways: sending care packages to American soldiers overseas, recycling plastic bags, cleaning up a park, donating toys to a children’s hospital and encouraging others to vote.
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Omicron’s New Year’s cocktail: Sorrow, fear, hope for 2022

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Read time : 3 mins

Level : Advanced

People celebrate during New Year’s celebrations at Madrid’s Puerta del Sol in downtown Madrid, Spain, early Saturday, Jan. 1, 2022. (AP Photo/Manu Fernandez)

By JOHN LEICESTER and NICK PERRY Associated Press

PARIS (AP) — Sorrow for the dead and dying, fear of more infections to come and hopes for an end to the coronavirus pandemic were — again — the bittersweet cocktail with which the world said good riddance to 2021 and ushered in 2022.

New Year’s Eve, which used to be celebrated globally with a free-spirited wildness, felt instead like a case of deja vu, with the fast-spreading omicron variant again filling hospitals.

“We just need enjoyment,” said Karen Page, 53, who was among the fed-up revelers venturing out in London. “We have just been in so long.”

The mostly muted New Year’s Eve celebrations around the world ushered in the fourth calendar year framed by the global pandemic. More than 285 million people have been infected by the coronavirus worldwide since late 2019 and more than 5 million have died.
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Spidey nets 3rd best opening of all time with $253 million

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Read time : 3 mins

Level : Advanced

By LINDSEY BAHR AP Film Writer

Never underestimate your friendly neighborhood Spider-Man, even with a mutating virus afoot. Despite rising concerns over the omicron variant, “Spider-Man: No Way Home” not only shattered pandemic-era box office records; it became the third best opening of all time behind “Avengers: Endgame” ($357.1 million) and “Avengers: Infinity War” ($257.7 million).

The Sony and Marvel blockbuster grossed a stunning $253 million in ticket sales from 4,325 North American locations, according to studio estimates on Sunday, also setting a record for the month of December. The web-slinger’s success couldn’t have come sooner for a movie business that has had a rollercoaster 2021 and could be headed for a difficult start to 2022 as the omicron variant of the coronavirus forces more and more event cancellations.
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