Category: Life Style

Read time : 6 mins

Level : Advanced

By BOBBY CAINA CALVAN Associated Press

NEW YORK (AP) — New Year’s celebrations swept across the globe, ushering in 2023 with countdowns and fireworks — and marking an end to a year that brought war in Europe, a new chapter in the British monarchy and global worries over inflation.

The new year began in the tiny atoll nation of Kiribati in the central Pacific, then moved across Russia and New Zealand before heading deeper, time zone by time zone, through Asia and Europe and into the Americas.

The ball dropped on New York City’s iconic Times Square as huge crowds counted down the seconds into 2023, culminating in raucous cheers and a deluge of confetti glittering amid jumbo screens, neon, pulsing lights and soggy streets. Continue reading

Read time : 4 mins

Level : Intermediate

By Robyn Goldfarb

Social media has become an epicenter for news and politics. More than 4.74 billion people across the world use social media to stay up to date on current events and express their opinions on political and social issues. Ans it’s not going away. Experts are forecasting nearly 6 billion users on the major platforms like Facebook, Instagram and TikTok by the end of 2027.

Some analysts have argued that social media is one of the most significant contributors to the decline of democracy around the world. The Pew Research Center surveyed 19 economies to discover how the citizens of these countries view social media and if they see it as a constructive or destructive aspect of political life.

A Force for Good and Bad

Pew Research posed the overarching question of whether people believe social media is good or bad for democracy. Across the 19 advanced economies polled, 57% say that social media has been more of a good thing, while 35% say it has been bad. Continue reading

Read time : 6 mins

Level : Advanced

By JOCELYN NOVECK AP National Writer

Taylor Swift was up. Elon Musk was in, out, in and maybe out again. Tom Cruise was back. BTS stepped aside, and so did Serena Williams, and Tom Brady too — oops, scratch that.

But the slap? The slap was everywhere.

Ok, so maybe it wasn’t on the level of a moon landing, or selection of a pope. But henceforth all you need say is “the slap” and people will know what you mean — that moment Will Smith smacked Chris Rock at the Oscars and a global audience said, “Wait, did that happen?” Even in the room itself — maybe especially in the room itself — there was a sense everyone had imagined it, which helps explain why things went on as normal, for a bit.

The pandemic was over, phew! Well, of course it wasn’t. But live entertainment pushed forward in 2022, with mask mandates dropping and people rushing to buy things like, oh, Taylor Swift tickets! Continue reading

Read time : 5 mins

Level : Intermediate

By LEANNE ITALIE Associated Press

NEW YORK (AP) — “Gaslighting” — mind manipulating, grossly misleading, downright deceitful — is Merriam-Webster’s word of the year.

Lookups for the word on merriam-webster.com increased 1,740% in 2022 over the year before. But something else happened. There wasn’t a single event that drove significant spikes in the curiosity, as it usually goes with the chosen word of the year.

The gaslighting was pervasive.

“It’s a word that has risen so quickly in the English language, and especially in the last four years, that it actually came as a surprise to me and to many of us,” said Peter Sokolowski, Merriam-Webster’s editor at large, in an exclusive interview with The Associated Press ahead of Monday’s unveiling.

“It was a word looked up frequently every single day of the year,” he said. Continue reading

Read time : 4 mins

Level : Advanced

By KANIS LEUNG Associated Press

HONG KONG (AP) — In London, Wong Wai-yi misses the taste of home.

A year ago, the 31-year-old musician was in Hong Kong, earning a good living composing for TV and movies and teaching piano. Today, she makes about half as much in London working part-time as a server alongside her musical pursuits. She chose the job in part because staff meals allow her to save money on food.

It’s a difficult adjustment. And Wong, who left Hong Kong with her boyfriend in January, has turned to a beloved hometown staple to keep her grounded: milk tea. She brings the beverage to parties with Hong Kong friends and gives bottles to co-workers as gifts.

“It’s like reminding myself I am a Hong Konger. It will be fine as long as we are willing to endure the hardships and work hard,” said Wong, who left as part of an exodus that began after Beijing passed a law in 2020 that curtailed civil liberties. Continue reading

Read time : 3 mins

Level : Intermediate

By NICK PERRY Associated Press

WELLINGTON, New Zealand (AP) — New Zealand lawmakers will take a vote on whether to lower the national voting age from 18 to 16, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said Monday.

Her announcement came hours after the country’s Supreme Court ruled that not allowing 16- and 17-year-olds to vote amounted to age discrimination.

But while Ardern said she personally favors lowering the age, such a change would require a 75% supermajority of lawmakers to agree. And even proponents acknowledge they don’t currently have the numbers.

A number of countries are debating whether to lower their voting age. Some that allow people to vote at 16 include Austria, Malta, Brazil, Cuba and Ecuador. Continue reading

Read time : 3 mins

Level : Intermediate

By MASHA MACPHERSON and THOMAS ADAMSON Associated Press

PARIS (AP) — The mascots for the 2024 Paris Olympics and Paralympics have been revealed — a Phrygian cap.

The soft red cap, also known as a liberty cap, is an updated version of a conical hat worn in antiquity in places such as Persia, the Balkans, Thrace, Dacia and Phrygia, a place in modern day Turkey where the name originates. It later became a symbol of the pursuit of liberty in the French Revolution — and is still worn by the figure of Marianne, the national personification of France since that time.

The Olympic cap is triangular in shape, and comes complete with friendly smile, blue eyes, tricolor ribbon and big colored sneakers.

The Paralympic version features a prosthetic leg that goes to the knee — the first time such a mascot sports a visible disability, organizers said. Continue reading

Read time : 6 mins

Level : Intermediate

By BROOKE SCHULTZ Associated Press/Report for America

Cellphones — the ultimate distraction — keep children from learning, educators say. But in attempts to keep the phones at bay, the most vocal pushback doesn’t always come from students. In some cases, it’s from parents.

Bans on the devices were on the rise before the COVID-19 pandemic. Since schools reopened, struggles with student behavior and mental health have given some schools even more reason to restrict access.

But parents and caregivers who had constant access to their children during remote learning have been reluctant to give that up. Some fear losing touch with their kids during a school shooting.

Shannon Moser, who has students in eighth and ninth grades in Rochester, New York, said she felt parents were being pushed away when the Greece Central School District this year began locking away student phones. There’s a form of accountability, she said, when students are able to record what goes on around them.

“Everything is just so politicized, so divisive. And I think parents just have a general fear of what’s happening with their kids during the day,” Moser said. She said she generally has liberal views, but many parents on either side of the political divide feel the same way. Continue reading

Read time : 5 mins

Level : Advanced

By DANIEL COLE Associated Press

SAINTES-MARIE DE LA MER, France (AP) — In a makeshift arena in the French coastal village Aigues-Mortes, young men in dazzling collared shirts come face-to-face with a raging bull. Surrounded by the city’s medieval walls, the men dodge and duck the animal’s charges while spectators let out collective gasps. Part ritual and part spectacle, the tradition is deeply woven into the culture of the country’s southern wetlands, known as the Camargue.

For centuries people from across the region have observed Camarguaise bull festivities in the Rhone delta, where the Rhone river and the Mediterranean Sea meet. But now the tradition is under threat by rising sea levels, heat waves and droughts which are making water sources salty and lands infertile. At the same time, there are efforts by authorities to preserve more land, leaving less for bulls to graze.

“Here in Camargue the bull is God, like a king,” said Aigues-Mortes resident Jean-Pierre Grimaldi as he cheered on from the private arena stands, where he’s watched competitions for decades. “We live to serve these animals … some of the most brilliant bulls even have their own tombs built for them to be buried in.” Continue reading

Read time : 3 mins

Level : Intermediate

By KRISTIN M. HALL AP Entertainment Writer

Nashville, Tenn. (AP) — U.S. Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona’s household as a child was filled with music. Both his parents were performers, and he and his siblings were their backing band.

“My brother played the guitar and I played percussion. My sister joined in on choruses. We grew up together singing, and music was a huge part of our growing up and our connection to our roots,” he said.

But he says in too many school systems, students don’t have access to music education or instruments. After two years of dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic, U.S. schools are struggling with teacher shortages in some areas, renewed calls for school security and dramatic setbacks in learning. Cardona believes music education is a part of the solution to rebuilding students and their schools.

“Now as a father, seeing how music teachers have helped my children these last two years, they were high schoolers in the pandemic, and they missed their sense of community,” said Cardona. “And those music teachers know how to reconnect them to community.” Continue reading