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Articles of the Week 

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In Senegal, the bastion of the region’s Francophonie, French is giving way to local languages

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Read time : 4 mins

Level : Intermediate

A man sits outside a stationary store with French signs in Dakar, Senegal, Thursday, Oct. 3, 2024. (AP Photo/Annie Risemberg)

By MONIKA PRONCZUK Associated Press

DAKAR, Senegal (AP) — For decades Senegal, a former French colony in West Africa, has been touted as the bastion of the French language in the region. Leopold Sedar Senghor, the country’s first president and a poet, is considered one of the founding fathers of the concept of Francophonie, a global alliance of French-speaking countries.

But many say a shift is underway. While French remains the country’s official language, inscribed into its constitution, its influence is waning. It is giving way to Wolof, the most widely spoken local language — and not just on the street, where the latter has always been dominant, but in the halls of power: government offices, university corridors and mainstream media. Continue reading

Amazon, Target and other retailers are ramping up hiring for the holiday shopping season

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Read time : 3 mins

Level : Advanced

FILE – Amazon employees load packages on carts before being put on to trucks for distribution to customers for Amazon’s annual Prime Day event at an Amazon’s DAX7 delivery station on July 16, 2024, in South Gate, Calif. (AP Photo/Richard Vogel, File)

By HALELUYA HADERO AP Business Writer

Retailers are ramping up hiring for the holiday season, but fewer seasonal employees are expected to be taken on this year to help customers in stores and assemble online orders in warehouses.

E-commerce giant Amazon said Thursday it will hire 250,000 full, part-time and seasonal workers for the crucial shopping period, rounding out a series of announcements made in recent weeks by the country’s top retailers.

Amazon is hiring the same number of employees it did last year, similar to Bath & Body Works and Target, which said in September it planned to bring in roughly 100,000 seasonal employees and offer current employees the option to work extra hours during the holiday shopping period. Continue reading

Can a Good Cup of Coffee Turn a Bad Day Around?

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Read time : 2 mins

Level : Intermediate

Michael Dinich | Wealth of Geeks undefined

Over half of Americans claim a good cup of coffee can be “so powerful,” it can turn their worst days around into good ones.

On the flip side, in a poll of 2,000 American coffee drinkers, 31% said their entire day can be ruined if their coffee isn’t right. Some are so in-tune with their coffee, they can tell when they’ve received the incorrect order based on if it doesn’t taste right (25%) or doesn’t look right (9%).

Commissioned by La Colombe and Chobani and conducted by Talker Research, the study revealed how both hot coffee and iced coffee drinkers prefer their brews. Continue reading

As theaters struggle, many independent cinemas in Los Angeles are finding their audience

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Read time : 3 mins

Level : Advanced

Cinephile Miles Villalon, left, stands underneath the marquee of the New Beverly Cinema revival theater, Friday, Aug. 9, 2024, in Los Angeles. (AP Photo/Chris Pizzello)

By KRYSTA FAURIA Associated Press

LOS ANGELES (AP) — On a hot summer evening, Miles Villalon lined up outside the New Beverly Cinema, hours before showtime.

The 36-year-old already had tickets to the Watergate-themed double feature of 1976’s “All the President’s Men” and 1999’s “Dick.” But Villalon braved Los Angeles’ infamous rush-hour traffic to snag front-row seats at Quentin Tarantino’s historic theater.

This level of dedication is routine for the Starbucks barista and aspiring filmmaker, who typically sees up to six movies a week in theaters, and almost exclusively in independently owned theaters in and around Los Angeles.

“I always say it feels like church,” he said. “When I go to AMC, I just sit there. And I can’t really experience that communal thing that we have here, where we’re all just worshipping at the altar of celluloid.” Continue reading

The benefits of a four-day workweek according to a champion of the trend

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Read time : 4 mins

Level : Intermediate

(AP Illustration/Jenni Sohn)

By CATHY BUSSEWITZ AP Business Writer

Companies exploring the option of letting employees work four days a week hope to reduce job burnout and retain talent seeking a better work-life balance, according to the chief executive of an organization that promotes the idea.

The trend is gaining traction in Australia and Europe, says Dale Whelehan, CEO of 4 Day Week Global, which coaches companies through the months-long process of shortening their employees’ work hours. Japan launched a campaign in August encouraging employers to trim work schedules to four days.

American companies haven’t adopted four-day weeks as broadly, but that could change. Eight percent of full-time employees polled by Gallup in 2022 said they work four days a week, up from 5% in 2020. Continue reading

World leaders are gathering for the UN General Assembly. The outlook is gloomy

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Read time : 3 mins

Level : Advanced

António Guterres, United Nations Secretary-General, speaks during the 79th session of the United Nations General Assembly, Tuesday, Sept. 10, 2024. Cameroon’s former Prime Minister Philemon Yang, seated behind Guterres, took over the presidency of the U.N. General Assembly on Tuesday. (AP Photo/Yuki Iwamura)

By EDITH M. LEDERER Associated Press

UNITED NATIONS (AP) — Facing a swirl of conflicts and crises across a fragmented world, leaders attending this week’s annual U.N. gathering are being challenged: Work together — not only on front-burner issues but on modernizing the international institutions born after World War II so they can tackle the threats and problems of the future.

U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres issued the challenge a year ago after sounding a global alarm about the survival of humanity and the planet: Come to a “Summit of the Future” and make a new commitment to multilateralism – the foundation of the United Nations and many other global bodies – and start fixing the aging global architecture to meet the rapidly changing world.

The U.N. chief told reporters last week that the summit “was born out of a cold, hard fact: international challenges are moving faster than our ability to solve them.” He pointed to “out-of-control geopolitical divisions” and “runaway” conflicts, climate change, inequalities, debt and new technologies like artificial intelligence which have no guardrails. Continue reading

China is raising its retirement age, now among the youngest in the world’s major economies

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Read time : 4 mins

Level : Intermediate

People on their bicycles and electric bikes wait at a traffic lights junction during the morning rush hour in Beijing, Friday, Sept. 13, 2024. (AP Photo/Andy Wong)

By HUIZHONG WU and EMILY WANG FUJIYAMA Associated Press

BEIJING (AP) — Starting next year, China will raise its retirement age for workers, which is now among the youngest in the world’s major economies, in an effort to address its shrinking population and aging work force.

The Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress, the country’s legislature, passed the new policy Friday after a sudden announcement earlier in the week that it was reviewing the measure, state broadcaster CCTV announced.

The policy change will be carried out over 15 years, with the retirement age for men raised to 63 years, and for women to 55 or 58 years depending on their jobs. The current retirement age is 60 for men and 50 for women in blue-collar jobs and 55 for women doing white-collar work. Continue reading

Sustainable investing advocate says ‘anti-woke’ backlash in US won’t stop the movement

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Read time : 3 mins

Level : Advanced

(AP Illustration/Jenni Sohn)

By STAN CHOE AP Business Writer

NEW YORK (AP) — Maria Lettini already knew of the backlash against ESG investing when she took over as chief executive of US SIF last year.

US SIF is an advocacy group that supports sustainable investing, which encourages investors to consider a wider set of risks including the environment, social issues and corporate governance in hopes of improving their returns.

But returning to the U.S. after several years working in the U.K., Letting wasn’t prepared for how widespread the backlash against ESG was. Lettini spoke with The Associated Press about that and sustainable investing generally. The conversation has been edited for clarity and length. Continue reading

Autoworkers learn sign language hoping connection with deaf colleagues improves work and lives

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Read time : 2 mins

Level : Intermediate

In this photo provided by Nissan on Thursday, Sept. 5, 2024, workers of Nissan’s plant’s Paint Shop including John Johnson, foreground right and Michael Connolly, foreground, second left, pose for a photo at the plant, in Sunderland, England. (Matt Walker/Nissan via AP)

By DANICA KIRKA Associated Press

LONDON (AP) — One doesn’t need to know sign language to understand what Michael Connolly feels about his colleagues’ efforts to break down the barriers posed by his deafness.

When asked what he thought of his teammates’ decision to learn British Sign Language, the 45-year-old autoworker at the Nissan plant in Sunderland, England, grinned and flashed a universal symbol: Two thumbs up.

Connolly loves having the chance to banter with his workmates, to talk about everyday things — the kids, vacation plans, a TV program. And now he can, because the entire 25-member bumper-paint team at Sunderland started learning BSL at the beginning of the year. Continue reading

A robot begins removal of melted fuel from the Fukushima nuclear plant. It could take a century

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Read time : 3 mins

Level : Advanced

This photo shows the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant in Okuma, Fukushima prefecture, northern Japan, on Aug. 22, 2024. (Kyodo News via AP)

By MARI YAMAGUCHI Associated Press

TOKYO (AP) — A long robot entered a damaged reactor at Japan’s Fukushima nuclear power plant on Tuesday, beginning a two-week, high-stakes mission to retrieve for the first time a tiny amount of melted fuel debris from the bottom.

The robot’s trip into the Unit 2 reactor is a crucial initial step for what comes next — a daunting, decades-long process to decommission the plant and deal with large amounts of highly radioactive melted fuel inside three reactors that were damaged by a massive earthquake and tsunami in 2011. Specialists hope the robot will help them learn more about the status of the cores and the fuel debris.

Here is an explanation of how the robot works, its mission, significance and what lies ahead as the most challenging phase of the reactor cleanup begins. Continue reading