【慢速听力 3 篇 as】Officials Want to Limit Vietnam’s Work Week...
No.1
AS IT IS
Officials Want to Limit Vietnam’s Work Week to 40 Hours
December 14, 2019
Blue-collar workers like construction workers tend to work six days a week in Vietnam. (VOA/Ha Nguyen)
Officials in Vietnam are campaigning to reduce the country’s legal work week from 48 hours to 40 hours.
One of the effort’s main supporters is Nguyen Thien Nhan. He is the secretary of Ho Chi Minh City’s Communist Party central committee.
Nhan and others in the government have argued that making people work longer hours does not increase their productivity. Currently, Vietnam has a legal work week of 48 hours. This means people are expected to work six days a week, for eight hours a day.
Nhan says it is common for many workers to spend much longer on the job than the current legal limit. “Do we want our husbands or wives, our children or siblings to work nine to 10 hours a day all year round, or 10 to 12 hours a day for six months?” Nhan said. “We need to answer this question ourselves, before we even discuss overtime.”
Some countries have already taken steps to reduce the number of working hours. For example, Australia bars employers from requiring employees to work more than 38 hours a week.
Some European countries have average work weeks far below 40 hours. In Germany, the average worker spends 1,363 hours on the job each year, a 2018 report by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) found. This equals about 26 hours per week.
Citizens of Denmark labor a little longer, with an average 1,392 working hours each year. Next is Norway, where workers spend 1,416 hours on the job.
Nhan and his supporters have noted that movements for a 40-hour work week date back to a gathering of socialist and labor parties in 1889. However, Nhan said the 40-hour work week also became a recognized right among capitalist nations.
In some countries, companies are taking their own steps to reduce working hours for employees. Microsoft Japan is testing out a four-day work week. Rheingans, a technology company in Germany, is limiting its workers to a five-hour workday.
In Vietnam, the 48-hour week is more common among the country’s non-professional workers. Many government and professional workers work a 40-hour work week.
Nguyen Thi Xuan is a member of Vietnam’s parliament. She has expressed worries that some companies may already be overworking employees under the 48-hour system. Xuan, who represents a farming town in Vietnam’s Central Highlands, called for a reduction in working hours to protect the health and living standards of workers.
While Nhan and others keep pushing their campaign for a 40-hour work week, they are not expecting the change to happen anytime soon. Some are hoping their goal can be reached within 10 years. They have pointed out that Vietnam’s Communist Party was founded in 1930. By the time the party turns 100, in 2030, the nation’s workforce could receive a gift: a new 40-hour work week.
I’m Bryan Lynn.
Ha Nguyen wrote this story for VOA News. Bryan Lynn adapted the report for Learning English. Caty Weaver was the editor.
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Words in This Story
sibling – n. a sister or brother
capitalist – adj. a political and economic system in which industry is owned privately for profit and not by the state
standard – n. level of quality
No.2
HEALTH & LIFESTYLE
Homemade Soup May Fight Malaria
December 14, 2019
A man eats his soup during "La Porciuncula," a religious event where Franciscans monks serve food to the poor, at the Los Descalzos Convent in Lima, Peru, Aug. 2, 2017.
A new study suggests that some homemade soups – made of chicken, beef or vegetables — might help fight malaria.
Jake Baum of the Imperial College London led the research. He asked children at a London school to bring in homemade clear soups that their families would make to treat a fever. The children were from many different cultural backgrounds.
The soups were then exposed to the parasite that creates 99.7 percent of malaria cases in Africa, the World Health Organization, WHO, explained.
Of the 56 soups tested, five were more than 50 percent effective in containing the growth of the parasite. Two were as effective as one drug now used to treat malaria. And four soups were more than 50 percent effective at preventing parasites from aging to the point that they could infect mosquitoes that spread the disease.
Baum and his team reported their results recently in the publication Archives of Disease in Childhood.
"When we started getting soups that worked — in the lab under very restricted conditions— we were really happy and excited," Baum said in an email to Agence France Presse.
Baum also noted that it was unclear which foods made the soups effective against malaria.
"If we were serious about going back and finding the…ingredient, like good scientists, we'd have to do it in a very standardized way," he said.
The soups came from families from different ethnic histories, including Europe, North Africa and the Middle East. They had several main ingredients, including chicken, beef and green vegetables. Baum said the vegetarian soups showed similar results to the soups with meat.
Baum said his aim was in part to show children that scientific research can turn an herbal cure into a man-made medicine.
He noted the research of Dr. Tu Youyou of China. In the 1970s, she found that the herb quinhao was an effective antimalarial treatment. The herb has been used in Eastern medicine for two thousand years.
Tu’s research led to the manmade drug artemisinin, a drug now widely used to treat malaria. She won the Nobel Prize in 2015.
More and more people are becoming resistant to the drugs that treat the disease, which kills about 400,000 people a year. That means scientists will have to "look beyond chemistry” and find new drugs, Baum adds.
I'm Susan Shand.
Agence France Presse reported this story. Susan Shand adapted it for VOA Learning English. Ashley Thompson was the editor.
Write to us in the Comments Section or on our Facebook page.
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Words in This Story
soup – n. a food made by cooking vegetables, meat, or fish in a large amount of liquid
malaria – n. a serious disease that causes chills and fever and that is passed from one person to another by the bite of mosquito
fever – n. a disease that causes an increase in body temperature
backgrounds - n. one's history
expose - v. to introduce or show
mosquito – n. a small flying insect that bites the skin of people and animals and sucks their blood
ingredients – n. one of the things that are used to make a food,
herbal – adj. made of herbs
No.3
SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY
Climate Change, Invasive Species Threaten Everglades
December 14, 2019
A great egret sits on top of a dead tree in the Florida Everglades, near South Bay, Fla. Friday, Jan. 14, 2005, as the sky turns darks as a thunderstorm moves across the area.
Everglades National Park, in the American state of Florida, is home to a large number of different kinds of wildlife. There are, for example, more than 360 species of birds.
The Everglades is the only place in the world where freshwater alligators and saltwater crocodiles live together, some say.
But the park is facing problems, including climate change and invasive species.
Environmental problems
Over the last century, about half of the Everglades has disappeared.
What survives is not really a natural ecosystem. It depends on a large network of human-made waterways, dams, pump stations and other water-control structures.
It is what the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers calls a “highly managed system.” Critics call it a “Disney Everglades.”
New information about the speed of climate change has led some to question how much of the Everglades can ever be saved.
“I tend to think that everything can be saved,” says Fred Sklar of the South Florida Water Management District, which is responsible for much of the Everglades’ infrastructure. “Restored is another question.”
Tiffany Troxler is a director of Florida International University’s Sea Level Solutions Center. She recently showed reporters from the Associated Press some of the environmental problems. These include evidence of the collapse of a thick soil that supports the ecosystem.
“You can think about these soils as your bank account,” she said. “In the condition that this marsh is [in] right now, the outlook is not good.”
A lack of fresh water and an increase in sea water have caused salt levels to rise in the marshes, Troxler and others say. This appears to be slowing or stopping plant growth.
Earlier this year, a group that includes the Corps of Engineers and the National Park Service issued its latest Everglades System Status Report.
It reads, “The Florida Everglades is struggling to survive in the face of sustained pressure from human activities” and the increasing effects of climate change.
Invasive species
But climate change is only one of the problems facing the Everglades. Invasive species are another.
Of all the invasive species in the Everglades, the Burmese python is the most difficult to deal with. No one is quite sure how a huge snake native to Southeast Asia arrived in South Florida. Many believe the first pythons escaped — or were released — in the late 1970s. Estimates of their population run into the hundreds of thousands.
Scientists suspect the python is responsible for the disappearance of up to 99 percent of the marsh rabbits, raccoons and other small animals in the national park.
Scientist Ian Bartoszek heads the Conservancy of Southwest Florida’s snake research and removal program. Since 2013, he has been using pythons to catch pythons.
Every two weeks, he flies over the Everglades, picking up the signal of radio devices placed in 25 snakes. The hope is that these so-called “Judas snakes” will lead his team to others, especially females of reproductive age.
In the past six years, the conservancy team has removed more than 500 pythons with a combined weight of about 5,900 kilograms. However, Bartoszek thinks a total removal of the Burmese python is impossible.
Bartoszek noted that the Burmese pythons seem “to be adapting and evolving [in] real time here in the Everglades ecosystem.” He added that it may be more correct to call them Everglades pythons. “Because they’re ours now. They’re here,” he said.
Some hopeful signs
Still, there are some hopeful signs.
Some adaptation is taking place. Scientists have found evidence that local wood storks, a kind of bird, are eating non-native African jewelfish.
And the endangered Everglades snail kite has been eating a rare kind of mollusk, another invasive species in the area.
Perhaps the most hopeful development of all is the ongoing $578 million project to restore 103 square kilometers of the Kissimmee River Basin.
Since the destruction of some dams, part of the river has returned to its natural path. The wetlands are spreading and the numbers of wildlife are increasing in that area.
Thomas Van Lent, vice president of science and education at the Everglades Foundation, recently took a boat trip on a three-kilometer part of the restored river.
“And there were snail kites everywhere,” he says. “It’s just amazing to see the effects.”
I'm John Russell.
And I’m Jill Robbins.
Allen G. Breed reported on this story for the Associated Press. John Russell adapted it for Learning English. Caty Weaver was the editor.
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Words in This Story
ecosystem – n. everything that exists in a particular environment.
Judas - n. one that betrays another
managed – adj. describing something that is controlled (such as a business, department, sports team, etc.)
tend – v. used to describe what often happens or what someone often does or is likely to do — followed by to + verb
infrastructure – n. the basic equipment and structures (such as roads and bridges) that are needed for a country, region, or organization to function properly
marsh – n. an area of soft, wet land that has many grasses and other plants
adapt – v. to change your behavior so that it is easier to live in a place or situation
evolve – v. to change or develop slowly often into a better, more complex, or more advanced state : to develop by a process of evolution
amazing – adj. causing great surprise or wonder : causing amazement
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