Update on previous topics: Hong Kong, yellow vests, Boeing, and more

Time for an update on five previous episodes you’ve heard in the last year

Hi everyone, it’s Jeff, time to start another exciting week of learning English together. And yes, I mean together. You may think you’re the only ones learning here, but that’s not true. I learn things, even things about English, each and every week as I prepare the phrase, and now the grammar lesson on the web site. I’m learning right alongside you. Special thanks to JR, as always, the producer extraordinaire. You’re listening to episode 190, so that means all the episode resources can be found at PlainEnglish.com/190.

We’re going to do something a little different today. Instead of picking one new topic, I thought I’d update you on previous topics that we’ve talked about together. The ones I chose are Hong Kong, Alex Trebek, the Democrats challenging Donald Trump, Boeing’s woes, and the yellow vest protesters in France.

Before we start, I wanted to ask if you’ve signed up for our free email resources? I’ve been talking about Plain English Plus+ a lot lately, but we do send out a number of free resources to our e-mail list. Those include an additional word or phrase with every episode, links to English articles I use to prepare the show, and the song of the week every Thursday in case you don’t write it down when you hear it. To get all those, please visit PlainEnglish.com/mail and enter your details.

Update on some of your favorite stories

Before we start, I just want to clarify that I’m not doing this because I’m running out of topics. Quite the opposite. I have an app called Wunderlist on my phone and I keep a running list of future topics that I want to write about, and there are probably 20 items on that list. But last week I probably saw seven or eight stories about topics we’ve covered in the past, and none of them warranted another episode. But I’m always thinking about you, all of you out there, and I thought you might want to hear the latest news on some of these topics. So, here we go.

Hong Kong

In Hong Kong, things got worse before they got better—but the government of China appears to have delivered a major concession to the protesters. Hong Kong Executive Carrie Lam announced on television that she was formally withdrawing the controversial extradition bill that sparked the protests. She also pledged to increase dialogue with the community and would seek an independent review of the political climate. Her offer satisfies perhaps one and a half of the protesters’ five primary demands. Some protesters responded that the offer was too little, too late, while others doubted the government’s sincerity and ability to conduct a truly independent review itself. Confidence in government is at is lowest level since China took over sovereignty of Hong Kong in the late 1990s and the protests, now in their third month, are a thorn in Chinese Premier Xi Jinping’s side. They are also harming the city’s reputation as a safe place to do business. Both tourism and the local stock market have been down since the protests started.

Related: Episode 181: Escalating protests in Hong Kong test ‘one country, two systems’

Alex Trebek

Legendary game-show host Alex Trebek is back at work for a new season of Jeopardy! The 79-year-old host of one of America’s longest-running television quiz shows announced in March that he had Stage 4 pancreatic cancer. Trebek said that he’s “on the mend” after completing several grueling rounds of chemotherapy. Back in May, he said that his body was responding well to treatment and that many of the cancerous tumors on his pancreas were shrinking much more quickly than doctors had anticipated. He began taping new episodes of the quiz show in July, and the 36th season of Jeopardy! began airing on September 9.

Related: Episode 141: Why America loves Alex Trebek, host of quiz show Jeopardy!

Democrats against Trump

We last checked in on the race before the race for the American presidency back in June, when 24 Democrats were all vying for their party’s nomination for president. The winner of this race will go head-to-head with Donald Trump in November 2020. Since then, a few minor figures got into the race, but six candidates have dropped out. Although many candidates soldier on, three candidates have emerged as the front-runners, with all the rest fighting for scraps of support. The three leaders are former Vice President Joe Biden, Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren, and Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders. Sanders is a self-described “Democratic socialist” and is running on a very left-wing platform that promises to cancel student and medical debt. Senator Warren is the populist in the bunch: her message is that capitalism is broken and favors entrenched interests and big corporations. One of her key issues is breaking up big tech companies. Joe Biden is positioning himself as the voice of stability, having already served eight years as vice president to Barak Obama. His strongest appeal is that he has the greatest chance to beat Trump in the final round of voting. Under America’s absurdly long presidential calendar, the first states start voting in the primary elections in January, with the presidential election not until November 2020.

Related: Episode 165: Crowded field of Democrats begins primary season with Miami debate

Boeing jet

It has been a long summer for the aerospace company Boeing. Its 737-Max jets were grounded in March after a safety defect was discovered. Now reports show that the beleaguered jet may not return to the skies until December. Boeing is scrambling to convince international aviation regulators that it has sufficiently modified the flight-control computers and trained pilots on the new systems. However, America’s Federal Aviation Administration and other regulators recently rejected a briefing in which Boeing had described the changes it had made to its software. Boeing’s submission in August had already been delayed several times after the company found additional things it wanted to change. There are also questions about whether Boeing is doing enough to train pilots on the new systems. Pilots may need to spend more hours in simulators before being able to fly the Max again. Individual airlines have had to cancel flights and re-arrange their schedules, since their fleets are now smaller. If the delays go into the new year, they will affect the holiday travel season, possibly leading to higher prices for consumers.

Related: Episode 139: New Boeing jets grounded after second crash in just five months

Yellow vests

Emmanuel Macron has his mojo back. Almost a year ago, the French president was on the defensive, as protesters wearing gilets jaunes, or yellow vests, blocked traffic and marched down public streets, demonstrating against new fuel taxes and the high cost of living, in general. Macron canceled the majority of his international trips, went on an aggressive listening tour around the country, responded with some modest reforms, and capped off a successful year by hosting the meeting of G-7 leaders in a French seaside resort town in August. Macron’s listening tour involved 2 million responses to a survey and 92 hours of public meetings. In response to what he heard, he promised some cuts in taxes, reforms to class sizes for children, and reductions in proposed cuts to hospitals and staff, among other things. The fire that gutted Notre-Dame cathedral helped unite the country around its cultural heritage and a shared national symbol. The president has fully recovered the public support he lost before the yellow vest protesters broke out.

Related: Episode 111: Protesters in yellow vests disrupt life in France, but their demands are unclear

Honestly, the biggest thing going on in the world, and the biggest thing I wanted to update you about, is what’s going on in Britain. The problem is, I write the episodes a minimum of four days before they come out. Minimum. So I’m worried I’ll write something on a Sunday, but by the time it comes out on a Thursday, everything will have changed. We’ll have to wait until that situation calms down a little before we do another episode about it here.

And by the way, I’d like to include small updates on a more regular basis, maybe at the end of a normal episode, so if there’s a story in the past that you’d like to hear more about, just let me know by e-mail or WhatsApp.