World News for Students of English

04-09-2019 07:00

Facebook is testing a new tool, which can send users alerts in case of an emergency. Facebook is rolling it out in the USA by the end of the year.

Facebook says that local governments already used this tool to send alerts during Hurricane Barry when someone went missing or when there was a gas leak. In Facebook’s own survey of 2,000 users, 73% of users learned something new, and 43% took action after seeing the alert.

However, one American organization says that people also should have weather radios. Their batteries last longer, some models have solar panels, and some have a piece that you can turn to make electricity. For example, that could be very useful because in Puerto Rico people did not have electricity for 11 months after Hurricane Maria hit them two years ago.

Difficult words: alert (a warning, information about something dangerous), roll out (let everyone use it for the first time), survey (a set of questions that you answer so that Facebook gets some information from you).

You can watch the original video in the Level 3 section.