UN Urges African Nations to Protect Sexual Rights

(Download MP3) From VOA Learning English, this is As It Is.

Welcome back. I’m Caty Weaver.

On the show today we go to a conference in Cameroon. Delegates are seeking an end to sexual abuse and the establishment of reproductive rights for all Africans.

Then we hear from survivors of acid attacks in Pakistan. The attacks continue although there are laws in place to prevent them.

African countries have been called upon to accept "sexual rights" as a basic right for all African people. These countries are also being asked to remove all barriers that prevent women, girls and boys from having sexual rights.

Christopher Cruise has more.

Delegates at Conference Call for Sexual Rights for All Africans

About 550 people from 55 countries took part last week in the sixth Africa Conference on Sexual Health in Cameroon. Young people sang at the conference to draw attention to the problem of sexual violence. And they are asking their African leaders for help.

Among those singing is 18-year-old student Mbassi Antoinette. She attends University of Yaounde 1. She says her professor violated her sexual rights.
She says it started with the professor promising to help her. After that he started asking for sex. He told her that if she refused to have sex with him, he would fail her on her exams.

Sexual violence and rape seems to be increasing in many parts of Africa. Ahmadou Bouba is a Cameroonian professor. He says a study he carried out shows surprising amounts of violence in Cameroon. He adds that this violence is one of the main barriers to quality education in Africa.

Mr. Bouba says that cases of sexual mistreatment have increased in universities. Male professors are sexually threatening more female students. He adds that in some cases, female professors sexually threaten male students.

The U.N. Population Fund says Africa has more people under the age of 20 than any place in the world. Fund officials estimate that the continent's population is set to double to two billion by 2050.

However, Christine Boutegwa from Ghana says this economic development is at risk. She the legal systems in Africa do not protect the sexual and reproductive rights of these young people.

"They do not see adolescents as sexual beings. The policies that are there are not right for boys and girls."

The conference representative from Uganda, Sarah Mokossa, says there is a culture of silence around sex and sexuality on the African continent.

"We still practice child marriage, we still practice female genital mutilation, we still view it as acceptable that young women and young men should not be educated on their sexual and reproductive health and rights even though we know that they are sexually active and that usually that sexual activity is not one of choice. It is one in which they are coerced by older men in the case of young girls."

The situation is similar in Zimbabwe where laws are weak and do not punish those who carry out sexual abuse, says Ndana Tawamba. Ms. Tawamba represented Zimbabwe at the conference.

"The justice systems in the countries we are coming from are pretty much lacking behind in terms of what it is that they can do in terms of seeing to it that those girls that are being married at early ages get the kind of recourse that they deserve, getting the justice that they deserve after being raped particularly."

U.N. Population Fund Deputy Director Kate Gilmore spoke at the end of the conference. She called on African leaders to end all barriers that prevent women, girls and boys from having a healthy sexual life with control over their reproductive choices.

I’m Christopher Cruise.

A vicious form of punishment continues in Pakistan although the government has enacted laws to stop it. Almost 150 acid attacks were reported to the Acid Survivors Foundation in Pakistan last year.

VOA reporter Sharon Behn spoke to two victims in Islamabad. Caty Weaver has her report.

Acid Attacks Threaten Mostly Females in Pakistan

Females represent sixty percent of the acid attack victims in Pakistan. Nusrat Bibi is among them. Ms. Bibi’s brother refused to marry a member of her husband’s family. She suffered the results of that decision. Her husband punished her by throwing acid on her.

Ms. Bibi was in a hospital for nine months and had 17 operations to rebuild her face and body.
​​
Muhammad Hassan Mangi is the director of Pakistan’s Ministry of Law, Justice and Human Rights. He admits that more needs to be done about preventing acid attacks.

“You need to have such methods and things in practice that you can express your, even, anger in a decent manner. That has to be understood by society.”

Mohammed Farooq, a former member of the Pakistani military, is another victim. He also was punished after refusing to marry a woman chosen for him. He dealt with severe pain, damage and depression following his attack.

“At first I was devastated. There was nothing left in my life. No past, no future, no present.”

But three years later, he is able to face the world again. Mr. Farooq dreams of being an athlete. He wants to start bicycling again.

Valerie Khan leads the Acid Survivors Foundation in Islamabad. She says changing the way society judges acid attack victims is critical to their survival.

“It’s about rebuilding your mind, your self-esteem, and it’s about reclaiming your space in the community and in the public space as a man, a woman, who deserves and will obtain and achieve respect and dignity again.”

Mohammed Farooq is no longer hiding his face. He is learning the art of photography. He is getting on with his life.

“My message to those that did this is that you tried your best to kill us, but we have been saved. God willing, we will move on. Never lose hope. Be patient. This is a test of patience. God will reward us.”

And that’s As It Is for today. I’m Caty Weaver.

We want to know what you want to hear about on our show. Send an email to learningenglish@voanews.com. Or go to our website at learningenglish.voanews.com and click on Contact Us.

Thanks for joining us.

And, The Oscar Goes To…

(Download MP3) Welcome to American Mosaic from VOA Learning English.

I’m June Simms.

Today, we talk about the Oscars.

Each year, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences presents the Academy Awards in Los Angeles, California. The awards are called Oscars. They are the top honors in the American film industry.

The 2014 awards ceremony is Sunday night. This year marks the 86th Academy Awards. Nominees and other members of the movie industry will gather for the awards ceremony at the Dolby Theater in Hollywood. The attendees will be dressed in beautiful clothes and costly jewelry. After the ceremony, actors, directors and others attend parties until early in the morning.

About six thousand members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences vote for the winners by secret ballots. There are as many as twenty-five kinds of awards. They include best actors, directors, writers and producers among others.

The top award - best picture - is announced last. That category and the category for best foreign film are permitted up to ten nominees. Also, the entire Academy gets to choose those nominees.
​​
Otherwise, Academy members choose nominees in the same categories in which they work. In other words, actors nominate actors. Directors nominate directors. Designers nominate designers.

But, all Academy members vote to choose the final winners.

This year, actor and talk show host Ellen DeGeneres will lead the awards ceremony. Last year, comedian and producer Seth MacFarlane hosted the event. More than forty million people watched the show on television.

No one knows for sure how the Academy Award came to be called an Oscar. The award itself is a small statue of a standing man. One story goes that a former Academy official said the statue looked like her Uncle Oscar. The first award was presented in 1929. The Academy began to officially use the nickname Oscar ten years later.

So who and what are some of the Oscar nominees this year? There are nine movies nominated for Motion Picture of the Year. They are set all over, from space to sea. One asks a question of the future and technology. Another takes a hard look at the past. One uses first-time technology developed for the film. Another is a reminder of the days before color filmmaking.

The people honored with Oscar nominations for movies of 2013 are as different as the notable films.

So who will Oscar go home with Sunday night? Learning English reporter Caty Weaver went into the studio with VOA film correspondent Penelope Poulou to talk about this year’s movies and moviemakers.

“Hi Penelope. Thank you for joining us in the studio.”

“Thank you, Caty, and nice to see you.”

“I would like to start with the category of animated film, partly because I was shocked to find out how much money one of those nominated films made. ‘Frozen’ has made 980 million dollars, in box office.”
​​
“That is right. Of course, many people say that, although it has been so popular, it may not be as high of a quality as previous Oscar nominees and winners.

“In the animated category?”

“Exactly. So, I don’t know what it was that made this film so popular, maybe advertising. I have heard mixed reviews.”

“So, your guess for the winner?”

“It is going to be ‘Frozen.’”

“Yeah. ‘Frozen’ is also nominated in another category, original song. The song is called ‘Let It Go.’ Let’s listen.”

“There are nine films nominated for Motion Picture of the Year. Now, did you get a chance to see all of them?”

“I saw all but one. I didn’t see ‘Her.’ I read a lot about it. I read that it was very difficult to pull off a more spontaneous romance due to the circumstances.”

“Her” is about a man who falls in love with the intelligent operating system in his phone. The film presents viewers with a question: how close can technology and humanity become?

“Now ‘Gravity’ is a favorite for a lot of reasons. I mean, it’s a spectacle.”

“Absolutely. I appreciate ‘Gravity’ very, very much. I think it deserves not best picture. It deserves best director. Because for (Alfonso) Cuaron to do what he did, nobody else has done it yet. And I had the chance to watch it actually at the first screening in L.A. in a huge theater. So, it was almost horrific because none of us had had any feedback about the film. We didn’t know what to expect.”

“Sandra Bullock plays the lead in ‘Gravity.’ She is an astronaut floating in space after her ship is damaged. What do you think her chances are for best actress?”

“She’s not going to get the Oscar. It’s going to go to Cate Blanchett…”

“Really?”

​​“For ‘Blue Jasmine.’ Her interpretation was almost Shakespearean. I believe she is a shoo-in.”

“Let’s talk about, then, performance by an actor in a leading role.”

“Now, that’s a tough one. I think that’s the toughest of them all. The favorite of the moment is Chiwetel Ejiofor in ‘Twelve Years A Slave’ because he won the BAFTA. And BAFTA usually influences Oscar voters.”

“Tell our listeners what the BAFTA is.”

“OK. The BAFTA is the equivalent to the American Oscar. It’s the British equivalent. The BAFTAS have gravitas. So that has given Ejiofor momentum, but Matthew McConaughey is right there breathing down his neck.”

“Matthew McConaughey, for his role in ‘Dallas Buyers Club’ as an AIDS patient. Also, Christian Bale was supposed to be extraordinary in ‘American Hustle.’"

“It was a very, very good movie. I think the whole cast was stellar. Christian Bale has done an amazing job. But because it is such a tight race I cannot put him on the same level as Ejiofor and McConaughey.”

“Right. Well thank you so much Penelope.”

“Thank you Caty.”

That is “Happy,” another original song nominated for an Oscar. Pharell Williams wrote and performed the song for the animated movie, “Despicable Me 2.”

On Wednesday, “Happy” made the number one position on Billboard's Hot 100 singles list. Williams will perform the song at the awards ceremony Sunday night.

“Happy” and “Let It Go” are up against two other competitors. “The Moon Song” is on the soundtrack to the nominated film “Her.” Director Spike Jonze and rock and roller Karen O wrote the song together. Karen O performs it.

One of the biggest rock bands in the world wrote a song for the movie “Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom.” U2 band members were friends for many years with the former South African president and civil rights activist, Nelson Mandela. The song was released in November last year, shortly before his death.

We leave you with U2 performing “Ordinary Love.”

I’m June Simms. This program was written and produced by Caty Weaver.

Do you have a question about American life, people or places? Send an e-mail to learningenglish@voanews.com. We might answer your question in a future show. You can also visit our website at learningenglish.voanews.com to find transcripts and audio of our shows.

Join us again next week for American Mosaic from VOA Learning English.

How You Feel About Yourself Affects Your Work

(Download MP3) Hello and welcome back to As It Is. I’m Jim Tedder in Washington, with a program designed to help you learn and improve your American English. Today we are going inside the human brain to see how and what people think. Some researchers say there is a connection between how you feel about yourself, and how you do your job.

Then we will hear about children and music. Young people who study music and play instruments are smarter than those who do not. Right? Some folks at Harvard University say, “Hold on.”

We are very happy to have your brains thinking about what we are sending your way today on As It Is.

A new study says people who feel they lack social power find it harder to perform physical work. The researchers say their study is the first to show that people who believe they lack influence in society feel the weight of the world.

Eun Hee Lee is a candidate for a doctoral degree in the psychology department at Britain’s University of Cambridge. She says the people in the study were not suffering from the continuing deep sadness known as clinical depression.


Instead, Ms. Lee said, the study was based on how the participants saw themselves. They rated themselves on what level they thought they held in the social order. They compared themselves to people they thought of as powerful and in control. She described what the study team meant by “powerful.”

“We defined being powerful as the one who has control over their own and others’ resources; whereas being powerless as being the ones who [don’t] have their control over theirs and others' resources, and also have to [be] dependent to gain the resources that they need.”

She said powerless people continually feel unsure. Researchers in the study examined participants to learn their feelings about their status, or level, in society. They presented them with a statement such as, “I can get people to listen to what I say.”

The participants were asked to lift a number of boxes and guess their weight. The more powerless the people, the higher they estimated the weight of the containers.

In a second test the researchers asked participants to sit in ways that seemed powerful. In one example they sat with one elbow on the arm of a chair. That position is domineering, or commanding. Or, they sat with their hands under their thighs, a restrictive position. People in the restrictive positions thought the boxes weighed more than they really did. Those who sat in the more powerful way made better estimates of the boxes’ weight.

Finally, a number of participants were asked to remember a time in which they felt powerful or powerless. Those who thought of a powerful time gave the best answers for the weight of several boxes. Those who remembered moments of powerlessness repeatedly said the boxes were heavier than they were.

Ms. Lee believes feelings of lack of power in humans might have developed from prehistoric times. She says it might have been a way to keep early man from using up limited resources. But she says that today, these feelings might not be good for people at work.

“It might mean we are kind of preventing ourselves automatically putting 100 percent effort into the work without us realizing [it], which could be damaging.”

The Journal of Experimental Biology published the study.

Are Children Who Learn Music Smarter?

Many people believe that teaching children music makes them smarter – better able to learn new things. But the organizers of a new study say there is no scientific evidence that early musical training affects the intelligence of young people. Jery Watson joins us with details.

An estimated 80 percent of American adults think music classes improve children’s ability to learn or their performance in school. They say that the satisfaction from learning to play a new song helps a child express creativity.

​​Researchers at Harvard University, however, have found that there is one thing musical training does not do. They say it does not make children more intelligent.

Samuel Mehr is a graduate student at Harvard’s School of Education. He says it is wrong to think that learning to play a musical instrument improves a child’s intellectual development.

He says the evidence comes from studies that measured the mental ability of two groups of four-year-olds and their parents. One group attended music class. The other went to a class that places importance on the visual arts – arts that can be seen.

“The answer there is ‘no.’ We found no evidence for any advantage on any of these tests for the kids who were participating in music classes.”

Samuel Mehr says researchers have carried out many studies in an effort to learn whether musical training can make children smarter. He says the results have been mixed. He says only one study seemed to show a small percentage increase in IQ – intelligence scores – among students after one year of music lessons.

He does not believe that IQ is a good measure of a child’s intelligence. He says researchers in his study compared how well children in the music training group did on mental processing tasks, or projects. Then the results were compared to those of children who did not take lessons.

There was no evidence that the musical training group did much better on the mental tasks than the other group. The researchers confirmed their results with a larger group of children and their parents.

Mr. Mehr says music lessons may not offer children a fast, easy way to gain entry to the best schools later on in life. But he says the training is still important for cultural reasons. In his words, “We teach music because music is important for us.” He notes that the works of writer William Shakespeare are not taught so that children will do better in physics. He says Shakespeare is taught because it is important.

“And I don’t think music needs to be any different than that.”

A report on the benefits of music training in children was published in the journal PLOS ONE. I’m Jery Watson.

And I’m Jim Tedder in Washington. Speaking of music, today is the birth date of a very famous American. Three years before the turn of the century, in 1897, Marion Anderson was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. She became one of America’s greatest opera singers. Because she was an African American, she was not allowed to sing at Constitution Hall here in Washington. So she performed before 75,000 people on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. She later became the first black woman to sing with the New York Metropolitan Opera. Marion Anderson died in 1993.

And that is all for this edition of As It Is. But don’t go away. There are more Learning English programs just seconds away. And world news follows at the beginning of the hour on VOA.

Separated Families Meet in North Korea for a Rare Reunion

(Download MP3) Welcome to As It Is from VOA Learning English. I’m Mario Ritter in Washington.

Today, we hear about a group of Koreans who recently were reunited with family members for the first time in more than half a century. The meetings took place at Mount Kumgang in North Korea.

Later, we hear North Korea’s detention of a Christian missionary from Australia. Reports say the North is holding John Short, possibly because he was carrying religious materials. Long-separated Korean families and the arrest of an Australian man are our subjects today on As It Is.

North and South Korea Permit Reunion of Separated Families

Last week, a group of older South Koreans met their North Korean family members for the first time. The Korean War has separated these families for sixty years. Christopher Cruise has this VOA story.

Eighty-two South Koreans and 180 North Koreans met at a resort named Mount Kumgang, on North Korea’s east coast. The event was carefully guarded. But it also was filled with emotion.

​​Many of the South Korean families were filled with joy at the long-awaited reunions. They exchanged gifts and family photos. They shared stories. But the joy was colored with sadness. They know this may be the last time they will ever see or even talk to their relatives again. Both government ban phone calls and even letters between the two Koreas.

Lee Sang Chul is a representative of the South Korean Association of Divided Families. He has called for regular reunions of families separated since the Korean War.

He said, “We are running out of time. Right now, only about 100 people from each side are allowed to come to the family reunions. Divided families want both governments (North and South Korea) to increase the number of people able to join.”

Millions of Koreans were separated in the 1950s conflict. Most have died without ever seeing their relatives again. Since 2000, about 130,000 South Koreans have put their names on a reunion waiting list. Just over half are still alive. Many of these people are in their 80s. They have given up hope of seeing their loved ones.

These are the first family reunions held since 2010. And they almost did not happen. North and South Korea are officially still at war. Bad feelings between the two sides have recently been increasing.

For weeks, North Korea threatened to cancel the reunions if South Korea went forward with joint military exercises with the U.S.

North Korea agreed to the reunion last week. The agreement comes after a high-level meeting that many people hope can serve as a first step towards improving relations.

Troy Stangarone is a Senior Director at the Washington-based Korean Economic Institute. He tells VOA that these reunions are especially important because relations between the North and South have recently weakened.

"Over the last year we've had a lot of tension between North and South Korea as we've transitioned into Kim Jong Un('s rule). And this is sort of the first real step of progress between the two Koreas in that period."

Others are not so sure. They do not feel that the reunions reflect any major change in North Korea's policy towards the South. Lee Sung-Yoon is a Korea Studies professor at Tufts University.

Professor Lee says the reunions are important to the families involved. He does not believe, however, that they have helped relations between North and South Korea.

A second meeting involving 82 South Koreans and 180 North Koreans took place last weekend.

It is not clear when or if other reunions will follow.

I’m Christopher Cruise.

North Korea Detains an Australian Religious Worker

North Korea detained a 75-year old Australian man last week. John Short was visiting North Korea’s capital, Pyongyang. Karen Leggett has more on story.

​​John Short and his wife Karen Short are Christian religious workers, or missionaries. They have lived in Hong Kong for more than 50 years. VOA reporters spoke to Ms. Short by telephone at the couple’s home in Hong Kong. They asked about her husband’s recent detainment.

Karen Short says her husband has no political goals for visiting North Korea. She added that her husband was most likely seized for having religious material written in the Korean-language.

"He believed it was the right thing to go, and he cares about the situation there and the people there and [he] wanted to go and make a difference, be there, see the people and let them see him."

Short says her husband "is not political, and never has been." But, she says they were aware of the dangers in visiting North Korea. They know that North Korea severely restricts organized religion. And Christian missionaries are accused of foreign interference.

Ms. Short said her husband was able to pass on religious material to the people of North Korea on an earlier trip to the country. But, she said, he did so carefully. She said government officials were assigned to stay with him and were always watching him.

She says this time he must have done something to draw attention to himself or anger government officials. But she said she does not know what that could have been. Ms. Short also explained that she and her husband know the risks that go along with being missionaries.

“This is obviously not the outcome that you think would happen. But we also realize that it’s not a free country. It’s a closed country. And there are risks involved in going. But that didn’t hold back my husband to go.”

John Short is at least the second Christian missionary to be detained in North Korea. Forty-five year-old Korean-American Kenneth Bae was arrested in 2012. He was found guilty of trying to overthrow the government. Mr. Bae is currently serving a 15-year sentence of hard labor.

The Australian government has said that it will do all it can to get Short out of prison. But Australia and North Korea do not have diplomatic relations. Australian officials then must work with others countries that do have diplomatic relations with North Korea, such as Sweden.

I’m Karen Leggett.

Thank you for joining us today. For the latest world news, be sure to listen to VOA at the top of every hour, Universal Time.

Cameroon Launches Campaign against Illegal Hospitals

(Download MP3) From VOA Learning English, this is Science in the News. I’m Christopher Cruise.

And I’m Faith Lapidus. Today on the program we have three stories from the African nation of Cameroon. We report on efforts by the government to close illegal hospitals. We also tell about the country’s ban on non-biodegradable plastic bags. And we report on some of the problems faced by Cameroonians as their country moves to digital technology.

Cameroon Works to Close Illegal Hospitals

Cameroon has launched a campaign against illegal hospitals and medical centers, including those that use traditional Chinese medicines. The Ministry of Health has blamed hospitals operating without official permission for causing deaths of patients.

Twenty-seven-year-old Mirabel Ndi watches helplessly as her two-month-old baby cries in pain. She and her baby have been at a private medical clinic in the city of Yaounde all night long. But she says there are no medical workers on duty.

“I came to the hospital and there is nobody to help.”

Since the government began closing what it considers illegal hospitals, some health workers have gone into hiding.

Bijoko Atnagan is the secretary-general of the country’s National Medical Council. He says the government will continue to take action against what it believes are illegal clinics.

He says a person only needs to go and see for themselves the growing number of hospitals across the country -- many of them operating illegally. He says all doctors working in such places, and who do not belong to the Council, are practicing illegally.

Andre Mama Fouda is Cameroon’s Minister of Health. He says the government has identified 600 illegal hospitals and health centers.

He says the government is targeting hospitals all over the country. He says the government wants to know if they are operating legally and will close them if they lack permission to operate.

Even some of the hospitals that are operating legally have problems and may not be able to react effectively to emergencies.

Dr. Etoundi Albert works at the Central Hospital in Yaounde. He says the few workers at the hospital have too many people to care for.

He says the hospital can deal with up to eight emergencies at any one time. It can also handle 20 non-emergency cases at once. But he says it is very important that trained workers be available to treat Cameroonians so that when there is an emergency, the hospital will have the people and medical equipment to react quickly.

Dr. Nick Ngwanyam heads the Saint Louis Higher Institute of Health, which trains medical workers. He says the steps being taken to stop hospitals from operating illegally will save many lives.

He says “when it comes to medicine, there is no room for mistakes and so the action is welcome. You go to the hospital, there is the doctor who is genuine, then there is a nurse who is called doctor, the laboratory technician doctor, then the nurse aid doctor, and so doctor, which used to mean something,” he says “has become a generic name for somebody in a white coat.”

The government is also taking steps against health care workers who give traditional Chinese medicine to patients. But some Cameroonians, like Daniel Kum, believe the government should organize the practice of Chinese medicine, not ban it.

He says “after moving from one hospital to the other, I did not have drugs that could help me. But when I took the Chinese medication, especially what they call the One Bao, it helped me and I was happy.”

Cameroon Bans Plastic Bags

Cameroonians are returning to traditional ways of transporting food because of a ban on the production, sale and use of non-biodegradable plastic bags. People are now using large leaves from plantain trees to store food. But not everyone is happy about that.

It is early morning in Mfou, a town near Yaounde. Nka Pamela has come to a farm to buy plantain leaves. She has been doing this since the government’s decision to ban plastic bags.

Nka Pamela says many people want to buy plantain leaves. But she says they are difficult to find in many neighborhoods.

“At times the farmers will refuse to sell. There are times that they increase their prices so it makes it difficult for us to bring leaves to Yaounde to sell.”

At the Mfoundi market in Yaounde, people who sell food are now also selling leaves. Etta Deborah owns a restaurant. She says she uses the leaves for some traditional meals like corn fufu, koki, achu and mendumba.

“It is natural and then it is our African culture to use leaves for keeping of food and I want to protect my customers.”

But not everyone is happy. Cameroonian Ben Collins says he is worried about possible health risks.

“You don’t know the origin of the leaves. You don't know how the leaves are transported. You don't know how they were conserved. You don’t know the content of the chemical reaction between the leaf and the food. Some leaves sometimes are used for medicinal purposes and some people unknowingly take these leaves and they package their food with not knowing the effect.”

Dr. Agatha Tanya is a nutritionist and lecturer at the University of Yaounde. She says there is nothing to be worried about if plantain leaves are used in the right way.

“We can use leaves, natural leaves, which we have in abundance, and wrap food in it. And besides, these leaves have a very, very nice flavor.”

Others working at the market say leaves are not supposed to carry many things. Nevielle Ngalim sells bread in Yaounde.

“Where do they want us to put the bread and the cake? Will it be normal to put it in leaves? For me, it is not normal, the banning of the plastic.”

The Cameroon Association for the Defense of the Rights of Consumers says the government’s decision was a mistake. Yvonne Tarkang works for the group.

“Unfortunately, the socio-economic aspect wasn’t taken into consideration which means that if incentive measures are not put in place so many people within the sector will be affected. So we think that the government should come up with alternatives because non-biodegradable plastic bags are banned in Cameroon.”

Cameroon decided to ban non-biodegradable plastic bags because they pollute waterways. They also can be seen lying on the ground in many areas. Plastic bags are brought to landfills, where they slowly break down. The resulting plastic particles then pollute the soil and water.

The government plans to work with private businesses to make packaging materials that are less harmful to the environment.

Cameroonians have until April to use up all of the plastic bags already in use. After that, people using the bags could face heavy fines or even time in jail.

Cameroon Struggles With Switch to Digital Television

Countries around the world are preparing to end their dependence on analog technology. The move to digital technology is set to take place by the middle of next year. There are many good reasons for going digital. Digital images are sharper and brighter than analog ones, and the sound is clearer. But many people in Cameroon are not ready for the changes. So the country has set up a National Commission to assist with the move to digital technology. The group says many people have old televisions that will not be able to receive digital signals. Tebo Mathias is a digital switchover expert.

“The population is supposed to be informed, they are supposed to be well-educated because you will not imagine an old person maybe in the village somewhere with his old radio set, one morning he is unable to tune to a station because the switchover has taken place and he was not aware.”

The cost of soon-to-be out-of-date televisions has been falling. Some experts fear manufacturers will send these TVs to Cameroon and sell them to people who do not know about the digital switch. So the government has banned the import of non-digital television sets. But that decision has angered many people like Germain Nfor, a secondary-school teacher in Yaounde.

“(The) government has not really sensitized the people on why they are banning the old type of TV, and after everything the plasma TVs are very, very expensive. I wish to ask if there are not other alternatives that one can use to capture images apart from the plasma TV?"

Guillaume Kimbi is a reporter. He says many Cameroonians do not have the money to buy a digital television.

“We are simply being taken by surprise and the new TV screens are not within the reach of the average Cameroonians, which therefore means that so many Cameroonians will no longer be able to watch TV if that switchover were to come around now.”

Importers of electronic goods are also worried. Panje Raoul is one of them.

“We are calling on the state to look for ways of supplying appliances that can transform the images from analog to digital,” he says. “Are we able to buy flat screens? Today the minimum wage in Cameroon is 23,000 CFA francs, so I do not know if a Cameroonian will be able to feed himself with such an amount and also buy a plasma screen. We are asking the state to reconsider its decision,” he says.

Digital TV receivers cost as much as $1,000 in Cameroon. But the average salary there is about $56 a month. Experts like Tebo Mathias say people must start saving money to buy the digital sets. He says the decision made by the International Telecommunications Union to go digital next year will not be delayed.

“ITU has already decided that after that date, those countries that will refuse to switch will not be able to receive signals from abroad or their own signals will not be able to be transmitted to neighboring countries because of interference.”

Many experts agree that African countries must move toward digital technology. But they say people need to be guided through the process. They say there should be special telephone lines and major advertising campaigns to help people make the switch to digital.

This Science in the News was written by Christopher Cruise. Our producer was June Simms. I’m Faith Lapidus.

And I’m Christopher Cruise. Join us again next week for more news about science on the Voice of America.

Blight Tourism in Detroit Grows in Popularity

(Download MP3) From VOA Learning English, welcome to As It Is! I’m June Simms in Washington.

Detroit, Michigan is often called the “Motor City.” The name came from all the new vehicles being produced in its factories. But today Detroit is better known for its now-empty factories than its cars. On our program, we report on the changes in the city, and how those changes have given rise to a new kind of business: blight tourism. We also tell about an effort to help city planners clean up Detroit.

Blight Tourism in Detroit Grows in Popularity

Detroit’s Eastown Theater was once a successful business. Its big name performers included rock stars such as Bob Seger, Ted Nugent and Alice Cooper. Today, the sidewalk in front of the theater serves as a bed for homeless people.

Inside the building, the floor where musicians once performed is filled with holes. Some critics say the theater looks like a place where a bomb exploded. But it is actually an example of Detroit’s blight. Hard economic times caused the break-down of the Eastown Theater and other buildings.

Saint Agnes Catholic Church is also in need of repair. The once beautiful church has graffiti covering its walls and many broken windows. Columns that support the structure are starting to collapse.

Inside a school next to the church, a visitor can find forgotten shoes, old books and other unwanted things.

Kevyn Orr is Detroit’s emergency manager. He estimates the city has 78,000 buildings that suffer from blight. He says these buildings can become targets of vandal attacks and fire.

Jesse Welter is a photographer. He uses his pictures to tell a story. He sees art in the blight.

“I can see the beauty in it, and the architecture. I think they kind of tell you the history, you know, the past, what, you know, what it is, what it’s become.”

In 2011, Jesse Welter began inviting other photographers on his drives through the city.

“Basically, I was kind of doing this on my own, and I thought, you know, why not take people with me and give people an opportunity to do what I do.”

Now, people pay him between $40 and $100 to show them Detroit neighborhoods.

“My van, I can take up to 10 people, and they’re usually full. I’ve been doing this since 2011, and I’ve been to, probably, over 180 different buildings, and the tours I’ve probably done probably about 300 tours.”

One of the largest buildings they visit is the former Packard Automobile factory. It is one of the most popular stops on the tour. The former factory has a new owner who is interested in improving the building. One day, the Packard Automobile plant might become someone’s home.

In the second half of our show, we look at how Detroit plans to repair and replace blighted buildings around the city. You are listening to As It Is from VOA Learning English. I’m June Simms.

Motor City Mapping Project Takes Aim at Detroit Blight

​​The blighted neighborhoods in Detroit have changed the way people look at the city. But a new group of city planners aim to repair or replace the damaged buildings. Steve Ember reports.

​​​Tia Ciara Bonner is one of three people working on what is called the Motor City Mapping project. It seeks to map all the troubled properties in Detroit.

Ms. Bonner uses an electronic tablet to keep a record on the condition of each property she examines.

“As a Detroiter, I want to feel safe. And I need these abandoned homes knocked down.”

She is not happy with what she sees.

“I have saw (sic) more burnt up homes and more empty lots than the houses that are standing.”

The information she and her team gather is stored on computers at Motor City Mapping headquarters. There, other people examine the information, a process they call “blexting.” It combines the words blight and texting.

Jerry Paffendorf is Chief Executive Officer of Loveland Technologies. His company designed the blexting software programs.

“As properties are surveyed, they are stored in a database and immediately visualized on a map. And everything comes in real time, kind of like Twitter.”

Glenda Price is co-chair of the Detroit Blight Removal Task Force. Her group is supervising the Motor City Mapping Project. She says the group is bringing local, state, and federal agencies together to help solve the city’s blight. The goal is to improve the physical appearance of Detroit.

“One of the biggest obstacles to achieving that goal is going to be money, because it is going to be costly to do this. And so that is why we recognize that it will take probably three years, is what we are projecting.”

Jerry Paffendorf says the software program currently has a list of about 180,000 properties. The cost to clean up each blighted property is between $5,000 and $10,000.

The Motor City Mapping Project is expected to complete its work this month. The Detroit Blight Removal Task Force will have a better idea of the final cost of the clean-up once the project ends.

I’m Steve Ember.

And that’s our program for today. It was based on reports from VOA’s Kane Farabaugh in Detroit. This show was written by Jonathan Evans. Thank you for spending time with us today.

Every day on As It Is we report on issues we believe are of interest to you. You can tell us what you want to hear on a future show. E-mail us at learningenglish.voanews.com.

I’m June Simms. Join us again tomorrow at this time for another As It Is from the Voice of America!

Science Education…on a Bus!

(Download MP3) Hello, and welcome to As It Is from VOA Learning English.

I’m Christopher Cruise in Washington.

Today on the program, we report on a new device for quadriplegics -- people who have lost control of their bodies from the neck down. Not every part of their body is paralyzed.

“The tongue not only is, has sensory inputs to the brain, but it also has a very good motor capability.”

But first, we report on an unusual way to study science in the state of Maryland. High school students across Maryland now have a chance to perform experiments with the help of real scientists using laboratory equipment on a bus.

“We have anything from biology to forensic science. So we have a blood lab where they try and go ahead and test to see if any of our evidence samples have blood on it.”

It’s America on the move today on As It Is, as we help you learn to read, speak, write and understand everyday American English. Listen carefully, and before you know it, you will have improved your American English by listening to As It Is on VOA.

Science Education…on a Bus!

Most schools in America do not have the latest in laboratory equipment. It is just too costly. But the state of Maryland and a non-profit group found a way to make such equipment available during some parts of the school year. As Steve Ember tells us, they put it on a bus!

The 13-meter-long Maryland BioLab is a mobile classroom filled with equipment that lets students explore many kinds of science. It travels around the state visiting schools. Today, the bus has stopped at Patapsco High School and Center for Arts in the city of Baltimore. Science teacher Leah Warble is very pleased that her students could perform an experiment using real chemicals.

“And today the chemistry students were able to do an acid-based hydration, which just means they neutralize an acid with a base. So normally, they would do it through simulations on the computer. And now is able to allow them to do it in real life, actual time and actually apply it to something that we use in real life -- which is biodiesel.”

Scientist Angel Mangus led the mobile laboratory on the day VOA visited.

“There are two TVs, so there’s one down this end and there is one down that end. If you get lost at any point in time on your paper or what I am saying and you can’t see me, I have a camera…”

Ms. Mangus says the equipment lets students explore many different kinds of scientific interests.

“We have anything from biology to forensic science. So we have a blood lab where they try and go ahead and test if any of our evidence samples have blood on it. We also have DNA analysis lab where they try and test to see who did a specific crime. And we also have chemistry.”

The mobile lab has been bringing bioscience education to schools around Maryland for more than ten years.

“It’s really nice to get them in here with hands-on activities. They get really excited and they want to be engaged.”

Ms. Mangus talks to the students about how she became a scientist.

“At the end of each class, if we have enough time, we like to take five or ten minutes, talk about us, ourselves. Tell them how we got into science, maybe where we went to school, what we did, the different kinds of things that we could do.”

She says many students finish their experiments and leave the bus excited about the possibility of becoming a scientist.

The Maryland BioScience Foundation supports the BioLab program. Brian Gaines is the chief executive officer of the foundation. He says the organization’s goal is to help create the next generation of scientists.

“One of the reasons that we do this, this program is to talk about careers in science -- not just science, but science, technology, engineering and math.”

Mr. Gaines says students on the bus get real-life experience they do not get in a classroom.

“The equipment that the students are using on the mobile lab, they don’t have in schools. So our instructors are actually scientists, they work alongside the teachers. So they bring that science experience from the laboratory into the schools and they teach students how to use actually the newest techniques that we have in science.”

That made a difference to 15-year-old Seda Sinan, who is interested in biology.

“It, like gave me, like, more materials to work with than I had at school. It’s more, like, interactive.”

Her classmate Shenara Jefferson agrees.

“Well, it really showed me how just a little bit of difference can really impact, like, your product when you’re doing something in there. Like, I only added just a little bit of the solution and it completely affected my entire thing.”

Back in the school classroom, Leah Warble’s students continue working on the results of their experiments on the bus.

“It does help me do my job.”

Ms. Warble says children usually do not know what they are interested in until they get real-life experience with a subject.

“Well, the excitement of feeling like a real scientist -- I mean, even just a change in the, in the, what they were wearing, wearing goggles and, and blue gloves versus white gloves made them feel more television scientists, if you will. To, to handle that kind of situation makes them feel like more responsible for the work because they are now intrigued in, in doing it and they feel respected and responsible since we gave them those opportunities.”

A Wheelchair Controlled by Your Tongue!

People paralyzed from the neck down must use a wheelchair to move around. One of the biggest problems for them is controlling the movements of the wheelchair. To help them, American scientists have invented a system that lets those who cannot move their arms and legs operate the wheelchair with their tongues. The device is so easy to use that it may open up other possibilities for these people, who are called quadriplegics.

​​A very small magnet is placed on the person’s tongue. Each movement changes the magnetic field around the person’s head. Sensors in a headset read the changes and send them to a smartphone. A smartphone application, or app, then changes them into commands for the wheelchair’s motors. As the patient slowly moves his or her tongue, the wheelchair begins moving, then changes direction.

Maysam Ghovanloo is an associate professor of electrical engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology. He invented the tongue drive system.

“The tongue not only is, has sensory inputs to the brain, but it also has a very good motor capability, so why not using the tongue as an output of the brain?”

He says his invention is more useful for quadriplegics than voice commands, because their voices may be weak. Researchers are developing other systems that would let quadriplegics use electrical signals from the brain to control devices.

Professor Ghovanloo says his patients were able to learn how to use the tongue drive in a few hours. His team now is developing it for controlling almost anything.

“And the target device could be your wheelchair, could be your computer, could be your flat-screen TV, air conditioning system -- you name it, because the rest of the technology is already in place.”

The Georgia Tech team also is seeking to put the magnetic sensors into a dental device. So a headset would not be needed.

Professor Ghovanloo says his device could be available for purchase within a few years.

And that’s our program for today. It was written in Special English from reports by Faiza Elmasry in Baltimore, Maryland and George Putic in Washington.

I’m Christopher Cruise reporting from VOA Learning English headquarters in Washington. I’ll be back next week at this same time, and June Simms will be here tomorrow, with another edition of As It Is. I hope you’ll join us then, here on The Voice of America.

Another World, Underground: Carlsbad Caverns National Park

(Download MP3) From VOA Learning English, welcome to This is America. I’m Steve Ember.

This week on our program, we explore a UNESCO World Heritage Site in the American Southwest, near the city of Carlsbad, New Mexico.

Carlsbad Caverns National Park contains more than 100 caves below the surface of the desert. Most are closed to the public. But anyone can visit the main attraction, one of the largest caves in the world.

Stalactites and Stalagmites

Huge. Incredible. Inspiring. Words like these come to mind as visitors enter a world of silence, darkness and cold, almost 230 meters under the ground. Come along with us, as Bob Doughty and Barbara Klein tell you about Carlsbad Caverns.

An elevator lowers you into the world of Carlsbad Cavern, the big cave at Carlsbad Caverns National Park. Silent, except for the voices of guides and visitors. And not completely dark. The National Park Service has enough lighting to see many of the beautiful formations all around. The temperature is about 13 degrees Celsius.

A cavern is a large cave. But Carlsbad Cavern is really a long series of chambers. One of these is called the Big Room. The Big Room is more than three hectares big. The ceiling is 77 meters high. The Big Room is the single largest underground chamber ever found in North America.

The Big Room and other parts of the cavern contain huge, sharp formations of minerals. People are free to explore the lit formations in the Big Room. But park rangers must guide visitors to other areas of the cave.

​​Stalactites hang from the ceiling. Stalagmites rise from the floor. Some even meet to create a column. Other formations look like needles, popcorn, pearls and flowers.

A visitor still remembers the memory aid she learned long ago from her fifth-grade teacher. Stalactites have to hang on "tight" to the ceiling or they might fall off. And be careful about stalagmites -- you "might" trip over one on the floor.

One of the first questions that visitors have is how did Carlsbad Cavern form? Guides explain that it did not result from the action of water and streams like other limestone caves. Instead, it was created by the action of sulfuric acid.

The limestone developed about 250 million years ago. Then, within the last 20 million years, movements in the earth pushed the rock upward, forming the Guadalupe Mountains. Today these mountains extend from west Texas into southeast New Mexico.

The action of oil and natural gas created hydrogen sulfide in the limestone. The hydrogen sulfide reacted with oxygen in rainwater moving through the rock. Sulfuric acid developed. The acid created the caves by dissolving the limestone in its path.

Later, the water and most of the acid left the caves as the Guadalupe Mountains continued to rise. This permitted freshwater to move through. The freshwater left behind minerals. These minerals became the formations and shapes on the ceilings, walls and floors of the caves.

Summer Home to Thousands of Mexican Bats

People are not the only ones who visit Carlsbad Caverns National Park. About 400,000 Mexican free-tailed bats come to the big cave from Mexico each summer to give birth.

Every evening, as the sun goes down, thousands of adult bats fly out of the natural entrance of the cave. It can take from twenty minutes to more than two hours for them all to leave. The bats fly to nearby river valleys to feed on night-flying insects. Then, toward morning, they return to the bat cave within Carlsbad Cavern.

Park Service rangers explain that mother bats find their babies by remembering their location, their smell and the sound of their cry. Mothers and pups hang in groups on the ceiling. They spend the day resting and feeding.

While the adults go out at night for food, the young bats hang out in the cave for four or five weeks. Then, in July or August, they join their mothers on these nightly flights.

Finally, in late October or early November, the bats all leave and return to Mexico. But they always return the next year.

​​​​ ​​​​It is easy to imagine that it was the bats that led ancient people to discover the cave. Archeologists and others have found evidence of Ice Age hunters near the cave entrance. They have also found pieces of spear points left about 10,000 years ago.

More recently, Apache Indians painted pictures at the entrance. And evidence of one of their cooking areas was found beside a nearby path.

Curious Teen Found the Cavern around 1900

Around 1900, a teenage cowboy named James Larkin White began to explore the cave.

Jim White told his story in the 1932 book "The Discovery and History of Carlsbad Caverns." Here is a reading of his description of his first sight of the bats and the big cave:

"I thought it was a volcano, but then, I’d never seen a volcano -- nor never before had I seen bats swarm, for that matter. During my life on the range I’d seen plenty of prairie whirlwinds -- but this thing didn’t move; it remained in one spot, spinning its way upward. I watched it for perhaps a half-hour -- until my curiosity got the better of me. Then I began investigating …

"I worked my way through the rocks and brush until I found myself gazing into the biggest and blackest hole I had ever seen, out of which the bats seemed literally to boil …

"The more I thought of it, the more I realized that any hole in the ground that could house such a gigantic army of bats must be a whale of a big cave … I crept between cactus until I lay on the brink of the chasm, and looked down. During all the years I'd known of the place, I'd never taken the trouble to do this. There was no bottom in sight! I shall never forget the feeling of aweness it gave me."

Jim White told how he built a ladder from rope, wire and sticks and returned to the entrance of the cave a few days later.

"I found myself climbing down, down, deeper and deeper into the blackness ... At last my feet touched something solid. I lighted my lantern, and found that I was perched on a narrow ledge, almost at the end of my rope -- literally and figuratively.

"By now I could see into the tunnel -- it wasn’t much farther down to the floor of it, and that floor looked smooth and level. I decided that with a little exhibition of human-fly stuff, I could hold onto the rough wall and go down another twenty feet to level territory.

"Standing at the entrance of the tunnel I could see ahead of me a darkness so absolutely black it seemed a solid. The light of my lantern was but a sickly glow. Nevertheless, I forged ahead, and with each step the tunnel grew larger, and I felt as though I was wandering into the very core of the Guadalupe Mountains."

A few years later, a settler named Abijah Long also found the entrance and went into the cavern. He found huge amounts of bat droppings.

Abijah Long hired local workers to mine the guano which he sold to farmers as fertilizer. At the same time, he explored much of the caves. Some people might even say Abijah Long was the first real explorer of Carlsbad Cavern.

But Jim White made it his life’s work to make sure the public would see and enjoy the cavern. He worked on Abijah Long’s mining operation for 20 years.

The authors of the book "Carlsbad Cavern: The Early Years" say Jim White took the job for the chance to keep exploring the cave. And after the mining operation closed, he started building paths in the cavern. Yet once he had enough paths built to welcome visitors, no one seemed interested in his "bat cave."

Then, in 1918, Jim White took a professional photographer into the cave. Ray Davis' pictures of the Big Room appeared in the New York Times. National interest began to grow.

In 1923, scientists from the National Geographic Society explored the caves. The following year, President Calvin Coolidge named Carlsbad a national monument. Presidents can declare national monuments, but Congress must act to establish a national park. And that is what Congress did in 1930.

Since then, parts of Carlsbad Caverns have been used for movie sets, weddings, even meetings of the Carlsbad City Council.

Most visitors go to the main cavern. But some experienced cavers are permitted to explore five "wild" caves in the park. And in another one, scientists are studying microbes in search of a cure for cancer.

As for Jim White, he became chief ranger of Carlsbad Caverns. In his story in the book "The Discovery and History of Carlsbad Caverns," he talks about all the work that was done.

"I doubt if you can understand how happy this modernizing has made me. It's like the pleasant end to a dream."

Our program was written by Nancy Steinbach and produced by Dana Demange. I’m Bob Doughty.

And I’m Barbara Klein. Doug Johnson was our reader.

This is America is a production of VOA Learning English. I’m Steve Ember inviting you to join us again next week.

Have You Heard of the Golden Rule?

(Download MP3) Now, the VOA Special English program Words and Their Stories.

Throughout history, gold has been a sign of purity, beauty and power. Calling something "golden" means it has great quality and value.

For example, the “golden rule” is possibly the world’s most widespread moral rule. It says people should treat others the way they themselves would like to be treated. Every major religion has its own version of this idea.

The “golden ratio” is found in art, architecture and nature. It describes a rectangle with a length about one and one-half times its width. Objects using this ratio in their design seem to please the eye more than others.

Philosophers have their own golden idea. The “golden mean” says moderation in all things is the best way to live one’s life. It is an idea linked to the Ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle. Similar thoughts exist in Buddhism and Confucianism.

Ancient Greek myths told of a time long ago when people lived in peace and happiness. Poets called it “The Golden Age.” A golden age now describes a historical period of great artistic, scientific or economic progress. It can even recall a time of success and popularity for an industry. For example, the 1930s and 40s were called “The Golden Age of Radio.”

You may have heard the proverb “silence is golden.” This means silence is of great value -- it is sometimes better to say nothing than to speak.

You might say your child was “good as gold” when he behaved well at school. British writer Charles Dickens used this expression in 1843. He was describing the child Tiny Tim in the book “A Christmas Carol.”

In 1937, American playwright Clifford Odets wrote a play called “The Golden Boy.” This expression describes a young man who has many good qualities and a bright future.

You might tell someone “you are golden” when that person does something very well.

“Gold-digger” is another description. But this does not say something nice about a person. A “gold-digger” is someone who seeks to marry a rich person because he or she is only interested in that person’s money.

Maybe you like old songs from the 1950s or 60s that are still well known and popular today. These are called “golden oldies.”

In the 1980s and 90s, an American television comedy series told about four older women living in Miami, Florida. “The Golden Girls” often dealt with social issues in a funny way.

Today, most older people look forward to reaching their “golden years.” This is when hard-working people can retire to a life of ease and fulfillment.

This program was written by Mario Ritter.

I’m Faith Lapidus.

You can find more Words and Their Stories at our Web site, voaspecialenglish.com

World Digital Library Reaches 9,900 Items

(Download MP3) Hello and welcome to As It Is, from VOA Learning English! I’m Steve Ember in Washington.

The American space agency NASA launched its first Voyager spacecraft in 1977. Scientists announced last year that Voyager 1 had entered interstellar space. Today on the program, we hear more about the spacecraft and something else that made the trip.

World Digital Library Reaches 9,900 Items

But first, we hear about a place right here on planet Earth where you can find images and recordings from all over the world. In fact, it currently has nearly 9,900 items from 80 different countries. Karen Leggett reports.

What is a place where you could find old pictures of camels carrying people to Mecca, Saudi Arabia, and also books about ancient Aztecs in Mexico?

It is all found in the World Digital Library. Its collection is available on the Internet. The library has books, ancient writings, music and photographs. Partners include national or university libraries, museums and other cultural organizations.

The librarian of the United States Congress, James Billington, launched the WDL in 2009. John Von Oudenaren is the director of the library. He says Mr. Billington wanted it to include items that are both interesting and important.

“So we are looking for things from each country and each culture, each civilization – things that are unique, important and help to tell the story of that place.”

Every item is explained in the six official languages of the United Nations – English, Arabic, French, Spanish, Chinese, Russian - plus Portuguese.

Von Oudenaren says users include schools, researchers and anyone interested.

“People say this is what the Internet should be about and that kind of warms my heart.”

He was especially happy to hear from one teacher in New York City.

“She said it was really wonderful to have a site where every kid in the class, no matter what country they were from, or where their parents were from, could search and find something about that country that was interesting and important.”

Musa Murawih is a researcher for the WDL from Sudan. He works with all the materials that are in Arabic. He recently published rare photographs of Mecca from 1885.

“These camels were lying with their heads on the ground which is very unusual for a camel. It means this camel has traveled for so long and the humps of those camels were very thin too meaning they have exhausted all the fat they have stored there.”

Musa Murawih believes the library provides tools for understanding especially among Arabs, Muslims and the United States.

He says the WDL is posting many items about important developments in Arabic and Islamic science.

“The kind of cultural heritage you are promoting is exactly I believe what the world needs, which is basically all these cultures contribute together to promote understanding throughout humanity in general.”

Anyone may search the World Digital Library by subject, time period, kind of document or area of the world. The website is www.wdl.org. I’m Karen Leggett.

You are listening to As It Is from VOA Learning English. Thanks for joining us today. I’m Steve Ember.

Late last year, NASA announced that Voyager 1 had become the first spacecraft to reach interstellar space. That is the space between stars. Officials are not exactly sure when the spacecraft crossed over. But they said scientific measurements confirmed that it has entered interstellar space. Avi Arditti has more on the story.

Voyager 1 Carries Special Item into Interstellar Space

The spacecraft carries the voices and sounds of human beings and animals that were living on Earth in 1977 when it was launched. The sounds are on a gold-plated phonograph record secured to the side of the spacecraft.

Tim Ferris mixed the audio that went on the record.

“The record is a conventional long-playing phonograph record, except that it’s made of copper and it’s covered in gold and then it’s put inside a titanium case to protect it.”

Tim Ferris was one of a small group of people who worked to persuade the American space agency to attach the record to Voyager’s side. Annie Druyan, another member of the group, says the original idea came from Frank Drake, an astronomer at the University of California.

“And it seemed to Frank that the best way to compress as much information as possible in a very small space was to do it on a phonograph record.”

And there is plenty of information on the record. It contains messages in 59 human languages.

It has 118 pictures of life on Earth, and 27 pieces of music.

Tim Ferris says these demonstrate the diversity of human creation.

“So there’s music on the record from Europe and the United States, but also from Africa, and the South Pacific and South America. Georgia, Russia, and, you know, all these places -- China, India.”

Shortly after American astronauts returned from space in 1968, the space agency released a photograph of the Earth rising from behind the moon. Margaret Weitekamp is with the Smithsonian Institution’s National Air and Space Museum. She says that picture deeply touched people like Frank Drake and his partner on the gold record project, the scientist and TV star Carl Sagan. The photo made them think carefully about how they might present all humanity, not just the nation that sent the spacecraft up.

“Knowing that that picture was taken by a human being I think profoundly changed the thoughts of these people and really made them start thinking about ‘If we are this, you know, pale blue dot in this ocean of vastness, then how do we communicate something about who we are?’”

As for the message they chose, Tim Ferris says they could not have chosen anything better.

“You can’t say that an Indian raga or a piece by Bach or a Japanese Shakuhachi piece, you can’t say it ‘means’ something that you can put into words. It is its own end product. It, it means really what it is, similar to things in nature. A flower isn’t a way of expressing something else, it’s the end product. It is what it is.”

I’m Avi Arditti.

And that’s As It Is for today. I’m Steve Ember.

For the latest world news, listen to VOA at the top of the hour, Universal Time. Enjoy your day!

Gold Gains Importance in DRC Conflict

(Download MP3) Welcome to As It Is, from VOA Learning English! I’m Bob Doughty in Washington.

Today on the program, some nations are attempting to cut links between the conflict in the Democratic Republic of Congo and eastern Congo’s mineral exports. Later in the show, we hear what Western governments are doing to avoid fueling the unrest.

But first, researchers recently produced a map of mining areas in the Democratic Republic of Congo. The map shows mines under the control of the Congolese army and armed groups. The study suggests that the top “conflict mineral” in the area is now gold. Economics reporter Mario Ritter has more on the story.

Gold Increases in Importance as a Conflict Mineral in DRC

A Belgian group, the International Peace Information Service, carried out the study in partnership with the DRC registry of mines.

The researchers found that armed groups were involved in about 200 of the 800 mines they studied. The Congolese army was involved at 265 mines. The researchers reported that both the military and the militias are taxing mine workers illegally.

The International Peace Information Service carried out a similar survey in 2009. Filip Hilgert was the lead researcher. He told VOA the map they made four years ago is no longer correct. He said many of the miners are now digging for gold. And he said the armed groups are profiting much more from gold than from other conflict minerals, such as tin, tungsten and tantalum. These minerals are often called the “3Ts.”

One reason for the change has been an increase in the price of gold. Another reason has been stronger international rules for mineral imports. The United States Congress passed legislation to fight the trade of conflict minerals. Mr. Hilgert says such efforts have had a big effect on trade in the 3Ts. But it has not affected the gold trade.

Judith Sargentini is a member of the European Parliament. She has been campaigning for a European law on conflict minerals. She notes that gold, like diamonds, is easy to transport in small amounts. That explains why it is hard to know where it was mined.

The German geological institute BGR has collected minerals from hundreds of mines in Rwanda. The collection could be used to prove whether a sample of minerals came from a conflict area. But, Judith Sargentini suggests that geophysical tests will not work. She says buyers need to know about their suppliers.

“You cannot solve every trade in commodity by trying to find out what the geological background of a material is. It shows that you need, first of all, a due diligence supply chain, and second of all, initiatives that lead to fair trade gold mining.”

Due diligence, in this case, means knowing and being able to trust your supplier.

You are listening to As It Is from VOA Learning English. Thanks for joining us today. I’m Bob Doughty.

Western Nations Act Against Conflict Minerals

Western governments want to cut links between the conflict in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo and the area’s mineral exports.

Both the United States and the European Union have taken steps to tighten control of mineral imports to avoid fueling the conflict in eastern Congo. Mario Ritter has more.

The United States Congress passed the Dodd Frank Act in 2010. The law deals mainly with financial rules. But it also includes a special requirement for American-listed companies. It says buyers of tin, tantalum, tungsten or gold need to show they have not supported conflict in Africa’s Great Lakes area.

Now the European Union is also writing a bill to prevent deals that help private armies in the eastern Congo. Judith Sargentini says the aim of the European law is to help break the link between the minerals trade and armed conflict. She suggests the law will require EU companies buying minerals to prove they were mined without supporting the conflict in the Congo.

“We cannot just have the U.S. work on the issue, where we are the bigger trading countries with Africa and ignore this. It will influence European companies that want to trade on the U.S. market, but besides that, more importantly, Europe has a responsibility towards a lot of countries that are actually even former colonies.”

She says the bill is not a reaction to an increase in Chinese imports of these minerals by companies that are not concerned about the Dodd Frank Act.

“But I would say that European communication on trade and raw materials, of course, is completely influenced by the fear that Europe has that China will buy out everything and we don’t have anything in the future anymore”

Judith Sargentini says the American law reduced trade and jobs. She notes that the proposed law will not stop imports from eastern Congo. She says some imports will continue even if the minerals were mined under what she called bad circumstances.

Critics say the Dodd Frank Act stopped trade and led to the illegal transport of minerals through nearby countries. Ms. Sargentini agrees but says the planned law should have a different effect. She says the EU trade commissioner wants to increase trade with the Congo. She says the law will reward businesses that make an effort to trade minerals fairly and openly.

Some Congolese experts say they think the Dodd Frank Act has helped to cut the flow of money to militia leaders. In eastern Congo, workers at the Enough Project say people have changed behaviors because of it, but the conflict minerals part of the law has yet to be enforced.

And that is As It Is. I’m Bob Doughty. Be listening again tomorrow for another program from VOA Learning English.

Keep listening to VOA for the latest world news coming up at the top of the hour, Universal Time. Thanks for spending part of your day with us.

UN Chief Wants 3,000 Troops Sent to Central African Republic

(Download MP3) From VOA Learning English, this is In the News.

United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has appealed for international action to stop religious violence in the Central African Republic. Mr. Ban asked the Security Council on Thursday to deploy at least 3,000 more troops to the country within the coming days and weeks. He said, “When innocent civilians are being murdered in large numbers, deliberately targeted in the most brutal fashion, simply because of who they are, the world must act.”

More than 7,000 African Union and French forces are already in the country. The European Union has promised to send another 1,000 soldiers. The Central African Republic is a former French colony.

This week, Mr. Ban also proposed $38 million in financial and other aid for the AU forces. He worries the religious violence could turn into genocide. The unrest began a year ago after Muslim rebels ousted the president, Francois Bozize. His overthrow and resulting violence led to a majority Christian militia. Its members are accused of carrying out attacks against Muslim civilians. Since December, hundreds of people have died in clashes between Muslims and Christians. Tens of thousands have fled the country in the past month.

The militia men call themselves the anti-balaka. Balaka is said to be a word for knife or machete in a local language. Militia members say they came to the capital, Bangui, in December to oust the government of Michel Djotodia, the country’s first Muslim president. But international forces have accused the anti-balaka of being the problem. They say its fighters are increasingly turning to attacking homes and businesses.

Some fighters are only teenagers. They have set up roadblocks on country roads, carrying weapons and demanding money. French and African troops have used force to disarm them.

The anti-balaka has been described as a loose alliance, and several leaders claim to speak for the men. Joachim Kokate represented the militia at a meeting in January. He says it is time for justice. He says those organizing theft and extrajudicial killings should be targeted, and they should answer for their acts.

Many anti-balaka fighters tell VOA they want the same treatment the Muslim Seleka rebels are receiving. That means they want food, shelter and financial aid. They also want the chance to join the national army as part of a disarmament agreement.

Some fighters consider themselves liberators of their country. Others see the conflict as becoming a battle between religious groups. But the militias are made up of both Christians and animists, people who believe that natural objects have spirits. They say they are motivated by nationalism -- not religion.

Anti-balaka leaders say they have tens of thousands of fighters.

And that’s In the News from VOA Learning English. I’m Steve Ember.

Home Birth Movement Grows in the US

(Download MP3) Welcome to American Mosaic from VOA Learning English.

I’m June Simms.

On the show today a report on an old and newly popular birthing practice.

We also hear some great jazz from the past brought to new life in a Broadway musical.

Home Births in the US Becoming More Common

Most births in the United States take place in hospitals. Women giving birth are under the care of doctors, armed with modern drugs and equipment. About one in three babies arrive through a surgical operation called a Caesarean section. However, a growing number of parents-to be are choosing a different way. Steve Ember reports.

Emilie Jacobs and her husband, Rowan Finnegan, are preparing to welcome their second child. The baby will be born at their home --- just like their first child, 22-month-old Elias. The same nurse-midwife will help with this birth, too. If all goes well it will be a peaceful birth, without medicine, high tech machinery or surgery.

“And then after giving birth, straight into my own shower, into my own bed, with our new family and our home. There’s just…there’s just nothing like that.”

Emilie Jacobs attended medical school, so she has attended hospital births. She thinks doctors consider hospital rules and possible legal risks in administering birth care more than the needs of the women they serve.

“It’s not an illness to be pregnant, it’s a beautiful experience, and if you feel supported and have the right kind of support, to labor and give birth in your own home is such a gift.”

Home births have risen sharply in recent years. There are now about 30,000 such deliveries across the country each year. However, that number still represents less than one percent of all U.S. births.

A 2008 documentary, “The Business of Being Born,” helped increase the popularity of home births. The documentary included film of untroubled births in homes, including some in warm water. Other supporters of home birth have spread the idea with video of their water births with midwives assisting.

Critics disagree about the safety of home births. One study found that babies born at home are ten times likelier to born dead. The study found that they are also four times more likely to have serious neurological problems.

The findings were reported in the American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology. Study co-author Dr. Jack Chervenak is with the New York-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell Medical Center.

“We here on our labor and delivery unit fight for seconds when an unexpected fetal distress occurs, we do drills, so that we plan an emergency Caesarean and fight for seconds. If someone is as much as one block away from this hospital, it’s too far.”

But others say the study had problems. Tina Johnson is with the American College of Nurse Midwives.

“He used a lot of flawed data and drew a lot of conclusions that are inconsistent with all of the other research that’s out there currently, including another recent AJOG article, that came out more recently, citing that planned home births, with certified nurse-midwives, outcomes are just as safe as midwifery deliveries in the hospital.”

Writer Jennifer Block agrees. She says women are choosing home birth for the baby’s health as well their own.

“Because if the mother has a spontaneous vaginal birth, that’s absolutely the best-case scenario for a baby. We know babies benefit from vaginal birth: their lungs, their respiratory health, their gut health: they are colonized with good bacteria.”

And Ms. Block notes that the experience is very different in Western Europe and some other countries. In those areas, midwives care for healthy pregnant women and send them to doctors only if there are problems or known risks.

Broadway Show Honors Music of the Cotton Club

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The Cotton Club in New York City helped bring fame to many African-American performers during the early 1920s to the 1940s. Now, a new musical play celebrates some of the greatest jazz musicians who played there. Bob Doughty has more on the show “After Midnight.”

Two men partnered to create “After Midnight.” Wynton Marsalis is the artistic director of Jazz at Lincoln Center in New York City. His friend Jack Viertel is the director of a company that brings old musicals back to life in new shows. Their shared love of the music of this time gave birth to “After Midnight.”

The Cotton Club was in the Harlem neighborhood of the city. David Levering Lewis is a history professor at New York University and writer of the book “When Harlem Was In Vogue.” He says “After Midnight” shows what one night at the famous nightclub was really like.

"I thought it captured the flavor of what would have been one night - the best ever - at the Cotton Club."

Duke Ellington, Cab Calloway and Bessie Smith are just some of the musicians re-created in “After Midnight.” Mr. Viertel and Mr. Marsalis used old sound recordings from the Cotton Club to re-create what it was really like.

"Hello Everybody! Welcome to our famous Cotton Club. It’s great to see so many friends here tonight, enjoying themselves in spite of the cover charge. If you can spare a minute from your merry making, I’d like to have the pleasure of introducing the greatest living master of jungle music, the rip-roaring harmony hound, none other than Duke Ellington!"

But there is an ugly side to the history. The Cotton Club was located in the center of the African-American neighborhood of Harlem. The club used black performers. But the club only permitted white people to attend the shows.

Mr. Lewis describes how even the celebrated composer W.C. Handy was not permitted to enter.

"As everyone knows, it was infamously racially-exclusive. W.C. Handy wished to go one evening to The Cotton Club and he was turned away. And he could hear his music being performed!"

Cotton Club shows often presented African-Americans in insulting ways. But this is not explored in “After Midnight.” Mr. Viertel says the creators wanted to free the music from its past.

I’m June Simms. Our program was written by Anna Matteo and Jonathan Evans. Caty Weaver was the producer

Do you have a question about American life, people or places? Send an e-mail to learningenglish@voanews.com. We might answer your question in a future show. You can also visit our website at learningenglish.voanews.com to find transcripts and audio of our shows.

Join us again next week for American Mosaic from VOA Learning English.

Syrian Refugees in Lebanon Lack Food Aid and Education

(Download MP3) From VOA Learning English, this is As It Is.

Welcome back. I’m Caty Weaver. On the program today we explore the situation of almost one million Syrian refugees currently living in Lebanon. More and more flee across the border every day. The United Nations is concerned about the limited food aid it can provide the refugees. And it says most refugee children are receiving little or no education.

The Syrian refugee crisis in Lebanon: today on As It Is.

Many Syrian Refugees in Lebanon Lose Food Aid

United Nations agencies have been forced to reduce food aid to about one out of five Syrian refugees in Lebanon. Those who get no food say they are falling into deep debt. VOA reporter Jamie Detmer investigated the situation from Beirut. Christopher Cruise has his report.

Syrian refugees continue to flee the violence in their country. Many of them are going to Lebanon. U.N. aid agencies found it increasingly difficult to provide food assistance to them for most of last year. Twenty percent of registered refugees had their food aid ended at the end of 2013.

Um-Odai fled the Syrian city of Homs with her husband and five children. They are living in a shelter in the northern Lebanese city of Tripoli.

She says her family stopped receiving assistance, and now, they owe a lot of money. Her husband is too sick to look for work. Four of her children are very young. Her oldest son has a wife and a newborn.

She says one of her sons works as a laborer on jobs that sometimes last for just one day. When he finds a job he can bring money to the family. But Um-Odai says the family owes money to many shops in the area. They do not know how they will pay their debt.

She says they owe $2,000 after living in Lebanon for a year-and-half.

About eleven thousand Syrian refugees arrive in Lebanon every week. Negotiators have made little progress in reaching an agreement to end the civil war in Syria. The flow of Syrian refugees to Lebanon shows no sign of slowing. A million Syrians will have registered as refugees in Lebanon by the beginning of March if new arrivals continue at the current rate.

Ninette Kelley is the head of the U.N. refugee agency in Lebanon. She says the U.N. does not have enough food for all of the refugees, so it helps those most at risk.

“Most of last year, blanket food assistance was provided to everybody who was registered, but this is not something that is a normal practice. But once you have more information you can further target your provision of food assistance according to vulnerability.”

Last year, U.N. agencies worked to establish who were the most at risk among all registered Syrian refugees. The agencies found 80 percent of the refugees would have no other form of food support without international assistance. The agencies used this information to make some difficult decisions.

“Which meant that there were 20 percent who had been receiving food who were notified that they would no longer receive it on a regular basis.”

But Um-Odai says she does not understand why she and her family are among about 250,000 refugees without food assistance. She says the decision does not seem reasonable. She says she and her husband know other refugees in the camp who are in the same situation as they are. But, she says, those refugees are still receiving U.N. money to buy food and her family is not.

Even those who receive U.N. food aid say life is getting harder and more costly. They say they, too, are creating debt.

I’m Christopher Cruise.

United Nations officials say one-third of the Syrian refugees fleeing to Lebanon are school-age children. But the majority of them are not able to go to school. We return to Caty Weaver, who has more on the situation of these young refugees.

Many Syrian Refugee Children Not Attending School

​​Eleven-year-old Marah has been in Lebanon for eighteen months. She lives in an unofficial refugee settlement near the coastal Lebanese city of Tripoli. Her family had lived on a farm near the Syrian city of Homs. They fled when a rocket hit their farmhouse during an attack.

Marah is luckier than most of the refugee children in Lebanon: she is attending school.

Marah says it is difficult for her to learn in Lebanon’s French-based educational program. In Syria, she was taught in Arabic. She says she speaks Lebanese to understand the other students. But there are problems. She says they sometimes insult her and other Syrian students for being refugees.

But Marah at least has a chance of reaching her goal to become a nurse. In her settlement there are about 200 families. Only a few of them have children in school.

Media reports about the refugees are mostly about their emergency needs -- like food and medical care. Those needs take most of the humanitarian aid as well. But the longer-term needs of the refugees are becoming more central as the Syrian civil war continues.

The lack of educational possibilities for refugee children is a major concern for Ninette Kelley.

“The situation of children is rather dire. There are over 300,000 now, Syrian school-age children, which is the same number of Lebanese children who were registered at Lebanese schools last year. And while the ministry of education has indicated they could absorb 100,000 in the formal education system that still leaves over 200,000 kids without a formal education option.”

The U.N. and non-governmental groups are working together to try to provide basic reading and writing classes for children. They are centering efforts on the temporary refugee settlements that are being created. The Lebanese government has refused permission for the building of official refugee camps.

But, Ms. Kelley says basic reading and writing classes are not going to meet the needs of older children in the camps.

And that’s As It Is for today. I’m Caty Weaver. Thanks for joining us.
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Mosquitoes and Bats May Carry Disease

(Download MP3) Hello and welcome to another program designed to help you learn and improve your American English. I’m Jim Tedder in Washington. Today we are concerned with your health. We have information about a disease that seems to have spread from Africa and Asia into the Western Hemisphere. If you have mosquitoes near your home, you will need to listen carefully.

Then imagine you are sitting outside near the end of another day. Every now and then you see something fly above your house very quickly, and make sharp turns. No, it is not a bird. It is a bat, and it, too, may be a serious disease carrier.

What are these illnesses? And how can you protect yourself from them? We’ll have the answers, next on As It Is.

Mosquito's bite pass new virus to people in the Western Hemisphere

A painful disease found mainly in Africa and Asia has been discovered in the Western Hemisphere. The World Health Organization reported last December that two cases of chikungunya were found in the French part of the Caribbean island of Saint Martin. Since then, the disease has been reported on other islands in the Caribbean.

Chikungunya results from a virus. It is passed to humans from the bite of an insect -- the mosquito. The disease can cause a higher than normal body temperature and pain in the head. It also causes pain in the joints, which can last for weeks. Chikunguya rarely kills people, but there is no treatment or vaccine for the disease.

The WHO says chikungunya infected many people in the African nation of Gabon, India and islands in the Indian Ocean about 10 years ago. It spread within Europe for the first time in 2007.

Peter Hotez is the head of the National School of Tropical Medicine at the Baylor College of Medicine in Texas. He says he soon expects to see reports of chikungunya in the southern United States.

“The mosquitoes are here. That’s an important factor. Second, there may be some component of global warming.”

He says insects carrying the disease are found in places where poverty and development are increasing, such as in the southern United States.

Bats spread virus across Africa

Straw-colored fruit bats are found across much of Africa. The bats carry two deadly viruses that could spread to people. While scientists have long known this, they did not know until recently how many of the animals were carriers.

A new study has found that one third of the fruit bats are infected with a virus similar to the one responsible for the viral disease rabies. And 42 percent carry henipaviruses, which can cause a deadly disease.

The new study was a project of researchers with the University of Cambridge and the Zoological Society of London. The researchers studied blood and tissue from more than 2,000 bats from 12 African countries. They found the animals were genetically similar -- meaning they travel and live together across the continent. James Wood of the University of Cambridge says this genetic similarity helps speed the spread of the viruses.

Fruit bats live in groups of more than 100,000. These groups often live near cities. In some areas, people hunt the animals for their meat. Eating bat meat can spread the viruses to humans. Henipaviruses can also be spread through contact with waste products from bats.

​​Neither disease has been reported in humans in Africa. But experts are warning that could change. Alison Peel helped to prepare a report on the study. She warns that trying to remove bats from cities could increase the risk of infection. In her words, “the most appropriate response is ongoing studies and public awareness to avoid handling bats, and to wash the wound thoroughly if you are bitten by a bat.”

The report appeared in the journal Nature Communications.

China reported death from influenza virus

In December, China reported the death of a woman who it said was the first human to become infected with a new kind of avian influenza virus. Researchers are working to learn more about the H10N8 strain of the virus that killed her. The World Health Organization says the speed at which China reported the case shows the country is getting better at identifying deadly viruses. The 73-year old woman died late last year, just six days after visiting a poultry market in Jiangxi Province.

Bernhard Schwartlander is the WHO’s representative in China. He says the quick identification of the bird flu that killed the woman shows the increased strength of China’s surveillance system.

“The fact that Chinese authorities detected this case in a 73-year-old woman that had other medical conditions actually shows that the active surveillance system, the active alert system, is actually working quite well.”

The woman often visited markets were live chickens and other poultry were sold.

She was taken to a hospital on November 30 and died December 6th. She had suffered from high blood pressure and heart disease, which may have kept her body from being able to fight the infection. Dr. Schwartlander says officials need to watch other people closely to see if the disease has spread.

“Of course, we are always concerned when we see that the virus has actually jumped from one species to another. And you have to be very careful watching this because every time this happens it has, of course in theory, the potential for a wider spread.”

Last year, about 100 people were infected with the H7N9 strain of bird flu. Chinese officials reacted quickly with increased testing and reporting of similar cases.

The H10N8 virus had earlier been found in Guangdong Province and lived in poultry for many years. Dr. Schwartlander says the first human death from the virus is a worrisome development.

“This is the first case that we detected the virus in a human being.”

In 2002 and 2003, some countries criticized China for being slow to release news about Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome, also known as SARS. The disease killed more than 700 people. As health officials followed the disease, the government told reporters in China not to report on SARS. Government officials also did not tell WHO researchers much about the spread of the disease.

Since then, China’s health systems have improved. But some experts say China must work harder to study laboratory-confirmed infections.

Chinese officials are also closely watching for cases of the H5N1 bird flu virus, which has killed more than 380 people since 2003. Scientists fear the virus could change and then spread quickly from one person to another.

When it comes to your health, it is always better to know than not to know. There are more Learning English programs coming your way next, and world news at the beginning of the hour on VOA. I’m Jim Tedder in Washington.