Experts Will Study How to Improve Math Teaching in U.S.

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I'm Steve Ember with the VOA Special English Education Report.

A new committee of experts will look for the best ways to improve math education in the United States.

The effort is part of the American Competitiveness Initiative that President Bush discussed in his State of the Union message in January. The program calls for spending more than two hundred million dollars to improve the teaching of mathematics.

Michigan grade school students work on a lesson

The Education Department says the experts will examine how to prepare for, and succeed in, learning algebra. One goal is to decide about teaching higher-level math at younger ages. American fifteen-year-olds performed below the average in math on the most recent Program for International Assessment.

Education Secretary Margaret Spellings says: "To keep America competitive in the twenty-first century, we must improve the way we teach math."

But there is disagreement about which teaching methods are the most effective. Traditional ones depend heavily on memory and tests. Newer methods are based more on developing creative problem-solving skills.

Supporters of the traditional way say it may not be exciting but students get the right answers. Critics say many students never understand why the answers are correct.

Some say the best way to teach math is to combine the new and traditional methods. The debate is similar to the one over the best way to teach reading.

The National Mathematics Advisory Panel will be led by Larry Faulkner, a former president of the University of Texas at Austin. The seventeen experts also include the president of the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics.

A study has found that less than half of American high school graduates are prepared for college math. Other studies suggest that strong math skills developed in the early teen years can lead to college success.

The experts will consider scientifically based research and then advise the president and the education secretary. Margaret Spellings says all high school graduates need solid math skills. And she says the nation must give more high school students the chance to take advanced math and science courses.

The new advisory committee gives its first report in January. A final report is expected by February of two thousand eight.

This VOA Special English Education Report was written by Nancy Steinbach. Read and listen to our reports at voaspecialenglish.com. I’m Steve Ember.

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After Harding Dies, Coolidge Aims to Rebuild Trust in the Government

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VOICE ONE:

THE MAKING OF A NATION -- a program in Special English on the Voice of America.

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This is Shirley Griffith. Today, Steve Ember and I tell about Calvin Coolidge and how he became president of the United States.

VOICE TWO:

Warren Harding

The early nineteen twenties were a troubled time for the United States. Congress and the public began to discover crimes by several officials in the administration of President Warren Harding. Harding himself became seriously sick during a trip to Alaska and western states. He died in a hotel room in California in August, nineteen twenty-three.

Harding's vice president, Calvin Coolidge, became the new president. Both men were Republicans. Their policies on issues were much the same. Coolidge, however, was a very different man. He was completely honest. He was the kind of president the country needed to rebuild public trust in the government.

VOICE ONE:

Calvin Coolidge was quiet and plain-looking. He was the son of a farmer and political leader from the small northeastern state of Vermont.

Young Calvin worked at different jobs to pay for his college education. He became a lawyer. He moved to another northeastern state -- Massachusetts -- where he became active in Republican Party politics. First he was elected mayor of a town. Then he was elected to the state legislature. Finally, he was elected governor of Massachusetts.

It was as governor that Coolidge first became known throughout the United States.

VOICE TWO:

In nineteen-nineteen, a group of policemen in the city of Boston tried to start a labor union. This violated the rules of the police department. So the commissioner of police suspended nineteen of the union's leaders. The next day, almost seventy-five percent of Boston's policemen went on strike.

Criminals walked freely through the city for two nights. They robbed stores and threatened public safety. Frightened Americans all across the country waited to see what Governor Coolidge would do.

VOICE ONE:

He took strong action. He called on state troops to end the strike. He said: "There is no right to strike against the public safety by any body, any where, any time."

Most Americans approved of what Coolidge did. The people of Massachusetts supported him, too. They re-elected him governor by a large number of votes. Then, in nineteen twenty, Republicans nominated Warren Harding for president. They nominated Calvin Coolidge for vice president. When President Harding died in California, Coolidge, his wife, and two sons moved to the White House.

VOICE TWO:

Calvin Coolidge

America's thirtieth president was, in some ways, an unusual kind of person to lead the country. He said little. He showed few feelings. Coolidge's policies as president were not active. He tried to start as few new programs as possible. He was a conservative Republican who believed deeply that government should be small.

Coolidge expressed his belief this way: "If the federal government should go out of existence, most people would not note the difference." And once he said: "Four-fifths of our troubles in this life would disappear if we would only sit down and keep still."

VOICE ONE:

Coolidge believed that private business -- not the federal government -- should lead the country to greater wealth and happiness. He continued President Harding's policy of supporting American business both inside the United States and in other countries. The government under President Coolidge continued high taxes on imports in an effort to help American companies.

VOICE TWO:

Many Americans shared Coolidge's ideas about small government and big business. In the early nineteen twenties, many of them were living better than ever before.

At that time, companies were growing larger. The prices of their stocks rose higher and higher. There were lots of jobs. And the wages of many workers increased. Americans agreed with their president that there was little need for government spending and government programs, when private industry seemed so strong.

VOICE ONE:

The American economy grew in the nineteen twenties for several reasons. The world war had destroyed many factories and businesses in Europe. The United States did not suffer the same destruction. It was still a young country. It had great natural resources, trained workers, and a huge market within its own borders. When peace came, Americans found their economy stronger than any other in the world.

VOICE TWO:

Changes in the American market also helped economic growth. "Installment buying" became popular. In this system, people could buy a product and pay for it over a period of several weeks or months. The total cost was higher, because they had to pay interest. But the system made it possible for more people to buy more goods. It also made the idea of borrowing money more acceptable to many Americans.

VOICE ONE:

The growing importance of the New York stock markets also helped economic growth in the nineteen twenties. Millions of Americans bought shares of stock in companies that seemed to grow bigger every month. Such investment almost became a national game. People would buy shares of stock, then sell them when the stock rose in value. There were many stories of poor people who became rich overnight by buying the right stocks.

The American Congress also helped the economy by lowering income taxes. People had more money to spend on new goods. Another important reason for economic growth was a change in the way American companies were operated.

VOICE TWO:

During the nineteen twenties, the idea of manufacturing goods in the most scientific way became very popular. The father of this idea of "scientific management" was an engineer, Frederick Taylor.

Mister Taylor developed a system to study manufacturing. He studied each machine involved in the process. He studied how much work each person did. He studied how goods moved from one part of a factory to another. Then he offered ideas to business owners about ways to produce goods faster and for less cost.

VOICE ONE:

Henry Ford

Taylor's ideas of scientific management appealed to business owners. Automobile manufacturer Henry Ford proved that the ideas could work in his new car factory in the state of Michigan. Ford used the assembly line system of production. In this system, each worker did one thing to a product as it moved through the factory. This helped cut prices and increase wages.

VOICE TWO:

Ford and other businessmen learned a great deal about how to control costs, set prices, and decide how much to produce. All these changes in production and marketing helped Ford and other American companies grow larger and stronger.

Henry Ford's Model-T car became popular throughout the country. So did other new products. Radios. Refrigerators for cooling food. Vacuums to clean carpets. Ready-made cigarettes. Beauty products.

Americans in the nineteen twenties began to buy all kinds of new products they had never used before.

VOICE ONE:

Calvin Coolidge was in the White House. However, business led the nation. Times were good. Americans trusted business and its leaders. It became an honor to call someone a businessman. Colleges organized business classes. Middle-class citizens in almost every city and town gathered to discuss business ideas.

President Coolidge spoke for millions of Americans when he said: "The chief business of the American people is business."

VOICE TWO:

Coolidge represented traditional values and a simple way of life. He knew exactly how every dollar he earned was saved or spent. And he spent no more money than was necessary.

The strange thing was that Coolidge was extremely popular with a public that was spending large amounts of money. Some economic experts warned that the country's quick economic growth would end in economic depression. Most Americans, however, believed that the good times had come to stay. They enjoyed the good things in life that work and success in business could bring.

On our next program, we will see how the economic growth of the nineteen twenties brought exciting changes to the day-to-day life of millions of Americans.

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VOICE ONE:

You have been listening to V.O.A. Special English program THE MAKING OF A NATION. Your announcers were Shirley Griffith and Steve Ember. Our program was written by Nancy Steinbach. Join us again next week at this same time for another report about the history of the United States.

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World No Tobacco Day: A Chance for Smokers to Give Their Bodies a Cigarette Break

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VOICE ONE:

This is SCIENCE IN THE NEWS, in VOA Special English. I’m Bob Doughty.

VOICE TWO:

And I’m Faith Lapidus. On our program this week, the health risks of smoking -- and some advice about how to stop.

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VOICE ONE:

Chinese students break cigarettes during an anti-smoking campaign Monday at a school in Jinan. China's government said Monday that it will ban smoking on public transportation and in all indoor workplaces as part of plans for a tobacco-free 2008 Beijing Olympics. China has 350 million smokers.

For many years, scientists have warned that tobacco is bad for your health. Yet millions of people around the world continue to smoke.

The World Health Organization estimates that each year, smoking is responsible for the deaths of five million people. And that number is increasing. At current rates, W.H.O. officials say tobacco use could kill ten million people a year by two thousand twenty.

In the United States, a nation of almost three hundred million people, an estimated forty-four million adults are smokers. Health experts say tobacco use is the leading preventable cause of death in the country. Researchers believe that four hundred thirty-eight thousand Americans will die this year of diseases linked to smoking.

VOICE TWO:

The dangers of smoking are well known. Heart disease and stroke are just two of the risks. Tobacco smoke is the leading cause of lung disease. The American Cancer Society says smoking is responsible for almost nine out of ten cases of lung cancer in the United States. Smoking is also a major cause of cancers of the mouth, esophagus, kidney, bladder and pancreas.

Scientists have identified more than sixty chemicals in tobacco smoke that cause cancer in humans and animals.

Cigarettes are not the only danger. Smokeless tobacco and cigars also have been linked to cancer.

VOICE ONE:

Smoking harms not only the smoker. Women who smoke during pregnancy are more likely to have babies with health problems and low birth weight. Low birth-weight babies have an increased risk of early death. They may also suffer from a number of health disorders.

Family members at home and people at work who breathe tobacco smoke can also get sick. This is the danger of what is known as secondhand smoke.

Each year, secondhand smoke causes an estimated three thousand non-smoking adults in the United States to die of lung cancer. At the same time, researchers say, it also causes lung infections in as many as three hundred thousand young children.

The American Cancer Society says there is no safe way to smoke. It says smoking begins to cause damage immediately. All cigarettes can damage the body. Smoking even a small number of cigarettes is dangerous.

VOICE TWO:

On May thirty-first of each year, the World Health Organization holds World No Tobacco Day. This event seeks to increase understanding about the public health effects of tobacco. Another purpose of World No Tobacco Day is to reduce individual dependence on tobacco.

Last year, a smoking-related treaty became part of international law. The Framework Convention on Tobacco Control came into force on February twenty-eighth, two thousand five. Any country that approves the treaty is required to obey its rules. The treaty deals with things such as price and tax increases on cigarettes, marketing restrictions, secondhand smoke and illegal trade in tobacco products.

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VOICE ONE:

Nicotine is a substance in tobacco that gives pleasure to smokers. Nicotine is a poison. The American Cancer Society says nicotine can kill a person when taken in large amounts. It does this by stopping the muscles used for breathing.

The body grows to depend on nicotine. When a former smoker smokes a cigarette, the nicotine reaction may start again. This forces the person to keep smoking.

Studies have found that nicotine can be as difficult to resist as alcohol or the illegal drug cocaine. So experts say it is better never to start smoking than it is to smoke with the idea of stopping later.

VOICE TWO:

Most people who smoke have heard about the harmful effects of cigarettes. Some of them decide to smoke fewer cigarettes. Most who try, however, find it difficult.

Experts say menthol cigarettes are no safer than other tobacco products. Menthol cigarettes produce a cool feeling in the smoker’s throat. So people can hold the smoke inside their lungs longer than smokers of other products. As a result, experts say menthol cigarettes may be even more dangerous than other cigarettes.

VOICE ONE:

Other smokers believe that cigarettes with low tar levels are safer. Tar is a substance produced when tobacco leaves are burned. It is known to cause cancer.

In two thousand one, the National Cancer Institute released a report about low tar cigarettes. It found that people who smoke these cigarettes do not reduce their risk of getting diseases linked to smoking. Scientists found no evidence of improvements to public health from changes in cigarette design and production in the past fifty years.

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VOICE TWO:

It is not easy to stop smoking permanently. But, if you are a smoker, doctors say you will probably live longer if you do stop. Smokers who stop feel better and look better.

You will not only help yourself. You will also protect the health of other people around you.

The American Cancer Society says the sooner people stop, the more they can reduce their chances of getting cancer and other diseases.

It says blood pressure returns to normal twenty minutes after smoking the last cigarette. Carbon monoxide gas levels in the blood return to normal after eight hours. The chance of heart attack decreases after one day. After one year, the risk of heart disease for a non-smoker is half that of a smoker.

VOICE ONE:

There are products designed to help people reduce their dependence on cigarettes.

There are several kinds of nicotine replacement products that provide small amounts of the chemical. These can help people stop smoking.

Experts also say a drug used to treat depression has proven effective for many smokers. The drug is called Zyban. It does not contain nicotine. It works by increasing levels of dopamine in the brain. Dopamine is a chemical that produces feelings of pleasure.

There is evidence that people who have suffered from depression are much more likely than other people to smoke. The same is true for people with schizophrenia and other mental disorders. It also is much harder for them to stop smoking than it is for other people.

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VOICE TWO:

The American Cancer Society says there is no single "right way" to stop smoking. It says one method or a combination of methods may be successful. These include attending self-help programs or following directions in a book. The group says any way to stop smoking that is legal, moral and effective is worth a try.

To stop smoking, you should carefully plan your actions for at least one week. Stay away from public places where people are smoking. And try to stay away from people and situations that might trouble you.

Alcohol can weaken a person's will to stop smoking. So people who drink may find it easier to give up cigarettes if they stay away from alcohol temporarily.

VOICE ONE:

Many experts say the best thing for a smoker is to stop completely. Even one cigarette can make you a smoker again. In the first week or two without cigarettes, you will probably feel terrible. You may be angry all the time or you may feel sad. You may have a headache or your stomach might feel sick.

Do not lose hope. If you stay away from tobacco, those feelings will go away in a few weeks. Tell yourself that you will be happier as a non-smoker. Tell yourself that nicotine should not control your life.

VOICE TWO:

Move around as much as possible. Go for a quick walk or a run at least two times a day. Walking or running will make you breathe deeply. This will help clear the nicotine from your body. Also, when you have the urge to smoke, you could chew gum or eat a piece of fruit instead.

For a long time, you can expect to continue to have periods when you really want a cigarette. But these times will come less and less often. One day, you will recognize that you have won the struggle against smoking.

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VOICE ONE:

SCIENCE IN THE NEWS was written by George Grow. Cynthia Kirk was our producer. I’m Bob Doughty.

VOICE TWO:

And I’m Pat Bodnar. Read and listen to our programs at voaspecialenglish.com. To send us e-mail, write to special@voanews.com. And join us again next week for more news about science in Special English on the Voice of America.

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Carbon Trading: How the Chicago Climate Exchange Works

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I’m Shep O'Neal with the VOA Special English Agriculture Report.

A carbon exchange is like a stock exchange for pollution. The idea of trading in greenhouse gases has its roots in the Kyoto Protocol. This is the international treaty to reduce levels of gases that trap heat and are linked to climate change.

The Chicago Climate Exchange is known as the CCX. It provides a market for businesses to trade on the release and capture of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases.

Agricultural businesses can earn credits because plants remove carbon dioxide from the air. The process is called carbon sequestration.

Six different polluting gases are traded on the CCX. These include carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide.

So how do people trade in greenhouse gases? The system is called cap and trade. Members agree to reduce the amount of greenhouse gases they release into the atmosphere by a percentage. That limit is the cap.

Trading takes place when members release less than their limit. That leaves them with a surplus of emission credits. These credits can then be sold to members that have released more than their limit.

Market forces drive the price of the credits. The credits are called Carbon Financial Instruments. Each credit is equal to one hundred metric tons of carbon dioxide, the most common greenhouse gas.

By this December, members of the CCX are supposed to have reduced their emissions four percent below levels in a baseline period. That period is nineteen ninety-eight to two thousand one. A six percent reduction is the target for two thousand ten.

The CCX was the first carbon exchange when it opened in two thousand three. Today it is the only exchange of its kind in North America. In Europe, big producers of greenhouse gases are required to take part in emissions trading. The CCX owns the European Climate Exchange, in the Netherlands.

No one is required to take part in the Chicago Climate Exchange. But those who do are legally required to observe their emission agreements and the rules of the exchange.

Richard Sandor started the CCX. He helped develop the financial futures market for the Chicago Board of Trade. Mister Sandor has said he thinks the market for carbon credits could one day be larger than the market for oil.

This VOA Special English Agriculture Report was written by Mario Ritter. Read and listen to our reports at voaspecialenglish.com. I'm Shep O'Neal.

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Two Places, One Pursuit: English Teaching in Nepal and Afghanistan

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AA: I'm Avi Arditti and this week on Wordmaster: interviews with two English teachers, one from Nepal, the other from Afghanistan. I met them recently at the international convention of TESOL. TESOL is the professional organization Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages.

Govinda Raj Bhattarai

GOVINDA RAJ BHATTARAI: "I am Govinda from Nepal. We have altogether ninety-four living languages spoken in Nepal. Out of those languages, English has sixty-fourth position. And the native speakers of English, the number of the native speakers of English is something -- two thousand thirty or like that [laughs]."

AA: "Not very many."

GOVINDA RAJ BHATTARAI: "Not many at all. The government is very anxious and very eager to improve the situation of English. There are three [examples of that] -- I think these examples are not found in other parts of the world. Earlier, we had English from grade four to ten, now from grade one. Secondly all textbooks are translated into English from grades one to ten. And thirdly government is trying to give training to the teachers who do not have good proficiency level in English.

"And other organizers like NELTA -- which I represent -- Nepal English Language Teachers Association. We have some four hundred members who are English teachers from primary to university levels in our kingdom. And we hold conferences, publish materials, give workshops and trainings for English language teachers to promote their quality."

YAR MOHAMMAD BAHRAMI: "My name is Yar Mohammad Bahrami and I am from Kabul, Afghanistan."

AA: "How much demand is there in Afghanistan for learning English right now?"

Yar Mohammad Bahrami

YAR MOHAMMAD BAHRAMI: "Very much, and very much as you know that is clear to everyone that Afghanistan is now changing and is being changed. And we have international community with us, and Afghanistan intends not to be alone, but intends to have relations with the world, international community.

"So very high demand is for English because we have a lot of international staff, both civilians and military in our country, and they need people to speak English, especially those who want to have a high salary and work with them as translators and interpreters. Especially nowadays, people try to English, even aged people are trying to learn English and find good salary in our country."

AA: "At what age do you start teaching English?"

YAR MOHAMMAD BAHRAMI: "Very long ago, English was taught only as a subject in schools from seventh grade. But according to the changes and new connections, the system has been changed and now the English is going to be taught from grade four."

AA: "What are some of the challenges now in implementing these English teaching programs?"

YAR MOHAMMAD BAHRAMI: "The big challenges we have in our country is lack of professionals, because we were not used to or we were not familiar much more with the English long ago, and people were not entrusted to learn English. That's one. Or people were entrusted but they were afraid, especially when our country was invaded by the former Soviet Union and people were afraid to learn English and the Russian language took the place of the English language. And even sometimes people were forced to live and not learn English and instead learn Russian. But the big challenge we have is lack of professionals.

"But I hope it will be solved because the international community and especially the Fulbright programs we have in Afghanistan, the British Chevening scholarships we have. And a good example is that four of my colleagues are now abroad and do their studies and doing M.E.s [earning Masters of Education degrees]. Two of them are in the U.K. and two of them are in the U.S.A. through Chevening scholarships and Fulbright."

AA: "And they'll come home with masters in education."

YAR MOHAMMAD BAHRAMI: "Yeah, yeah, yeah. The good news for us is when I left Kabul a week ago, two of them arrived back to the country with master's degrees, one from the U.S.A. and one from the U.K.

AA: Yar Mohammad Bahrami is a lecturer in the English Department at Kabul University. And earlier you heard Govinda Raj Bhattarai, an English professor and assistant dean of the Faculty of Education at Tribhuvan University in Kathmandu, Nepal.

They were among the visitors to the VOA Special English booth at the 40th annual convention of the group TESOL, Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages. The convention took place in March in Tampa, Florida.

And that's Wordmaster for this week. Our e-mail address is word@voanews.com, and our segments are all posted at voanews.com/wordmaster. I'm Avi Arditti.

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Cervical Cancer Vaccine Moves Toward U.S. Approval

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I’m Barbara Klein with the VOA Special English Health Report.

A vaccine to protect against cervical cancer has moved toward approval in the United States. The drug company Merck developed the vaccine, called Gardasil. A federal advisory committee accepted Merck's findings that Gardasil is safe and effective for females age nine to twenty-six.

A final decision from the Food and Drug Administration is expected by June eighth.

The World Health Organization says almost half a million women each year develop cervical cancer. More than half of them die from it. Cervical cancer is a leading cause of cancer death in women in developing countries.

Gardasil is designed to protect against infection with human papillomavirus, or HPV. The vaccine blocks two kinds of HPV that experts say are responsible for seventy percent of all cervical cancers. The vaccine is also designed to protect against two other forms that cause most cases of genital warts.

HPV is a common infection among sexually active people. The virus is spread by skin-to-skin contact. Experts say most cases go away within a few years. Many people never show signs of infection.

But in some people, the virus remains for many years. And in some women it can lead to cervical cancer.

The new vaccine does not prevent all forms of HPV linked to cervical cancer. And it is not a replacement for medical examinations.

Experts say a yearly Pap test is the best way to find cervical cancer cells early, when they can be treated most successfully. The test has sharply reduced rates of cervical cancer in the United States and other countries where it is widely used.

Merck says Gardasil is effective for at least five years. It says the vaccine works best in those who are not yet sexually active.

The company is also testing Gardasil in boys and men.

The vaccine is given in three injections over a six-month period. Gardasil is expected to cost three hundred to five hundred dollars. There are concerns that the price could limit its use. Also, some conservative groups have expressed concern that the vaccine could lead young people to become more sexually active.

Later this year, the drug maker GlaxoSmithKline plans to seek approval of a cervical cancer vaccine called Cervarix.

This VOA Special English Health Report was written by Cynthia Kirk. I’m Barbara Klein.

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Honoring Military Service and Sacrifice

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VOICE ONE:

Welcome to THIS IS AMERICA, in VOA Special English. I'm Barbara Klein.

VOICE TWO:

And I'm Steve Ember. The last Monday in May is a national holiday. Memorial Day honors those who died in military service.

VOICE ONE:

But any time of year, visitors to the nation's capital can see a number of memorials that honor members of the armed forces.

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VOICE TWO:

A bugler at Arlington National Cemetery

Part of the tradition of an American military funeral is the playing of a bugle call known as taps. Taps is also played at military burial grounds during Memorial Day ceremonies.

Another traditional honor in many communities is a Memorial Day parade. And new for two thousand six was a ceremony held a week earlier on the grounds of the Washington Monument. The event, called "A Time of Remembrance," was described as the first of its kind.

Organizers invited family members who lost relatives in every conflict since the Revolutionary War. Children of service members killed in Iraq and Afghanistan received special gold medals.

Memorial Day honors all of those who have died in America's wars. But the holiday began as a way to remember soldiers killed in the Civil War. On May thirtieth, eighteen sixty-eight, flowers were placed on the graves of Union and Confederate soldiers at Arlington National Cemetery.

VOICE ONE:

Today, more than two hundred sixty thousand people are buried there. Lines of simple white headstones mark the graves. The eighty-hectare cemetery also serves as a burial place for people of national and historical importance.

The cemetery is in Arlington, Virginia, across the Potomac River from Washington. Next to the burial ground is the Defense Department headquarters at the Pentagon.

VOICE TWO:

A funeral with full military honors traditionally includes a caisson to transport the body. A caisson is a wagon pulled by horses. At Arlington, six black or gray horses pull caissons made in nineteen eighteen. A seventh horse carries the leader of the procession.

Sometimes a horse without a rider also takes part in a funeral. The best known riderless horse was Black Jack. He took part in the funerals of presidents Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson. The horse was named after a famous general known as “Black Jack” Pershing.

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VOICE ONE:

Each year about one and one-half million people visit the Vietnam Veterans Memorial. It is one of the most-visited places in Washington.

The Vietnam Veterans Memorial was the idea of a former soldier named Jan Scruggs. He fought in the Vietnam War. The war ended in nineteen seventy-five. Many soldiers came home only to face the anger of Americans who opposed the war.

Jan Scruggs organized an effort to remember those who never returned.

In nineteen eighty, a group of former soldiers announced a competition to design a memorial. The winner, Maya Lin, was twenty-one years old. She was studying architecture at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut. Maya Lin designed a memorial formed by two walls of black stone.

VOICE TWO:

The Vietnam Veterans Memorial opened in nineteen eighty-two.

The walls are about seventy-six meters long. They are set into the earth. They meet to form a wide V. The names of more than fifty-eight thousand Americans killed or declared missing-in-action are cut into the stone.

Nearby is a statue of three soldiers. They are looking in the direction of the names. Another statue honors the service of women in the war.

Almost any time of day, you can see people looking for the name of a family member or friend who died in the war. Once they find the name, many rub a pencil on paper over the letters to copy it.

Many people leave remembrances at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial. One day, as crowds passed by, two young men left notes. A woman in her late seventies or eighties left a handful of red roses.

VOICE ONE:

After the success of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, Congress approved a memorial to Korean War veterans. The Korean War Veterans Memorial opened in July of nineteen ninety-five. It is near the Vietnam memorial.

The Korean War lasted from nineteen fifty to nineteen fifty-three. The memorial honors those who died. It also honors those who survived.

The Korean War has been called the last foot soldier's war. The memorial includes a group of nineteen statues of soldiers. The soldiers appear to be walking up a hill, toward an American flag.

Artist Frank Gaylord made the statues from steel. Each is more than two meters tall. People who drive along a road near the memorial sometimes think the statues are real soldiers.

VOICE TWO:

On one side of the Korean War Veterans Memorial is a stone walkway. It lists the names of the twenty-two countries that sent troops to Korea under United Nations command. On the other side is a shiny stone wall. Sandblasted into the wall are images from photographs of more than two thousand five hundred support troops.

A Pool of Remembrance shows the numbers of American and United Nations forces killed, wounded, captured or missing. The total is more than two million. Cut into the wall above the pool is a message: "Freedom is Not Free."

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VOICE ONE:

One of the lesser known memorials on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., is often called "the temple." The round stone structure honors people from the District of Columbia who died in World War One.

The war was fought from nineteen fourteen to nineteen eighteen. The memorial was completed in nineteen thirty-one. It is the only District of Columbia memorial on the National Mall.

VOICE TWO:

In nineteen eighty-six, President Ronald Reagan signed legislation to honor women in the military. The Women in Military Service for America Memorial opened in nineteen ninety-seven.

The memorial is near the entrance to Arlington National Cemetery. It recognizes the service of all the women who have taken part in the nation's wars. About two million women have served or currently serve in the armed forces.

Michael Manfredi and Marion Gail Weiss designed a place of glass, water and light. The memorial has a large wall shaped in a half-circle. In front, two hundred jets of water meet in a pool.

Inside the memorial, the stories of women in wartime are cut into glass panels. Computer records contain the names, pictures, service records and personal statements of about two hundred fifty thousand military women.

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VOICE ONE:

The World War Two Memorial is the newest of the major memorials in Washington. It rises between the Lincoln Memorial and the Washington Monument on the National Mall. America entered the war after Japan bombed the Navy base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, on December seventh, ninety forty-one.

Sixteen million men and women served in the American military between nineteen forty-one and nineteen forty-five. More than four hundred thousand died.

VOICE TWO:

The World War Two Memorial stands in the open air. It is built of bronze and granite. In the center, at ground level, is a round pool of water. Except in very cold weather, water shoots from a circle of fountains in the middle.

When the sun is just right, rainbows of color dance in the air. Fifty-six stone pillars rise around the pool. These represent each of the American states and territories, plus the District of Columbia, at the time of the war. On two tall arches appear the names of where the fighting took place. One says Atlantic; the other says Pacific.

Many visitors to the memorial served during the war. One visitor, a former Navy man, once said: "The only good thing about my fighting in the war was that I was too young to be terrified."

VOICE ONE:

A federal law passed in two thousand calls on Americans to stop for one minute at three o'clock local time on Memorial Day. The National Moment of Remembrance honors the members of the armed forces and others who have died in service to America.

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VOICE TWO:

Our program was written by Jerilyn Watson and produced by Caty Weaver. I'm Steve Ember.

VOICE ONE:

And I'm Barbara Klein. Read and listen to our programs at voaspecialenglish.com. And join us again next week for THIS IS AMERICA in VOA Special English.

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With Solid Fuels, a Deadly Risk of Indoor Air Pollution

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I’m Steve Ember with the VOA Special English Development Report.

Charcoal sellers in Haiti in 2004. Most of Haiti's forests have been cut down, largely to provide wood for cooking fuel.

The World Health Organization says half of the world’s population burns wood, coal, animal waste or other solid fuels. More than three thousand million people use solid fuels to cook and to heat and light their homes.

But people who burn these fuels often breathe in large amounts of smoke. This can lead to pneumonia and other diseases. Children are especially at risk.

The W.H.O., the United Nations health agency, recently published a report about the dangers of solid fuels. The report says these fuels are the cause of one and one-half million deaths each year.

Two out of three deaths happen in Southeast Asia and in Africa south of the Sahara Desert.

Among the victims are an estimated eight hundred thousand children and five hundred thousand women. Experts say indoor pollution also kills two hundred thousand men each year.

The World Health Organization says there has been little progress since nineteen ninety in supplying more people with modern cooking fuels.

The report discusses what it would take to cut the use of solid fuels in half by two thousand fifteen. To do that, almost five hundred thousand people every day would need to gain modern energy services. But experts say gains in health and productivity would more than pay for the costs required.

The W.H.O. estimates a yearly cost of thirteen thousand million dollars to supply liquefied petroleum gas to half the people now using solid fuels. It says that investment would result in yearly economic gains of ninety-one thousand million dollars. Other kinds of fuel would cost more.

Eva Rehfuess wrote the W.H.O. report. She says there are simple solutions that could help people in the short term. These include cleaner-burning stoves and better systems to clear the air in homes. She says longer-term solutions include a change to cleaner cooking fuels such as liquefied petroleum gas, biogas, ethanol or plant oils.

Miz Rehfuess says users would pay most of the investment costs, but some public investment would be needed to start the process.

The report is called "Fuel for Life: Household Energy and Health." It can be found on the World Health Organization Web site at w-h-o dot i-n-t (who.int). Enter the words "Fuel for Life" in the search box at the top.

This VOA Special English Development Report was written by Lawan Davis. Read and listen to our reports at voaspecialenglish.com. I’m Steve Ember.

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Dog Talk: Most Dogs in the U.S. Seem to Have an Easy Life

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Now, the VOA Special English program, Words and Their Stories.

Most dogs in the United States seem to have an easy life. They sleep a lot and get fed often. People take their dogs for a walk two times a day and also let them play outside. Dogs get medical care when they are sick or injured. What a great life! Right? Well, we say people with a similar, carefree existence enjoy a “dog’s life.” They have no troubles or responsibilities. They can come and go as they please, sleep all day, and never have to work.

But not everyone has it so easy. In fact, some people say we live in a “dog-eat-dog world.” That means many people are competing for the same things, like good jobs. They say that to be successful, a person has to “work like a dog.” This means they have to work very, very hard. Such hard work can make people “dog-tired.” And, the situation would be even worse if they became “sick as a dog.”

Still, people say “every dog has its day.” This means that every person enjoys a successful period during his or her life. To be successful, people often have to learn new skills. Yet, some people say that “you can never teach an old dog new tricks.” They believe that older people do not like to learn new things and will not change the way they do things.

Some people are compared to dogs in bad ways. People who are unkind or uncaring can be described as “meaner than a junkyard dog.” Junkyard dogs live in places where people throw away things they do not want. Mean dogs are often used to guard this property. They bark or attack people who try to enter the property. However, sometimes a person appears to be mean and threatening but is really not so bad. We say “his bark is worse than his bite.”

A junkyard is not a fun place for a dog. Many dogs in the United States sleep in safe little houses near their owners’ home. These doghouses provide shelter. Yet they can be cold and lonely in the winter.

Husbands and wives use this “doghouse” term when they are angry at each other. For example, a woman might get angry at her husband for coming home late or forgetting their wedding anniversary. She might tell him that he is “in the doghouse.” She may not treat him nicely until he apologizes. However, the husband may decide that it is best to leave things alone and not create more problems. He might decide “to let sleeping dogs lie.”

Dog expressions also are used to describe the weather. “The dog days of summer” are the hottest days of the year. A rainstorm may cool the weather. But we do not want it to rain too hard. We do not want it “to rain cats and dogs.”

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This VOA Special English program, WORDS AND THEIR STORIES, was written by Jill Moss. I’m Faith Lapidus.

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Scott Joplin: The King of Ragtime Music

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VOICE ONE:

I’m Steve Ember.

VOICE TWO:

And I’m Barbara Klein with People in America in VOA Special English. Today we tell about the life and work of one of America’s greatest music writers: Scott Joplin, the King of Ragtime.

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VOICE ONE:

That song is called “Maple Leaf Rag.” Scott Joplin wrote it more than one hundred years ago. The song changed Joplin’s life. It was very popular. The composer earned a good living from the sales of the sheet music. He also became famous.

But, even today, much about Scott Joplin remains a mystery. There is conflicting information about the most basic facts, like when and where he was born.Official population documents suggest Scott Joplin was born in eighteen sixty-seven and eighteen sixty-eight. He was born in Texas, probably near the border with Arkansas. The Joplins moved to Texarkana, Texas sometime after eighteen seventy-five and Scott grew up there.

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VOICE TWO:

Scott was the second of seven children born to Giles and Florence Joplin. His father was a freed slave who worked on the railroad. His mother cleaned people’s homes.

The whole Joplin family was musical. Scott’s father played the violin. His mother played the banjo. And all the Joplins enjoyed singing together at home.

Scott learned to play several musical instruments. But Florence Joplin wanted her son to learn how to play the piano. When Scott was about seven years old he began taking piano lessons with a music teacher at his school. The Joplins were poor, so Scott’s mother paid for the weekly lessons with food. Florence Joplin also got permission for her son to use a piano in one of the houses she cleaned in Texarkana.

Florence and Giles Joplin separated before Scott became a teenager. Some experts think Scott blamed himself for the break-up. Many experts also think Scott Joplin’s opera “Treemonisha” included incidents of his life with his mother after Giles Joplin left. For example, the character “Treemonisha” receives music lessons paid for by her mother who cleans people’s houses. Listen to this aria from the opera. Carmen Balthrop is Treemonisha.

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VOICE ONE:

Scott Joplin’s early piano lessons did not include ragtime. That kind of music was played in dance and drinking places and was not considered acceptable.Scott first studied classical music with several teachers. They included a German immigrant named Julius Weiss who probably had the strongest influence on the boy.

VOICE TWO:

Scott left Texas when he was a teenager. He worked as a piano player and gave lessons in the guitar and mandolin. In his twenties he settled in Sedalia, Missouri. He formed a group called the Texas Medley Quartet. The group sometimes traveled great distances to perform. Scott Joplin began his music-writing career in Sedalia. He attended college classes to learn to become a composer.

Joplin also got a permanent job in Sedalia playing the piano in a new nightclub. Sedalia’s most important citizens visited the Maple Leaf Club. The job permitted Joplin time to write and play his own work.

Something even more important happened to Joplin in Sedalia. He met John Stark, the owner of a local music store. In eighty ninety-nine, Stark published the song “Maple Leaf Rag.” It was not Joplin’s first published music. But it was the he was most proud of.

Stark offered to pay Joplin a percentage of each sale of “Maple Leaf Rag” sheet music. This was an extremely unusual business agreement for a white publisher and black composer at that time. Usually, white publishers paid only a small amount of money for full ownership of music written by African-Americans. The agreement was very good for both Scott Joplin and John Stark.

(MUSIC)

VOICE ONE:

Ragtime music is dance music. It combines a solid, often lively, beat with a looser, complex melody. Most experts agree that the traditional music and dance of American slaves played a big part in the development of ragtime.

Here is a perfect example. Scott Joplin and John Stark published “A Breeze From Alabama” in nineteen-oh-two. It is music for a dance called the two-step.

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VOICE TWO:

John Stark decided that Scott Joplin was going to become too popular to stay in the small town of Sedalia. He decided to move his music business to the big city of Saint Louis, Missouri. Joplin moved to Saint Louis with a woman named Belle Hayden. Later they were married. But Joplin was not as successful in love as he was in music. He and Belle separated in nineteen-oh-two.

Two years later Joplin married again. But his wife, Freddie Alexander, died just three months later. The Scott Joplin Organization in Sedalia, Missouri says Joplin wrote this rag, “The Chrysanthemum,” for his second wife.

(MUSIC)

After his wife’s death, in nineteen-oh-five, Joplin wrote a concert waltz called “Bethena.” The piece has a sad sound to it, quite unlike Joplin’s earlier work. You might recognize it as the theme music for the Special English program Words and Their Stories.

(MUSIC)

VOICE ONE:

Joplin lived in many places in the years that followed. He also worked on his opera, “Treemonisha.” He had hoped his longtime business partner John Stark would publish it, but he refused. Stark did not think a ragtime opera would sell.

After nineteen-oh-seven Joplin lived mostly in New York City. He and his new wife Lottie tried for many years to get “Treemonisha” produced. But its opening night did not come until more than fifty years after Joplin’s death.

By about nineteen fifteen, Scott Joplin began suffering badly from syphilis. The disease robbed him of his ability to play piano. It also destroyed his ability to write music. He died in New York City in nineteen-seventeen.

Scott Joplin left the world sixty musical works. These include many piano rags that are still played today.

(MUSIC)

VOICE TWO:

This program was written and produced by Caty Weaver. I’m Barbara Klein.

VOICE ONE:

And I’m Steve Ember. Join us again next week for People in America in VOA Special English. We leave you now with one of Scott Joplin’s prettiest rags, “Heliotrope Bouquet.”

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A Municipal Report

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ANNOUNCER: And now, the weekly VOA Special English program of American stories.

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Our story today is called "A Municipal Report." It was written by O. Henry and first published in nineteen-oh-four. Here is Shep O'Neal with the story.

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STORYTELLE: It was raining as I got off the train in Nashville, Tennessee -- a slow, gray rain. I was tired so I went straight to my hotel.

A big, heavy man was walking up and down in the hotel lobby. Something about the way he moved made me think of a hungry dog looking for a bone. He had a big, fat, red face and a sleepy expression in his eyes. He introduced himself as Wentworth Caswell -- Major Wentworth Caswell -- from "a fine southern family." Caswell pulled me into the hotel's barroom and yelled for a waiter. We ordered drinks. While we drank, he talked continually about himself, his family, his wife and her family. He said his wife was rich. He showed me a handful of silver coins that he pulled from his coat pocket.

By this time, I had decided that I wanted no more of him. I said good night.

I went up to my room and looked out the window. It was ten o'clock but the town was silent. "A nice quiet place," I said to myself as I got ready for bed. Just an ordinary, sleepy southern town."

I was born in the south myself. But I live in New York now. I write for a large magazine. My boss had asked me to go to Nashville. The magazine had received some stories and poems from a writer in Nashville, named Azalea Adair. The editor liked her work very much. The publisher asked me to get her to sign an agreement to write only for his magazine.

I left the hotel at nine o'clock the next morning to find Miss Adair. It was still raining. As soon as I stepped outside I met Uncle Caesar. He was a big, old black man with fuzzy gray hair.

Uncle Caesar was wearing the strangest coat I had ever seen. It must have been a military officer's coat. It was very long and when it was new it had been gray. But now rain, sun and age had made it a rainbow of colors. Only one of the buttons was left. It was yellow and as big as a fifty cent coin.

Uncle Caesar stood near a horse and carriage. He opened the carriage door and said softly, "Step right in, sir. I'll take you anywhere in the city."

"I want to go to eight-sixty-one Jasmine Street," I said, and I started to climb into the carriage. But the old man stopped me. "Why do you want to go there, sir? "

"What business is it of yours?" I said angrily. Uncle Caesar relaxed and smiled. "Nothing, sir. But it's a lonely part of town. Just step in and I'll take you there right away."

Eight-sixty-one Jasmine Street had been a fine house once, but now it was old and dying. I got out of the carriage.

"That will be two dollars, sir," Uncle Caesar said. I gave him two one-dollar bills. As I handed them to him, I noticed that one had been torn in half and fixed with a piece of blue paper. Also, the upper right hand corner was missing.

Azalea Adair herself opened the door when I knocked. She was about fifty years old. Her white hair was pulled back from her small, tired face. She wore a pale yellow dress. It was old, but very clean.

Azalea Adair led me into her living room. A damaged table, three chairs and an old red sofa were in the center of the floor.

Azalea Adair and I sat down at the table and began to talk. I told her about the magazine's offer and she told me about herself. She was from an old southern family. Her father had been a judge.

Azalea Adair told me she had never traveled or even attended school. Her parents taught her at home with private teachers. We finished our meeting. I promised to return with the agreement the next day, and rose to leave.

At that moment, someone knocked at the back door. Azalea Adair whispered a soft apology and went to answer the caller. She came back a minute later with bright eyes and pink cheeks. She looked ten years younger. "You must have a cup of tea before you go," she said. She shook a little bell on the table, and a small black girl about twelve years old ran into the room.

Azalea Aair opened a tiny old purse and took out a dollar bill. It had been fixed with a piece of blue paper and the upper right hand corner was missing. It was the dollar I had given to Uncle Caesar. "Go to Mister Baker's store, Impy," she said, "and get me twenty-five cents' worth of tea and ten cents' worth of sugar cakes. And please hurry."

The child ran out of the room. We heard the back door close. Then the girl screamed. Her cry mixed with a man's angry voice. Azalea Adair stood up. Her face showed no emotion as she left the room. I heard the man's rough voice and her gentle one. Then a door slammed and she came back into the room.

"I am sorry, but I won't be able to offer you any tea after all," she said. "It seems that Mister Baker has no more tea. Perhaps he will find some for our visit tomorrow."

We said good-bye. I went back to my hotel.

Just before dinner, Major Wentworth Caswell found me. It was impossible to avoid him. He insisted on buying me a drink and pulled two one-dollar bills from his pocket. Again I saw a torn dollar fixed with blue paper, with a corner missing. It was the one I gave Uncle Caesar. How strange, I thought. I wondered how Caswell got it.

Uncle Caesar was waiting outside the hotel the next afternoon. He took me to Miss Adair's house and agreed to wait there until we had finished our business.

Azalea Adair did not look well. I explained the agreement to her. She signed it. Then, as she started to rise from the table, Azalea Adair fainted and fell to the floor. I picked her up and carried her to the old red sofa. I ran to the door and yelled to Uncle Caesar for help. He ran down the street. Five minutes later, he was back with a doctor.

The doctor examined Miss Adair and turned to the old black driver. "Uncle Caesar," he said, "run to my house and ask my wife for some milk and some eggs. Hurry!"

Then the doctor turned to me. "She does not get enough to eat," he said. "She has many friends who want to help her, but she is proud. Misses Caswell will accept help only from that old black man. He was once her family's slave."

"Misses Caswell." I said in surprise. "I thought she was Azalea Adair."

"She was," the doctor answered, "until she married Wentworth Caswell twenty years ago. But he's a hopeless drunk who takes even the small amount of money that Uncle Caesar gives her."

After the doctor left I heard Caesar's voice in the other room. "Did he take all the money I gave you yesterday, Miss Azalea?" "Yes, Caesar," I heard her answer softly. "He took both dollars."

I went into the room and gave Azalea Adair fifty dollars. I told her it was from the magazine. Then Uncle Caesar drove me back to the hotel.

A few hours later, I went out for a walk before dinner. A crowd of people were talking excitedly in front of a store. I pushed my way into the store. Major Caswell was lying on the floor. He was dead.

Someone had found his body on the street. He had been killed in a fight. In fact, his hands were still closed into tight fists. But as I stood near his body, Caswell's right hand opened. Something fell from it and rolled near my feet. I put my foot on it, then picked it up and put it in my pocket.

People said they believed a thief had killed him. They said Caswell had been showing everyone that he had fifty dollars. But when he was found, he had no money on him.

I left Nashville the next morning. As the train crossed a river I took out of my pocket the object that had dropped from Caswell's dead hand. I threw it into the river below.

It was a button. A yellow button...the one from Uncle Caesar's coat.

(MUSIC)

ANNOUNCER: You have just heard the story "A Municipal Report." It was written by O. Henry and adapted for Special English by Dona de Sanctis. Your narrator was Shep O'Neal. This is Susan Clark. Join us again next time for another American story on the Voice of America.

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W.H.O. Members Mourn Death of Agency Chief Lee Jong-wook

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I'm Steve Ember with IN THE NEWS in VOA Special English.

Lee Jong-wook

Health ministers from more than one hundred ninety countries met this week in Geneva to discuss issues like bird flu and other threats. But the yearly meeting of the World Health Assembly opened with tragic news. Lee Jong-wook, head of the World Health Organization, had died hours before he was supposed to give a speech at the meeting.

Doctor Lee suffered a stroke last weekend. He died Monday following an operation to remove a blood clot from his brain. Doctor Lee, a South Korean, was sixty-one years old.

The W.H.O. named Assistant Director-General Anders Nordstrom as acting leader. Officials say it could take as a long as a year for the organization to choose a new director-general.

On Wednesday, more than one thousand people attended funeral services in Geneva for Lee Jong-wook. Speakers there and at the fifty-ninth World Health Assembly praised his efforts to improve health conditions around the world.

Doctor Lee had worked for twenty-three years for the W.H.O., the United Nations health agency. He played a major part in campaigns against tuberculosis, leprosy, malaria and polio. He became director-general in two thousand three.

One of his major goals was to get treatment to many more people with H.I.V. and AIDS in developing countries. He worked to make the W.H.O. more effective in dealing with infectious diseases.

The agency says his work has made the world better prepared for the possible spread of avian flu. One example is an agreement last year among W.H.O. members to develop a fast reporting system for suspected cases.

More than two hundred cases have been confirmed in ten countries since two thousand three. These have resulted in more than one hundred twenty deaths.

Most of the cases are believed to have been caused directly by contact with infected birds or their waste.

But as world health ministers were meeting in Geneva, medical teams were investigating an unusual situation in northern Indonesia. At least six members of a family died from the h-five-n-one virus in the past month.

The W.H.O. sent experts to North Sumatra to investigate. The agency said all the cases can be directly linked to close and extended periods of contact with a patient.

Julie Gerberding heads the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. She said in Geneva that experts believed the disease spread among family members caring for others who were sick.

Early reports suggested that three of the people had spent a night in a small room with the woman who had the first case in the family.

Officials say tests on the victims found no evidence that the virus had changed in ways that would let it spread easily from person-to-person.

IN THE NEWS in VOA Special English was written by Nancy Steinbach. Read and listen to our reports at voaspecialenglish.com. I’m Steve Ember.

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Springsteen Sings the Songs of Seeger

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HOST:

Welcome to AMERICAN MOSAIC, in VOA Special English.

(MUSIC)

I'm Doug Johnson. On our show this week:

We answer a question about the Internet …

Play some new recordings of folk songs by Bruce Springsteen …

And report about a few movies being released this summer.

Summer Movies

HOST:

Summer is the most popular season for Hollywood movies. Faith Lapidus tells about three movies that opened recently.

FAITH LAPIDUS:

"United 93" from Universal Pictures

One of the most talked-about movies is called “United Ninety-three.” It tells about one of the planes that Islamic terrorists hijacked in the United States on September eleventh, two thousand one. The movie shows how several of the passengers tried to gain control of the plane from the terrorists. The target of the plane was thought to be either the White House or the Capitol building in Washington, D.C. However, the plane crashed in a field in the state of Pennsylvania, killing everyone.

“United Ninety-three” was directed by Paul Greengrass, who is British. There are no famous actors in the film. In fact, several people who took part in the events of that day play themselves in the movie.

Many critics praised “United Ninety-three” as realistic. However, some Americans refuse to see it because they say it presents a tragic event for entertainment purposes.

The first big adventure movie of the summer is “Mission: Impossible Three.” It is the third in a series of movies based on a popular American television program of the nineteen sixties. Tom Cruise again stars as secret government agent Ethan Hunt. In this movie, he must rescue another secret agent. Later, he must rescue the woman he marries in the film. And he must stop a dangerous weapons dealer, played by Philip Seymour Hoffman.

“Mission: Impossible Three” has exciting car crashes, helicopter chases and explosions. Tom Cruise even jumps between tall buildings in Shanghai, China. This is the first motion picture directed by J.J. Abrams, who created two popular television series.

“The Da Vinci Code” opened last Friday. It is based on the book by Dan Brown that has sold more than forty million copies. The movie stars Tom Hanks as a professor who must solve a murder mystery involving art history and religion. Some of the movie was filmed in the Louvre Museum in Paris where parts of the story take place.

Some Catholic officials around the world have urged people not to see “The Da Vinci Code.” They say it presents theories about Jesus that insult the Christian religion. However, director Ron Howard said people should remember that "this is supposed to be entertainment."

Early reports said “The Da Vinci Code” had an estimated two hundred twenty-four million dollars in ticket sales worldwide during its first three days in theaters.

Internet Connections

Our listener question this week comes from Vietnam. Tran Khanh Linh wants to know how a dial-up Internet connection, a DSL connection and an ADSL connection are different.

A dial-up connection is where the computer connects to the Internet over a traditional telephone line. With dial-up service, users enter a phone number into their computer and wait until the connection is set up. Dial-up connections are slow. That means it can take a long time to load Web sites.

Until a few years ago, dial-up connections were the only way most people could use the Internet. New and improved technologies offer much faster connections.

In the United States, the use of dial-up service is less and less common. Today, most Americans who use the Internet have a high-speed connection, also known as broadband. With broadband, the computer always stays connected to the Internet.

Several kinds of technologies provide high-speed connections. Among them are DSL and ADSL.

DSL stands for Digital Subscriber Line. With DSL connections, Internet users have much faster download speeds than with a traditional phone line. The download speed is how long it takes to see a Web page or save a music file or an e-mail attachment.

Another kind of DSL is ADSL. It stands for Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Line. Asymmetric means unequal. With ADSL, the upload speed is slower than the download speed. That means it takes longer to send information from a computer to the Internet than to receive information from the Internet.

ADSL connections cost less than other DSL service. People usually have ADSL because they do not need to upload large amounts of information like a business would. To them it is more important to have fast download speeds.

Other ways to get fast Internet are by cable modem, fiber optic connection and satellite. People can also find wireless service in more and more public places. And some lucky people have high-speed service on their cell phones.

Springsteen Plays Seeger

HOST:

Bruce Springsteen with the Seeger Sessions Band

Rock and roll musician Bruce Springsteen has released a new album. It honors folk music singer Pete Seeger. The collection of thirteen traditional folk songs can be described as music to listen to loudly. Barbara Klein tells us more.

BARBARA KLEIN:

Springsteen’s new record is called “We Shall Overcome: The Seeger Sessions.” Springsteen and a new group of musicians performed some of the songs at the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival last month. The city is still recovering from damages caused by Hurricane Katrina last August.

“The Seeger Sessions” is Springsteen’s first album of “cover” songs. They are Springsteen’s version of folk music made popular by Pete Seeger. Seeger is a musician, songwriter and social activist.

He was a leader of the political folk music movement of the nineteen fifties and sixties. For example, Seeger recorded this song in nineteen sixty-three. He was performing at Carnegie Hall in New York City.

(MUSIC: “We Shall Overcome”)

Here is Bruce Springsteen with the same song.

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Bruce Springsteen says he got the idea for the album in nineteen ninety-seven. At that time, Springsteen was recording music for a different album in honor of Pete Seeger. Springsteen says that experience sent him looking for a new band. He says he wanted a special sound – the sound of people just sitting around playing music. This song from “ We Shall Overcome: The Seeger Sessions” represents just that sound. It is called “Old Dan Tucker.”

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HOST:

I'm Doug Johnson. I hope you enjoyed our program today.

Our show was written by Shelley Gollust, Daniel Kirch and Jill Moss. Caty Weaver was our producer.

Join us again next week for AMERICAN MOSAIC, VOA’s radio magazine in Special English.

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Fannie Mae Agrees to Big Fine to Settle Accounting Case

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I'm Bob Doughty with the VOA Special English Economics Report.

Fannie Mae, the mortgage-finance company, agreed this week to pay a fine of four hundred million dollars. The United States government will get some of that money. Most of it will go to shareholders.

The Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight says top officers at Fannie Mae created a false image of always meeting earnings targets. This let them receive millions of dollars in extra pay.

The office released a report that deals with the period from nineteen ninety-eight to two thousand four. It says former chief Franklin Raines set high goals for earnings per share. Company officials then produced misleading financial reports that gave the appearance of smooth growth.

The report says Mister Raines received fifty-two million dollars in bonus payments.

Mister Raines says he never approved or knew about any violations of accounting rules. And his replacement, Daniel Mudd, says Fannie Mae has "learned some powerful lessons." Yet the report says Mister Mudd did not fully investigate concerns expressed by three employees.

Fannie Mae buys home loans from banks and other lenders. This gives them money to lend for other purposes. Fannie Mae is a private company. It began in nineteen thirty-eight as the Federal National Mortgage Association, created by Congress.

To buy mortgages, Fannie Mae borrows huge amounts of money. In fact, it is the second largest borrower in the world after the United States government.

Fannie Mae sells and trades investment products secured by mortgages. The report says Fannie Mae sought to present itself as a very low-risk company when, in fact, it was out of control. The report also says Fannie Mae officials tried to slow the investigation through influence in Congress.

The civil fine is one of the largest ever in such a case. The settlement does not require Fannie Mae to admit or deny wrongdoing. Under the agreement, Fannie Mae will not add to its mortgage holdings without approval. And it must propose a system of financial controls.

Fannie Mae has already been ordered to restate its earnings to correct for accounting mistakes. These are currently estimated at about eleven thousand million dollars.

Fannie Mae and a smaller company, Freddie Mac, control about half the home loans in the nation. Three years ago, Freddie Mac reported five thousand million dollars in accounting mistakes.

This VOA Special English Economics Report was written by Mario Ritter. I'm Bob Doughty.

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Mesa Verde National Park in Colorado: Protecting the Culture of Ancient Native Americans

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VOICE ONE:

I’m Steve Ember.

VOICE TWO:

And I’m Barbara Klein with Explorations in VOA Special English. Today we tell about a large National Park established to protect the culture of ancient Native Americans. It is called Mesa Verde.

(MUSIC)

VOICE ONE:

Cliff dwellings at Mesa Verde

It was cold that day in eighteen eighty-eight in southwestern Colorado. Richard Wetherill and his brother-in-law were trying to find some missing cattle. They were up on Mesa Verde. Spanish explorers had named the area. The high, flat mountaintop is covered with many green juniper and pinon pine trees. It looks like a huge green table, which is “mesa verde” in Spanish.

The two men came to the edge of a deep canyon. Through the falling snow, they saw what looked like a small city across the canyon. It was suspended in the middle of the rock wall. There were many connected rooms built into a natural opening in the rock.

They named the ruins Cliff Palace. In the next few days, they found two more large ruins. They named one Spruce Tree House. They named the other Square Tower House.

VOICE TWO:

A number of other people had seen and taken pictures of some of the cliff dwellings earlier. But the Wetherill family was the first group to study them. Soon after his discovery, Richard Wetherill returned to Mesa Verde, to the ruins that had remained silent and untouched for centuries.

Richard Wetherill collected many objects. It was an easy task. It looked as if the people who had lived there had just walked away, leaving everything they owned. Cooking pots by the fireplaces. Food bowls on the floors. Shoes in the corners. Sticks for digging by the doors.

The ruins in Colorado had been home to the ancestors of the present day members of the Pueblo tribes. They were named Anasazi, or ancient ones, by the Navajo Indians. They moved to Mesa Verde about one thousand five hundred years ago and left seven hundred years ago. They built the cliff dwellings in Mesa Verde toward the end of the eight hundred years they lived there.

VOICE ONE:

Richard Wetherill showed his collection of objects in nearby towns. People were not interested. Just some more old Indian things, they said. Finally, he sold his collection to the Colorado Historical Society. But the Wetherill family continued exploring Mesa Verde. Their finds became known in the eastern United States and in Europe. Hundreds of people went to Mesa Verde to see for themselves.

VOICE TWO:

One of the earliest visitors was a young man from Sweden, Gustaf Nordenskiold. Mister Nordenskiold spent months exploring the area. He traveled on foot and on horseback. He took pictures that were published in a book, “The Cliff Dwellers of the Mesa Verde.”

Gustaf Nordenskiold collected hundreds of objects he found in the ruins. He loaded them on teams of mules and sent them to the nearby town of Durango, Colorado. Local officials tried to prevent him from removing so many objects. But there were no laws to stop him. Mister Nordenskiold shipped the objects to Sweden. Later, they were given to the national museum in Helsinki, Finland, where they remain today.

VOICE ONE:

Many people were shocked by the continuing removal of objects from the ruins at Mesa Verde. One was a woman named Virginia McClurg. She had visited the area and had explored a few small ruins. From eighteen eighty-seven to eighteen ninety-six, she campaigned throughout the country to get laws to save the cliff dwellings. She gave speeches describing the destruction of the dwellings by people seeking treasures. She worked for years with members of the United States Congress to get such laws passed.

Finally, on June twenty-ninth, nineteen-oh-six, President Theodore Roosevelt signed a bill creating Mesa Verde National Park. It was the first National Park designed to protect the works of humans. Then Congress approved the Federal Antiquities Act of nineteen-oh-six. The act helps protect ancient ruins on federal lands.

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VOICE TWO:

Today, from a distance, Mesa Verde appears as it did centuries ago. It rises more than five hundred forty meters above the floor of the valley. Visitors can drive up to the top of Mesa Verde on a winding mountain road. When you reach the top, you are two thousand four hundred meters above sea level. In the distance are the flat lands and mountains of the Four Corners area. That is where the western states of Colorado, New Mexico, Utah and Arizona meet. This area has one of the largest numbers of archeological sites in the United States.

VOICE ONE:

Within the national park are more than five thousand ruins from the time of the Ancestral Puebloan people. Six hundred are cliff dwellings. Most of the ruins remain unexplored. Some have been uncovered and supported to make them safe to visit. These ruins are open to the public during most of the year. During the winter, activities are limited. The visitors' center at the park is open during the summer. The museum is open all year.

The visitors’ center and the museum provide information about the history of the culture of the ancient Pueblo people and about present-day Indians. National Park Service guides lead visitors to the ruins. They give talks about the cultural history of the area. And they talk about the geology and wildlife.

VOICE TWO:

Some of the ruins in the Four Corners area are from the earliest people who lived there. They were hunters and gatherers, now known as Basket Makers. The Basket Makers lived in simple caves. Their civilization existed two thousand years ago. The first evidence that ancient people had moved to Mesa Verde is from about the year five hundred. Those people lived in pit houses. Pit houses were large holes in the ground with roofs of wood and mud.

In about the year seven hundred fifty, the early Pueblo people began building square structures of large connected rooms, or pueblos, above ground. Finally, in about eleven hundred, they climbed down the canyon walls and began building cliff dwellings. Today, visitors to Mesa Verde can see some of the remains of all four kinds of settlements.

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VOICE ONE:

Cliff Palace is the largest cliff dwelling in Mesa Verde and also in North America. It has one hundred fifty rooms. It is difficult to get to it. Visitors must climb down into the canyon on a narrow path with many steps. They must also climb down several ladders. But the trip is well worth the effort. Visitors can examine a huge and beautiful structure made of stone and clay.

Spruce Tree House is the third largest cliff dwelling in Mesa Verde National Park. It has one hundred fourteen rooms. It also has eight underground rooms called kivas. The Indian men gathered in the kivas for special ceremonies. About one hundred people lived in this cliff dwelling during the thirteenth century.

Spruce Tree House is the easiest cliff dwelling to visit. The path curves down into the valley and then up to the ruin. Signs along the path point to trees and plants used by the Ancestral Puebloan people. Also along the path are the juniper and pinon pine trees that make Mesa Verde green.

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VOICE TWO:

About five hundred thousand people visit Mesa Verde National Park each year. The park’s archeologists have recovered many objects that the ancient Pueblo people used, including pots, tools and jewelry. Many of the objects are shown in the visitors’ center. However, human remains or any object from a grave may not be touched or shown. This is to honor the wishes of the modern Puebloan people who live in the area today.

Mesa Verde National Park occupies twenty-one thousand hectares of land. However, only about ten percent of the area has been explored.

VOICE ONE:

Mesa Verde is recognized as a special place. The United Nations named it one of the first World Heritage sites in nineteen seventy-eight. Special events were held at Mesa Verde during its one hundredth anniversary in two thousand six. They included tours of areas never before open to the public.

Today's Pueblo Indians whose ancestors lived in Mesa Verde consider it a sacred place. And for visitors from around the world, it remains a place of mystery and beauty.

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VOICE TWO:

This program was written by Marilyn Christiano and Shelley Gollust. It was produced by Mario Ritter. I’m Barbara Klein.

VOICE ONE:

And I’m Steve Ember. Join us again next week for Explorations in VOA Special English.

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In Choice of Immigration Terms, Some Say Focus on the Act, Not the Actor

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AA: I'm Avi Arditti with Rosanne Skirble, and this week on Wordmaster: what to call people who are in the United States without following immigration laws.

RS: Sometimes they are called "undocumented immigrants" or "undocumented workers" or "illegal aliens." The most common term by far, though, at least as reflected in the news media, is "illegal immigrants." Yet in the debate over immigration policy, linguist Otto Santa Ana at the University of California, Los Angeles, sees it as a biased political term.

AA: Which may help explain why Professor Santa Ana has found a small increase since 2004 in the use of more-neutral terms in newspapers. He traces this to a speech by President Bush in January of 2004 during his re-election campaign.

OTTO SANTA ANA: "I believe that he opened up and made legitimate, for once, the characterization of immigrants as family members, as people, as God-fearing, hard-working individuals trying to make a living. Until that time no one with the president's power ever referred to immigrants as people.

"And so although that is understood, it is articulated each and every time that we say 'immigrants without papers,' 'people who are working here without legal documents' or other sorts of circumlocutions, to not focus the illegality on the immigrant.

"And, in fact, in Congress right now, what the senators and representatives are discussing is the official status of those people. So by using the term 'illegal immigrant' solely, what the journalists do is articulate a partisan perspective."

RS: In fact, Professor Santa Ana calls the term illegal immigrant a "vigilante term."

OTTO SANTA ANA: "You know, for one thing news editors already exclude the notion of 'illegal' as a noun. In the early '90s, people were very comfortable with saying 'Oh, those illegals.' But that was already understood to be pejorative. In a very negative way, it characterized people as primarily criminals. But they have broken a civil law that's equivalent in some sense -- in very many senses -- to jaywalking, but we don't call jaywalkers 'illegal pedestrians.'"

AA: "You're talking about the act of being within the United States ... "

OTTO SANTA ANA: "Is currently a civil infraction of the law. It is technically illegal. But the term illegal immigrant -- if you say the people who are here without legal papers, that's a more appropriate characterization."

RS: "So what I'm hearing you say is that since 2004 you're seeing in the media other words next to immigrant: undocumented, without papers ... "

OTTO SANTA ANA: "Right."

RS: " ... without legal papers."

OTTO SANTA ANA: "Exactly."

RS: "And so those phrases are ... "

OTTO SANTA ANA: "They provide an alternative way of viewing the immigrants. We'd never say, for example, that the people who are hiring immigrants who don't have papers 'criminal bosses' or 'illicit businesses. If we did, then one could argue that illegal immigrant is perfectly neutral.

"But we are not characterizing, we are not focusing on the characterization of the status of the immigrant in the totality. We're focusing on that individual and calling that person a criminal up front."

RS: "Among themselves, what do immigrants call their situation?"

OTTO SANTA ANA: "Well, they use all sorts of terms. They will say 'indocumentado' ... "

RS: "Undocumented."

OTTO SANTA ANA: "They will say 'illegal.'"

RS: "Illegal. They'll say illegal?"

OTTO SANTA ANA: "Yes, yes. They'll also say 'sin papel,' without papers, and all sorts of other terminology. The range -- it's not like a standard term that's being used, but what I want to focus our attention on is journalistic language."

AA: "What about on the macro level? What would -- is there an alternative to the term illegal immigration? Or is that OK to use that term, do you think? I mean, if you were a news editor or a headline writer and you had to use the term, like to put in a headline, what term would you use?"

OTTO SANTA ANA: "I'd avoid any adjective."

AA: "You'd just refer to immigration."

OTTO SANTA ANA: "Immigration."

RS: Linguist Otto Santa Ana is an associate professor in the Department of Chicana and Chicano Studies at UCLA and author of several books. And that's Wordmaster for this week. Our e-mail address is word@voanews.com.

RS: And you can read and listen to all our segments at voanews.com/wordmaster. With Avi Arditti, I'm Rosanne Skirble.

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Americans Vote for Change in 1920 as Harding Promises 'Normalcy'

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VOICE ONE:

THE MAKING OF A NATION -- a program in Special English on the Voice of America.

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This is Shirley Griffith. Today, Doug Johnson and I tell about America's presidential election of nineteen twenty and the man who won it, Warren Harding.

VOICE TWO:

The presidential election of nineteen twenty was a turning point in American politics. It ended a period of social reforms at home and an active foreign policy. It began a period of conservative thinking in both the political and social life of the nation.

American reporter H. L. Mencken described the national feeling this way: "The majority of Americans are tired of idealism. They want capitalism -- openly and without apology."

VOICE ONE:

President Woodrow Wilson had suffered a stroke during his second term. He was very sick. No one expected him to be a candidate again. Yet he refused to announce that he would not run for a third term.

Woodrow Wilson

Woodrow Wilson had done much during his administration. He helped pass important laws dealing with trade, banking, and the rights of workers. He led the nation through the bloody world war in Europe. He tried, but failed, to have the United States join the new international organization -- the League of Nations.

The American people honored Wilson for his intelligence and ideas. But they were tired of his policies of social change. And they did not want to be involved in international problems anymore.

VOICE TWO:

The leaders of President Wilson's Democratic Party understood the feelings of the people. They knew they had little chance of winning the presidential election if they nominated a candidate of change.

Delegates to the democratic nominating convention voted forty-four times before agreeing on a candidate. They chose the governor of the state of Ohio, James Cox.

The Republican Party also had a difficult time at its nominating convention. Four men wanted to be president. The delegates voted six times. None of the men gained enough support. So, several party leaders met in private. They agreed that only one man -- a compromise candidate -- could win the support of the convention. He was a senator from the state of Ohio, Warren Harding.

The delegates voted ten more times before choosing Harding as their candidate for president. For vice president, they chose Calvin Coolidge of Massachusetts.

VOICE ONE:

Warren Harding

Warren Harding had owned a newspaper in Ohio. People advised him to enter politics, because he was such a good public speaker.

During the campaign, he promised lower taxes, less immigration, and more aid to farmers. He called for "normalcy" -- a new period of peace and quiet, with few changes. That is what the voters wanted to hear in nineteen twenty. Warren Harding won the election with sixty-eight percent of the popular vote.

In his first act as president, he invited people to visit the White House. He permitted them to walk in the garden. The act was a sign. The government seemed to be returning to the people.

VOICE TWO:

Warren Harding is remembered mostly for two events. One was a successful international conference. The other was a shameful national incident.

After World War One, Britain, Japan, and the United States expanded their navies. They built bigger and better ships. Many members of the United States Congress worried about the cost. They also worried about increased political tension in Asia. They asked President Harding to organize a conference to discuss these issues.

VOICE ONE:

The conference was held in Washington in November, nineteen twenty-one. President Harding invited representatives from the major naval powers of the time: Britain, Japan, France, and Italy. He also invited representatives from countries with interests in Asia: China, Portugal, Belgium, and the Netherlands. He did not invite the new Soviet leaders in Russia.

Mr. Harding's Secretary of State, Charles Evans Hughes, spoke. He offered the conference a detailed plan to reduce the size of the world's major navies.

He proposed that the world's strongest nations should stop building warships for ten years. He also proposed that Britain, Japan, and the United States should destroy some ships to make their navies smaller immediately.

VOICE TWO:

Delegates to the conference debated the plan for three months. Japan demanded, and won, the right to have more ships. But the final agreement was very close to the one proposed by Secretary Hughes.

The conference was not a complete success.

For example, it did not prevent countries from building some kinds of ships. These ships would prove important in the second world war. Also, it did not create ways to protect China and the islands in the South Pacific Ocean from Japanese expansion. Yet the naval treaty of nineteen twenty-one was the first in which the world's strongest countries agreed to reduce the size of their armed forces. Most people thought it was a good treaty.

VOICE ONE:

The second thing for which President Harding is remembered is the Teapot Dome scandal. It involved the mis-use of underground oil owned by the federal government.

Warren Harding was an honest man. But he did not have a strong mind of his own. He was easily influenced. And he often accepted bad advice. He explained the problem with these words:

"I listen to one side, and they seem right. Then I listen to the other side, and they seem just as right. I know that somewhere there is a man who knows the truth. But I do not know where to find him."

VOICE TWO:

President Harding appointed several men of great ability to his cabinet. They included Secretary of State Charles Evans Hughes, Treasury Secretary Andrew Mellon, and Commerce Secretary Herbert Hoover. However, some of his appointments were dishonest men. One was Interior Secretary Albert Fall. He was responsible for the Teapot Dome scandal.

Secretary Fall gave a private company the right to take oil from land owned by the federal government. In return, the company gave him money and cattle.

The oil was not supposed to be taken from the ground. It was supposed to be saved for the United States navy to use in an emergency. Private oil companies and many politicians opposed this policy. They said saving the oil was unnecessary.

VOICE ONE:

Albert Fall opposed the policy when he was a member of the Senate. When he became Interior Secretary, his department took control of the lands containing the underground oil. Then he permitted private companies to use the land for a period of time. During that time, the companies could take out the oil.

Some of the oil was in the western state of Wyoming. The rock mass on the surface looked like a container for making tea. So, the area was called Teapot Dome. When the Senate uncovered Secretary Fall's wrong-doing, the press quickly called the incident the Teapot Dome scandal.

The Senate investigation led to several court cases which lasted throughout the nineteen-twenties. Secretary Fall was found guilty of mis-using his government position. He was sentenced to prison for one year.

VOICE TWO:

President Harding did not live to see the end of the Teapot Dome incident. In the summer of nineteen twenty-three, he made a political trip to Alaska and western states. On the way home, he became sick while in San Francisco. He died of a heart attack.

Vice President Calvin Coolidge was in the northeastern state of Vermont when he heard that President Harding had died. Coolidge's father was a local court official there. He gave the oath of office to his son. That is how Calvin Coolidge became the thirtieth president of the United States.

The story of his administration will be the subject of our program next week.

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VOICE ONE:

You have been listening to the VOA Special English program, THE MAKING OF A NATION. Your announcers were Shirley Griffith and Doug Johnson. Our program was written by David Jarmul. Join us again next week at this same time for another report about the history of the United States.

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