 Thank you, Strong, and this is VOA One, The Hits. Welcome to Learning English, a daily 30-minute program from the Voice of America. I'm Ashley Thompson. And I'm Dan Novak. This program is designed for English learners, so we speak a little slower, and we use words and phrases, especially written for people learning English. Today, you will hear stories from Brian Lin, Gregory Stockle, Faith Perlow, and Andrew Smith. Then, John Russell presents a new everyday grammar lesson. He uses messages from learners around the world to take a deeper look at the noun population. But first, here is Brian Lin. European farmers held protests Thursday to demand government help in dealing with rising costs and environmental rules. One of the protests happened in Brussels, Belgium, where EU leaders gathered for a summit meeting on Thursday. Some farmers drove tractors onto the grounds of the European Parliament building to bring attention to their demands. Protesters also lit off fireworks and threw eggs and bottles at police in the area. The Associated Press reported, smoke could also be seen around parts of Brussels as some farmers set pieces of hay on fire, the news agency said. Security forces put out the fires and moved in to protect EU buildings. In Paris, French farmers continued to block traffic on major roadways around the city. Farmers in several European nations have been holding mostly peaceful protests in recent weeks. The farmers say it is harder to make a good living because of high operating costs. Costs for fuel and fertilizer have risen sharply in Europe since Russia's invasion of Ukraine. They also say they have been hurt by increased competition and weather conditions. France's government sent in armored vehicles to Paris's large Rajis food market, which was targeted by demonstrators. French police told Reuters news agency they arrested 79 people who entered a storage center at the market. The market is an important supplier of fruits and vegetables to France and other nations. Rajis has repeatedly become a target for European farmers, many of whom traveled a long way to bring their tractors there. One farmer who traveled to Brussels to protest was 26-year-old Luka Muton. He told Reuters, time is up, EU leaders must think of the farmers. Talk to the farmers rather than about the farmers, discuss what is possible. We are open to dialogue. Jean-François Ricker is a farmer from southern Belgium who spent the night in the cold near EU headquarters. He told the AP he hoped a lot of protesters would show up to demonstrate how important the issues are to farmers across Europe. We are going to show that we do not agree, said Ricker. The purpose of Thursday's EU summit was mainly to approve a proposal to provide Ukraine with a new $54 billion a deal. But Belgian Prime Minister Alexander de Croix urged EU leaders to also hear the farmers' demands. Belgium currently holds the EU presidency. De Croix said governments need to make sure that farmers can get the right price for the high quality products that they provide. He also urged an easing of some environmental rules that farmers have said can hurt their profits. Farmers are an important voting group within the EU as well as in their own countries. This has led some leaders to offer some new proposals. The European Commission announced plans Wednesday to offer protections to farmers, facing increased competition from low-cost imports from Ukraine. The body also proposed easing restrictions on how much of a farmer's own land he can use while still receiving support from the EU. Here in the week, France's government promised to provide farmers' emergency aid and some new controls on imported food. On Thursday, French Prime Minister Gabriel Attal offered more measures. They included a move to permit farmers to use more pesticides if other nations do the same and an offer to increase financial aid and tax breaks. I'm Brian Lin. Tickets for the American football Super Bowl game are among the hardest to get in all of sports. Because of that, some websites that buy and resell tickets have set prices for the upcoming game in Las Vegas, Nevada at almost $10,000. The National Football League championship game between the Kansas City Chiefs and San Francisco 49ers is on Sunday, February 11th. The Chiefs won last year's Super Bowl. They feature star quarterback Patrick Mahomes and Travis Kelsey, the boyfriend of singer Taylor Swift. Many people believe Swift will fly to the game after performing in Japan only one day earlier. The 49ers are one of the most popular teams in the western part of the US. Las Vegas is a busy tourist city known for its hotels and casinos. It is the first ever Super Bowl in Las Vegas. For many years, the league did not want to have games in Las Vegas because the city permits sports gambling. That changed when the Oakland Raiders moved to Las Vegas to play in a new stadium before the 2020 season. The combination of two well-known teams plus a city that many people like to visit means tickets on a website called TickPick are in high demand. They are reselling for almost double last year's cost. The Chiefs defeated the Philadelphia Eagles in the Super Bowl last year near Phoenix, Arizona. Before this year, the Super Bowl with the highest resale ticket price was in 2021 when the Tampa Bay Buccaneers defeated the Chiefs in Tampa, Florida. That year, however, tickets were limited because of restrictions connected to the COVID-19 pandemic. TickPick said the highest prices for a non-COVID Super Bowl came in 2020 when the Chiefs and 49ers played in Miami, Florida. The average ticket that year was over $6,000. TickPick, however, noted that prices for this year might go down as the game gets closer. Brett Goldberg is the co-CEO for TickPick. In a message to the Associated Press, he wrote, Location has always impacted demand for a Super Bowl, but Vegas takes things to a whole other level. He said Las Vegas is already the entertainment capital of the world. Sometimes Goldberg wrote, Two successful teams pushed down demand because the average fan is tired of seeing them play again. However, he noted prices are high this year because fans want to experience their team winning a Super Bowl in Vegas. StubHub is another ticket-selling website. Prices on that site were over $9,000. StubHub said tickets are selling faster this year than in recent years. The demand has far surpassed the last time Kansas City and San Francisco met in Miami, said a spokesperson from StubHub. I'm Dan Friedel. Canada recently announced a two-year limit on the number of foreign students given permission to study in the country. The move is partly to ease a growing housing shortage. Reuters news agency recently reported on some of the details of the plan. Mark Miller is Canada's immigration minister. Miller said the government, led by the Liberal Party of Canada, will introduce a temporary two-year limit on student visas. That will result in about 364,000 student visas in 2024. The government said that is a cut of 35% from the year before. The new proposals will also set limits on postgraduate work permits issued to foreign students. The new limits will likely cause many postgraduate students to return to their home countries. The permits were formally seen as an easy path to securing permanent residency. People in master's or postdoctoral programs will be eligible for a three-year work permit. However, people who are married to foreign students in undergraduate and lower-level college programs will no longer be able to receive work permits. The acceptance of new study permit requests in 2025 will be reconsidered at the end of the current year, Miller said. Canada has become a popular place for international students. It has been easy to receive work permits after finishing study programs in the country. But the increase in international students has led to a shortage of rental homes. This has caused the price of rent to go up. In December, the cost of rent nationwide rose 7.7% from a year earlier. Government data shows Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's popularity has decreased, partly because of increasing living costs. Opposition Conservative Party leader Pierre Poilevra has taken a lead over Trudeau in public opinion studies. Elections are expected to be held next year. The government has also been concerned about the quality of education offered by some schools. Canada's government says international students bring in about $16.4 billion to the nation's economy. The new policy will hurt many colleges and universities. Ontario, the most populous area or province, has the biggest share of international students. Some businesses, including restaurants and retail industries, have warned that a limit on foreign students will create a shortage of temporary workers. I'm Gregory Stockle. In wealthy countries, like Japan, poverty is sometimes considered a taboo subject. But an Australian filmmaker, Ryan McAvoy, wants to share the stories of women and children in poverty in Japan. In his documentary film, The Ones Left Behind. The film was released last year. It shows single mothers raising their children in poverty. The women work hard. They sleep a few hours a night, and they try to balance working with childcare and housework. McAvoy said he wanted to deal with a topic that no one wanted to discuss. The film shows discussions with poor women and experts on poverty. He said the film also shows a different side of Japanese society, where getting married and becoming a stay-at-home mother is normal for many women. In Japan, it's very taboo. I think it's a very apt title, because I feel that single mothers and their children have really been left behind in society. The film shows one woman who works almost 12 hours a day and earns less than $1,350 a month. That amount is low for a country where the cost of living is high. Monthly rent for one small room can cost one-third of that amount. Tomoko Nakayama is one of the women in the film. She said, I have to do everything on my own. Another woman almost cries when she describes how her child stopped asking her to come to take your parent to school days. Japan has one of the highest rates of childhood poverty, although it is one of the wealthiest nations. One in seven children live in poverty in Japan. Almost half of single-parent homes are considered poor. Japanese society often favors men who work full-time. Women sometimes receive lower pay and fewer benefits than their male counterparts, while working full-time and overtime. Ayuri Makavoy produced the film and is also Makavoy's wife. She was formerly a single mother, but they say that is not why they made the film. Ryan Makavoy said that the country's traditional culture makes women accept their difficult lives and makes them ashamed to ask for help. He told the Associated Press that the women are keeping their public face and private face separate. Akihiko Kato is a professor at Meiji University in Tokyo. He appears in the film. Kato said that Japan does not have a system to legally force fathers to pay for their children if the parents are separated. The Japanese government has promised to give money to people with children, but this is slow to come, he said. Kato said that this is partly why birth rates in Japan have been so low. There were 1.2 million births in the year 2000 compared to fewer than 800,000 births in 2022. Some people believe the modern idea of the nuclear family means that single parents, mostly mothers, have to do everything on their own. People like grandparents, neighbors, and extended family members no longer seem to be able to help with children. Yanfei Zhou is a social science professor at Japan Women's University in Tokyo, who also appears in the film. She said that these changes have serious effects on children. The divide between rich and poor is growing, and children will end up in poverty, she said. The film won the best documentary prize at the Miyako Jima Charity International Film Festival last year. It was also officially chosen for the Yokohama International Film Festival. McAvoy said he has long been interested in telling the story of those who society had forgotten and who do not have a voice. He said that being on the outside of Japanese culture has helped him to share stories with a new viewpoint and without bias. He said his next film will be about young people dying by suicide in Japan. McAvoy said it's one thing we can do more of in society to try to recognize people's cries for help. I'm Faith Perlow. And I'm Andrew Smith. Pack your bags. Make sure your travel documents are in order. Today we are taking a trip around the world, if only in our imagination. For this everyday grammar lesson, we will leave behind our grammar books. We will instead look at messages from friends who are in Pakistan, Spain, Belgium, and Japan. Our goal? To learn more about the populations of different countries. We will learn about English along the way. Let's begin our journey. In a recent lesson about the noun population, we asked our listeners the following questions. What is the population like in your country or city? Is the population increasing or decreasing? Here are some of the answers we received. Said wrote to us from Lahore, Pakistan. Said noted, city Lahore, Pakistan, increasing. In 2023 was 13,979,000, a 3.23% increase from 2022. Said presented some exact numbers about the city of Lahore. Our suggestion is to use complete sentences. In other words, Said could update the statement to something like this. The population of Lahore, Pakistan is increasing. In 2023, the population was 13,979,000, a 3.23% increase from 2022. Now that we have learned some information about a big city in Pakistan, we can learn about a major European city. Rafael writes to us from Barcelona, Spain. Here is part of the message. The population in my city is decreasing due to low birth rate, although the total count is maintained thanks to immigration. The arrival of people from very different cultures creates some integration problems, but it helps to solve other important ones derived from the general aging. Rafael wrote an excellent message. Our main suggestion is to double check the spelling of a few words, population and immigration. In terms of grammar, one idea is to include an article such as the before birth rate. Definite and indefinite articles help show the difference between a specific and a general noun. So we could update Rafael's statement to something like this. The population in my city is decreasing due to the low birth rate. Now let's look at part of a message from Jean-Claude in Belgium. The population of Belgium was 11.67 million inhabitants on January 2023. The Belgian population increased by 0.98% compared to the previous year. Jean-Claude's message was clear and to the point. There is one suggestion we have. It is in the first sentence. We have the phrase on January 2023, but instead we should use the short word in, like this. The population of Belgium was 11.67 million inhabitants in January 2023. We usually use the short word on for an exact date, such as on January 4th or on January 27th. Next we are in for a long trip to the other side of the world. A friend from Japan would like to tell us about the population of the island country. Here is part of a message from an unnamed reader. According to the national statics, Japan's population has been decreasing almost 600,000 people per year. There are more than 120 million people in Japan now. However, I heard the population will be under 100 million in 30 years. We suggest the following changes to the first sentence. The term statics should be changed to statistics. In addition, we often use the short word by after decreasing. We can then remove a from its position before year, so we might update the sentence to something like this. According to national statistics, Japan's population has been decreasing by almost 600,000 people per year. That brings us to the end of our imaginative trip around the world. We received many wonderful pieces of writing, those that were included in today's lesson, and many others that were not. Overall, the general recommendations are to pay careful attention to spelling and to double check short words, prepositions, articles, and so on. We hope that you have learned a little more about the world, as well as some ideas to use when you write in English. I'm John Russell. You just heard this week's everyday grammar lesson. Now John Russell joins us to talk more about it. Hi John, welcome. Hi Ashley, thanks for having me on the show. In this lesson you discussed parts of several pieces of writing. There were many other pieces of writing we received that you were not able to discuss. Was there one issue you would like to talk about in terms of the other pieces of writing you received? Yes, absolutely. We received a lot of wonderful messages. Unfortunately, we weren't able to include all of them. One issue I noticed in many of the messages was that people mixed up popular with population. These are two different words that have similar spellings, at least at the beginning of the word. Popular is an adjective, while population is a noun. That's right. Popular means liked or enjoyed by many people. So you might talk about popular sports, popular music, and so on. Whereas population refers to a group of people. Yes, that's right. So you might talk about the population of Mexico or the population of Vietnam, for example. Well, thank you for coming on the show to talk about that point, John. And thanks for your lesson this week. Thanks for having me on the show. See you next time. And that's our program for today. Join us again tomorrow to keep learning English through stories from around the world.