 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. Coming up on the program, Katie Weaver has a story on daylight savings time. I report on cuts to refugee education in Rwanda. Gregory Stockle has a story on a K-pop star with an AI twin. I return for a story on efforts by corporations to limit their water usage. And finally, John Russell presents the Everyday Grammar Lesson on Optimism, but first... As November begins, many countries in North America and Europe are turning the clock back, as daylight saving time ends. Daylight saving time is the practice of moving clocks forward by one hour during summer months, so daylight lasts longer into the evening. In Europe, the practice is called European summertime. The clock usually moves forward in March and turns back at the end of October. Most European countries follow the practice. Georgia, Russia, Turkey, Iceland, and a few others are among the exceptions. Across the Atlantic Ocean, Canada, Mexico, Cuba, and the United States, start daylight saving time in March also. The clock will be set back an hour on November 5th this year. Countries closer to the equator usually do not follow daylight saving time, because the period of daylight changes little. Those that do not change the times include countries in Central America, Asia, and Africa. The idea of changing the clocks with the seasons started with George Hudson, a New Zealand scientist who studied insects. In 1895, Hudson proposed a time change to extend summer daylight hours. The extra time would have helped him with collecting insects after work. The idea did not appeal to anyone until the time of World War I, when European countries sought to save energy. Germany was the first country to adopt daylight saving time in 1916, and the U.S. followed in 1918. Some people believe that the U.S. established daylight saving time to help farmers. But farmers generally do not like the practice. The publication Modern Farmer said American farmers were against the practice, but that Congress approved it anyway. Opponents of daylight saving time have pointed to studies that found an increase in traffic accidents, health issues, and lack of sleep in the days after clocks are moved forward every March. As for saving energy, the Congressional Research Service said studies have found little, if any, energy savings from the time change. Daylight saving time has been a fluid issue from the start. Some countries have adopted and rejected it several times. In South America, Uruguay ended the practice in 2015. Chile replaced it with winter time from May to August in 2016. Egypt announced in March it would return to daylight saving time after seven years to save energy. Japan briefly considered adopting the practice for the 2020 Olympics, but rejected it due to a lack of popular support. In the U.S., there have been several efforts to make daylight saving time permanent. Last year, a bill called the Sunshine Protection Act passed the Senate, but got stuck in the House of Representatives. Lawmakers could not agree on whether to keep standard time or permanent daylight saving time. The bill was proposed again this year. I'm Katie Weaver. Cuts to United Nations aid for refugees living in Rwanda are threatening education for children from more than 100,000 families. The families fled conflict in several East African countries. They are spread among five refugee camps in Rwanda. Burundian refugee Epimake Nizohoraho spoke about the situation to the Associated Press. He said the leader of his son's school reported that his child should not return to class because the UN refugee agency had stopped paying for the education. Nizohoraho said he does not know how much it costs to attend the school, but he said he had hoped education would save his son's future. Last weekend, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, UNHCR, announced budget cuts for food, education, shelter, and health care. The agency acted as hopes disappear to meet the $90.5 million in aid donations. UNHCR spokesperson Lily Carlyle said that only $33 million had arrived by October. The agency cannot manage to meet the needs of the refugees, she said. Rwanda is home to a little more than 134,500 refugees. About 62% of them came from neighboring Congo. About 37% came from Burundi. Less than 1% are from other countries, says the country's Emergency Management Ministry. Among those affected are 553 refugee schoolchildren who were expecting to go to boarding schools this year. The budget shortfall will not permit their attendance. The UNHCR is already supporting 750 students in boarding schools, Carlyle said. The school fees for boarding schools in Rwanda is $80 each school term. Budget problems have also affected food assistance, which has dropped from $5 to $3 per refugee monthly since last year. Shantal Mukhabrori is a Burundian refugee living in eastern Rwanda's Mahama Camp. She says with reduced food aid, her four children are going hungry and refusing to go to school. Do you expect me to send children to school when I know there is no food? She asked. Carlyle is urging refugees to look for employment to support their families, but some say this is hard to do as a refugee. So Laanj Uwamahoro fled violence in Burundi in 2015 after an attempted government overthrow. She says going back to the same country where her husband was killed may be her only choice. I have no other option now. I could die of hunger. It's very hard to get a job as a refugee, Uwamahoro told the AP. Philippe Babinschutti is Secretary of Rwanda's Emergency Management Ministry. He says the refugees in Rwanda should not be forgotten even with the increasing number of global conflicts. The aid reduction effect on education is likely to lower school enrollment. Rwanda from UNHCR in 2022 showed that 1.1 million of 2.2 million refugee children in the East, horn of Africa, and Great Lakes area were out of school. Listeners want to feel close to the musicians they support, and most would jump at the chance to talk with their favorite artist one-on-one. The famous people rarely have the time for that kind of meeting. So what is the next best thing? For Mark Twan, whose new recording Fallen is out Friday, it was creating a digital avatar. The Taiwanese-American entertainer from Los Angeles, California is a former member of the Korean group Got7. He partnered with Soul Machines to create a digital twin called Digital Mark. In doing so, Twan became the first famous person to attach their likeness to the Artificial Intelligence, or AI program, OpenAI's GPT. The technology permits fans to talk one-on-one with Twan's avatar. It's very different. It's not really me, but it is me, he says of Digital Mark. It's a cool thing that fans get to interact with him, too. Greg Cross is head of Soul Machines. He views Digital Mark as the future of fan interaction. Cross said we are only at the beginning of how this technology will change, how fans interact with famous people and companies. Twan's hope with Digital Mark is that as the technology progresses, so too will fans' relationships with his AI twin. He also hopes that they will get to communicate with him in languages beyond English. Getting Digital Mark to look like and act like the real Mark Twan involved a lot of work. Twan had to spend several days filming in a bodysuit to capture his movement. He made different faces so the Digital Mark could capture his emotions. And he spent a lot of time recording his voice as well. Right now, Digital Mark just stands in one place, but Twan says that maybe one day they will have Digital Mark walking around, too. The technology is in its early days. Twan says Digital Mark has been talking about a musical event that does not exist. But he is hopeful to see how the avatar will progress. Fans have already been using Digital Mark to interact with Twan about event dates and new music. As for concerns over how this kind of technology could be used in the future, Twan is hopeful but has some concerns. I've seen a lot of movies where robots take over the world, he jokes. You never really know what's going to happen, but I think it is really cool. I'm Gregory Stockle. Major corporations in industries that produce clothing, food, drinks, and technology services use a lot of water. However, many companies say they want to be more responsible about the fresh water they use. Drought, floods, and extreme weather also threaten their supply chains. The non-profit environmental group Ceres ranked 72 companies for their sustainability efforts. Ceres said few of the businesses are close to reaching the 2030 goals set by the group, which is based in Boston, Massachusetts. Last year, Ceres launched an effort to push companies with large water usage to protect water resources. Recently, the group released a study that included the corporations Coca-Cola, General Mills, and Amazon. There's no doubt that companies need to do better, said Kirsten James. She is a program director for water at Ceres. Ceres said the companies were chosen from four industries based on their size and use of water. They were ranked based on several factors, including promises to protect the amount and quality of the water they use, as well as the environments that supply it. They were also tested on whether they helped improve access to water and sanitation in communities where they do business. Ceres used publicly available information, including information the companies provided to the government through March. None of the companies scored above 70% of the points available. Some were considered to be on track to meet the goals set by the nonprofit group, with scores of at least 50%. Coca-Cola said its water use in 2022 was 10% more efficient compared to 2015. The company said it hopes to have 100% circular water use. That is where all water is used and returned to the watersheds it has been drawn from. But the company did not say how likely it was to reach that target nor how much progress it has made. Coca-Cola also said producing its products does not use as much water as growing what goes into the products it sells. The agricultural ingredients that we use use vastly more water to produce than the actual manufacturing process, said Michael Goldsman. He is vice president of Coca-Cola and a sustainability head. Reports say technology companies like Amazon and Apple use a lot of water to cool the computers in their large data centers. The series study rated both companies below 20% progress toward the nonprofit's targets. Food company General Mills was among the companies closest to meeting the 2030 targets at 65%. Mary Jane Melendez is the company's chief sustainability officer. She said 85% of the company's water use is in agriculture. Extreme weather in the US has reportedly affected the company in recent years. Melendez gave examples of weather-related problems. She said freezing and thawing hurts the company's supply of sugar beets. She also said droughts affected its oats supply. Michael Koparski is director of the Wheeler Water Institute at the University of California, Berkeley. He said that corporations have an interest in protecting their operations from water shortages. That could push them to make bigger steps to protect freshwater resources. Koparski pointed out there is no way to enforce series targets. But he asked, does money talk? When it talks, it talks pretty loud, he said. How do we talk about events or actions that make us happy or hopeful about the present and future? In other words, how do we talk about optimism? In today's everyday grammar, we will explore a point of connection between grammar and hopeful ideas about the future. You will learn how to understand the difference between closely related words and how to use them in sentences. Let's start with some important terms. Today's lesson begins with a noun, optimism. It is a feeling or belief that good things will happen in the future. The online etymology dictionary traces the roots of the word optimism to 1759. The word first appeared in translations from the French writer Voltaire. We also have a closely related noun that appeared in English at about the same time. Optimist. An optimist is a person with a hopeful way of looking at things. The two nouns differ by only one letter. Optimism ends in an M and suggests a general feeling or belief. Optimist ends with a T and means a person with a hopeful worldview. From optimist, we can add an I-C ending to get an adjective. Optimistic describes a person who is hopeful about the future or expects good things to happen. From optimistic, we can add an ALLY ending to get an adverb, optimistically. The word describes or modifies verbs. So, we have a family of words. We have two nouns, optimism and optimist. From the noun optimist, we can add more letters to get the adjective, optimistic, and the adverb optimistically. Now, how do we use these words in everyday discussions? It is important to remember that some words are commonly used together. You might think of these as high-frequency structures, or word groups you see or hear a lot in speech and writing. What are some of these high-frequency structures? Let's start with optimism. Google's Ngram viewer tells us that the most commonly used word before optimism is the short word of. For example, we might say the following. At that time, people in the streets were happy. The economy was strong. A feeling of optimism was in the air. What about the noun optimist? Once again, Google's Ngram viewer tells us that another short word is commonly used before the noun optimist. In this case, the short word is an. So you are likely to hear or read something like this. I am an optimist. Or she is an optimist. What about the adjective optimistic? Once again, Google's Ngram viewer tells us that the short word an is the most commonly used word before optimistic. So you are likely to hear or read something like the following. He gave an optimistic answer. Finally, we have the adverb optimistically. What is the most commonly used word before it? In this case, we have the verb said. You are likely to hear or read something like this. The traffic doesn't look too bad, she said optimistically. Now, let's take some time to work with these ideas. Fill in the blank with the correct word, either noun, adjective, or adverb. She spoke about the country's economic outlook. The correct word is the adverb optimistically. The sentence is, she spoke optimistically about the country's economic outlook. We know that the adverb is needed because it is modifying or describing the verb spoke. How did she speak? She spoke optimistically. Now let's consider another example. Fill in the blank. Tom is always so hopeful. He's an at heart. The correct answer is the noun optimist. The full statement is, Tom is always so hopeful. He's an optimist at heart. We know that the answer is optimist because the words coming before optimist suggest a noun phrase. When we see the short word, in, that tells us that a noun or noun phrase is coming. In today's report, we explored a few closely related words. We also learned about commonly used structures. There are, of course, other ways to talk about hopeful views or ideas about the future. But that will have to be the subject of another lesson. I'm John Russell. You just heard this week's everyday grammar. John Russell joins us now to talk a little bit more about the lesson. Welcome, John. Hi, Dan. Thanks for having me on the show. The subject of today's lesson was optimism. Why did you choose that subject? There are many different ways you can think about other people and the world. One way of thinking about the future, the world, or other people is in terms of optimism. And another way of viewing the world is in terms of pessimism. Pessimism is the opposite of optimism. That's right. We didn't get a chance to explore pessimism in today's lesson. Perhaps we will explore it in a future lesson. John, I have a personal question for you. Do you consider yourself to be an optimist? Overall, I would consider myself an optimist. Of course, there are certain times or situations that do not make me feel optimistic. What about you? Um, I'm generally optimistic. I try to think as positively as possible. But I think you're right. It can be hard to be optimistic sometimes, and I'm pessimistic occasionally. One thing that always makes me feel optimistic is the lovely feedback we get from our listeners around the world. Thanks for coming on the show today, John. Thank you for having me. 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. I'm Ashley Thompson. And I'm Dan Novak.