 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. On today's program, you will hear reports from Brian Lin and Faith Perlow. Later, Dan Novak presents this week's Education Report. Finally, John Russell brings us today's lesson of the day. But first, Brian Lin has this report on the recent earthquakes in Japan. A series of powerful earthquakes in western Japan have left at least 55 people dead and damaged thousands of buildings, automobiles, and boats. The first quake struck New Year's Day, registering 7.6 in magnitude or strength. The shaking caused major damage across Ishikawa prefecture. Japanese media reports said the quake destroyed tens of thousands of homes and cut water, power, and phone services in some areas. The mayor in the town of Suzu, near the quake's center, said up to 90% of homes may have been destroyed, Reuters news agency reported. The earthquake set off tsunami warnings along Japan's western coast. Officials ordered about 100,000 people to leave their homes Monday night. They were sent to schools and sports centers to take shelter. Many returned to their homes Tuesday after the warnings were lifted. Japan's meteorological agency said about 200 aftershocks had struck since the main quake and that more were expected in coming days. Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida told reporters the government had deployed teams that included military troops, police, and local rescuers. We have received reports that there are still many people waiting to be rescued under collapsed buildings, he said. Kishida added that saving lives is the top goal. Japan sits on the so-called Ring of Fire, a collection of volcanoes and fault lines found around the Pacific Basin. About 20% of the world's earthquakes of magnitude 6 or greater happen in that area. Monday's earthquake was Japan's deadliest since 2016. Emergency teams battled fires in several cities as rescuers searched for people trapped in wreckage. Shoeichi Kobayashi lives in the city of Wajima. He told Reuters he was at home celebrating new years with his wife and son when the quake hit and sent furniture flying across the house. I've never experienced a quake that powerful, Kobayashi said. In the city of Nanao, Fujiko Ueno said she was celebrating with about 20 people in her home when the earthquake struck. The quake caused walls to collapse onto a parked car. Ueno said no one in the group was injured. It all happened in the blink of an eye, she said. Toshitaka Katada is a University of Tokyo professor who specializes in disasters. He told the Associated Press that people were better prepared for this event because the area had been hit by quakes in recent years. There is probably no people on Earth other than Japanese who are so disaster ready, Katada said. Government officials said several nuclear centers in the area were operating normally. A 2011 earthquake and tsunami caused three reactors to melt down and release large amounts of radiation at the Fukushima Nuclear Power Center in Northeastern Japan. I'm Brian Lin. Every day, Juanita Mengel, a 67-year-old woman from the state of Ohio, wakes up and puts on her manufactured leg. The device is called a prosthetic. Then, Mengel does the same for Lola Pearl, her colorful, five-year-old cat. Lola Pearl is missing her back left leg. Mengel has many cats. Most of them have disabilities, but Lola Pearl is special. She is a therapy cat. And she and Mengel are partners of a kind. They are among 200 therapy cat teams registered in the United States by the non-profit group Pet Partners. The group helps humans and pets alike by setting them up into teams to provide animal assisted intervention. The teams visit hospitals, nursing homes, and schools and assist those in need. Taylor Chastain Griffin is the National Director of Animal Assisted Interventions at Pet Partners. She said a therapy animal is an animal who's been assessed based on their ability to meet new people and not just tolerate the interaction, but actively enjoy it. Chastain Griffin is a researcher who studies the effects of therapy cats. She said there needs to be more research done in cat therapy. She said that there is a lot of research on other therapy animals, like dogs, and many people are surprised to learn that cats can be therapy animals too. They go into a setting and people are like, whoa, there's a cat on a leash, what's happening? It kind of inspires people to connect in a way we haven't traditionally heard talked about in other therapy animal interventions, Chastain Griffin said. Besides dogs and cats, Pet Partners registers seven other species as therapy animals, including horses, rabbits, rats, guinea pigs, birds, many pigs, and llamas and alpacas. Mangle said Lola Pearl showed signs that she would make a good therapy cat soon after the animal joined her family. Mangle took her new cat to a meeting for amputees. She was so good with people, I just knew she would be a good therapy cat. People really were attracted to her too, Mangle said. Recently, people who attended a support group for amputees were able to meet Lola Pearl. They petted her as she woke up from a rest. On the side of the cat carrier she wrote in was a sign, therapy cat it read. Mangle was a traveling nurse when she was in a car accident that almost killed her. One of her legs could not be saved. Later she connected with a friend in the state of Missouri who had a severely injured kitten. Her legs were twisted together. An animal medical specialist worked to repair the damage, but in the end, they had to remove one of the baby cat's legs. That kitten was Lola Pearl. Mangle took Lola Pearl as her cat after talking with her friend. Despite the difficulties Mangle has faced, she is thankful for Lola Pearl and their work together. It's a really rewarding experience, she said. I get just as much out of it as the people that I visit. I'm Faith Perlow. The United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organization, or UNESCO, says the period from birth to eight years old is one of remarkable brain development for children. The organization adds that it represents an important time for their development and education. The U.S. National Institutes of Health says that supporting children's early learning can lead to higher test scores and a better chance of staying in school and going to college. Studies even suggest early learning can lead to fewer teen pregnancies, improved mental health, and a longer life. The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, or OECD, is made up of 38 democracies with market-based economies. The organization aims to build better policies for better lives. In a recent education study, the OECD found that most of its member countries provide care or education for children under five. In countries including Belgium, Denmark, France, Hungary, Iceland, Israel, Norway, Spain, and Britain, at least 95% of three-year-olds are enrolled in an early education program. However, within OECD countries, there can be a large difference in enrollment. In the United States, for example, 80% of three- to five-year-olds in the capital city of Washington, D.C., are enrolled in early education programs. That is compared to 46% in the western states of North Dakota. The differences also exist in European countries like Greece, Lithuania, and Switzerland. Places with higher rates of women in the workforce usually have higher rates of enrollment for children under three. During the pandemic, the U.S. government provided an additional $24 billion to help childcare programs nationwide. The funding finally ended last October. The Century Foundation is a research organization in New York City. It estimates that one-third of the programs could close as a result. That affects more than 2.2 million children. The organization says that childcare is important for the economy at large since childcare permits parents to stay at work. Around the world, governments invest little in early childhood education, UNESCO says. About 6.6% of education budgets are put toward early education programs, 2% in poor countries. That is well below the targets of 10% by 2030 suggested by the children's organization UNICEF. In the U.S., parents can choose to put their children at age five in kindergarten or a childcare program. Kindergarten enrollment has dropped since the COVID-19 pandemic. Concerned about the virus or wanting to avoid online school, hundreds of thousands of families delayed the start of school for their young children. The Associated Press found that kindergarten enrollment remained down 5.2% in the 2022-2023 school year compared with the 2019-2020 school year. Debra Steipeck is a former head of the Graduate School of Education at Stanford University. She said kindergarten is where children learn to follow directions, learn good behavior, and get used to learning. Steipeck said missing that year of school can put kids at a disadvantage. Last year, ILA went to a children's program that met mainly outdoors instead of enrolling in kindergarten in the state of California. ILA now has to adjust to being inside a classroom and learning the right way to hold a pencil. It's harder, way, way harder, ILA said of the new way she learned to hold a pencil. Still, her mother, Hannah Levy, says it was the right decision to skip kindergarten. She wanted ILA to enjoy being a child. There is plenty of time, she reasoned, for her daughter to develop study skills. I'm Dan Novak. Dan Novak joins me now to talk more about his report on early childhood education. Hi, Dan. Welcome to the show. Thanks for having me, Ashley. You said in the story that kids who miss a year of kindergarten come into first grade at a disadvantage. What does disadvantage mean? An advantage is something that helps make someone or something better or more likely to succeed than others. It also means a desirable feature or quality. This word can be used in many contexts. One advantage of having a car, for example, is being able to get to work quicker. So a disadvantage is something that causes difficulty or something that causes you to be less likely to succeed. Why does missing kindergarten put kids at a disadvantage? Well, kindergarten is usually at age five and the year right before the official beginning of school at first grade. In kindergarten, children learn good behavior, they learn to follow directions, and they get used to being in a classroom. So missing that development can put kids at a disadvantage compared to other kids that did attend kindergarten. Kindergarten enrollment is down in the U.S. and a large number of child care programs may close. Why is that? Well, as I mentioned in the story, 24 billion dollars of pandemic relief money expired last October. The money was important to keep the buildings open and raise pay for workers who are often very low paid. So experts predict that up to one-third of child care programs may close as a result of the lack of funding. And as for kindergarten, enrollment hasn't recovered since the pandemic. Enrollment has been down at all grades since 2020, but especially bad for kindergarten. Children are not required to attend kindergarten at many states. Whether that it's a problem that kids are missing kindergarten kind of depends on what they're doing instead. Are they getting taught by their parents? Are they attending a private program? Or maybe they're not learning at all. What they're doing that year can really determine how their schooling will go once they start first grade. Well, thanks for answering my questions today, Dan. You're welcome. In this next report, Brian Lin tells us about a United Nations finding about drug production. We learn that the UN found Myanmar has become the world's top opium producer. Pay careful attention to the word overtaken. We will talk more about it after the report. A United Nations report finds that Myanmar has overtaken Afghanistan as the world's top opium producer. The change came after Myanmar expanded its opium production for a third year. The UN reported. In Afghanistan, production fell sharply in 2023 after the Taliban placed a ban on poppy farming. The latest data on worldwide opium production was recently released in the UN's report, the Southeast Asia Opium Survey 2023. The report was released by the UN's Office of Drugs and Crime, or UNO DC. The report estimates opium crops in Afghanistan dropped an estimated 95% in 2023 after the Taliban's ban and enforcement efforts. During the same period, an increasing number of farmers in Myanmar turned to opium as a new crop. The increase in production follows a military takeover of the government in 2021 that pushed the country into a civil war. The situation has severely hurt Myanmar's economy. The UN report estimates poppy growth and processing in Myanmar grew 33% in 2022 and another 18% this year. That amounts to a total of 47,000 hectares. That is the most land Myanmar has used for opium production since 2013. Jeremy Douglas is the area representative for the UN ODC. He told VOA the country's economic and security situation have severely limited business possibilities and led more people to turn to opium farming to make money. Most families in Myanmar make their living off the land, but a World Bank report released in May found that nearly half of farming families said they worry about having enough food. That number was up from 26% from a year earlier. The UN ODC estimates Myanmar's farmers grew enough poppy this year to produce up to 1,080 metric tons of dry opium. This amounted to total earnings of up to $2.5 billion. Most of this money is believed to have gone to traffickers shipping the product across Asia and as far as Australia, often as heroin. Most of that heroin flows through neighboring Thailand on its way to other places. In September, Thai police seized over 440 packs of heroin along with some 15 million methamphetamine pills. A top Thai law enforcement official told VOA the $8.2 million drug seizure was the largest in the country's history. The UN ODC report notes Afghanistan's reduced opium production is expected to create a worldwide heroin shortage and drive prices higher. This is likely to lead even more farmers in Myanmar to start growing poppies. Douglas said such a shortage could also result in more heroin processed in the Golden Triangle area making its way beyond the Asia Pacific to Europe and North America. The Golden Triangle is a heavily criminalized area near the borders of Myanmar, Laos and Thailand. It is known for growing and producing large amounts of drugs. Afghan heroines started taking over the European and North American markets from the Golden Triangle more than 10 years ago. That change came as drug controllers in Southeast Asia started dealing mostly in methamphetamine. Douglas told VOA that even as Afghan production falls sharply, there is still large demand for opium on the world market. He said, it's highly likely that we're going to start seeing Golden Triangle heroin returning to markets that it hasn't been in for quite some years. I'm Brian Lin. Before the report, we asked you to pay careful attention to the word overtaken. Can you remember when you heard it? You heard it in the very first line of the story. Let's listen again. A United Nations report finds that Myanmar has overtaken Afghanistan as the world's top opium producer. Our main verb of interest is overtake. We spell it like this, O-V-E-R-T-A-K-E. One form of the verb overtake is the past participle, overtaken. It is spelled just like overtake, but has an N at the end of the word. Overtaken, the past participle, is the form you heard in the report. We use the past participle when an action has been completed. We will talk a little more about this idea later. So, what exactly does the verb overtake mean? One meaning is to move up to and past someone or something that is in front of you. You can also think of it as meaning to become more successful than something or someone else. When we say that Myanmar has overtaken Afghanistan as the world's top opium producer, we mean that Myanmar has moved past Afghanistan in terms of opium production. You will hear the verb overtake used in many situations. These situations often have a connection with competition. In politics, we might say that one party has overtaken another party in terms of popularity or votes, or we might say that one business has overtaken another business in terms of sales. We might also use overtake when we talk about sports competitions. One runner might overtake another runner at the end of the race, for example. One note about the use of the past participle. The report said Myanmar has overtaken Afghanistan as the world's top opium producer. This suggests that the action of overtaking has been completed, but it does not suggest exactly when. It would also be correct to use the past form of overtake, overtook. For example, you might say, Myanmar overtook Afghanistan as the world's top opium producer last year. If you would like to learn more about the differences between the two verb forms, has overtaken and overtook, be sure to check the resources in the everyday grammar and ask a teacher's sections of our website, learningenglish.voanews.com. And that's the lesson of the day. I'm John Russell. 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.