 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, Faith Perlow reports on a new holiday in Kenya for nationwide tree planting. Gregory Stockle has a story on human-like robots. Katie Weaver reports on the oldest black hole ever discovered. And later Andrew Smith and Jill Robbins present the lesson of the day. But first, here is Faith Perlow. The government of Kenya says November 13th will be a public holiday for nationwide tree planting. The surprise holiday is part of a huge plan to grow 15 billion trees by 2023 to fight climate change. Keetore Kandiki is the Interior Minister of the African Nation. He announced the tree planting holiday via the newspaper, which was then posted to social media. The announcement came after a cabinet meeting last week and was led by President William Ruto. Kandiki says that the government expects the public to plant trees as part of their patriotic contribution to the national efforts to save our country from the devastating effects of climate change. The government has saved more than $80 million this year for the project. The goal is to increase tree cover to more than 10%. Right now, tree cover is only at 7%. The more tree cover, the less carbon in the air because the trees store it. Deforestation or removing trees speeds up climate change. It stops photosynthesis so the trees cannot take in the carbon. Deforestation often happens alongside burning, which also increases carbon dioxide. Extreme weather events are worsening because of climate change in the Horn of Africa, which includes Kenya. There, rains have failed the past five seasons, though Kenya is currently experiencing heavy rains and flooding because of the El Nino weather event. The Kenyan Environment Ministry said it would supply tree seedlings to citizens to stand for the government's commitment on climate action. Soy Pantuya is the environment minister. She said it is a moment for Kenyans to stand in solidarity in the defense of our environment. She referred to the day as a hummingbird contribution day. Hummingbirds are small birds, but they play an important part in the environment by pollinating flowers. The saying means that it seems like a small contribution, but if everyone does it together, the results will be impactful. Since becoming president in September of 2022, President Ruto has made the National Landscape and Ecosystem Restoration Program a top consideration. Kenya is part of the British Commonwealth. King Charles III praised the efforts last week on his first visit to an African nation since becoming King last year. King Charles said at a state dinner, having been planting trees for most of my life, I thought I was doing rather well, but your ambition for planting 15 billion trees makes me admire your efforts. During his visit, Charles planted a tree at the State House in the capital city of Nairobi. He also planted one in the Karura Forest. The forest is associated with Wangari Mathai, the late environmentalist and Nobel Prize winner who made the Green Belt movement, which was the original tree planting effort in Kenya in the 1970s. I'm Faith Perlow. Being a robot that is both human-like and useful has been a goal of engineers for many years. Interest in the idea of artificial intelligence, or AI, has created another wave of investment in robot technology to build a human-like robot. But most of the current robot models that aim to look like people are not too effective. They appear to work well in planned performances, but not in real life. However, this has not stopped some startups from continuing to develop human-like or humanoid robots. The intention is not to start from the beginning, said Jonathan Hearst. He is co-founder and chief robot officer at Agility Robotics. We're trying to make robots that can operate in human spaces. Hearst said Agility's robot digit is designed to do human things. It is not designed to look like a human. What it does is pick up objects and move them. Amazon announced in October that the company will begin testing the digit robot for use in some of its storage buildings. Agility opened a factory in the western state of Oregon in September to mass produce their robot. Digit has a head containing cameras, other sensors, animated eyes, and an upper body that provides power. It has two arms and two legs. But its legs are not human-like. It looks similar to cats and dogs that walk on the very end of their feet rather than on flat feet. Competing robot makers, like Figure AI, are designing robots differently. The company believes that only human-like robots can effectively work in places built for humans. Figure AI also plans to start developing robots for simpler uses. But it aims to build robots that can perform more than one job to help take over work from humans. There's not enough people doing these jobs, so the market's massive, said Figure AI chief Brett Adcock. He said he believes his company can sell millions, or even billions, of humanoid robots if it can make a robot do a human's work. At the moment, however, Adcock's company does not have a model that is ready. The company was founded just over a year ago after it raised tens of millions of dollars. Figure AI released a 38-second video of its robot, Figure, walking through its building in California. Elon Musk, head of Tesla, is also trying to build a human-like robot called Optimus in the Electric Car Makers Robotics division. But a presentation of the robot's walking last year did not win over experts in the field. Agility's digit robot caught Amazon's attention because it can walk and move in a way that would work well with the robots the company already uses. Those robots look like vehicles and work in large buildings carrying heavy loads. Ty Brady is Amazon's chief technologist for robotics. He said the way the robot moves is more interesting than the way it looks. Agility Robotics co-founder and chief Damien Shelton said its digit robot is just the first use case of a new generation of robots. He hopes people will embrace robots rather than fear them as they enter businesses and homes. So in 10-20 years, you're going to see these robots everywhere, Shelton said. He added, human-centric robots like that are going to be part of human life. I'm Gregory Stockle. Scientists have discovered the oldest black hole yet. The huge object formed about 470 million years after the Big Bang, researchers said. The study was published recently in Nature Astronomy. The researchers said the findings confirm their theory. Supermassive black holes existed in the very early universe. The United States Space Agency, NASA, used its James Webb Space Telescope and Chandra X-ray Observatory over the past year to make the observations. If the universe is 13.7 billion years old, the age of this black hole would be 13.2 billion years. The scientists said that this oldest black hole is extremely massive, 10 times bigger than the black hole in our own Milky Way galaxy. It is believed to weigh anywhere from 10% to 100% the mass of all the stars in its galaxy. Said the study's lead writer, Akos Bogdan, of the Harvard Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. That is far larger than all the black holes in our Milky Way and its closer galactic neighbors, he noted. Their mass on average is only about one-tenth of a percent of that of the stars in their galaxies. It's just really early on in the universe to be such a behemoth, said Yale University's Priyam Vada Natarajan, a study team member. The Astrophysical Journal Letters published a report linked to the study. It's astounding how this thing actually is sitting in place already with its galaxy so early on in the universe, Natarajan said. The researchers believe the black holes formed from huge clouds of gas that collapsed in a galaxy next to another with stars. The two galaxies joined and the black hole was in control. The Chandra telescope found the object with X-ray imaging. That fact confirms, without a doubt, that it is a black hole, Natarajan said. With X-rays, you're actually capturing the gas that is being gravitationally pulled into the black hole, sped up, and it starts glowing in the X-rays, she said. Natarajan also said this black hole is considered a quasar since it is actively growing and the gas is extremely bright. In addition to the latest find, scientists said the Webb telescope might have found a black hole that is 29 million years older. However, that object still needs to be observed in X-rays to be confirmed. Natarajan expects more early black holes will be found, perhaps not as far away, but still very distant. We are expecting a new window to open in the universe and I think this is the first crack, she said. The two space telescopes, Webb and Chandra, were able to observe the part of space that holds this galaxy, UHZ-1, and its black hole because of what is called gravitational lensing. The gravity of a galaxy much closer to Earth magnified the apparent image of UHZ-1 and its black hole, which are further in the background. It's a pretty faint object and, thanks to luck, nature has magnified it for us, Natarajan said. NASA launched the Webb telescope in 2021 to a point 1.6 million kilometers away from Earth. It is the biggest and most powerful observatory ever sent into space. Webb captures images of the universe in infrared light. The much older Chandra records X-ray radiation. It was sent into orbit in 1999. I absolutely find it amazing that Chandra can do such amazing discoveries 24 years after its launch, Bogdan said. I'm Katie Weaver. That was Katie Weaver with this week's Science and Technology Report. Katie joins me now to talk more about the story. Hi, Katie. Hi there, Dan. Great to be back on the podcast. Your story today was about the recent discovery of the oldest black hole. You refer to the black hole as an object. I find it hard to picture a hole in space as an object and I think many people probably do. It is not something I can wrap my head around fully. We think of holes as empty places or new places made by removing material. But NASA explains that black holes are not empty at all. Experts there describe a black hole as a great amount of matter crowded into a very small area. But we can't actually see a black hole, right? Right. The pull of a black hole is so strong that nothing, not even light, can escape it. But working with data from the Webb and Chandra telescopes, the scientists could measure the intensity and brightness of gases as the black hole's gravitational field sucks them in. Or as it did 13.2 billion years ago. Right. The issue of time and what exactly time is will have to be left for another discussion. It will certainly come up in future Science and Technology Reports. Well, Katie, thanks for coming in and talking about one of the most mysterious things in the universe. It was fun. See you again soon, Dan. My name is Andrew Smith. And I'm Jill Robbins. You're listening to The Lesson of the Day on The Learning English Podcast. Welcome to the part of the show where we help you do more with our series Let's Learn English. The series shows Anna Matteo in her work and life in Washington, D.C. In Lessons 32 and 33 of the series, Anna has a new TV show for children. In the show, there is a computer named Mindy that helps Anna travel to different places. But Mindy sometimes has trouble sending Anna to the correct place. Anna loves baseball. And she wants to travel to a ballpark to talk about the sport of baseball. But Mindy has sent Anna to wrong places, including the ocean. Let's see if Mindy can fix the problem. Last time on the Time Traveling Treehouse, Anna was lost. Really lost. She wants to learn about baseball, but her computer Mindy sent her to many wrong places. Mindy, help me. I am in the ocean with a shark. I will try one more time, Anna. Please try harder, Mindy. Can teach children about baseball when you find the answer. Now Anna can explain how to play baseball, a sport that is popular in the United States. To play baseball, you really only need a bat, a ball, and a glove. Each team has many players. Pitchers pitch the ball. Catchers catch the ball. Batters bat the ball. Runners run the bases. Fielders field the ball. In baseball, bases are special places on the field. And to bat means to hit the ball with a specially shaped piece of wood or metal called a bat. To pitch means to throw the ball to the batter. The throw itself is called the pitch. Have you noticed how the same word can work in different ways? The word bat can be either a verb or a noun. To bat means to hit, and a bat is the piece of wood or metal. And the batter is the person who holds the bat and tries to bat the ball. For some words in English, we can take the noun or verb form and add the ending er. Pronounced er to describe the person or agent doing the activity. Here are several examples. Run, runner. Work, worker. Dance, dancer. Swim, swimmer. Think, thinker. Bank, banker. Pitch, pitcher. In baseball, the pitcher is the person who throws the ball to the batter. To pitch is the verb. While the pitch is the noun, the name for the throw itself. From pitcher to batter. When you are learning new words in English, it is helpful to know how the words can be used in different forms like to pitch, the pitch, and pitcher. Let's take another example using the verb create. To create means to make something new and original. A creator is someone who creates, just like a pitcher is someone who pitches. But here's where English spelling might drive you crazy. Words like pitcher, batter, runner, and dancer all end with the letters er. But creator ends with the letters o-r. But it still sounds like the sound er, creator. How else can the word create change? Well, we can use the noun form creation. The adjective creative or the adverb creatively. To repeat the forms that's create, creator, creation, creative, creatively. So remember, when you learn a new word in English, be sure to check the dictionary to learn all the forms of the word. I'm Jill Robbins and you're listening to the Learning English podcast. Before we move on, we should say one more thing about baseball. We have many idiomatic expressions in English that come from the sport such as hit a home run or be out in left field. If you want to learn more about these, enter the following words in a search on the internet. Words and their stories, VOA baseball. Let's repeat that. The search terms are words and their stories, VOA for Voice of America, and baseball. That will help you find a VOA learning English article that explains all of the baseball expressions and gives more information about the sport. After Anna's computer, Mindy, brought her back to the right place, Anna was able to finish teaching about baseball. And then she asks Mindy to return her to what she calls her treehouse, which in this scene is really a room at the office. Mindy, Mindy, we found the answer. It's time to return to the treehouse. Good job. That was fast. Good job, Anna. You know, I still don't like children's shows, but I like this children's show. In American culture, we often say positive, supportive things to people we work with. We call these statements compliments. An easy compliment to say is good job. Good job. That was fast. Good job, Anna. Here are some other compliments we commonly say. That was thoughtful of you. Thanks. You are so helpful. I really appreciate it. It's great having you on our team. Way to go. Nice job. I really like what you've done here, Andrew. Well, thank you. Now, here's something our listeners can do. Try to compliment someone you know in English. Then you can write to us and tell us about it at learningenglishatvoanews.com. And while Andrew and I don't need compliments, we do like to hear your comments and what you think about the lesson of the day on the Learning English podcast. Remember that you can find us on YouTube, Facebook, and Instagram. Thanks for listening to the lesson of the day on the Learning English podcast. I'm Andrew Smith. And I'm Dr. Jill. 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.