 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, Dan Friedel reports on international talks to end plastic pollution. Katie Weaver has a story about animals in Japan receiving blessings in place of children. Gina Bennett and I have the education reports on the gap between girls and boys when it comes to graduating high school. Later, John Russell presents the lesson of the day. But first, a large group of international negotiators and United Nations representatives are meeting in Nairobi, Kenya this week. They aim to take the next step in creating a document that hopes to stop plastic pollution around the world. The meeting is the third of an expected five gatherings of what the UN calls an Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee, or INC, under the UN Environment Program. The final meeting will be late in 2024. By then, the UN hopes to have an agreement that will have the force of law in countries that agree to it. The agreement would limit plastic production and provide rules on how to throw away or recycle plastic products currently in use. Kenya is one of the most restrictive countries in the world. In 2017, the East African nation banned the manufacturer, sale, and use of plastic bags that can be used only one time. Lawbreakers can face five years in jail and fines. In 2019, Kenya banned single-use plastics, such as water bottles and drinking straws, from being used in parks, forests, beaches, and other protected natural areas. The most recent meeting was held in Paris in June. There was disagreement over how the rules should affect oil-producing countries. Plastic is largely made from oil. However, the June meeting ended with an agreement to create an initial treaty text, or an outline, that will be refined this week. Bjorn Bieler is with the International Pollutants Elimination Network, a group of environmental nonprofits. He said the text is like a large food list at a restaurant, a menu. The job this week is for the negotiators to choose what they want for the treaty. He said the treaty will grow as those in Nairobi this week present their ideas. Bieler's group hopes the document deals with bad chemicals used in the creation of plastics. Kenya's president is William Ruto. He said the treaty will be the first domino in a move away from plastic. Domino's is a game in which the pieces connect to each other. Gustavo Adolfo Mesa Quadra Belasquez is a permanent member of the UN from Peru. He is the head of the negotiating committee. He called the need to deal with the world's plastic pollution urgent, and said the world needs to work together to bring a difference at the scale required. Two of the nations pushing an agreement are Norway and Rwanda. The nations released a statement earlier this month calling for an ambitious treaty that will protect human life and the environment. They are concerned about plastic pollution, plastic waste, and greenhouse gas emissions. Saudi Arabia is among the countries that have large oil industries. The nations include Iran, China, and Russia. They want the treaty to center on plastic waste control and not reduce the creation of plastic products. Environmental activists are concerned that those countries will not cooperate. Graham Forbes is with Greenpeace. He said it was unfortunate that a handful of governments are putting the interests of chemical companies ahead of the health of the planet and their own citizens. Another climate activist is Eric Lindberg of the World Wildlife Fund based in Switzerland. He said the oil producing nations want to make the treaty a loose voluntary agreement. He wants the agreement to be a strong treaty. Negotiators for the US said the treaty should have meaningful terms but also leave room for differences between countries so that an agreement can be reached. Chemical companies and oil companies such as ExxonMobil say they want the treaty to pay more attention to the lifespan of plastics instead of banning them. Chris John is a spokesman for the International Council of Chemical Associations. He said the group should center its talks on ending plastic pollution, not plastic production. Karen McKee of ExxonMobil noted improvements in the ability to recycle plastics at ExxonMobil's center in Baytown, Texas. The meeting ends on Sunday. The next meeting of the INC is next April in Ottawa, Canada. I'm Dan Friedle. A traditional ceremony for children in Japan is growing popular for animals there as well. Natsuki Aoki recently flew with her two Chihuahua dogs from the western city of Hiroshima to Tokyo, the nation's capital. She took the trip so the little dogs could receive a special blessing at the Zama Shrine, a Shinto holy place. Aoki noted that few religious centers are open to animals. I think it would be great to see more places like this, the 33-year-old said on Tuesday. The Zama Shrine dates back to the 6th century. It is about 25 kilometers southwest of Tokyo. The religious center established a prayer area for animals in 2012. It now holds Shichigosan ceremonies, where pet owners can pray for the health and happiness of their dogs and cats. The ceremony, which means 753 in Japanese, is traditionally celebrated in mid-November for children reaching those ages. Parents dress their girls and boys in kimonos and bring them to a Shinto holy place for the ceremony. On Tuesday, several people led their animals up the steps of the Inuniko Jinja, or Dog Cat Shrine. They prayed and received a blessing from a Shinto clergy. Six Shiba Inu dogs wearing kimonos lined up for pictures at the event. Japan's birth rate dropped for a seventh straight year in 2022 to a record low, while deaths increased to an all-time high. The number of children is decreasing each year, and as a result, more and more people are pouring their love into their dogs and cats, said Yoshinori Haraga of the Zama Shrine. We want to offer the pet owners a place at Zama Shrine for them to thank the gods when their dogs and cats reach the ages of three, five, and seven, said Haraga. The clergy estimated about 120 pets would be brought to the shrine this season. Among them was Masayo Tashiro, who brought two dogs, a terrier and a pomeranian, to the center as she made offerings and prayers. They are very important to me, like my own children, said the 53-year-old caregiver. I came here to pray that they will have a safe and healthy life with us together. I'm Katie Weaver. The U.S. government does not require states to report graduation rates by a student's sex, but in every state reporting high school graduation rates by gender, research shows female students graduate at higher rates than male students. A report from the Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C., found that in 37 states reporting the data, more than 45,000 fewer boys than girls graduated high school in 2018. Richard Reeves was one of the writers of the report from 2021. He said that about 88% of girls graduated on time compared with 82% of boys that year. A follow-up study in 2021 found the difference in graduation between girls and boys in 28 states was 6%. This difference is not just limited to the United States. The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, OECD, measures education data in many countries. Among 38 member countries, including most of North America, South America, and Europe, more girls graduate high school than boys. In 2020, the average graduation rate for girls in OECD countries was 86% for girls, but 79% for boys. Just two countries that provided data to OECD, the Czech Republic and South Korea, had a higher graduation rate for boys. OECD's Program for International Student Assessment, or PISA, measures student knowledge and skills in mathematics, reading, and science at age 15. 85 countries take PISA. OECD information shows that girls mostly perform better in reading than boys. Boys perform better in science and math. The difference between graduation rates for girls and boys in the U.S. is being called a gender gap. Few people talk about it and reports suggest that schools have done little to deal with the issue, but some schools have found ways to fight it. The city of Yonkers, New York raised graduation rates for minority boys through support such as mentoring. Former superintendent Edwin Quasada said dealing with the difference between races in graduation rates was useful toward understanding the gender gap, which was 7 percentage points in 2022. Boys are sent to special education at higher rates than girls in early grades and are suspended at higher rates throughout school. That can all result in not graduating on time, Quasada said. Schools in the city of Buffalo, New York have included efforts from My Brother's Keeper. That was the program started by former president Barack Obama to help boys succeed in school. Buffalo also has provided mentoring to male students and hired more men to teach, spokesman Jeffrey Hammond said. Still, the urban school district reported a 10 percentage point difference between female and male graduation rates in 2022 and an 11 point gap in 2021. Girls nationally succeed in school over boys because they are more apt to plan ahead and set academic goals, Hammond wrote in an email. He said girls receive fewer school suspensions showing they are more likely to follow rules and receive more instruction from teachers. Only 10 states that report graduation rates by gender also measure it by race. That makes it difficult to understand how race influences the graduation gender gap. Reeves found some important differences in his latest study in the five largest states that do report graduation by race. He found that the difference between the graduation rate of black girls and black boys was much larger than the difference between white girls and white boys or Asian girls and Asian boys. This year Reeves left the Brookings Institution to start the American Institute for Boys and Men. It is a nonprofit group that says it aims to improve men's lives. The graduation gap is also linked to what observers call a success gap between students from wealthy and poor families. But the reasons for the difference between boys and girls are not clear. Discussions with students, educators and researchers point to several influences. Men can earn the same pay as women with less education. But boys also are more likely to be suspended or face other forms of discipline and punishment. And they do not seek treatment as often as girls do when they face mental health problems. Some boys are fine when they first drop out of school finding jobs with good pay. But over the long term, not graduating from high school can hold men back. Studies show young men who drop out of high school earn less money over their lifetimes and are more likely to end up in jail. In some cases, boys are not as interested in graduating as girls because they have not needed a high school degree to pay for rent and food, said Beth Jaros. She is with the nonprofit research organization PRB. A man without a high school diploma often earns as much as a woman who has completed a year or two of college, she said. I'm Dan Novak. And I'm Gina Bennett. Interesting story on graduation rates for boys and girls. Was there anything in the story that surprised you? I did some of my own research for the story on the graduation gender gap in different countries. And I was surprised at how girls graduate at higher rates than boys at many other countries besides the US. There were just two OECD countries where boys graduated more than girls, right? Yeah, that was the Czech Republic and South Korea. OECD has members all over the world, but are mostly from North America, South America, and Europe. So out of 35 countries that provided data, just Czech and South Korea had a higher rate for boys than girls. And boys graduated only 1% more on average and less than 1% in South Korea. So really small margins there. It didn't seem super clear as to why girls graduate more than boys. Yeah, there isn't a whole lot of research into the gender gap in graduation. In the US, a third of states don't even gather that data. But experts interviewed for the story do have some ideas. Boys are more likely to enter special education than girls and they're also more likely to get in trouble or get suspended. Both of those things can make it harder to graduate. And boys are still able to earn enough money even if they don't graduate? Yeah, that's another possible reason. It might just not be as important for boys to graduate because they earn about the same amount of money on average as a girl who has completed a year or two of college. Which is not to say that dropping out isn't a problem. Boys who drop out of school earn less over their lifetimes. We'll see if school systems start doing more to address the problem. Thanks for answering my questions, Dan. In this next report, Anna Mateo tells us about changes to social media services Facebook and Instagram. We learn how the parent company, Meta, recently announced the changes due to data privacy rules in Europe. Pay careful attention to the word comply. We will talk more about it after the report. Facebook and Instagram users in Europe are getting the option to use the social media services without seeing advertisements. However, they will have to pay for that option. Meta, the parent company of both Facebook and Instagram, recently announced the new choice, which is meant to comply with Europe's data privacy rules. Starting this month, users on desktop browsers will pay about $11 a month, while iOS and Android users will pay $14 a month. Meta said in a blog that the price difference between the versions is the result of higher costs linked to the Apple and Google app stores. The monthly payment will cover all LinkedIn Facebook and Instagram accounts until March 1, 2024. On that date, Meta will require $6 to $8 for each additional account, depending on the system used. Meta released details of the plan late last month. Meta said it is introducing the new pay option after a ruling by the EU's top court. The court said Meta must first get consent before showing ads to users under EU data privacy rules. Meta advertises products and services to individual users based on their online activity. The EU ruling affects the company's ability to make money from its advertising methods. Meta said in a statement that the paid option balances the requirements of European regulators while giving users choice and allowing Meta to continue serving all people. Users aged 18 and older in the EU's 27 member countries and also Switzerland, Norway, Iceland and Lechtenstein will still have the choice to continue using Facebook or Instagram with ads. Meta said it is considering how to provide teens with a useful and responsible ad experience under the European privacy ruling. On November 1, the European Data Regulator, the European Data Protection Board, announced that it would extend a ban on behavioral advertising on Facebook and Instagram. The ban covers all 30 countries in the EU and the European Economic Area. The ban was first put into place by non-EU member Norway. The northern European country has ordered Meta to pay thousands of dollars each day since the middle of August for breaking the country's privacy rules. Behavioral advertising targets users by collecting their personal data. The EU's ban on such advertising is considered a setback for Meta. In a statement, Meta said it believes in an ad-supported internet but the company said it respects the spirit and purpose of these evolving European regulations and aims to comply with them. I'm Anna Mateo. Before the report, we asked you to pay careful attention to the word comply. Can you remember when you heard it? You heard comply a couple of times in the report. Here is the first example of it. The parent company of both Facebook and Instagram recently announced the new choice which is meant to comply with Europe's data privacy rules. Comply is a verb. The online etymology dictionary tells us that it dates to the 14th century. Originally, it was a transitive verb, meaning it took a direct object and suggested carrying out or fulfilling something. Over time, it took on an intransitive sense, meaning the verb does not take a direct object. This intransitive meaning suggests doing what you are asked or required to do, obeying. In general, we use the intransitive sense in modern times, just like you heard in the report. An important point about comply. English speakers often use comply with the word with. So you are very likely to hear comply with, as in meta will comply with the EU's new privacy rules. Here is a comparison. You can think of the verb comply and the word with as good friends. They are often seen side by side. So we have the verb comply. It appears next to with. We also have an adjective form, compliant and a noun form, compliance. Both the adjective and noun forms often appear with the word with as well. So you might hear a person say, the company needs to be compliant with the new laws. Or, our company is in compliance with the new laws. 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.