 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. Speaking up on the program, Andrew Smith has a story on the spread of bedbugs in France as the country prepares to host the 2024 Olympics. Dan Friedel and Gina Bennett report on mining companies considering producing renewable energy. Gregory Stockle brings us this week's Education Report on Concerns Surrounding American Students' Poor Math Skills. Later, John Russell presents the English lesson of the day, but first... Officials in France are worried about the spread of an insect called the bedbug, as Paris prepares to hold the 2024 Summer Olympic Games. Prime Minister Elizabeth Bourne called a meeting of ministers to deal with the bedbug crisis. The country's transportation minister, Clément Bourne, recently met with transportation companies to make a plan for monitoring and disinfecting. Bourne also spoke about reducing worry caused by reports on social media. He told reporters there is no increase in bedbug cases. He added that 37 cases reported in the bus and metro train system and many other reports from trains have proved false. The National Agency for Health and Food Safety reported that 11% of households had a bedbug problem between 2017 and 2022. Because many people might not want to say in public that they have a bedbug problem, the agency used a pole by the company Ipsos to collect the information. The insects are about the size of an apple seed. They neither jump nor fly. However, they have become more resistant to chemicals used to kill insects. And they can stay alive for up to a year with no food. The carbon dioxide humans give off makes the insects become active and try to bite, explained Jean-Michel Beranget. He is a scientist who studies insects. He raises bedbugs in his laboratory in the Infectious Diseases Division of the Mediterranean University Hospital in the city of Marseille. For now, Beranget said, this much is clear. Bedbugs have infested the media. Experts say it makes no difference if a home is clean or dirty. The insects simply want to bite people to get blood, explained Beranget. Whether you live in a dump or a palace, it's the same thing to them, he said. Worry about bedbugs has increased business for insect control companies in France. They use dogs to smell the special odor that bedbugs make. Then they use hot steam to kill the bugs. Kevin Lemestre is director of Lut Antinuisible, a company that removes unwanted insects and animals such as rats. He said that in the past, people would not call his company even if they had been bitten by a bedbug. But now, he said his company is getting many calls from people worried about the insects. The increase in public worry began about a month ago, after reports of bedbugs at a Paris movie theater. Videos began popping up on social media, showing the little insects on trains and buses. Some government officials want to create new rules to fight against bedbugs. Lawmaker Mathilde Panot recently brought a glass container of bedbugs to the parliament to criticize the government, claiming it had let the insects spread quickly. Because bedbugs travel easily on clothing or in luggage, they are a cause of worry for officials ahead of the 2024 Olympic Games. Bone, the transport minister, is hopeful that steps can be taken to reduce the public's fear. But, he added, it's hell, these bedbugs. I'm Andrew Smith. Mining companies produce important metals needed to build electric car batteries and solar panels. Devices called smelters process the rock and minerals so the metal can be purified and sold to manufacturers. The work requires a lot of energy. The advisory business, McKinsey & Company, says mining operations produce between four and seven percent of the world's greenhouse gas emissions. Those are gases released into the atmosphere that some scientists say are warming the planet. Some of the companies that use mined materials include Apple, Hyundai, and Mercedes. Those companies are now putting pressure on mining companies to use less energy. Many of those companies have environmental, social, and governance, or ESG commitments. The ESG commitments require companies such as Apple and car maker Volvo to choose materials that are made in a less harmful way when possible. Some mining companies are thinking about how they can change their business methods to use less energy and create less pollution. The pressure is changing the way mines in Indonesia, Chile, and Canada operate. On the island of Sulawesi in Indonesia, the Brazilian mining company Valet runs its smelters using hydroelectric power instead of diesel fuel. The hydroelectric power comes from three dams the company built years ago. Valet now says it can reduce its carbon dioxide by over one million tons per year. The company says its greenhouse gas emissions are down by one-fifth since 2017. The smelter in Sulawesi produces 75,000 tons of nickel each year. The metal is used for batteries, electric cars, and many machines used around the home. While the company runs the smelter on hydroelectric power, other machines still require coal power. The demand for metals such as nickel and cobalt is rising as more people drive electric cars and use solar panels to power their homes. But as new mines open and active mines increase operations, environmental activists wonder if the mining companies can continue to reduce pollution. Activists say pressure is important to get industries to create less pollution. In Chile, mines that produce copper, lithium, and other materials use some energy from solar farms. In Canada, the Raglan mine in the far northern part of Quebec produces nickel with the help of wind power. Michael Goodsite teaches civil and environmental engineering at the University of Adelaide in Australia. He said the mines that are moving away from diesel fuel are setting a good example. In Indonesia, President Jaco Widodo has pushed for his country to develop its own industries. One of those industries is mining. Indonesia is the world's largest producer of nickel and Valais recently signed a deal for a $4.5 billion processing center. Some of the investment came from Ford, the U.S.-based automaker. Ford is concerned about how its materials are produced. Ford official Christopher Smith said the company can help ensure that the nickel we use in electric vehicle batteries is mined produced within the same ESG standards as our business around the world. But mining companies may not be able to change fast enough for people worried about climate change. Kohl is used to power some of Valais' metal processing in Indonesia. Fabriani Eddy is chief of Valais, Indonesia. She said the company plans to change from Kohl to liquefied natural gas. Experts say the gas is not as bad as Kohl. Eddy said it is the best current choice. The company believes better options may not be available for 15 to 20 years. She said she could wait for the perfect solution or she can work with natural gas, saying it is a transition only. Eddy said natural gas will reduce emissions by 40%. Some climate activists say natural gas still produces methane and carbon dioxide, which they say hurt the environment. But Eddy said Valais can save money in the long run by producing its own energy in Indonesia. She said hydroelectric power reduces the company's carbon emissions and also permits the company to save money. We are no longer that vulnerable to fuel and Kohl costs because we have hydropower, she said. Some products will still be made by businesses that are not making energy changes. Goodsite, the university professor in Australia, said when asked about China. He added that some of the changes will come because businesses want to reduce their energy use. However, he said change will happen if people, who he called end users, who buy cars and mobile phones and other products, choose to buy things made from different materials. I'm Gina Bennett and I'm Dan Friedle. Many Americans joke about how bad they are at math. But labor experts and others in the United States are not laughing. They say the nation's ever-decreasing math skill threatens U.S. economic competitiveness and national security. Jim Stigler is a professor at the University of California, Los Angeles. He studies the process of teaching and learning subjects, including math. He said the advances in technology that are going to drive where the world goes in the next 50 years are going to come from other countries because they have the intellectual capital and we don't. The Education Reporting Collaborative, a coalition of eight news agencies, is documenting the math crisis facing schools. Members of the Collaborative are AL.com, the Associated Press, the Christian Science Monitor, the Dallas Morning News, the Heckinger Report, Idaho Education News, the Post and Courier in South Carolina, and the Seattle Times. The U.S. military has called for a major program to support education in science, technology, education, and math. It argues that the U.S. is dangerously behind other nations. The Defense Department says China produces eight times as many college graduates in these study fields as the United States. It says Russia produces four times as many engineers as the U.S. Government labor experts say the number of jobs in areas requiring math skill will increase by more than 30,000 each year through the end of 2030. That is much faster than most other kinds of jobs. Mathematics is becoming more and more a part of almost every career, said Michael Allen. He chairs the math department at Tennessee Technological University, but most American students are not prepared for those jobs. And the most recent program for international student assessment tests in math or PISA, U.S. students tested lower than students from 36 other education systems around the world. Students in China tested the highest. Only one in five American high school students planning to attend college is prepared for college-level study in STEM, say experts at the National Science and Technology Council, a government group. However, students from other countries are preparing to lead in these areas, reports the National Foundation for American Policy, a non-profit organization. It says only one in five graduate students in math heavy fields at U.S. universities are American. The rest come from other countries. Most will leave the U.S. when they finish their programs. In Massachusetts, employers are expecting a shortage over the next five years of 11,000 workers in the life sciences alone. It's not a small problem, said Edward Lambert Jr. He is director of the Massachusetts Business Alliance for Education. We're just not starting students, particularly students of color and from lower-resourced families, on career paths related to math and computer science, and those things in which we need to stay competitive, or starting them early enough, he said. This is not an educational question alone, said Josh Weiner, a vice president of the Aspen Institute, a think tank. In July, it warned that other nations are gaining near to America's technological power. It urged decision makers to make education an important national security goal. We are no longer keeping pace with other countries, particularly China. The Aspen report says, calling this a dangerous failure. I'm Gregory Stockel. In this next report, Andrew Smith tells us about growing concerns in France. The source of concern? A kind of insect known as a bed bug. We learn that some people are worried about bed bugs, especially because of the large numbers of travelers coming to France for the 2024 Summer Olympic Games. Pay careful attention to two nouns, dump and palace. We will talk more about them after the report. Officials in France are worried about the spread of an insect called the bed bug, as Paris prepares to hold the 2024 Summer Olympic Games. Prime Minister Elizabeth Bourne called a meeting of ministers to deal with the bed bug crisis. The country's transportation minister, Clément Bonne, recently met with transportation companies to make a plan for monitoring and disinfecting. Bourne also spoke about reducing worry caused by reports on social media. He told reporters there is no increase in bed bug cases. He added that 37 cases reported in the bus and metro train system and many other reports from trains have proved false. The National Agency for Health and Food Safety reported that 11% of households had a bed bug problem between 2017 and 2022, because many people might not want to say in public that they have a bed bug problem, the agency used a poll by the company Ipsos to collect the information. The insects are about the size of an apple seed. They neither jump nor fly. However, they have become more resistant to chemicals used to kill insects. And they can stay alive for up to a year with no food. The carbon dioxide humans give off makes the insects become active and try to bite, explained Jean-Michel Beranget. He is a scientist who studies insects. He raises bed bugs in his laboratory in the infectious diseases division of the Méditerranée University Hospital in the city of Marseille. For now, Beranget said, this much is clear. Bed bugs have infested the media. Experts say it makes no difference if a home is clean or dirty. The insects simply want to bite people to get blood, explained Beranget. Whether you live in a dump or a palace, it's the same thing to them, he said. Worry about bed bugs has increased business for insect control companies in France. They use dogs to smell the special odor that bed bugs make. Then, they use hot steam to kill the bugs. Kevin Le Maestre is director of Lut Antinuisible, a company that removes unwanted insects and animals such as rats. He said that in the past, people would not call his company even if they had been bitten by a bed bug. But now, he said his company is getting many calls from people worried about the insects. The increase in public worry began about a month ago after reports of bed bugs at a Paris movie theater. Videos began popping up on social media, showing the little insects on trains and buses. Some government officials want to create new rules to fight against bed bugs. Lawmaker Mathilde Panot recently brought a glass container of bed bugs to the parliament to criticize the government, claiming it had let the insects spread quickly. Because bed bugs travel easily on clothing or in luggage, they are a cause of worry for officials ahead of the 2024 Olympic Games. All human population movements are profitable for bed bugs because they go with us to hotels in transport, said Beranget. Bone, the transport minister, is hopeful that steps can be taken to reduce the public's fear. But, he added, it's hell, these bed bugs. I'm Andrew Smith. Before the report, we asked you to pay careful attention to the nouns dump and palace. Can you remember when you heard them? You heard them in a quote from an insect expert named Jean-Michel Beranget. Let's listen again. Experts say it makes no difference if a home is clean or dirty. The insects simply want to bite people to get blood, explained Beranget. Whether you live in a dump or a palace, it's the same thing to them, he said. Let's start with dump. The online etymology dictionary tells us that dump, a verb, meaning to throw down or fall with force, drop something or someone suddenly, dates to the early 14th century. The word was not found in Old English, so it may have come from a Scandinavian word. Eventually, the noun form of dump began to be used, perhaps in the 1860s, the online etymology dictionary says. The original noun form of dump meant a place where waste is dumped, or a pile or heap of waste. By the late 1890s, the meaning gradually grew to be any place in very poor condition. Now we turn to the noun palace. The online etymology dictionary tells us the noun palace dates to the early 13th century, from the French word palais, which traces its origins to a Latin word. By about 1300, palace took on a more general sense of a magnificent living place. So we have dump, meaning a place in very poor condition, and palace, a large living place in great condition. But please note that the two words are not exact opposites. Dump does not suggest anything about size. A dump could be large or small, but a palace is always large. The point of this lesson is to get you thinking about vocabulary words. When we learn new words, it can be useful to learn a contrasting word, a word that is different or perhaps the opposite. For example, in the story, we have words such as clean and dirty. We have dump and palace. When we pay careful attention to new words and ask ourselves questions about the words, for example, what are the opposites, or how are these words different but not exactly the opposite, we can improve our learning and understanding of words. 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.