No.1This is the VOA Special English Education Report.A program in the eastern United States invites young people into a prison to try to scare them away from prison. The goal is to teach them to avoid bad choices and bad influences that could put them behind bars for life.Students can take a tour of the prison, in school groups or by themselves. At the end, the young people sit down for a discussion with some of the inmates.The program is called Prisoners Against Teen Tragedy, or PATT. It takes place at the Maryland Correctional Institution-Hagerstown, a medium-security prison for men. Sal Mauriello is a case specialist there.SAL MAURIELLO: "We have a group of eleven inmates who are in the PATT program. They tellthe youth what they went through as a child, what their crimes consist of. They try to teach them about peer pressure. They try to teach them about bad choices."The Prisoners Against Teen Tragedy program also includes an essay-writing contest. Tomi Dare is a seventeen-year-old student at Hagerstown Community College. Shesaw an announcement for the contest on her college website. To enter, students had to write about peer pressure and why they do not do drugs. The prize: five hundred dollars for school.In her essay, Ms. Dare wrote about her own experience growing up as anAfrican-American girl interested in sports.T OMI DARE: "Drugs and alcohol not only slow a person down, it doesn't make you feel like you are a winner. It doesn't make you feel like you are the best. As an athlete, I'm 6-2 [188 centimeters], so I feel that I should be above peer pressure because I'm bigger than everybody that I’m around."So I was talking about that and I was talking about how I consider myself a queen. Andif I’m royalty, I need to not put substances in my body. Drugs and alcohol are not whata queen should be taking."The scholarship is presented by the Prisoners Against Teen Tragedy program.Prison spokesman Mark Vernarelli says most teens who visit come to understand what even one bad decision can mean.MARK VERNARELLI: "A lot of men and women serving life in prison in the state of Maryland didn't pull a trigger or plunge a knife into anybody. They were accessories to a crime. Theydrove the getaway car. They were with the perpetrator who did the main part of the crime. And yet they got the life sentence as well. "Prisoners Against Teen Tragedy began in nineteen eighty-eight. PATT is one of Maryland's oldest programs to keep young people from a life of crime. But there are also others.MARK VERNARELLI: "We found that girls really need special sit-down sessions sometimes more than the boys do, so we have a program for girls only. We have a program that travels across the state, which talks about the dangers of gang affiliation."We have an excellent program where the inmates actually lead a tour and they have the children eat the meal in the prison cafeteria with the inmates."Mark Vernarelli says the Prisoners Against Teen Tragedy also gain from the program. It offers them a chance to help repay society for their crimes, and keep others from following in their footsteps.And that's the VOA Special English Education Report. I'm Steve Ember.No.2This is the VOA Special English Health Report.An outbreak of cholera in Haiti continues to spread sickness and worry. Health officials are worried that the capital could suffer a major outbreak of the disease.So far most cases in Port-au-Prince have been found in people who arrived in the city already sick. But now health officials have confirmed the first case in a boy who had not left the city for at least a year. And there are other suspected cases in the Haitian capital. Cholera causes diarrhea and vomiting. It robs the body of fluids. People can get cholera if they eat foods or drink liquids containing the bacteria that cause the infection.Cholera is not hard to treat. Basically, patients drink a solution of salt, sugar and water. The problem is that help is not always available quickly. If cholera is not treated, it can kill within hours, especially in people already in weakened conditions.The earthquake in January displaced large numbers of people. It forced them into crowded, dirty conditions in tent camps -- in other words, the perfect environment for cholera.The outbreak in Haiti has already killed several hundred people. The country's last major outbreak of the disease was more than one hundred years ago.Disease-control experts from the United States confirmed the first cases of cholera in Haiti on October twenty-first in the Artibonite area. The outbreak was mostly limited to that area until a powerful storm struck Haiti last Friday.Hurricane Tomas caused heavy rains and flooding and some deaths. The number of cholera cases had been dropping last week but then rose sharply after the storm.Medical workers in Haiti are now trying to spread the message not to use river water without some form of purification. People are being urged to take steps like adding a small amount of bleach to the water or boiling it for at least a full minute.Workers are also struggling to provide clean bottled water and water purification tablets.People are being urged to wash their hands carefully with soap and purified water after using the toilet or changing a baby's diaper. The same advice goes for before eating, and before and after preparing food. If no soap is available, then ash can be used instead. And that's the VOA Special English Health Report, written by Caty Weaver. You can read transcripts and download our programs at . We're also on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube at VOA Learning English. I’m Faith Lapidus.No.3This is the VOA Special English Technology Report, formerly called the Development Report.Before we changed the name, we went on our Facebook page and asked for story ideas. Some of you suggested that we talk about ICT, information and communication technology.Well, the International Telecommunication Union, a United Nations agency, released its latest ICT Facts and Figures report last week.Since two thousand five, the number of Internet users worldwide has doubled to more than one and a half billion people. At least two billion are expected to be online by the end of this year.The ITU says more than seventy percent of new Internet users this year will be indeveloping countries. Still, only twenty-one percent of the population of the developing world is online -- compared to seventy-one percent in developed countries.Susan Teltscher is head of the agency's Market Information and Statistics Division in Switzerland.SUSAN TELTSCHER: "There are still very huge divides when it comes to accessing the Internet, especially high-speed Internet. In developing countries, you have only one out of five people using the Internet. If we look at certain regions like in Africa, for example, the figures are even lower. In Africa we have not even ten percent of the population using the internet."Less than sixteen percent of homes in developing countries are wired for the Internet. But, on the other hand, Ms. Teltscher says mobile phone usage has reached sixty-eight percent in developing countries.The world has almost seven billion people. Nine out of ten now have access to mobile networks.The ITU estimates that mobile subscriptions will reach five billion three hundred million this year. The majority are in the developing world. And Susan Teltscher says more and more people in developing countries are using their mobile phones to connect to the Internet.SUSAN TELTSCHER: "Because it's so difficult to put in place the cable infrastructure and the fiber infrastructure, the mobile networks really offer a great opportunity for them to connect to the Internet over the wireless networks."Ms. Teltscher says mobile technology is already improving lives in developing countries. She points to examples like banking by phone, e-health services and farm reports by text messaging. And the possibilities will only grow as broadband, or high-speed, connections become more widely available.ITU Secretary General Hamadoun Toure calls broadband "the next truly transformational technology." He also calls it the most powerful tool available in the race to meet the Millennium Development Goals by twenty fifteen.And that's the VOA Special English Technology Report, written by June Simms. Join us online at or on Facebook or Twitter at VOA Learning English. I'm Steve Ember.。