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5/15(土)の放送の英文記事と英単語：前触れ、内乱

Israel Ground Forces Shell Gaza as Fighting Intensifies

shell　 (～を) 砲撃する
wage　 (戦争・反対運動などを) 行う、遂行する
prelude　 前触れ
artillery fire　 砲兵射撃
unprecedented　 前例のない
civil unrest　 内乱
reinforcements　 (軍や警察の) 増援部隊
turmoil　 騒動、混乱
trajectory　 軌道、軌跡
impoverished　 貧困に陥った、貧しい
crucible　 試練、苦しい経験
barrage of　 (打撃・質問などの)連続，集中
pulverize　 (～を)粉状にする、砕く、(～を)完全にやっつける

著者：Declan Walsh
(c) 2021 The New York Times Company

Israeli ground forces carried out attacks on the Gaza Strip early Friday in an escalation of a conflict with Palestinian militants that had been waged by airstrikes from Israel and rockets from Gaza.

It was not immediately clear if the attack was the prelude to a ground invasion against Hamas, the Islamist militant group that controls Gaza.

An Israeli military spokesman, Lt. Col. Jonathan Conricus, initially said that “there are ground troops attacking in Gaza,” but later clarified that Israeli troops had not entered Gaza, suggesting the possibility of artillery fire from the outside. He provided no further details.

The surge in fighting highlighted the unprecedented position Israel finds itself in — battling Palestinian militants on its southern flank as it seeks to head off its worst civil unrest in decades.

It followed another day of clashes between Arab and Jewish mobs on the streets of Israeli cities, with the authorities calling up the army reserves and sending reinforcements of armed border police to the central city of Lod to try to head off what Israeli leaders have warned could become a civil war.

Taken together, the two theaters of turmoil pointed to a step change in the grinding, decades-old conflict between Israel and the Palestinians. While violent escalations often follow a predictable trajectory, this latest bout, the worst in seven years, is rapidly evolving into a new kind of war — faster, more destructive and capable of spinning in unpredictable new directions.

In Gaza, an impoverished coastal strip that was the crucible of a devastating seven-week war in 2014, Palestinian militants fired surprisingly large barrages of enhanced-range rockets — some 1,800 in three days — that reached far into Israel.

Israel intensified its campaign of relentless airstrikes against Hamas targets there on Thursday, pulverizing buildings, offices and homes in strikes that have killed 103 people including 27 children, according to the Gaza health authorities.

Six civilians and a soldier have been killed by Hamas rockets inside Israel.

Egyptian mediators arrived in Israel Thursday in a sooner-than-usual push to halt the spiraling conflict. U.S. diplomats also were heading to Israel to begin de-escalation talks.

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5/16(日)の放送の英文記事と英単語：宇宙船、手柄、差し迫った

China’s Mars Rover Mission Lands on the Red Planet

Spacecraft 宇宙船
Feat 手柄
Module 組み立てユニット
Inaugurating 就任させる
Contender 競争者
Spectacularly 素晴らしく
Imminent 差し迫った
Deep space 深宇宙

著者：Steven Lee Myers and Kenneth Chang
(c) 2021 The New York Times Company

The United States now has company on Mars.

A Chinese spacecraft descended through the thin Martian atmosphere and landed safely on a large plain on Saturday morning, state media reported, accomplishing a feat that only two other nations have before. (In the United States, it was still Friday— 7:18 p.m. Eastern time — when the spacecraft touched down.)

The landing follows China’s launch last month of the core module of a new orbiting space station and a successful mission in December that collected nearly 4 pounds of rocks and soil from the moon and brought them back to Earth. Next month, the country’s space program plans to send three astronauts back to space, inaugurating what could become a regular Chinese presence in Earth’s orbit.

Just by arriving at Mars and orbiting the planet in February, China’s space program confirmed its place among the top tier of agencies exploring the solar system. Now that it has executed a landing — with a deployment of a rover still to come — it has established itself as a principal contender in what some view as a new era of space competition.

The Global Times, a newspaper controlled by the Communist Party, said that the mission had “spectacularly conquered a new major milestone” with its landing.

Thomas Zurbuchen, NASA’s associate administrator for science, offered his congratulations to the Chinese. “I look forward to the important contributions this mission will make to humanity’s understanding of the Red Planet,” he wrote on Twitter.

Until Friday, the China National Space Administration had said little about its plans for the landing, in keeping with its usual secrecy involving operations. The news of the impending landing, however, began to spill out on social media and in official news reports, signaling that the landing was imminent.

In a virtual conference organized by the social media platform Weibo on Friday, several scientists debated the reasons to explore Mars, with one saying that the planet’s evolution could hold lessons for changes happening on Earth now.

“The purpose is to better protect our Earth itself,” Jiao Weixin, a professor of geophysics at Peking University, said in the forum. “I think this is the most fundamental purpose of our deep space exploration.”

The Chinese space agency has also highlighted international collaboration on the Tianwen-1 mission including contributions from the Europe Space Agency, Argentina, France and Austria.

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5/17(月)の放送の英文記事と英単語：消費者支出、横ばいになる

Consumer Spending Flattened Last Month After Surging in March

consumer spending 消費者支出、個人消費
flatten 横ばいになる
buoyant (経済・市場・物価などが) 好調な、上昇傾向の
at the onset of ～の始まりに
gauge 測定基準、標準　
highlight (動) 強調する、浮き彫りにする
fitful 変わりやすい、断続的な
consumer confidence 消費者信頼感、消費意欲
a broad array of 広範囲の、多岐にわたる

著者：Sapna Maheshwari
(c) 2021 The New York Times Company

Retail sales were flat last month after a buoyant March, the Commerce Department said Friday, as Americans continued spending their latest round of government stimulus checks.

The pace for April was a slowdown from the prior month, when retail sales rose by 10.7%, as vaccinations increased and people became more comfortable outside their homes, spending more money on clothing, restaurants, bars and sporting goods. Retail sales, which experienced record drops just over a year ago at the onset of the pandemic, have been closely watched as monthly gauges of the health of the economy and the mindset of consumers.

The report highlights the bumpiness of the economic recovery in the United States as it emerges from the pandemic. And it shows how connected consumer spending remains to government support. Economists at Morgan Stanley had anticipated a smaller increase in retail sales in April compared with March based on stimulus check distribution, with roughly 83% of this latest round distributed in the back half of March.

“Stimulus money is driving retail sales right now,” said Robert Frick, a corporate economist at the Navy Federal Credit Union, which is able to track credit card spending across its members. “The economy hasn’t recovered completely even though we had a strong first quarter.”

Last week, a separate government report showed that job growth slowed in April, a surprise to many economists, while the jobless rate rose slightly to 6.1%. The data served as a reminder of the fitful economic recovery and that stimulus money can only go so far.

“Labor market income will become increasingly important in sustaining consumer confidence and spending over the coming months,” the Morgan Stanley economists wrote in a May 7 note.

Retail sales increased in April in categories including restaurants and bars, which posted a 3% gain, as well as electronics and appliance stores and grocery stores. Declines were seen in a broad array of categories, including apparel, gas stations, sporting goods and book stores and department stores.

Still, the broader picture is sunny compared with April 2020. Spending at clothing and accessories stores was up more than 700% last month, compared with a year earlier, while furniture and home furnishing stores had gone up nearly 200%.

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5/18(火)の放送の英文記事と英単語：無分別な、絶え間ない

In a Dark Year on Campus, Some Surprising Glimmers of Light

serendipitous　予想外の幸運をもたらすような
ill-advised　無分別な
beer pong　ビアポン
☝️テーブルの両端に置いたカップに
ピンポン球を投げ入れ合う飲み会ゲーム
perpetual　絶え間ない
wariness　警戒
camaraderie　(共同生活から生まれた)友情
[親戚: comrade(仲間、同志)]
giddy　目が回るような
tumult　大騒ぎ
☝️tumultuous(騒々しい)　
snag　《米口語》すばやくつかむ
invaluable　非常に貴重な
[語源: in(〜ない)+valuable(評価できる)
　　　　→評価できないほど価値がある]
regimen　養生方法
[語源: regimen(ラテン語でルール、ガイド)]
buffet　ビュッフェ

著者：Anemona Hartocollis
(c) 2021 The New York Times Company

It was the year of college without the college experience.

No packed stadiums and arenas. No intimate, small-group seminars or serendipitous encounters with strangers. No (or fewer) ill-advised nights of beer pong and partying.

It is not likely, if given the choice, that many college students would opt for the past year of distance, separation and perpetual wariness. Still, perhaps surprisingly, for many students, there was much that was gained as well as much that was lost in their unwanted suspension of campus life during the pandemic.

Madison Alvarado, who graduated from Duke this month, could no longer enjoy the camaraderie of painting herself blue and the giddy tumult of Duke basketball, which to her was as much about community as sport. As companies stopped hiring last summer, she snagged a summer internship only at the last minute and was still job-hunting this year.

But she is grateful for an invaluable lesson in dealing with how unpredictable life can be.

“I was the person with a plan,” she said. “A lot of people are following a preset track — premed, financial analyst, Ph.D. The pandemic put that in stop mode. It’s made me realize that not knowing the next step doesn’t mean my world is going to crumble. I think it made me less scared to face the unknown.”

At the end of this most unusual of academic years, students interviewed at colleges around the country said they would not miss the regimen of virus testing and quarantining, the classes on Zoom, the zero tolerance for straying from prescribed rules, the distance they felt from one another.

“It’s just been a lot of grieving almost — grieving what we could have had,” said Raina Lee, a freshman at the University of North Carolina, who started the year in a dormitory but almost immediately had to move to an apartment off campus because of a COVID outbreak. “My life physically became a lot smaller, just this apartment.”

But for many it has also been a time of self-discovery. Some applied themselves to academics in a way they never would have if offered the familiar buffet of campus amusements. Some bonded with a tight group of friends. Many, like Alvarado, found that for the first time in their lives, they had been liberated from their carefully planned lives and their focus on getting the approval of others.

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5/19(水)の放送の英文記事と英単語：同行する、許可する、無制限に

They Live in the U.S., but They’re Not Allowed to Come Home

accompany　同行する、付き添う
permit　許可する、許可証
strand　立ち往生させる、困らせる
indefinitely　無期限に
exempt　免除する、適用しない
in limbo　不安定な状態
dependents　扶養家族
biometrics　生体認証

著者：Aishvarya Kavi
(c) 2021 The New York Times Company

In early April, Payal Raj accompanied her family to India to renew the visas that permit them to live in the United States. She and her husband waited until they had been vaccinated, carefully preparing their paperwork according to the advice of their immigration lawyers. But the visa itself would soon strand her in India indefinitely, separating her from her husband and daughter in Hendersonville, Tennessee.

“Our family is in a crisis,” said Raj, who is one of thousands of immigrants stuck in India, in part because the Biden administration’s restrictions on most travel from the country mean that temporary visa holders are explicitly barred from reentering the United States.

The restrictions, issued as a devastating surge in coronavirus cases has overwhelmed India in recent weeks, prohibit Raj and others like her from returning to their homes, families and jobs in the United States. Even those exempt under the ban are in limbo as the outbreak forces the U.S. Embassy and consulates to close, leaving many with no clear path home.

Raj’s husband, Yogesh Kumar, an operations manager for a multinational corporation, lives in the United States on an H-1B visa, or a temporary permit for highly technical foreign workers. As dependents, Raj and their daughter hold H-4 visas, which allow temporary workers to bring immediate family and must be renewed about every three years at an embassy or consulate outside the United States.

Kumar and his daughter, Saanvi Kumar, renewed their visas, but Raj was asked to submit biometrics and complete an in-person interview, both of which would not be completed until after the travel restrictions went into effect two weeks ago.

The White House did not respond to questions about the restrictions on travel from India, but a State Department representative described them as “appropriate public health measures” that are “critical” to defeating the coronavirus.

But critics say that the exemptions to the travel ban are unevenly applied and still risk spreading the virus. American citizens and permanent residents, for instance, can travel freely, while people who are fully vaccinated, test negative or quarantine before and after flying cannot.

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5/20(木)の放送の英文記事と英単語：加速する、言い値、独立企業

MGM Looks to Amazon as the Hollywood Studio Tries to Find a Buyer

turbocharge 加速する、質を向上させる
asking price 言い値、提示価格
brag 自慢する
put ~ on the block ～の売却を検討する
orchestrate 画策する、編成する
stand-alone company 独立企業
spin off 別会社を設立する、スピンオフ

著者：Brooks Barnes
(c) 2021 The New York Times Company

LOS ANGELES — Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer has been in talks to sell itself to Amazon, according to three people briefed on the matter. If completed, a deal would turbocharge Amazon’s streaming ambitions by bringing James Bond, Rocky, RoboCop and other film and television properties into the e-commerce giant’s fold.

MGM has been looking for a buyer for months, with $9 billion floated as an asking price. Apple and Comcast had previously kicked MGM’s tires and decided it was worth roughly $6 billion.

It was unclear how much Amazon might be willing to spend, according to the people briefed on the talks who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the sale process is private. The purchase of Whole Foods for $13.4 billion in 2017 was the biggest acquisition in Amazon’s history. Even $6 billion would make MGM the second-largest.

Representatives for Amazon and MGM declined to comment.

A timeline for a potential deal was unclear, the people said. Michael De Luca, MGM’s chairman, presented the studio’s coming slate to Amazon’s team on Friday, one of the people said.

In total, MGM has about 4,000 films in its library, but many of its characters (the Pink Panther, Chucky the doll) and franchises (“Legally Blonde,” “Tomb Raider”) need reinvention.

MGM, once home to “more stars than the heavens” as its co-founder Louis B. Mayer liked to brag, has been majority owned by Anchorage Capital, a New York investment firm, for more than a decade. Kevin Ulrich, Anchorage’s chief executive and MGM’s chairman, formally put the studio on the block late last year, hiring Aryeh B. Bourkoff, a deal maker and chief executive of LionTree, to orchestrate a sale.

The end of MGM as a stand-alone company would add to a vast reshaping of the media business as the big seek to compete by getting even bigger. On Monday, AT&T announced a deal to spin off its WarnerMedia group and combine it with Discovery Inc., a move designed to strengthen WarnerMedia’s struggling HBO Max streaming service.

Such megadeals have left smaller studios like MGM, Lionsgate and STX Entertainment looking for lifelines. (STX, known for “Hustlers” and “Bad Moms,” merged with the Bollywood studio Eros International last summer.)

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5/21(金)の放送の英文記事と英単語：干ばつ、灌漑、残雪

Severe Drought, Worsened by Climate Change, Ravages the American West

drought　　干ばつ／渇水期
ravage　　荒廃させる／荒らす
irrigation　　灌漑／注水
snowpack　残雪／雪塊
trickle　　したたり／細流
eventual　　いずれの／結局の
haul　　（重いものを）引っ張る／運送する
livestock　　家畜／畜類
forage　　まぐさ／飼い葉
stunt　　成長を妨げる／発育を止める
year-round　　一年中／通年の
exceed　　超える／超過する

著者：Henry Fountain
(c) 2021 The New York Times Company

This year, New Mexican officials have a message for farmers who depend on irrigation water from the Rio Grande and other rivers: Unless you absolutely have to plant this year, don’t.

Years of warming temperatures, a failed rainy season last summer and low snowpack this winter have combined to reduce the state’s rivers to a relative trickle.

Severe drought — largely connected to climate change — is ravaging not only New Mexico but the entire western half of the United States, from the Pacific Coast across the Great Basin and desert Southwest and up through the Rockies to the Northern Plains.

In California, wells are drying up, forcing some homeowners to drill new ones that are deeper and costlier. Lake Mead, on the border of Arizona and Nevada, is so drained of Colorado River water that the two states are facing the eventual possibility of cuts in their supply. And 1,200 miles away in North Dakota, ranchers are hauling water for livestock and giving them supplemental forage, because the heat and dryness is stunting spring growth on the rangelands.

The most dramatic, and potentially deadly, effect of a drought that is as severe and widespread as any seen in the West are the wildfires that are raging amid hot, dry conditions. And this is well before the full blast of summer’s heat arrives.

California, Arizona and New Mexico have each had two large blazes, which is unusual this early in the year. None has been fully contained, including the Palisades Fire that has burned 1,200 acres on the outskirts of Los Angeles.

Officials are predicting when the fire season ends — if it ever does, as warming conditions have made fires possible year-round in some areas — the total could exceed the 10.3 million acres that burned last year.

“The signals and indications are that we are heading for another very dangerous fire year,” Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack, whose department includes the U.S. Forest Service, said last week after he and Interior Secretary Deb Haaland were briefed by experts from the National Interagency Fire Center. “We’re seeing a higher level of risk and an earlier level of risk than we’ve seen in the past.”

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