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5/1(土)の放送の英文記事と英単語：探偵、刑事、証言

Five Charged in Shooting of Lady Gaga’s Dog Walker

in connection with　～に関連して
detective 　 探偵、刑事
evidence 証拠、証言
breed 品種　　　　　
accessory 　《法律》従犯の
attempted murder 　 殺人未遂【同】murder attempt
surveillance 　監視、監督、見張り
tussle 激しく格闘する、取っ組み合いをする
close call 危機一髪

著者：Michael Levenson
(c) 2021 The New York Times Company

Five people have been arrested and charged in connection with a violent attack in February in which a man who was walking Lady Gaga’s French bulldogs in Hollywood was shot and the dogs were stolen, the Los Angeles police said on Thursday.

The police said that an investigation had revealed that James Jackson, 18, Jaylin White, 19, and Lafayette Whaley, 27, were involved in the robbery and shooting of the dog walker.

Detectives do not believe the men were targeting the dog walker because of the dogs’ owner, the police said. Evidence, however, suggests that the men knew that the dog breed was valuable and that this was the motivation for the robbery, according to the police.

The police said that two others who were arrested and charged — Harold White, 40, and Jennifer McBride, 50 — were found to be accessories after the shooting. McBride reported that she found the dogs and responded to a reward email to return them.

Lady Gaga, whose real name is Stefani Germanotta, had offered a $500,000 reward for the safe return of the dogs, which are named Koji and Gustav.

McBride ultimately took the dogs to the Los Angeles Police’s Olympic Station.

It was not immediately clear if the five people who were arrested had lawyers.

The police said that Jackson, Jaylin White and Whaley had been charged with one count each of attempted murder and robbery. Harold White and McBride were charged with one count each of being accessories to attempted murder, the police said.

According to surveillance video from a nearby home, the dog walker, Ryan Fischer, was on a sidewalk as a white car pulled up next to him.

Two men got out of the car and tussled with Fischer. He screamed repeatedly and moments later, a gunshot was heard. “Help me, I’ve been shot,” Fischer can be heard saying just after the car drove away. “I’ve been shot. Oh my God.”

Fischer wrote last month that he was “still in recovery from a very close call with death” and “will write and say more later.”

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5/2(日)の放送の英文記事と英単語：誓う、従う、監視、詐欺

Apple’s App Store Draws EU Antitrust Charge

Antitrust 独占禁止の
Vow 誓う
Comply 従う
Oversight 監視
Fraud 詐欺
Buggy バグが多い
Undercut 切り取る
Deprive 拒む
Distort 歪ませる
Remedy 救済

著者：Adam Satariano
(c) 2021 The New York Times Company

European Union regulators on Friday accused Apple of violating antitrust laws by imposing unfair rules and fees on rival music-streaming services that depend on the App Store to reach customers.

Apple has vowed to fight the charges.

Any app downloaded to an iPhone or iPad must comply with the company’s rules and guidelines, including using Apple’s payment system and sharing up to 30% on any sales. If not, a company risks losing access to millions of Apple customers.

Apple says tight oversight of the App Store ensures customers download high-quality apps, protecting users from viruses, fraud and buggy software. But companies including Spotify, the music streaming service that filed a complaint two years ago that set off the EU’s investigation, have grown frustrated with its powerful position. They argue it allows Apple to undercut competitors to services like Apple Music and charge an unfair tax on developers.

The European Commission, the executive arm of the 27-nation bloc, agreed with Apple’s opponents. Authorities zeroed in on requirements that rival music platforms must use Apple’s payment system, forcing them to give Apple a percentage of their subscription fees. The rules have the effect of driving up prices, regulators said, because companies are prevented from offering cheaper payment options and pass on Apple’s fees to customers.

Margrethe Vestager, the commission’s executive vice president in charge of antitrust enforcement, said Apple was abusing its power to harm Spotify, the Swedish company that is Apple’s main competitor in the music streaming and podcast market.

“By setting strict rules on the App Store that disadvantage competing music streaming services, Apple deprives users of cheaper music streaming choices and distorts competition,” Vestager said in a statement.

Remedies could include letting app developers use alternative payment methods.

Apple said its App Store policies do not harm competition, but rather give businesses a platform to reach customers. The company said developers can find payment alternatives, noting that Spotify pays little in commissions to Apple because customers must subscribe through a website. Apple said Spotify has become the world’s largest music streaming service in part because of the App Store.

“They want all the benefits of the App Store but don’t think they should have to pay anything for that,” Apple said in a statement. “The commission’s argument on Spotify’s behalf is the opposite of fair competition.”

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5/3(月)の放送の英文記事と英単語：綿棒、伝染病、腐敗した

In Indonesia, Lab Workers Arrested, Accused of Reusing Swabs in Coronavirus Tests

swab（cotton swab） 綿棒
rapid antigen test 迅速抗原検査
*PCR検査（nasal swab/saliva）
*抗体検査（antibody testing: blood）
unravel 　　解明する
contagious disease 伝染病
contaminated 汚染された
tainted 腐敗した、汚染された
unscrupulous 良心的でない、不謹慎な
legitimate 　正当な、正規の
sterile 殺菌した、無菌の
confiscate 　押収する、差し押さえる

著者：Richard C. Paddock
(c) 2021 The New York Times Company

The idea was simple: Why throw away used rapid antigen test kits for the coronavirus when they could be used again and again?

All it took was washing the cotton swabs used to take nasal samples, repackaging them as if they were new and reusing them on other people.

The fraud unraveled this week when five laboratory workers were arrested in the Indonesian city of Medan and accused of reusing nasal swabs in administering as many as 20,000 tests. They face up to six years in prison for violating consumer protection, medical waste and contagious disease laws.

Authorities said they were investigating whether any people were infected with the coronavirus as a result of the contaminated tests given at an airport testing site operated by Kimia Farma, a giant state-owned company.

They were also investigating how many people received tainted test results as they prepared to board flights at Kualanamu International Airport, one of the nation’s busiest. A negative test result is required in Indonesia before a passenger can board a flight.

Police announced they would conduct random checks of labs around the country to ensure that others were not conducting similar frauds.

Erick Thohir, the minister who oversees state-owned enterprises, said Friday that such practices by “unscrupulous” company employees would not be tolerated.

The five workers were believed to have pocketed about $2,000 a day since mid-December by charging people for the tainted tests. The lab employees administered legitimate tests using sterile cotton swabs to about 100 people a day and reused swabs for tests on about 150 others, which would amount to thousands of tests over the period.

The police raided the laboratory Tuesday, arrested the five employees and confiscated hundreds of recycled cotton swabs. They also seized more than $10,000 in cash and a laptop used to produce the documents given to people to certify their test results.

Indonesia, the world’s fourth most populous country, has reported nearly 1.7 million coronavirus cases and more than 45,000 deaths, the most in Southeast Asia, according to a New York Times database. Health experts have estimated that the totals are actually many times higher because of limited testing.

The country has recovered somewhat from a surge that peaked in late January but is still averaging more than 5,000 new cases a day. A nationwide vaccination campaign is underway, and more than 19 million doses have been administered.

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5/4(火)の放送の英文記事と英単語：要、最終的に、匿名性

Verizon Near Deal to Sell Yahoo and AOL

linchpin　かなめ
☝️車軸から車輪が外れないように留めるピン
elsewhere　他のどこかで
☝️anywhere else
ultimately　最終的に
supplanted　(強引に)押しのけて取ってかわる
[語源: sub(下)+planta(足の裏)→足下をすくってひっくり返す]
nimbler　より敏捷な
anonymity　匿名性
buying spree　買いまくる ☝️spending spree　お金を使いまくる
stake　杭

著者：Edmund Lee and Lauren Hirsch
(c) 2021 The New York Times Company

Verizon once saw media as the future, the linchpin of a strategy to give customers something they could not get elsewhere at a time when all mobile offerings were essentially the same. It has a different vision for the future now.

The phone giant, signaling that it has given up on its media business, is near a deal to sell Yahoo and AOL to private equity firm Apollo Global Management, two people with knowledge of the matter said Sunday.

The transaction would be the latest turn in the history of two of the internet’s earliest pioneers. Yahoo used to be the front page of the internet. AOL was once the service that most people used to get online.

But both were ultimately supplanted by nimbler startups, like Google and Facebook, though Yahoo and AOL still publish highly trafficked websites like Yahoo Sports and TechCrunch.

The deal, which could be announced in the coming days, would value the brands at $4 billion to $5 billion and include Verizon’s advertising technology business as well. The people, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the talks are confidential, cautioned that the talks could still fall apart.

Verizon bought AOL in 2015 for $4.4 billion. Tim Armstrong, head of AOL, was part of the package, and he orchestrated the 2017 purchase of Yahoo for $4.5 billion — a prize he had been pursuing for years.

It is unclear what Apollo plans to do with the business, but it still generates plenty of revenue. The media division recorded $1.9 billion in sales in the first quarter, a 10% gain over last year.

Apollo has been involved in other media deals. It helped finance the 2019 merger of USA Today parent Gannett and local newspaper chain New Media Investment Group, which created the largest U.S. newspaper publisher. And it owns the television and radio stations of the Cox Media Group. The private equity firm has been on a buying spree in the past few months, announcing deals to acquire crafts retailer Michaels and the Venetian resort in Las Vegas.

Apollo declined to comment. Verizon did not respond to requests for comment. Bloomberg, which first reported the expected deal, said Verizon would maintain a stake in the media arm.

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5/5(水)の放送の英文記事と英単語：取り戻す、復帰する、注目される

Facebook Panel to Reveal Whether Trump Will Regain His Megaphone

reveal　明らかにする
regain　取り戻す、復帰する
closely watched　注目される
political speech　政治演説、政治的発言
misinformation　誤報、偽情報
too great　大きすぎるものである
inconsistent　一貫性が無い
fact check　事実確認、裏取り

著者：Cecilia Kang
(c) 2021 The New York Times Company

Facebook’s Oversight Board, an independent and international panel that was created and funded by the social network, plans to announce Wednesday whether former President Donald Trump will be able to return to the platform that has been a critical megaphone for him and his tens of millions of followers.

The decision will be closely watched as a template for how private companies that run social networks handle political speech, including the misinformation spread by political leaders.

Trump was indefinitely locked out of Facebook on Jan. 7 after he used his social media accounts to incite a mob of his supporters to storm the Capitol a day earlier. Trump had declined to accept his election defeat, saying the election had been stolen from him.

At the time that Facebook barred Trump, the company’s chief executive, Mark Zuckerberg, wrote in a post: “We believe the risks of allowing the president to continue to use our service during this period are simply too great.”

Two weeks later, the company referred the case of Trump to Facebook’s Oversight Board for a final decision on whether the ban should be permanent. Facebook and the board’s members have said the panel’s decisions are binding, but critics are skeptical of the board’s independence. The panel, critics said, is a first-of-its-kind Supreme Court-like entity on online speech, funded by a private company with a poor track record of enforcing its own rules.

Facebook’s approach to political speech has been inconsistent. In October 2019, Zuckerberg declared that the company would not fact check political speech and said that even lies by politicians deserved a place on the social network because it was in the public’s interest to hear all ideas by political leaders. But Trump’s comments Jan. 6 were different, the company has said, because they incited violence and threatened the peaceful transition of power in elections.

On Monday, Trump continued to deny the election results.

“The Fraudulent Presidential Election of 2020 will be, from this day forth, known as THE BIG LIE!,” he said in an emailed statement.

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5/6(木)の放送の英文記事と英単語：市場に出す、取り消す、無効にする

Pfizer to Seek FDA Approval for Vaccine Use for Youths Age 2-11

earnings call （ビデオや電話での）収支報告、業績発表
full approval 完全認証
an emergency use authorization 緊急使用許可
market 市場に出す、販促する
meant to be ～であるはずだ、～する運命だ
revoke 取り消す、無効にする
entity 組織、団体、機関
make ~ mandatory 義務化する

著者：Emily Anthes
(c) 2021 The New York Times Company

Pfizer expects to apply to the Food and Drug Administration in September for emergency authorization to administer its coronavirus vaccine to children between the ages of 2 and 11, the company told Wall Street analysts and reporters on Tuesday during its quarterly earnings call.

The company said it also plans to apply this month for full approval of the vaccine for use in people from ages 16 to 85. And it said it expected to have clinical trial data on the safety of its vaccine in pregnant women by early August.

By early next week, the FDA is expected to issue an emergency use authorization allowing the vaccine to be used in children 12 to 15 years old, a major step ahead in the U.S. fight against COVID.

The Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine is being given to adults under an emergency use authorization that the companies received in December. Obtaining full FDA approval would, among other things, allow the companies to market the vaccine directly to consumers. The approval process is expected to take months.

“Full approval is a welcome indicator of the continued safety and efficacy of the Pfizer vaccine,” Saskia Popescu, an infectious disease epidemiologist at George Mason University, said in an email. It could also “build further confidence in the importance of vaccination,” she said.

The Pfizer-BioNTech coronavirus vaccine was the first to receive emergency authorization in the United States. Emergency authorizations are meant to be temporary, and can be revoked when a public health emergency is over.

Full approval would allow the vaccine to remain on the market as the pandemic fades. It may also make it easier for companies, government agencies, schools and other entities to require vaccination. The University of California and California State University school systems, for instance, have announced that once coronavirus vaccines receive full FDA approval, they will require students, faculty and staff members to be vaccinated. The U.S. military, which has seen many troops decline coronavirus vaccines, has said that it would not make them mandatory as long as they have only emergency authorization.

Jen Psaki, the White House press secretary, said at a news conference on Tuesday that she did not want to get ahead of the FDA’s authorization process, but that the administration was preparing to “make that accessible to additional, younger populations.”

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5/7(金)の放送の英文記事と英単語：法規する、特許、強化する

U.S. Supports Waiving Patent Protections for COVID Vaccines

waive　　放棄する／委棄する
patent　　特許（権）／特許証
intellectual property　　知的財産／知的所有物
holdout　　協調を拒む人／（長い間）抵抗する人
World Trade Organization（WTO）世界貿易機関
ramp up　　強化する／改良する
measures　手段／政策
consensus 　総意／合意
press for　　迫る／催促する
epidemiologist　　疫学者
pragmatic　　実用本位の／実用的な

著者：Thomas Kaplan
(c) 2021 The New York Times Company

The Biden administration on Wednesday came out in support of waiving intellectual property protections for COVID-19 vaccines, a breakthrough for international efforts to suspend patent rules as the pandemic rages in India and South America.

The United States had been a major holdout at the World Trade Organization over a proposal to suspend intellectual property protections in an effort to ramp up vaccine production. But President Joe Biden had come under increasing pressure to throw his support behind the proposal, including from many congressional Democrats.

Katherine Tai, the U.S. trade representative, announced the administration’s position in a statement Wednesday afternoon.

“This is a global health crisis, and the extraordinary circumstances of the COVID-19 pandemic call for extraordinary measures,” she said. “The administration believes strongly in intellectual property protections, but in service of ending this pandemic, supports the waiver of those protections for COVID-19 vaccines.”

Tai added that the United States would participate in negotiations at the WTO over the matter, adding, “Those negotiations will take time given the consensus-based nature of the institution and the complexity of the issues involved.”

Activists have been pressing for the waiver but have also said that a waiver alone will not boost world supply of the vaccine; it must be accompanied by the process known as “tech transfer,” in which patent holders supply technical know-how and personnel.

“This is a start,” said Gregg Gonsalves, a Yale University epidemiologist and longtime AIDS activist who has been pressing for the waiver. “We need the writing of the text of this waiver now to be transparent and public, but as we have always said we need tech transfer now.”

Earlier Wednesday, members of the WTO held another round of discussions about waiving intellectual property protections. Further discussions are expected in the coming weeks, as India and South Africa, which proposed the waiver, are preparing a revised plan for nations to consider.

Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, director general of the WTO, urged members to proceed with negotiations over the text of the plan.

“I am firmly convinced that once we can sit down with an actual text in front of us, we shall find a pragmatic way forward,” she said at a meeting of the organization’s General Council.

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