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8/9(月)の放送の英文記事と英単語：ショート、突き出す、熱烈な

Japan Brings Home the Gold Medal in Baseball, a National Passion

shortstop　　ショート　(略) SS
awash with　　～でいっぱいで、～であふれて
thrust　　突き出す、強く押す
fervent　　熱烈な、熱心な (類) passionate
arguably　　ほぼ間違いなく (類) possibly, potentially
topple　　倒す、打倒する
boot　　(俗) 解雇する、追い出す 　

著者：James Wagner
(c) 2021 The New York Times Company

YOKOHAMA, Japan — After stepping on second base for the final out, Japan shortstop Hayato Sakamoto felt awash with a new sensation. For so long, Japan had never achieved Olympic glory in a beloved sport.

Leading into the gold medal game Saturday at Yokohama Baseball Stadium, Sakamoto, 32, admitted he felt a lot of pressure. And before that final play, he said he was very nervous. So after securing the final out in a 2-0 win over the United States, Sakamoto jumped up and thrust his arms in the air.

“I felt so relieved,” he said through an interpreter.

The last time baseball was in the Olympics, in 2008 in Beijing, Japan failed to even win a medal.

Baseball was back, only temporarily, because of the host country’s fervent love of the sport. In finally winning the top prize, the Japanese baseball team delivered arguably its signature moment of a trying and unusual Tokyo Olympics, an event postponed a year because of the coronavirus pandemic and held this summer still amid a state of emergency.

“This Olympic Games is really special because we’re the hosting country and we have the frustration from the Beijing Olympics,” said manager Atsunori Inaba, 49, a former player on that 2008 team. “All of the players really desired gold medals.”

Japan had come close to doing so just once before — in 1996, when it settled for winning the silver medal. It claimed bronze medals in 1992 and 2004. In its sixth trip to the Olympic baseball tournament since 1992, when the sport was first officially played in the Summer Games, top-ranked Japan toppled another baseball power to emerge on top.

Olympic baseball is taken seriously here. The country’s top professional league, Nippon Professional Baseball, paused its season so that its best players could play.

MLB, on the other hand, carried on and didn’t allow players on its 40-man rosters to compete in the Olympics.

Saturday marked the last chance for baseball players across the world to compete on the Olympic stage. Booted from the permanent program after the 2008 Games, Japan restored it for the Tokyo Olympics. But neither baseball nor softball will return for the 2024 Games in Paris. They are widely expected to return in 2028 in Los Angeles.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

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8/10(火)の放送の英文記事と英単語：鼓舞する、気晴らし、浮かれ騒ぐ

Olympics End as They Began: Strangely

cohort 団、グループ、群
respite (苦悩などの)一時的中止、休止
rousing 鼓舞する、奮起させる
diversion 気晴らし、転換　
frolic 遊び戯れる、浮かれ騒ぐ
poignant (興味などを)強く心に訴える
lukewarm 生ぬるい、不熱心な

著者：Motoko Rich
(c) 2021 The New York Times Company

TOKYO — As the athletes finished marching into the stadium for the closing ceremony of the 32nd Summer Olympics on Sunday night, the announcer asked for a big round of applause. But there simply weren’t enough people in the stands to make much noise. And the flashiest component of the ceremony, a formation of the five Olympic rings by tiny points of light, was invisible live in the stadium. The magic of its special effects played only on large screens and to television audiences.

And so one of the strangest Olympics in recent memory ended much as they began, with reduced cohorts of athletes waving to cameras and volunteer dancers rather than spectators, and rows of empty seats serving as reminders of a pandemic that could not be brought to heel by messaging about the healing power of the Games.

Yet perhaps more than any recent Olympics, the tournament was an athletic reality show, inviting viewers to seek respite from the frustration and tragedy of the past 18 months. The drama of competition and bouts of rousing sportsmanship offered diversion from the daily counts of coronavirus cases — the ones within the Olympic bubble and the vastly larger numbers outside of it.

Although organizers argued that the Japanese public and international audiences had embraced the Olympics after months of controversy, the numbers from NBCUniversal in the United States, the largest broadcaster at the Games, showed steep drops from the Rio de Janeiro Olympics in 2016. In Japan, a smaller proportion of viewers watched the Games than when Tokyo last hosted the event, in 1964.

Many of the performances in the closing ceremony elicited a lighthearted joy that the more somber opening ceremony did not. In one segment, actors and dancers dressed in street fashion frolicked around the center of the stadium, meant to evoke a park, with capoeira dancers, stunt bikers, jugglers and double Dutch jumpers, a poignant demonstration of a side of Tokyo that most Olympic visitors never got to see.

In his concluding remarks, Thomas Bach, the president of the International Olympic Committee, thanked the people of Japan and noted that no organizing committee had ever had to put on a postponed Games before. “We did it — together!” he said, to lukewarm applause.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

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8/11(水)の放送の英文記事と英単語：単刀直入に、排除する、唯一無二

U.S. Women Win Basketball Gold and Prepare to Turn the Page

novel　今までにない
unfamiliar　見たことがない
unmatched　類を見ない、唯一無二
stalwart　断固たる、屈強な存在
point blank　単刀直入に、率直に
rule out　排除する
sip　一口飲む、すする

著者：Andrew Keh
(c) 2021 The New York Times Company

SAITAMA, Japan — The members of the U.S. women’s basketball team lined up on the court at Saitama Super Arena, stepped onto the highest podium and raised their hands above their heads.

The scene, in some ways, was novel and unfamiliar. Thick white masks obscured the lower halves of the players’ faces. The seats in the stands behind them were empty. But in other ways, it was exactly what the basketball world has seen from the American women’s team for more than two decades.

The United States dominated on the court in the final of the Olympic tournament, beating Japan, 90-75, to claim the team’s seventh consecutive gold medal. The Americans’ talent was unmatched throughout a Games in which they did not lose. And in the middle of the team picture afterward were the smiling faces of two veteran guards, Sue Bird and Diana Taurasi, who won their first gold medal before some of their current teammates had started kindergarten.

Bird and Taurasi claimed their fifth gold medal, a record for basketball players at the Olympics. Each collected her first at the 2004 Games in Athens, Greece, and they have been stalwarts of the team ever since.

“Hopefully we left some sort of a legacy for the younger players where they now can carry that torch,” said Bird, who had 7 points and three assists in the gold medal game. “To be sitting here now after going through 20 years of that, it’s amazing.”

Bird, 40, confirmed that these would be her last Olympics (“No one has to ask about it anymore,” she said). Taurasi (7 points, 8 assists, 6 rebounds) also seemed to suggest as much, talking nostalgically about her international career after the game.

But when she was asked, point blank, if she would join Bird in stepping aside, Taurasi did not rule out playing at the 2024 Games, when she will be 42.

“I love Paris,” Taurasi said between sips of Champagne. “They have beautiful buildings there, great fashion.”

The team’s run of consecutive Olympic titles has now matched the run of seven by the U.S. men’s team, from 1936 to 1968.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

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8/12(木)の放送の英文記事と英単語：犠牲者、前衛的な、振付師

‘West Side Story’ Will Not Return to Broadway

revival 再上演
casualty 犠牲者
under fire 非難を受けて
avant-garde 前衛的な
choreographer 振付師
proposition 提案
capitalize on ～から利益を得る、～を十分に利用する

著者：Matt Stevens
(c) 2021 The New York Times Company

NEW YORK — “West Side Story,” an ambitious, reimagined revival of the classic musical, will not reopen when Broadway returns this fall, the show announced Monday, making it one of the biggest productions yet to become a casualty of the pandemic.

The show’s lead producer, Scott Rudin, announced in April that he was stepping back from active roles in his Broadway productions after he came under fire for a long history of bullying employees. But Rudin said at the time that while the decisions about the future of “West Side Story” and his other shows would be left to others, he hoped that they would return to Broadway when theaters were allowed to reopen.

The “West Side Story” revival — put together by a creative team with avant-garde credentials, including the director Ivo van Hove and the choreographer Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker — opened in February 2020, less than a month before the coronavirus outbreak shut down Broadway and brought performances around the nation to a halt.

“This difficult and painful decision comes after we have explored every possible path to a successful run, and unfortunately, for a variety of reasons, reopening is not a practical proposition,” Kate Horton, a producer on the show, said in a statement. “We thank all the brilliant, creative artists who brought ‘West Side Story’ to life at the Broadway Theater, even for so brief a time, especially the extraordinary acting company, 33 of whom made their Broadway debuts in this production.”

News of the closure of “West Side Story” comes as Broadway is cautiously preparing for a return. Preview performances of the play “Pass Over” began last week, and are scheduled to be followed next month by the return of longtime favorites including “Hadestown,” “Hamilton,” “Wicked” and others.

The “West Side Story” production, while daring, opened to mixed reviews. A new film adaptation by Steven Spielberg is scheduled to be released in December, but the Broadway show will not be around to capitalize on any interest that the new film version generates.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

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8/13(金)の放送の英文記事と英単語：死傷率、子会社、コインランドリー

Facebook Removes Russian-Based Network That Spread Vaccine Misinformation

Casualty rate 死傷率
Subsidiary 子会社
Disinformation 逆情報、偽情報
Laundromat コインランドリー
Misleading 誤解させる、紛らわしい
Falsehood 虚偽
Meddle 干渉する
Coup クーデター

著者：Davey Alba
(c) 2021 The New York Times Company

Facebook said Tuesday that it had removed a network of accounts based in Russia that spread misinformation about coronavirus vaccines. The network targeted audiences in India, Latin America and the United States with posts falsely asserting that the AstraZeneca vaccine would turn people into chimpanzees and that the Pfizer vaccine had a much higher casualty rate than other vaccines, the company said.

The network violated Facebook’s foreign interference policies, the company said. It traced the posts to a marketing firm operating from Russia, Fazze, which is a subsidiary of AdNow, a company registered in Britain.

Facebook said it had taken down 65 Facebook accounts and 243 Instagram accounts associated with the firm and barred Fazze from its platform. The social network announced the takedown as part of its monthly report on influence campaigns run by people or groups that purposely misrepresent who is behind the posts.

“This campaign functioned as a disinformation laundromat,” said Ben Nimmo, who leads Facebook’s global threat intelligence team.

The influence campaign took place as regulators in the targeted countries were discussing emergency authorizations for vaccines, Facebook said. The company said it had notified people it believed had been contacted by the network and shared its findings with law enforcement and researchers.

Russia and China have promoted their own vaccines by distributing false and misleading messages about American and European vaccination programs, according to the Department of State’s Global Engagement Center. Most recently, the disinformation research firm Graphika found numerous antivaccination cartoons that it traced back to people in Russia.

Security analysts and American officials say a “disinformation for hire” industry is growing quickly. Back-alley firms like Fazze spread falsehoods on social media and meddle in elections or other geopolitical events on behalf of clients who can claim deniability.

AdNow, the parent company of Fazze, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Facebook said it had also removed 79 Facebook accounts, 13 pages, eight groups and 19 accounts in Myanmar that targeted domestic citizens and were linked to the Myanmar military. In March, the company barred Myanmar’s military from its platforms, after a military coup overthrew the country’s fragile democratic government.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

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