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2/14(月)の放送の英文記事と英単語：異常値、引き起こす、偏在する

Switzerland, Long a Safe Haven for Tobacco Ads, Weighs a Ban

evoke　呼び起こす、引き起こす(≒invoke)
outlier　外れ値、異常値
ubiquitous　至るところにある、偏在する(≒omnipresent)
unfashionably　時代遅れな様子の
headquaters　本部、司令部、本社
puff away　ぷかぷか吹かす、(ほこりを)吹き払う

著者：Noele Illien
(c) 2021 The New York Times Company

ZURICH — The images are jarring to visitors: happy, glamorous couples smoking together in a cafe, packs of cigarettes opened invitingly, rugged Western landscapes that evoke the Marlboro Man.

While many countries have long banned cigarette advertising, it has lived on in Switzerland, where loose regulations on the sale and marketing of tobacco products make the country an outlier in much of the Western world. The ads adorn billboards on city streets, are shown in movie theaters, and are ubiquitous at sports and cultural events like Montreux’s famed jazz festival.

But this weekend, much of that may start to fade away as Swiss voters decide whether to place restrictions on tobacco ads that would effectively ban them in public spaces.

The initiative, which is expected to pass in a referendum, according to polls conducted by Swiss media outlets, has been endorsed by health advocates who cite findings by bodies like the World Health Organization that the ads encourage young people to smoke and make it harder for smokers to quit.

The initiative has unsurprisingly been opposed by the tobacco industry, but also by the government, which has maintained unfashionably friendly relationships with tobacco companies that have set up regional and even global headquarters in Switzerland. A majority of members of Parliament have also come out against it. Many of them say jobs will be lost if the referendum passes, since cigarettes rank with chocolate and cheese as some of the country’s leading exports.

If voters approve the initiative, advertising for tobacco products, including e-cigarettes, would no longer be allowed in places or on websites that are accessible to those under 18.

Even though it would not be a blanket ban, it would nonetheless represent a significant change. Switzerland is one of the few places in Europe that has not introduced a nationwide ban on the sale of tobacco-related products to minors. Although some parts of the country ban sales to children under the ages of 18 or 16, others have no minimum age, and in many places young people can be seen puffing away in public.

If Swiss voters reject the initiative Sunday, the amended bill will come into effect without the broad restrictions on ads.

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2/15(火)の放送の英文記事と英単語：併合、弾圧、侵入

As Other Hot Spots Boil, U.S. Shows Its Foreign Policy Focus Is Asia

brace for　(困難などに)備える
bolster　強める、増強する
shuttle diplomacy　往復外交
mass [動]　(軍隊などを)集結させる
annexation　併合
incursion　(突然の)侵入、侵攻
repression　弾圧

著者：Edward Wong
(c) 2021 The New York Times Company

MELBOURNE, Australia — With Europe bracing for the possibility of its biggest ground war in decades, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken took a 27-hour flight this week in the opposite direction.

On Friday, Blinken met with the foreign ministers of Australia, Japan and India at a summit in Melbourne of the four-nation coalition called the Quad. His message was clear: Despite crises in Ukraine and elsewhere in the world, the United States is committed to bolstering its presence across Asia and presenting a different vision of the future than the one offered by China.

“Countries deserve to have the freedom to work together and associate with whom they choose,” Blinken said as he stood alongside the other foreign ministers before their meeting Friday afternoon.

Australia is only the first of three stops for Blinken, who is also scheduled to meet with foreign officials in Fiji and Hawaii. The weeklong trip to the farthest reaches of Asia and the Pacific shows the intensity with which the Biden administration wants to signal that the vast region is the most important focus of its foreign policy.

In late January, Blinken had to do shuttle diplomacy in Kyiv and other European cities to address Russia’s aggression toward Ukraine. Since then, President Vladimir Putin has continued massing troops along Russia’s border with Ukraine for what could be a deadly follow-up to his forceful annexation in 2014 of the Crimean peninsula and incursion into eastern Ukraine.

Blinken said at an evening news conference in Melbourne after the ministers had met that a Russian invasion could even occur before the end of the Winter Olympics in Beijing, an event at which Putin and President Xi Jinping of China issued a long joint statement in which they said the partnership of the two nations had “no limits.”

While Blinken and some of his foreign counterparts did discuss Russia and Ukraine, that was not the focus of their talks. The Quad, which has gained momentum in recent years after being established in 2007, is an important part of President Joe Biden’s vision for countering China, which has a powerful economic presence in every corner of the globe and a growing military footprint in Asia and parts of the Indian Ocean.

The coalition also seeks to address broad regional issues, and the ministers said they talked Friday about climate change, COVID-19 vaccines, counterterrorism, regional infrastructure and repression in Myanmar.

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2/16(水)の放送の英文記事と英単語：分配、瞑想、より環境に優しい

A Million More Trees for New York City: Leaders Want a Greener Canopy

greener　より環境に優しい
canopy　天蓋、天蓋形のひさし
contemplation　瞑想、黙想
pandemic　(伝染病が)全国(世界)的に広がる
borough　自治町村、(New York 市の)行政区
conservancy　管理局、保護
allotment 割り当て、分配
carbon dioxide　二酸化炭素
statistics　統計

著者：Dana Rubinstein
(c) 2021 The New York Times Company

NEW YORK — When Mayor Eric Adams named a commissioner this past week to oversee New York’s parks department, he spoke of how important the city’s green spaces were for recreation and contemplation, especially during the pandemic.

But he also acknowledged having no particular agenda or master plan for the more than 30,000 acres of park land under his control.

On Monday, the city’s five borough presidents will ask Adams to plant 1 million new trees by 2030, a revival of an ambitious and successful “million trees” initiative that started under former Mayor Michael Bloomberg and was completed under his successor, Bill de Blasio.

The borough presidents will also ask Adams to honor his campaign pledge to devote 1% of the city’s budget to the parks department.

About 22% of the city is covered by tree canopy. The figure has increased about 2% in recent years.

New York has roughly 7 million trees, or fewer than one tree for each of its 8.8 million residents, according to a recent Nature Conservancy report. About 650,000 trees line the streets, but they are not evenly distributed.

The Trust for Public Land, a conservation group that helps create public parks across the United States, found that low-income New Yorkers and people of color have significantly less available park space than residents of neighborhoods that are mostly white and wealthy. The allotment of trees somewhat follows that pattern.

It is estimated that the streetscape could accommodate 250,000 more trees; the rest of the new plantings would be in parks and other green spaces.

Trees absorb stormwater and carbon dioxide and provide shade in summer, and their density has a measurable effect on the surrounding air temperatures. City health department statistics indicate that 350 people in New York die each year because of heat-related causes — more than the number of those who die in traffic crashes.

With Adams making healthy living a major component of his agenda, Donovan Richards, the Queens borough president, argued that the tree initiative was a natural for the mayor to embrace.

“This ties into everything he’s talking about,” Richards said. “Having a healthy eating lifestyle is great, but having a healthy open space is just as good.”

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2/17(木)の放送の英文記事と英単語：急増する、年率、縮小

Japan’s Economy Surged in the Brief Window Before Omicron

surge 急増する、急成長する
rebound 戻る、立ち直る
disrupt 混乱させる、中断させる
annualized rate 年率
contraction 縮小、収縮
vaccine uptake ワクチン接種率
vanquish 征服する、克服する
batter 本文では（消費を）冷え込ませる、打ち壊す

著者：Ben Dooley
(c) 2021 The New York Times Company

TOKYO — Japan’s economy surged back into growth in the fourth quarter of 2021, as consumer spending rebounded during an autumn respite from the pandemic that briefly allowed life to return to something close to normal.

But the good news is likely to be followed, once again, with bad as the omicron variant of the coronavirus drove consumers back indoors and disrupted manufacturing during the winter months.

In the October-to-December period, the country’s economy, the third largest after the United States and China, grew by an annualized rate of 5.4%, government data showed on Tuesday. The result, a quarterly rise of 1.3%, followed a contraction in the previous three-month period, when economic output shrank at a revised annualized rate of 0.7%.

The strong quarter capped Japan’s first year of economic growth since 2018. It was a rare bright spot for an economy that had been struggling with slow growth even before the virus hit, amid slumping demand for exports and trade frictions between the United States and China.

Japan’s economy expanded in 2021 by 1.7% in real terms, government data showed. The result followed a contraction of 4.5% in 2020 and a 0.2% drop the year before.

The growth in the last three months of 2021 was driven by a jump in domestic consumption as vaccine uptake reached almost 80% and the threat of the delta variant receded. For a brief window, the virus seemed to have been vanquished, with daily case counts hovering in the low hundreds. Relieved, people flooded back into shops and restaurants.

That bright spot, however, looks to have been brief, with short-term forecasts provoking a strong sense of déjà vu.

Analysts agree that the country’s next reporting period is likely to show that the economy — which has bounced between growth and contraction on a quarterly basis for the better part of two years — shrank again, as the arrival of omicron battered consumption and forced infected workers to stay home, disrupting manufacturing.

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2/18(金)の放送の英文記事と英単語：影響力、破壊的、蓄積

Google Plans Privacy Changes, but Promises to Not Be Disruptive

Disruptive 破壊的
Sway 影響力
Surreptitious 不正な、こそこそとした
Accumulation 蓄積
Underpin つっかえをする、補強する

著者：Daisuke Wakabayashi
(c) 2021 The New York Times Company

Google said Wednesday that it was working on privacy measures meant to limit the sharing of data on smartphones running its Android software. But the company promised those changes would not be as disruptive as a similar move by Apple last year.

Apple’s changes to its iOS software on iPhones asked users for permission before allowing advertisers to track them. Apple’s permission controls — and, ultimately, the decision by users to block tracking — have had a profound impact on internet companies that built businesses on so-called targeted advertising.

Google did not provide an exact timeline for its changes, but said it would support existing technologies for at least two more years.

Anthony Chavez, a vice president at Google’s Android division, said in an interview before the announcement that it was too early to gauge the potential impact from Google’s changes, which are meant to limit the sharing of data across apps and with third parties. But he emphasized that the company’s goal was to find a more private option for users while also allowing developers to continue to make advertising revenue.

As the world’s two biggest smartphone software providers, Google and Apple hold significant sway over what mobile apps can do on billions of devices. Changes to increase privacy or provide users with greater control over their data — a growing demand from customers, regulators and politicians — come at a cost for companies collecting data to sell ads personalized to a user’s interests and demographics.

Chavez said that if Google and Apple did not offer a privacy-minded alternative, advertisers might turn to more surreptitious options that could lead to fewer protections for users. He also argued that Apple’s “blunt approach” was proving “ineffective,” citing a study that said the changes in iOS had not had a meaningful effect in stopping third-party tracking.

The changes from Google and Apple are significant because digital advertising based on the accumulation of data about users has underpinned the internet for the past 20 years. But that business model is facing more challenges as users have grown more suspicious about far-reaching data collection amid a general distrust of technology giants.

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2/19(土)の放送の英文記事と英単語：癒合した、情緒、気難しい

‘You Have to Give Us Respect’: Asian Americans Drove San Francisco Recall

Discriminating　識別力のある、差別的な
Lopsided　一方に傾いた、偏った
Coalesced　癒合(ゆごう)した、合体(連合化)した
Unequivocal　あいまいでない、明白な
Fractious　気難しい、すねた
Ballot　投票用紙
Turnout　投票率、出席者数、生産高、着こなし
Unearthed　発掘する、発見する、明るみに出す
Sentiment　感情、情緒、感傷、所感

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

SAN FRANCISCO — As Election Day approached, a flurry of messages flashed across the phones of San Francisco’s Chinese American community. “Remember to vote,” said one message in Chinese from a campaign organizer, Selena Chu. “And throw out the commissioners who are discriminating against us and disrespecting our community.”

The lopsided victory in a recall election Tuesday that ousted three members of the San Francisco school board shook the city’s liberal establishment and was a resounding alarm of parental anger over the way the public school system handled the coronavirus pandemic.

Parents of varying ethnicities and income levels who had coalesced last year while San Francisco schools remained closed — they stayed shut for much longer than those in other large cities — organized themselves through Facebook groups and vowed to push out Board of Education members for what they saw as incompetence. They kept their promise: The three commissioners were removed by as much as 79% of voters, an unequivocal rejection in a city renowned for fractious politics.

For many Asian Americans in the city, the results were an affirmation of the group’s voting power. Every registered voter received a ballot for the election, and although overall turnout was relatively low at 26%, turnout among the 30,000 people who requested Chinese-language ballots was significantly higher at 37%.

In Tuesday’s election, two issues motivated Chinese voters in particular. The Board of Education had voted to put in place a lottery admission system at the highly selective Lowell High School, replacing an admission process that primarily selected students with the highest grades and test scores. The introduction of the lottery system reduced the number of Asian and white ninth graders at Lowell by around one-quarter and increased Black and Latino ninth graders by more than 40%.

Chinese voters were also upset by tweets by Alison Collins, one of the recalled school board members, that were unearthed during the campaign. The tweets reinforced a sentiment among many Chinese voters of being taken for granted, underrepresented and insulted, people involved in the recall campaign said.

“We are still being looked at as foreigners,” Chu said. “We are Americans. You have to give us respect.”

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2/20(日)の放送の英文記事と英単語：芸術性、心に響く、ぼろぼろに壊れる

A Russian Star Falls and Another Rises in a Blur of Jumps, Tumbles and Tears

Rink　スケートリンク
Soar　高く上がる
Crumble　ぼろぼろに壊れる
Sweep　圧勝する、掃き掃除
Artistry　芸術性
Poignant　強烈な、心に響く

著者：Juliet Macur
(c) 2021 The New York Times Company

BEIJING — Kamila Valieva, the Russian figure skating star at the center of a doping scandal, showed up at the Olympic rink Thursday night facing a single, heavy expectation, especially heavy for a 15-year-old who has soared to the top of her sport in four months, only to fall from it while the world was watching.

Her job was to win.

She set out, determined, as Maurice Ravel’s “Bolero” began to play. But jump by jump, as her routine crumbled after uncharacteristic falls and stumbles, she knew a victory that everyone had once expected her to deliver was not to be.

Instead of ending the night in first place to perhaps salvage an Olympics gone bad after she was found to have tested positive weeks ago for a banned heart medicine, she finished it by skating off the ice in tears. Her coach, Eteri Tutberidze, greeted her not with a hug, but with a stern look.

“Why did you let it go?” Tutberidze asked in Russian in a scene broadcast on live television. “Why did you stop fighting? Explain it to me, why? You let it go after that axel.”

The Russians were expected to sweep the medals, with Valieva finishing first and living up to her reputation as one of the best skaters in history. But a Russian teammate, Anna Shcherbakova, won gold. Yet another Russian teenager, Alexandra Trusova, won the silver. Valieva, who just 11 days ago was deemed unbeatable because of her difficult jumps, textbook technique and prima ballerina’s artistry, was fourth.

Shcherbakova, the reigning world champion, won the gold with a smooth and poignant performance that included two quadruple jumps, scoring 255.95 points. Trusova won silver with 251.73 points. Kaori Sakamoto of Japan took the bronze with 233.13 points.

Valieva finished with a score of 224.09.

An air of awkwardness loomed over the victory ceremony Thursday night, as Shcherbakova, 17, sprung onto the top step of the podium to accept her stuffed mascot panda, a fuzzy reminder of her win until she receives her gold medal Friday.

“I was feeling a lot of pleasure because I happened to be in the right time and the right place and did the right things,” Shcherbakova said. But she quickly added, obliquely referring to Valieva’s situation, “On the other hand, I feel this emptiness inside.”

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