音声プラットフォーム「Voicy」で毎朝6時30分に更新中の英語ニュースチャンネル「Voicy News Brief with articles from New York Times」。このチャンネルでは、The New York Timesの記事をバイリンガルのパーソナリティが英語で読み上げ、記事と英単語を日本語で解説しています。英語のニュースを毎朝聴いて、リスニング力の向上と英語学習にお役立てください。

このVoicy Journalでは、毎週月曜日に前の1週間分のスクリプトをまとめて紹介しています。放送はアプリやWebページからいつでもご視聴いただけます。Voicy News Brief Season3の記事は2/7(月)以降をご覧ください！

4/11(月)の放送の英文記事と英単語：次々と死ぬ、不毛の、腐敗の

Trying Everything, Even Lettuce, to Save Florida’s Beloved Manatees

hurl　強く投げつける、放つ
die-off　次々と死ぬ
estuary　河口、入江
barren　不毛の、不妊の
leaky　漏れる、漏れやすい
septic　腐敗の
necropsy　検死

著者：Patricia Mazzei
(c) 2021 The New York Times Company

INDIAN RIVER LAGOON, Fla. — At first, the manatees stayed away from the romaine lettuce.

It was an extraordinary experiment in dire times: humans dumping pallets of leafy greens to feed Florida’s beloved manatees in the warm waters of the Indian River Lagoon, where decades of pollution have destroyed their delicate sea grass diet.

Eventually, a pair of bold manatees approached. More followed. On the coldest days, hundreds came, and over the three-month feeding period, the hungry mammals ate every scrap of the 202,000 pounds of lettuce hurled from above.

Floridians cherish manatees, but people have failed to care for the animals’ environment, putting the species’ survival at risk. Now, as manatees are disappearing in large numbers, humans are trying crisis rescue measures in desperate attempts to keep them alive.

It may not be enough. The iconic manatee remains in trouble, and with it, a piece of Florida’s identity.

Manatees had been something of a success story, their status upgraded to threatened from endangered in 2017 after years of educating boaters to avoid deadly strikes. Starvation has once again put them in peril.

Along Florida’s Atlantic coast, the die-off began last year, after the Indian River Lagoon, a 156-mile estuary that had been a seasonal manatee refuge, turned into a barren underwater desert. Decades of waste from leaky septic tanks and fertilizer runoff from farms and development fueled algal blooms that blocked the sunlight and choked the sea grass that manatees used to eat.

The feeding experiment, conceived and executed by federal and state wildlife officials and fueled by $116,000 in public donations, was a gamble. Between Jan. 1 and April 1, the number of confirmed deaths fell to 479, down from 612 in 2021. In 2020, that figure was 205.

In all of last year, 1,100 Florida manatees died, a record. About 7,500 are thought to remain in the wild.

This year’s dip in deaths does not necessarily mean that starvation has eased and feeding has helped. Scientists will spend the summer reviewing environmental conditions, necropsy results and other data to make a more complete assessment, said Dr. Martine de Wit, a veterinarian with the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission at its Marine Mammal Pathobiology Lab in St. Petersburg.

音声はこちら

4/12(火)の放送の英文記事と英単語：決選投票、輝きのない、優勢

Macron to Face Le Pen for President as French Gravitate Toward Extremes

gravitate　　　　　 (人・物が)…に自然に引き寄せられる (*gravity ＝ 重力)
runoff　　　　　　 決選投票
disaffection　　　　不平、不満
xenophobic　　　　外国(人)嫌いの
lackluster　　　　　輝きのない、どんよりした
fray　　　　　　　 [動]擦り切れる、ほころびが生じる　
preponderance 　　優勢、優位(性)

著者：Roger Cohen
(c) 2021 The New York Times Company

PARIS — President Emmanuel Macron will face Marine Le Pen, the French far-right leader, in the runoff of France’s presidential elections.

With 92% of the ballots cast Sunday counted, Macron, a centrist, was leading with 27.4% of the vote to Le Pen’s 24.3%. Le Pen benefited from a late surge that reflected widespread disaffection over rising prices, security and immigration.

With war raging in Ukraine and Western unity likely to be tested as the fighting continues, Le Pen’s strong performance demonstrated the enduring appeal of nationalist and xenophobic currents in Europe. Extreme parties of the right and left took 51% of the vote, a clear sign of the extent of French anger and frustration.

An anti-NATO and more pro-Russia France in the event of an ultimate Le Pen victory would cause deep concern in allied capitals, and could fracture the united trans-Atlantic response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

But Macron, after a lackluster campaign, will go into the second round as the slight favorite, having fared a little better than the latest opinion polls suggested. Some had shown him leading Le Pen by just 2 points.

The principled French rejection of Le Pen’s brand of anti-immigrant nationalism has frayed as illiberal politics have spread in both Europe and the United States. She has successfully softened her packaging, if not her fierce conviction that French people must be privileged over foreigners and that the curtain must be drawn on France as a “land of immigration.”

Le Pen’s ties to Russian President Vladimir Putin are close, although she has scrambled in recent weeks to play them down.

“I will restore France to order in five years,” Le Pen told cheering supporters, appealing to all French people to join her in what she called “a choice of civilization” in which the “legitimate preponderance of French language and culture” would be guaranteed and full “sovereignty reestablished in all domains.”

The choice confronting French people on April 24 was between “division, injustice and disorder” on the one hand and the “rallying of French people around social justice and protection” on the other, she said.

Last week, in an interview in the daily Le Parisien newspaper, Macron called Le Pen “a racist” of “great brutality.” Le Pen hit back, saying Macron’s remarks were “outrageous and aggressive.” She called favoring French people over foreigners “the only moral, legal and admissible policy.”

音声はこちら

4/13(水)の放送の英文記事と英単語：永久凍土層、雪が解ける、放射する

Donors Pledge $41 Million to Monitor Thawing Arctic Permafrost

Permafrost : (北極地方の)永久凍土層
Arctic : 北極の、厳寒の
Thaw : 雪が解ける、解ける、温まる、やわらぐ、打ち解ける
Mitigate: (苦痛、苛酷さを)やわらげる、静める、(刑罰を)軽減する
Decompose: (…を)分解する、(…を)腐敗させる
Emit: 放射する、発する、発行する、(電波で)送る
Erosion: 浸食

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

Climate scientists, policy experts and environmental justice advocates on Monday announced a major project to better understand the contribution of thawing permafrost to global warming and to help Arctic communities cope with its effects.

Led by Massachusetts-based Woodwell Climate Research Center, the six-year, $41 million project will fill in gaps in monitoring across the Arctic of greenhouse gas emissions from thawing permafrost, currently a source of uncertainty in climate models. The project is financed by private donors, among them billionaire philanthropist Mackenzie Scott.

With the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard University and the Alaska Institute of Justice, the project will also develop policies to help mitigate the global impact of permafrost emissions and, locally in Alaska, assist Native communities that are struggling with thawing ground.

“A good part of this is science,” said Sue Natali, a permafrost researcher, director of the Arctic program at Woodwell and one of the leaders of the new project, called Permafrost Pathways. “But really, it’s important to us to be making sure that our science is actually useful and usable where it’s needed.”

Permafrost, the frozen ground that underlies much of the Arctic and can be hundreds of feet deep, contains the remains of plants and animals accumulated over centuries. As rapid warming in the region has caused more of the topmost frozen layer to thaw, organic matter has been decomposing and emitting carbon dioxide and methane.

Permafrost is thought to contain about twice as much carbon as is now in the atmosphere. But as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change noted last year as part of its Sixth Assessment Report, the size and timing of emissions from thawing permafrost are uncertain.

“That uncertainty has been a major barrier to the incorporation of permafrost emissions into global climate policy,” Natali said.

Permafrost thaw does not only have global effects. Locally throughout the Arctic it has caused roads, bridges, homes and other structures built in frozen ground to become unstable and unusable. Melting permafrost has also resulted in greater erosion, leading to land collapse and flooding.

The project will address those issues in coordination with some Alaska Native communities, said Robin Bronen, a human rights lawyer and executive director of Alaska Institute for Justice, based in Anchorage. A few coastal communities in the state have been trying to relocate for years.

音声はこちら

4/14(木)の放送の英文記事と英単語：元に戻す、険しい、緩和

Philadelphia Will Reinstate an Indoor Mask Mandate, the First Major U.S. City to Do So This Spring

reinstate 元に戻す
get ahead 先を行く、先回りする
go into effect 有効になる, 実施される
tick up 上がる、上昇する
steeper 険しい、急な
mitigation 緩和
recede 減退する、収まる

著者：Campbell Robertson
(c) 2021 The New York Times Company

With new coronavirus cases low but rising sharply in recent days, the city of Philadelphia announced Monday it will reinstate an indoor mask mandate a little more than a month after lifting it, becoming the first major U.S. city to do so.

“This is our chance to get ahead of the pandemic,” Health Commissioner Cheryl Bettigole said in a news conference. She acknowledged that the average number of daily new cases, currently at 142, is still nowhere near what it was at the beginning of the year, when the omicron variant was pushing the seven-day average to nearly 4,000.

But she said that if the city failed to require masks now, “knowing that every previous wave of infections has been followed by a wave of hospitalizations, and then a wave of deaths, then it will be too late for many of our residents.” Over the past week, the city reported that the number of residents who had died of COVID-19 passed 5,000.

The mandate will go into effect next week. A spokesperson for the city’s Health Department said it would end when case numbers and rates go beneath a certain threshold.

The decision comes as cases are ticking up across the country, fueled by the highly transmissible omicron subvariant, known as BA.2. Although the national increase is so far relatively small — about 3% over the past two weeks — the growth in cases in Northeastern cities such as New York City and Washington, D.C., has been significantly steeper.

Under Philadelphia’s COVID-19 response plan, mitigation measures are triggered when caseloads or case trajectories pass certain thresholds. Since early March, as omicron swiftly receded, the city had been at Level 1, or “all clear,” meaning most mandatory measures — including indoor mask mandates and proof-of-vaccine requirements in restaurants — had been lifted. Masks have no longer been required at city schools, although people visiting hospitals or riding public transportation have had to wear them.

The indoor mask mandate is reinstated automatically when the city rises to Level 2, in which average new daily case counts and hospitalizations are still low but “cases have increased by more than 50% in the previous 10 days.”

音声はこちら

4/15(金)の放送の英文記事と英単語：排気管、反響、つまずく

California Reveals Its Plan to Phase Out New Gas-Powered Cars by 2035

Mandate 司令
Enact 制定
Tailpipe 排気管／マフラー
Reverberate 反響
Falter つまずく
Alleviate 軽くする

著者：Lisa Friedman
(c) 2021 The New York Times Company

WASHINGTON — California on Wednesday made public an aggressive plan to mandate a steady increase in the sale of electric and zero-emissions vehicles, the first step in enacting a first-in-the-nation goal of banning new gasoline-powered cars by 2035.

Under the proposed rule, issued by the California Air Resources Board, the state will require 35% of new passenger vehicles sold in the state by 2026 to be powered by batteries or hydrogen. Less than a decade later, the state expects 100% of all new car sales to be free of the fossil fuel emissions chiefly responsible for warming the planet.

It would mark a big leap. Currently, 12.4% of new vehicles sold in California are zero-emissions, according to the board.

If the board finalizes the plan in August, it could set the bar for the nation’s automobile industry. California is the largest auto market in the United States and the 10th largest in the world. In addition, 15 other states — including New York, Massachusetts and North Carolina — have previously followed California’s moves regarding tailpipe emissions and may adopt similar proposals.

“This is tremendously important,” said Daniel Sperling, a member of California’s air board and the director of the Institute of Transportation Studies at the University of California, Davis. He said the proposed rule, which he said he expects to pass, sends a signal to the global auto market.

“Other countries and other states, they watch what California does,” he said. “And so this will reverberate around the world.”

The proposal comes as President Joe Biden’s climate agenda is faltering. Biden signed an executive order last year calling for the government to try to ensure that half of all vehicles sold in the United States be electric by 2030. Legislation that would help enable that transition by allocating billions of dollars in electric vehicle tax incentives, however, has been stalled in the Senate. Meanwhile, under pressure to alleviate high gas prices, the president has been urging oil companies to drill for more oil.

Automakers did not immediately respond to requests for comment about California’s proposed rule.

音声はこちら

4/16(土)の放送の英文記事と英単語：明白な、国民投票、徐々に押しのけられる

Legal Marijuana Sales Will Start Next Thursday in New Jersey

Curtail　 縮小する
Dispensary (病院の)薬局
Palpable 明白な
Referendum 国民投票
Edged out 徐々に押しのけられる
Alleviate 緩和する

著者：Tracey Tully
(c) 2021 The New York Times Company

The first sales of recreational, adult-use cannabis in New Jersey will start next Thursday, marking the culmination of a yearslong effort to legalize marijuana and to curtail the racially unbalanced penalties for possessing the drug.

At least a half-dozen medical marijuana dispensaries are planning to open their doors to all adults April 21 after winning final approval this week from New Jersey’s Cannabis Regulatory Commission.

“This is a historic step,” Gov. Phil Murphy wrote Thursday on Twitter as he announced the official start date.

Enthusiasm within the industry was palpable.

Dispensaries in Bloomfield and Paterson, New Jersey, were making plans to entertain customers waiting in line with a DJ, doughnut truck and a steel drum band.

“The end of prohibition is coming to New Jersey,” said Ben Kovler, CEO of Green Thumb Industries, which operates both dispensaries. “We’re prepared for a tidal wave of demand.

“The war on drugs was a failure for people of color,” he said. “This is going to create a lot of wealth, for a lot of people.”

Towns that permit cannabis businesses to operate may charge a 2% tax in addition to state taxes and surcharges.

New Jersey voters approved a referendum legalizing marijuana in November 2020, but it was not until this week that the commission established a pathway for the first legal sales of adult-use, recreational cannabis. On Monday, seven companies and 13 medical marijuana dispensaries they operate got the go-ahead to sell their products to all adults.

Not all are expected to be ready to open by next Thursday; state officials said a full list of the stores that will open April 21 would be posted on the commission’s website as soon as dispensaries confirmed their plans.

Each cannabis company had to demonstrate it had enough of a supply for medical and recreational customers as well as plans in place to ensure that patients were not edged out by the flood of customers expected in the early days of legal sales.

Dianna Houenou, chair of the commission, reiterated her commitment to creating an industry that helps to alleviate the harm caused by the war on drugs, particularly in communities of color.

“Ultimately, we hope to see businesses and a workforce that reflect the diversity of the state,” Houenou said in a statement.

音声はこちら

4/17(日)の放送の英文記事と英単語：大火災、過ぎ越しの祭、致命的な

Clashes Erupt at Jerusalem Holy Site on Day With Overlapping Holidays

Conflagration ： 大火災、大火 (戦争・紛争)
Passover ： 過ぎ越しの祭
Deadly ： 致命的な
Prompt ： (動) 刺激する、駆り立てる
Expulsion : 排除
Worshipper ： 参拝者
Baton ： 警棒、指揮棒、バトン

著者：Patrick Kingsley and Raja Abdulrahim
(c) 2021 The New York Times Company

JERUSALEM — More than 150 people were injured Friday at one of Jerusalem’s holiest sites after clashes erupted between Israeli riot police and Palestinians, adding to weeks of escalating tensions in Israel and the occupied West Bank, and raising fears of further conflagrations in the coming days.

Palestinians threw stones at police, who stormed parts of the mosque compound, fired sound grenades and rubber bullets, and arrested more than 400 people. But by midday Friday, the first day of a rare convergence of Ramadan, Passover and Easter, calm had returned to the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound in the Old City, known to Jews as the Temple Mount — a complex that is sacred to both religions.

The violence followed a recent wave of Palestinian attacks on Israelis and deadly Israeli raids in the occupied West Bank. Tensions and clashes around the same compound played a central role in the buildup to an 11-day war in May between Israel and Palestinian militants in the Gaza Strip.

Over the past month, violence has escalated across Israel and the occupied territories with four Arab attacks that killed 14 people in Israel. That prompted the Israeli military to step up raids in the occupied West Bank that have left at least 15 Palestinians dead. Israel said that the raids were aimed at preventing and deterring further attacks, but Palestinians denounced them as a collective punishment.

Palestinian authorities strongly condemned the storming of the compound by Israeli police.

“The expulsion of the worshippers by force, repression and batons in preparation for the incursions of the Jewish extremists will ignite the fire of the religious war for which the Palestinians alone will not pay the price,” the Palestinian foreign ministry said in a statement.

Yair Lapid, the Israeli foreign minister, said his country was committed to freedom of worship for people of all faiths in Jerusalem.

“Our goal is to enable peaceful prayer for believers during the Ramadan holiday,” he said in a statement. “The riots this morning on the Temple Mount are unacceptable and go against the spirit of the religions we believe in.”

音声はこちら

「Voicy News Brief with articles from New York Times」は毎朝6時30分にVoicyで更新中！いつでも無料で聴けるVoicyの英語チャンネルを活用して、英語力向上にお役立てください。