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6/6(月)の放送の英文記事と英単語：隠喩、辺獄、事実上の

Jubilee Honors Britain‘s Queen, but Also Highlights Her Increasing Absences

jubilee　記念祭、祝祭
metaphor　隠喩、象徴
limbo　辺獄、中間の場所
understudy　代役、代理
de facto　事実上の
knighthood　爵位、騎士道

著者：Mark Landler
(c) 2021 The New York Times Company

LONDON — Queen Elizabeth II’s Platinum Jubilee has become a party without its guest of honor. Her absence is a metaphor for the twilight of Britain’s second Elizabethan Age, an awkward limbo in which the 96-year-old queen still reigns but has, in many ways, been replaced by her eldest son and heir, Prince Charles.

After appearing Thursday on the balcony at Buckingham Palace and lighting a beacon to celebrate 70 years on the throne, the queen skipped a thanksgiving service Friday at St. Paul’s Cathedral. The palace cited her “discomfort” and problems with mobility, which have forced her largely out of the public eye.

Charles, in what has become a familiar sight, played the understudy. He took his mother’s seat at the front of the cathedral, smiling slightly when the Archbishop of York, Stephen Cottrell, said of the queen, “We are so glad you are still in the saddle. And we are all glad that there is still more to come.”

How much more, of course, is a mystery.

That lingering uncertainty poses an acute challenge to Charles, who at 73 is already the longest-serving heir in British history. His unspoken transition into the sovereign’s role amounts to a kind of soft launch, royal experts said, allowing Britons to get used to the idea of him as king.

“Prince Charles is now the de facto, front-of-house head of state,” said Peter Hunt, a former royal correspondent for the BBC. “A frail queen will mostly be a virtual presence in our lives. What’s yet to be resolved is what happens if she can no longer carry out her core duties, such as her weekly discussions with the prime minister.”

With fewer working royals, the burden of hundreds of public appearances a year falls on Charles. He performs investitures, in which the palace confers knighthoods, on behalf of his mother. Last month, he presided over the state opening of Parliament, dutifully reading the Queen’s Speech, which lays out the government’s legislative priorities.

“We’re living through a regency in all but name,” said Ed Owens, a historian who has written about the relationship between the media and the monarchy. “They’ve got no blueprint for what to do with a monarch who is so aged and so frail.”

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6/7(火)の放送の英文記事と英単語：生き生きとさせる、基礎を築く、AをBにねじ込む

Apple Starts Connecting the Dots for Its Next Big Thing

bring …. to life　 …に生命を与える、生き生きとさせる
augmented-reality　拡張現実、ＡＲ (VR: 仮想現実)
lay the groundwork　基礎を築く、土台を作る、下準備をする
navigate　操作する
thrust A into B　AをBにねじ込む、AがBに突き進む
coalesce　合体する
keynote　基調講演

著者：Tripp Mickle and Brian X. Chen
(c) 2021 The New York Times Company

Nearly 15 years after the iPhone sparked the smartphone revolution, Apple is assembling the pieces for what it hopes will become its next business-altering device: a headset that blends the digital world with the real one.

The company has enlisted Hollywood directors such as Jon Favreau to develop video content for a headset that it is expected to ship next year, according to three people familiar with that work. Favreau, an executive producer of “Prehistoric Planet” on Apple TV+, is working to bring that show’s dinosaurs to life on the headset, which looks like a pair of ski goggles and aims to offer virtual- and augmented-reality experiences, these people said.

Separately, at its annual conference for developers this Monday, Apple plans to unveil software tools that would allow apps to add new camera and voice functionality, laying the groundwork for a hands-free interface that customers will eventually be able to navigate on the headset, according to two people familiar with the project and documents reviewed by The New York Times.

An Apple spokesperson, Trudy Muller, declined to comment on future projects. A spokesperson for Favreau could not comment.

The planned headset will thrust Apple into an emerging competition to define the future of mixed reality. Microsoft, Google and Facebook’s parent company, Meta, are in various stages of developing software and hardware to create environments where 3D digital images and the physical world coexist.

Last year, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg dropped Facebook as his company’s name and committed it to building a concept known as the metaverse, where the online, virtual and real worlds coalesce in a new universe. He and others believe it could become the next wave of computing, succeeding the smartphone age dominated by Apple’s iOS and Google’s Android software, much as those platforms followed the decades of Windows and Macintosh.

The mixed-reality work is expected to be overshadowed during the keynote of Apple’s conference Monday, which will largely be devoted to the company’s existing software systems. Apple may announce a redesigned MacBook Air with slimmer borders around its display than current models and updated processors, analysts said.

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6/8(水)の放送の英文記事と英単語：記録を更新する、冷酷な、産業革命前

Carbon Dioxide Levels Are Highest in Human History

break a record　記録を更新する
relentless　冷酷な、容赦ない
pre-industrial　産業革命前
concentration　集中力、専念、濃縮、濃度
Fahrenheit　華氏 (Celsius: 摂氏)
Stark　こわばった、正真正銘の、完全な、飾りのない、がらんとした、ありのままの
dip　浸す、下がる

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

The amount of planet-warming carbon dioxide in the atmosphere broke a record in May, continuing its relentless climb, scientists said Friday. It is now 50% higher than the pre-industrial average, before humans began the widespread burning of oil, gas and coal in the late 19th century.

There is more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere now than at any time in at least 4 million years, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration officials said.

The concentration of the gas reached nearly 421 parts per million in May, the peak for the year, as power plants, vehicles, farms and other sources around the world continued to pump huge amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. Emissions totaled 36.3 billion tons in 2021, the highest level in history.

As the amount of carbon dioxide increases, the planet keeps warming, with effects like increased flooding, more extreme heat, drought and worsening wildfires that are already being experienced by millions of people worldwide. Average global temperatures are now about 1.1 degrees Celsius, or 2 degrees Fahrenheit, higher than in pre-industrial times.

Growing carbon dioxide levels are more evidence that countries have made little progress toward the goal set in Paris in 2015 of limiting warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius. That’s the threshold beyond which scientists say the likelihood of catastrophic effects of climate change increases significantly.

They are “a stark reminder that we need to take urgent, serious steps to become a more climate-ready nation,” NOAA Administrator Rick Spinrad said in a statement.

Although carbon dioxide levels dipped somewhat around 2020 during the economic slowdown caused by the coronavirus pandemic, there was no effect on the long-term trend, said Pieter Tans, a senior scientist with NOAA’s Global Monitoring Laboratory.

The rate of increase in carbon dioxide concentration “just kept on going,” he said. “And it keeps on going for about the same pace as it did for the past decade.”

Tans and others at the laboratory calculated the peak concentration this year at 420.99 parts per million, based on data from a NOAA weather station atop the Mauna Loa volcano in Hawaii.

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6/9(木)の放送の英文記事と英単語：試験的な、燃え尽き症候群、ひっくり返す

In Britain, a New Test of an Old Dream: The 4-Day Workweek

pilot　試験的な
scale back　減らす、削る
assess　評価する
burnout　燃え尽き症候群、極度の疲労
upend　ひっくり返す、強烈な影響を与える

著者：Christine Hauser
(c) 2021 The New York Times Company

LONDON — Thousands of employees across 70 companies in Britain started the first day of a four-day workweek Monday, a pilot program that is the latest test in the decadeslong quest to scale back workers’ hours while they earn the same amount of pay.

The six-month trial was organized by the nonprofit groups 4 Day Week Global and 4 Day Week UK Campaign, and Autonomy, an organization that studies the impact of labor on well-being. Researchers at Cambridge University, Oxford University and Boston College will assess its effect on productivity and quality of life and will announce results in 2023, the organizers said in a statement.

The program in Britain follows similar efforts in other countries, including Iceland, New Zealand, Scotland and the United States.

More than 3,300 workers in banks, marketing, health care, financial services, retail, hospitality and other industries in Britain are taking part in the pilot, the organizers said. Ryle said the data would be collected through interviews and staff surveys, and through the measures each company uses to assess its productivity.

“We’ll be analyzing how employees respond to having an extra day off, in terms of stress and burnout, job and life satisfaction, health, sleep, energy use, travel and many other aspects of life,” Juliet Schor, a sociology professor at Boston College and the lead researcher on the project, said.

The four-day workweek has been a workplace dream for decades. In 1956, then-Vice President Richard Nixon predicted such an arrangement in the “not too distant future.” But the reality has been unevenly implemented globally over the years, said Schor, who is also leading research into other trials.

Individual companies have tailored their approaches, particularly as the pandemic upended traditional work culture. In the U.S., some companies allowed employees to trim their workweek, by cutting out Fridays, working hybrid shifts, taking pay cuts for fewer hours or setting their own timetables.

Working from home during the pandemic has been the main factor driving the growing momentum for a shorter workweek, Schor said. “It made employers realize they could trust their workers,” she said.

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6/10(金)の放送の英文記事と英単語：崇敬する、歪める、殺害された

Matthew McConaughey Meets Biden and Pleads for an End to Gun Violence

lectern　教壇
revere　崇敬する
disfigure　歪める
slain　殺害された
mutilate　切り裂く
bipartisan　二党の

著者：Jim Tankersley
(c) 2021 The New York Times Company

WASHINGTON — The actor Matthew McConaughey, a native son of Uvalde, Texas, took the lectern in the White House briefing room Tuesday and spoke of learning, in his boyhood, “to revere the power and the capability” of a gun. He then told of the horror he felt at losing 19 school children in his hometown to a man with a rifle so high-powered that it disfigured many of their bodies beyond recognition.

Fresh off a meeting with President Joe Biden, McConaughey echoed the president’s call for expanded background checks on gun buyers, new “red flag” laws and additional restrictions on the purchase of AR-15 rifles like the one used to kill 19 children and two teachers at an elementary school in Uvalde last month. He cast himself as a voice for responsible gun owners and described, in graphic detail, the horrors of gun violence.

“Children were left not only dead, but hollow,” McConaughey said, as he described meeting with the parents of slain children in Uvalde whose bodies had been “so mutilated that only DNA tests” could be used to identify them.

The shooting is one of the deadliest school attacks on record and one of more than 200 mass shootings recorded in the United States so far this year.

McConaughey’s appearance at the White House came as a bipartisan group of senators tries to negotiate new legislation to respond to gun violence. Senators involved in the talks expressed muted optimism that they could produce some sort of legislation that might clear the evenly divided chamber.

McConaughey, who also met with lawmakers on Capitol Hill on Tuesday, said that he and his wife, Camilla, had gone to Uvalde the day after the shooting. “You could feel the shock in the town,” he said.

McConaughey called on the news media to reduce its sensational coverage of mass shootings. He repeatedly invoked a need for “responsible gun ownership.”

“We need to raise the minimum age to purchase an AR-15 rifle to 21,” he said. “We need a waiting period for those rifles. We need red flag laws and consequences for those who abuse them. These are reasonable, practical, tactical regulations.”

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6/11(土)の放送の英文記事と英単語：予備調査、技術解析、必要とさせた

Federal Safety Agency Has Expanded Its Investigation of Tesla’s Autopilot System

preliminary evaluation　予備調査
engineering analysis　技術解析
scrutiny　精密な調査
defects　欠陥
warranted　必要とさせた
minimum　最低限

著者：Neal E. Boudette
(c) 2021 The New York Times Company

The federal government’s top auto safety agency is significantly expanding an investigation into Tesla and its Autopilot driver assistance system to determine if the technology poses a safety risk.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration said Thursday that it was upgrading its preliminary evaluation of Autopilot to an engineering analysis, a more intensive level of scrutiny that is required before a recall can be ordered.

The analysis will look at whether Autopilot fails to prevent drivers from diverting their attention from the road and engaging in other predictable and risky behavior while using the system.

“We’ve been asking for closer scrutiny of Autopilot for some time,” said Jonathan Adkins, executive director of the Governors Highway Safety Association, which coordinates state efforts to promote safe driving.

NHTSA has said it is aware of 35 crashes that occurred while Autopilot was activated, including nine that resulted in the deaths of 14 people. But it said Thursday that it had not determined whether Autopilot has defects that can cause cars to crash while it is engaged.

The wider investigation covers 830,000 vehicles sold in the United States. They include all four Tesla cars — the Models S, X, 3 and Y — in model years from 2014 to 2021. The agency will look at Autopilot and its various component systems that handle steering, braking and other driving tasks, and a more advanced system that Tesla calls Full Self-Driving.

Tesla did not respond to a request for comment on the agency’s move.

The preliminary evaluation focused on 11 crashes in which Tesla cars operating under Autopilot control struck parked emergency vehicles that had their lights flashing. In that review, NHTSA said Thursday, the agency became aware of 191 crashes — not limited to ones involving emergency vehicles — that warranted closer investigation. They occurred while the cars were operating under Autopilot, Full Self-Driving or associated features, the agency said.

Tesla and its CEO, Elon Musk, have come under criticism for hyping Autopilot and Full Self-Driving in ways that suggest they are capable of piloting cars without input from drivers.

“At a minimum they should be renamed,” said Adkins of the Governors Highway Safety Association. “Those names confuse people into thinking they can do more than they are actually capable of.”

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6/12(日)の放送の英文記事と英単語：広まる、モデリング、さっと避ける

Two New Versions of Omicron Are Gaining Ground in U.S., According to CDC Estimates

gain ground　広まる
trajectory　軌道、弾道、見通し
modeling　モデリング
outcompete　打ち負かす
dodge　さっと避ける

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

The omicron subvariants known as BA.4 and BA.5 now represent 13% of new coronavirus cases in the United States, up from 7.5% a week ago and 1% in early May, according to new estimates from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The spread of the subvariants adds more uncertainty to the trajectory of the pandemic in the United States, where current case counts are likely to be a significant underestimate. But whether it leads to a major new wave of infections, or spikes in hospitalizations and deaths, remains unclear, scientists cautioned.

The new figures, released Tuesday, are based on modeling, and the CDC’s estimates have missed the mark before. But the overall trend suggests that BA.4 and BA.5 could outcompete the two other omicron subvariants, BA.2 and BA.2.12.1, which together account for most U.S. cases, said Denis Nash, a public health researcher at the City University of New York Graduate School of Public Health & Health Policy.

“This could happen very quickly,” Nash said.

Data on BA.4 and BA.5, which were first detected in South Africa early this year, remains limited. But these variants seem to spread more quickly than earlier versions of omicron, such as BA.2, and may be better at dodging the immune system’s defenses. So far, there is not much evidence that they cause more severe disease, although more studies are needed.

Globally, the most recent data suggests that BA.4 and BA.5 still represent a relatively small share of cases, but that could change in the weeks ahead. In a recent report, the U.K. Health Security Agency noted that in many countries, the two subvariants were replacing BA.2 about as quickly as BA.2 replaced the original version of omicron.

The subvariants have become especially common in parts of the southern United States. In the region comprising Arkansas, Louisiana, New Mexico, Oklahoma and Texas, BA.4 and BA.5 account for more than 1 in 5 infections, according to the new figures.

Preliminary evidence from laboratory research suggests that unvaccinated people who were infected with the original version of omicron, known as BA.1, might be easily reinfected by BA.4 or BA.5. (Vaccinated people are likely to fare somewhat better, the study suggests.)

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