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7/11(月)の放送の英文記事と英単語：違反、放棄する、急落する

Elon Musk Moves to End $44 Billion Deal to Buy Twitter

taunt　あざける、冷やかす
breach　違反、裏切り、裂け目
protract　長引かせる、延ばす
waive　放棄する、撤回する
paramount　最高の、主要な
plummet　急落する
allude　ほのめかす、それとなく言及する

著者：Kate Conger and Lauren Hirsch
(c) 2021 The New York Times Company

SAN FRANCISCO — Less than three months ago, Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, struck a $44 billion deal to buy Twitter. He proclaimed that the company had “tremendous potential.”

Since then, Musk has changed his tune. He sniped at Twitter’s executives. He unleashed tweets taunting the company’s board. He complained that the social media service had too many spam accounts and that he could not get insight into the issue. He tweeted a poop emoji to express his displeasure.

And on Friday, Musk tried to back out of the acquisition altogether.

In a regulatory filing prepared by his lawyers, Musk said he was terminating the Twitter deal because of a continuing disagreement over the number of spam accounts on the platform. He said that Twitter had not provided information necessary to calculate the number of those accounts — which the company has said is lower than 5% — and that it had appeared to make inaccurate statements.

“Twitter is in material breach of multiple provisions” of the deal agreement, Musk’s lawyers said in the filing, and the company “appears to have made false and misleading representations.”

Musk’s move sets up what is likely to be a protracted legal battle with Twitter. The billionaire signed a legally binding agreement in April to buy the company for $54.20 a share, waiving due diligence to get the deal done quickly. The terms included a $1 billion breakup fee if the agreement fell apart and a clause that gives Twitter the right to sue Musk and force him to complete or pay for the deal, so long as the debt financing he has corralled remains intact.

For Twitter, completing a sale to Musk is paramount. Since April, Twitter’s shares have plummeted more than 20%, far below what Musk offered. To accept less than the originally negotiated price could expose Twitter to shareholder lawsuits. And in a sign of how the company’s investors were banking on the deal, its shares fell 5% in after-hours trading Friday after Musk revealed his desire to end the deal.

Musk didn’t immediately return requests for comment.

In a tweet, Bret Taylor, Twitter’s chair, said the company was intent on seeing the deal through. He alluded to how the matter would end up in court, saying he was “confident we will prevail in the Delaware Court of Chancery.” Many corporate cases are heard in Delaware, where Twitter is registered.

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7/12(火)の放送の英文記事と英単語：平和主義者、参議院、圧倒的多数

Shinzo Abe’s Party Triumphs in Parliamentary Vote, Extending Legacy

pacifist　平和主義者
the Upper House of Pariliament　参議院 (⇔ the Lower House of Pariliament 衆議院)
　*正式名称 : The House of Councillors 参議院 (⇔ the House of Representatives 衆議院)
supermajority　圧倒的多数
clause　(条約、法律などの) 条項
voter turnout　投票率 (*6/21参照)
hard sell　受け入れるのが困難な提案

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

TOKYO — Two days after Japan’s former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe was gunned down at a campaign stop Friday, his Liberal Democratic Party and its allies swept to victory in a parliamentary election that gave them a chance to pursue Abe’s long-held ambition of revising Japan’s pacifist constitution.

It was the clearest sign that Abe, Japan’s longest-serving prime minister, remained a guiding political force.

“I have the responsibility to take over the ideas of former Prime Minister Abe,” the current prime minister, Fumio Kishida, told a crowd west of Tokyo on Saturday, the day after Abe’s killing, as he campaigned for their party’s candidates for the Upper House of Parliament.

The Liberal Democrats and their coalition partners gained enough seats in Sunday’s election to form a crucial two-thirds supermajority. They can now amend a clause in the constitution, imposed by postwar American occupiers, that renounces war. That long-held goal would open the door for Japan to become a military power, capable of global leadership.

By the early hours of Monday, the Liberal Democrats, together with Komeito, their longtime partner, and other allied parties, had won 87 seats, giving them more than 70% of the Upper House, besting their last supermajority in 2016. (A similar coalition commands more than two-thirds of the Lower House.)

Abe’s death appeared to have helped increase voter turnout slightly, to over 52%, up from about 49% in the last Upper House election in 2019.

As returns rolled in, Kishida said he hoped to “gain people’s understanding” and “deepen the discussion” about the party’s proposal for revising the constitution.

Even with the supermajority, much stands in the way of the plan — not least that it has long been unpopular with the Japanese public. And with inflation pressures mounting, the yen weakening and coronavirus infections again on the rise, changing the constitution could be a harder sell than ever.

“I’m interested in prices, wages, daily life, medical services and child care,” said Risako Sakaguchi, 29, who cast her votes for Liberal Democratic candidates at a polling station in Saitama, a suburb of Tokyo.

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7/13(水)の放送の英文記事と英単語：鳥肌、赤外線の、ちらっと見る

Goose Bumps Build for the Webb’s 1st Snapshots of the Universe

Goose Bumps　鳥肌
Snapshots　写真
infrared　赤外線の
encase　(〜を)包む
peek　そっと覗く、ちらっと見る
the fruit of one’s effort　努力の成果
knock the socks off　〔良い事をして〕(人)をとても驚かせる、感動させる

著者：Dennis Overbye
(c) 2021 The New York Times Company

On Tuesday morning, NASA will show off the first pictures and data from the new James Webb Space Telescope. That will bring to an end some 30 years and $10 billion of planning, building, testing and innovating, followed by six months of terror, tension and anticipation.

The pictures constitute a sightseeing tour of the universe painted in colors no human eye has seen — the invisible rays of infrared or heat radiation. Infrared rays are blocked by the atmosphere and so can only be studied out in space. Among other things, they can penetrate the clouds of dust that encase the cosmic nurseries where stars are born, turning them into transparent bubbles that show the baby stars nesting inside.

The first image will be revealed Monday at 5 p.m. by President Joe Biden at the White House in an event streamed on NASA TV or the agency’s YouTube channel. NASA will then show other pictures at 10:30 a.m. Eastern time Tuesday in a live video stream.

Only the tiniest sliver of the world’s astronomers have gotten a look at what the Webb has seen. But the NASA officials who were granted an early peek at the new images could only gush during a news conference in late June.

Pamela Melroy, NASA’s deputy administrator and a former astronaut, said she could hardly contain herself.

“What I have seen moved me as a scientist, an engineer and a human being,” she said.

Webb is the largest space telescope ever launched. Its mission is to explore the earliest days of the universe, when galaxies and stars were just congealing out of the fog of the Big Bang, reaching farther into time and space than the Hubble Space Telescope can. Just as the Hubble defined astronomy during the past 30 years, NASA expects that the Webb will define astronomy for a new generation of astronomers.

The telescope is the fruit of the combined effort of some 20,000 engineers, astronomers, technicians and bureaucrats, according to Bill Ochs, the telescope’s project manager. It is now orbiting the sun at a spot called L2, 1 million miles from Earth.

The pictures to be revealed on Monday and Tuesday were cherry-picked by a small team of astronomers and science outreach experts to show off the capability of the new telescope and to knock the socks off the public.

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7/14(木)の放送の英文記事と英単語：預金者、詐欺行為、私服警備員

Security Forces in China Attack Protesters Seeking Frozen Funds

frozen funds　凍結資金、焦付資金
depositors　預金者
fraud　詐欺行為、不正行為
seek redress　救済を求める
plainclothes security agents　私服警備員
demonstrators　デモ参加者

著者：Zixu Wang and Austin Ramzy
(c) 2021 The New York Times Company

HONG KONG — A financial scandal in central China has touched depositors across the country, some of whom placed their life savings in four rural banks offering high rates of return, then found their funds frozen as investigators examined allegations of widespread fraud.

When the bank customers began showing up in person to demand their money, authorities in the city of Zhengzhou tried to use health-code apps meant to prevent the spread of COVID-19 to prevent them from traveling.

The city retreated after a backlash, and several officials were punished. But the depositors kept coming, with as many as 1,000 gathering Sunday.

This time, authorities sent in guards to break up the demonstration. They beat the protesters, kicking them to the ground and shoving them onto buses — the harshest response yet to the bank depositors’ efforts to seek redress.

Photos and video of plainclothes security agents attacking the protesters were shared on Chinese social media, stirring anger over the use of force. Although protest images are often quickly censored in China, the footage from Zhengzhou was still available Monday, with one hashtag viewed 32 million times on Weibo, a Twitter-like service.

The protesters had gathered in front of the Zhengzhou branch of the nation’s central bank, the People’s Bank of China. Protesters said dozens of people had been sent to local hospitals after being beaten.

“We came all the way to Zhengzhou to get our money back, and we didn’t want to have conflicts with anyone,” said Feng Tianyu, 31, who lives in the northern city of Harbin. “But the government sent so many people to deal with the unarmed people. We were cheated financially, beaten physically and traumatized mentally.”

Feng, who is two months pregnant, said men dressed in white shirts pulled her by her hair and arms onto a bus, where police officers beat some of the demonstrators. She said she was taken to a hospital for stomach pains but was refused admission.

The depositors say they are trying to recover the money they placed in rural banks using online, third-party platforms. The money has been frozen since April, when police and banking regulators said they were investigating allegations of illegal financial activity.

Depositors from across the country have tried to go demand their money in person, even as authorities have repeatedly shut down their messaging groups and tried to block them from traveling.

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7/15(金)の放送の英文記事と英単語：司教、教義上の、使徒

Pope Names First Women to Office That Helps Select Bishops

Bishop　司教
Congregation for Bishops　司教省
Diocese　監督管区
Doctrinal　教義上の
Apostle　使徒
Baptize　洗礼

著者：Gaia Pianigiani
(c) 2021 The New York Times Company

Pope Francis on Wednesday appointed women for the first time to the office that advises him in the choice of bishops across the world, a move that bolsters efforts to give women a larger voice in the church’s operations.

The decision to name the three women as members of the Congregation for Bishops will put them in position to influence the selection of the 5,300 bishops who lead dioceses and play a prominent role in the church’s interaction with the faithful all over the world.

The priesthood in the Roman Catholic Church is restricted to men only, based on doctrinal teaching that all of Jesus’ apostles were male. But women’s groups have been pressing for more authority, given that women participate so actively in church life.

The three women who were selected are Sister Raffaella Petrini, the highest-ranking woman in the Vatican City State and the deputy governor of the area; Sister Yvonne Reungoat, the French former superior general of an Italian religious order, the Daughters of Mary the Helper; and a laywoman, Maria Lia Zervino, president of the World Union of Catholic Women’s Organizations.

The office’s members meet a couple of times a month in Rome to evaluate candidates for bishop submitted by Vatican ambassadors and archbishops. It then advises the pope, who has the final word and has the latitude to appoint candidates who have not been assessed by the panel.

The size of the office varies, but the group announced Wednesday includes 14 people — the three women, along with 11 cardinals, bishops and priests, who will serve five-year terms.

Francis signaled his intention to appoint women to the office in an interview with Reuters earlier this month. “I am open to giving an opportunity,” Francis told Reuters, referring to women.

The pope noted in the interview that the new constitution for the Holy See allows any baptized Catholic to lead most sections of the Vatican’s central administration, indicating that he planned to appoint more women.

Not everyone was convinced that the presence of women on the bishop-selection office would lead to meaningful change.

“These women were chosen because they are in line with the Vatican’s hierarchy,” said Lucetta Scaraffia, a feminist, church historian and founder of Women Church World, the Vatican women’s magazine that exposed the economic exploitation and abuse of nuns. “Nothing will change, I think.”

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7/16(土)の放送の英文記事と英単語：初期の、惑星間の、居住可能な

Webb Telescope Reveals a New Vision of an Ancient Universe

Cosmos　宇宙
Nascent　初期の
Interstellar　惑星間の
Exoplanet　太陽系外惑星
Habitable　居住可能な
Gravitational Field　重力場
“oohed and aahed”　感嘆の声を上げた

著者：Dennis Overbye, Kenneth Chang and Joshua Sokol
(c) 2021 The New York Times Company

The universe was born in darkness 13.8 billion years ago, and even after the first stars and galaxies blazed into existence a few hundred million years later, these too stayed dark. Their brilliant light, stretched by time and the expanding cosmos, dimmed into the infrared, rendering them — and other clues to our beginnings — inaccessible to every eye and instrument.

Until now. On Tuesday the James Webb Space Telescope, the most powerful space observatory yet built, offered a spectacular slideshow of our previously invisible nascent cosmos. Ancient galaxies carpeting the sky like jewels on black velvet. Fledgling stars shining out from deep within cumulus clouds of interstellar dust. Hints of water vapor in the atmosphere of a remote exoplanet.

Their sum is both a new vision of the universe and a view of the universe as it once appeared new.

The Webb telescope — NASA’s vaunted successor to the Hubble Space Telescope, 30 years and nearly $10 billion in the making — is equipped to access this realm of cosmic history, study the first stars and galaxies and look for nearer, potentially habitable worlds. It is a collaboration among NASA, the European Space Agency and the Canadian Space Agency.

President Joe Biden offered a preview Monday afternoon when he introduced what NASA officials and astronomers hailed as the deepest image yet taken of the cosmos, a mark that will probably be passed before the week is done as more data spews forth from NASA’s computers.

The image, of a distant star cluster called SMACS 0723, revealed the presence of still more-distant galaxies spilled across the sky. The light from those galaxies, magnified into visibility by the gravitational field of the cluster, originated more than 13 billion years ago.

The new pictures were rolled out during an hourlong ceremony at the Goddard Space Flight Center that was hosted by Michelle Thaller, the center’s assistant director for science communication, with video stops around the world. A few miles away at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, an overflow crowd of astronomers whooped and hollered, oohed and aahed, as new images flashed on the screen — evidence that their telescope was working even better than hoped.

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7/17(日)の放送の英文記事と英単語：悲観論、超党派的な、自然の成り行き

As Faith Flags in U.S. Government, Many Voters Want to Upend the System

overhaul　全体的な見直し
gerrymander　勝手な選挙区改定
outgrowth　自然の成り行き
pessimism　悲観論
bipartisan　超党派的な
zero-sum　ゼロ和の

著者：Reid J. Epstein
(c) 2021 The New York Times Company

A majority of American voters across nearly all demographics and ideologies believe their system of government does not work, with 58% of those interviewed for a New York Times/Siena College poll saying that the world’s oldest independent constitutional democracy needs major reforms or a complete overhaul.

The discontent among Republicans is driven by their widespread, unfounded doubts about the legitimacy of the nation’s elections. For Democrats, it is the realization that even though they control the White House and Congress, it is Republicans, joined with their allies in gerrymandered state legislatures and the Supreme Court, who are achieving long-sought political goals.

For Republicans, the distrust is a natural outgrowth of former President Donald Trump’s domination of the party and, to a large degree, American politics. After seven years in which he relentlessly attacked the country’s institutions, a broad majority of Republicans share his views on the 2020 election and its aftermath: Sixty-one percent said he was the legitimate winner, and 72% described the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol as a protest that got out of hand.

Democrats’ pessimism about the future stems from their party’s inability to protect abortion rights, pass sweeping gun control measures and pursue other liberal priorities in the face of Republican opposition. Self-described liberals were more likely than other Democrats to have lost trust in government and more likely to say voting did not make a difference.

Americans’ bipartisan cynicism about government signals a striking philosophical shift: For generations, Democrats campaigned on the idea that government was a force for good, while Republicans sought to limit it. Now, the polling shows, the number of Americans in both parties who believe their government is capable of responding to voters’ concerns has shrunk.

More than half of all voters surveyed, 53%, said the American political system was too divided to solve the nation’s problems, an increase from 40% in a Times/Siena poll from October 2020. The sentiment is now most acute among Black voters and the youngest voters.

The lack of faith is starkest among the young, who have little to no memory of a time when American politics didn’t function as a zero-sum affair. Nearly half — 48% — of those surveyed between the ages of 18 and 29 said voting did not make a difference in how their government operates.

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