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8/15(月)の放送の英文記事と英単語：絶壁、厄介な、気象学の

Arctic Warming Is Happening Faster Than Described, Analysis Shows

definetive　決定的な、最終的な
equator　赤道
worrisome　気にかかる、厄介な
precipice　絶壁、危険な状態
clamp　締める、固定する
meteorological　気象の、気象学の

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

The rapid warming of the Arctic, a definitive sign of climate change, is occurring even faster than previously described, researchers in Finland said Thursday.

Over the past four decades, the region has been heating up four times faster than the global average, not the two to three times that has commonly been reported. And some parts of the region, notably the Barents Sea north of Norway and Russia, are warming up to seven times faster, they said.

One result of rapid Arctic warming is faster melting of the Greenland ice sheet, which adds to sea-level rise. But the impacts extend far beyond the Arctic, reaching down to influence weather such as extreme rainfall and heat waves in North America and elsewhere. By altering the temperature difference between the North Pole and the equator, the warming Arctic appears to have affected storm tracks and wind speed in North America.

Manvendra Dubey, an atmospheric scientist at Los Alamos National Laboratory, in New Mexico, and an author of an earlier study with similar findings, said the faster rate of warming of the Arctic was worrisome, and points to the need to closely monitor the region.

“One has to measure it much better, and all the time, because we are at the precipice of many tipping points,” like the complete loss of Arctic sea ice in summers, he said.

The two studies serve as a sharp reminder that humans continue to burn fossil fuels and pump greenhouse gases into the atmosphere at rates that are dangerously heating the planet and unleashing extreme weather.

Weeks after a deadly heat wave clamped down on European capitals, extreme temperatures are again engulfing western Europe this week. The heaviest rainfall in decades inundated Seoul, South Korea, killing at least nine and damaging nearly 3,000 structures. The McKinney wildfire continues to rage in Northern California, destroying 60,000 acres, killing four people and triggering a mass fish kill.

If the rate of warming in the Arctic continues to speed up, the influence on weather could worsen, one of the researchers said. Projections of future climate impacts might need to be adjusted, said Mika Rantanen, a researcher at the Finnish Meteorological Institute in Helsinki.

Even as the U.S. Congress is on the cusp of passing historic climate legislation, the country is still far from its goal to stop adding carbon dioxide to the atmosphere by 2050.

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8/16(火)の放送の英文記事と英単語：賛美、勅令、映画化

U.K. Police Investigate Online Threat to J.K. Rowling

handle　ハンドルネーム
assail　激しく攻撃する、責め立てる
glorification　賛美、賞賛
film adaptation　映画化
stand with　(人) ～を支持する
edict　勅令、命令

著者：Kurtis Lee
(c) 2021 The New York Times Company

Authorities in the United Kingdom said Sunday that they were investigating an online threat against author J.K. Rowling after she offered support on social media to Salman Rushdie, the novelist who was attacked last week at an event in western New York.

Hours after the attack on Rushdie, who was stabbed roughly 10 times as he prepared to speak at the Chautauqua Institution, Rowling tweeted her condolences. She first wrote on Twitter, “Horrifying news,” then added: “Feeling very sick right now. Let him be OK.”

In response, a user with the handle @MeerAsifAziz1 replied: “Don’t worry you are next.”

The tweet was later deleted, and the account was suspended by Sunday evening.

A spokesperson for Police Scotland said authorities had received a report of an online threat against Rowling and that an investigation was ongoing.

On Saturday, Rowling, 57, who wrote the award-winning “Harry Potter” books, assailed Twitter for allowing the social media account that lodged the threat to remain active.

“@TwitterSupport These are your guidelines, right?” she wrote. “Violence: You may not threaten violence against an individual or a group of people. We also prohibit the glorification of violence…”

Twitter did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

On Sunday, Warner Bros. Discovery, the entertainment company behind the “Harry Potter” film adaptations, offered a statement condemning the attack on Rowling.

“We stand with her and all the authors, storytellers and creators who bravely express their creativity and opinions,” the company said in a statement, which also offered condolences to Rushdie and his family.

“The company strongly condemns any form of threat, violence or intimidation when opinions, beliefs and thoughts might differ,” the statement said.

Rushdie went into hiding in 1989, shortly after the publication of his novel “The Satanic Verses.” The book, which contained fictionalized depictions of the Prophet Muhammad, offended many Muslims and resulted in a fatwa, or religious edict, from Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the supreme leader of Iran, who urged Muslims to kill the author. In 1998, the country’s president said Iran no longer supported the edict.

As Rushdie prepared to speak at the Chautauqua Institution, a man, later identified by police as Hadi Matar, 24, of New Jersey, stormed the stage and stabbed him. Rushdie remains in a hospital in Erie, Pennsylvania, and his agent said Sunday that he was recovering. Matar has pleaded not guilty in the attack.

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8/17(水)の放送の英文記事と英単語：下院、退役軍人、助成金

House Passes Climate, Tax and Health Package

house　下院
subsidies　(国家の)補助金、助成金 　　　　　　
grant　助成金
cap　(価格，賃金，支出などの)上限
deficit　赤字 (surplus: 黒字)
congressional　(米国の)国会の
veterans　退役軍人
crisscross the country　国を横断する

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

WASHINGTON — Congress gave final approval Friday to legislation that would reduce the cost of prescription drugs and pour billions of dollars into the effort to slow global warming, as House Democrats overcame united Republican opposition to deliver on key components of President Joe Biden’s domestic agenda.

With a 220-207 vote, the House agreed to the single largest federal investment in the fight against climate change and the most substantial changes to national health care policy since passage of the Affordable Care Act. The bill now goes to Biden for his signature.

The legislation would inject more than $370 billion into climate and energy programs aimed at helping the United States cut greenhouse gas emissions by an estimated 40% below 2005 levels by the end of the decade. It would also extend for three years expanded subsidies under the Affordable Care Act, as well as fulfill a long-held Democratic goal to lower the cost of prescription drugs by allowing Medicare to directly negotiate prices and capping recipients’ annual out-of-pocket drug costs.

The package would be financed largely by tax increases, including a new tax on company stock buybacks and a 15% corporate minimum tax for wealthy companies. Initial analyses of the legislation found that it could reduce the nation’s deficit by as much as $300 billion over a decade.

It is likely the last major legislative package to become law before the November elections, handing Democrats a significant victory before they defend their narrow congressional majorities. The vote comes days after Biden signed a $280 billion industrial policy bill that will shore up America’s chip manufacturing in an effort to better compete with China and legislation that will expand medical benefits for veterans exposed to trash fires that burned on military bases, the latest in a string of legislative successes.

Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris and members of the Cabinet are set to crisscross the country in the coming weeks to highlight the plan and emphasize that they had delivered on long-held promises, despite intense pressure from the pharmaceutical industry and other powerful lobbying arms.

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8/18(木)の放送の英文記事と英単語：栄枯盛衰、論理的根拠、追い出す

Adam Neumann’s New Company Gets a Big Check From Andreessen Horowitz

rise and fall　栄枯盛衰、浮き沈み
cautionary tale　教訓
hubris　傲慢、思い上がり
rationale　論理的根拠
implode　内側に破裂する、崩壊する
oust　追い出す

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

Adam Neumann, the founder of WeWork whose spectacular rise and fall has been chronicled in books, documentaries and a scripted television series, has a new venture — and a surprising backer.

Neumann is starting a new company called Flow, focused on the residential real estate market. Notably, it has the financial support of Andreessen Horowitz, the prominent Silicon Valley venture capital firm that was an early investor in everything from Facebook to Airbnb.

Andreessen Horowitz is considered royalty among early stage investors, so its backing is a powerful sign of support, and perhaps a rebuke to Neumann’s critics, who have described his leadership of WeWork as a cautionary tale of corporate hubris.

The firm’s investment in Flow is about $350 million, according to three people briefed on the deal, valuing the company at more than $1 billion before it even opens its doors. The investment is the largest individual check Andreessen Horowitz has ever written in a round of funding to a company.

Flow is expected to launch in 2023, and the venture capital giant’s co-founder Marc Andreessen will join its board, these people said. Neumann is planning to make a sizable personal investment in the firm in the form of cash and real estate assets.

“It’s often underappreciated that only one person has fundamentally redesigned the office experience and led a paradigm-changing global company in the process: Adam Neumann,” Andreessen wrote in a note posted on his firm’s website Monday, explaining his rationale for investing in the company.

At its height, WeWork was valued at some $47 billion. After a botched public offering and tales of mismanagement, it imploded spectacularly. Neumann was ousted from WeWork in 2019, but he walked away with hundreds of millions of dollars. Today, WeWork has a market value of about $4 billion.

Neumann, who has purchased more than 3,000 apartment units in Miami; Fort Lauderdale, Florida; Atlanta; and Nashville, Tennessee; aims to rethink the rental housing market by creating a branded product with consistent service and community features. Flow will own and operate the properties Neumann had bought and also offer its services to new developments and other third parties. Exact details of the business plan could not be learned.

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8/19(金)の放送の英文記事と英単語：満ちる、遅れている人、向かい風

Japan Bounces Back to Economic Growth as Coronavirus Fears Recede

recede　退く
teem　満ちる
annualize　年換算すると
gallop　ギャロップ
laggard　遅れている人
headwind　向かい風

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

TOKYO — Restaurants are full. Malls are teeming. People are traveling. And Japan’s economy has begun to grow again as consumers, fatigued from more than two years of the pandemic, moved away from precautions that have kept coronavirus infections at among the lowest levels of any wealthy country.

Lockdowns in China, soaring inflation and brutally high energy prices could not suppress Japan’s economic expansion as domestic consumption of goods and services shot up in the second three months of the year. The country’s economy, the third largest after the United States and China, grew at an annualized rate of 2.2% during that period, government data showed Monday.

The second-quarter result followed growth of 0% — revised from an initial reading of a 1% decline — during the first three months of the year, when consumers retreated to their homes in the face of the rapid spread of the omicron variant.

After that initial omicron wave burned out, shoppers and domestic travelers poured back onto the streets. Case numbers then quickly galloped back to record highs for Japan, but this time the public — highly vaccinated and tired of self-restraint — has reacted less fearfully, said Izumi Devalier, head of Japan economics at Bank of America.

“After the omicron wave ended, we had a very nice jump in mobility, lots of catch-up spending in categories like restaurant and travel,” she said.

The new growth report indicates that Japan’s economy may finally be back on track after more than two years of yo-yoing between growth and contraction. Still, the country remains an economic “laggard” compared with other wealthy nations, Devalier said, adding that consumers, especially older people, “are still sensitive to COVID risks.”

The second-quarter growth came despite stiff headwinds, particularly for Japan’s small- and medium-size enterprises.

A weak yen and higher inflation have also weighed on companies. Over the past year, the Japanese currency has lost more than 20% of its value against the dollar. While that has been good for exporters — whose products have grown cheaper for foreign customers — it has driven up prices of imports, which have already become more expensive because of shortages and supply chain disruptions caused by the pandemic and Russia’s war in Ukraine.

While inflation in Japan — at around 2% in June — is still much lower than in many other countries, it has forced some companies to substantially raise prices for the first time in years.

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8/20(土)の放送の英文記事と英単語：南京錠、宣告された、収容者

Three Men Charged in Prison Killing of Whitey Bulger

incarcerated　 監禁されていた
underworld　 犯罪社会
inmates　 収容者
solitary confinement　 独房監禁
top echelon informant　最高階級の情報提供者
padlock　 南京錠
pronounced　 宣告された

著者：Eliza Fawcett
(c) 2021 The New York Times Company

Three men were indicted in the death of notorious gangster James “Whitey” Bulger, who was beaten to death four years ago in a West Virginia federal prison where he was serving a sentence for crimes that terrorized Boston in the 1970s and ’80s, prosecutors said Thursday.

Fotios Geas, Paul J. DeCologero and Sean McKinnon were charged with conspiracy to commit first-degree murder by the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of West Virginia.

All three men were incarcerated with Bulger in the Hazelton prison in Bruceton Mills, West Virginia, where Bulger, 89, had been serving two life terms for his role in 11 murders committed when he controlled Boston’s underworld for several decades.

Bulger’s killing and the circumstances of his transfer to the West Virginia prison have remained somewhat of a mystery. And they have raised questions about the protection of high-profile inmates like Bulger, who was on the FBI’s 10 Most Wanted list for 12 years and was a known informant for the agency.

Prison officials quickly identified Geas as one of the suspects in Bulger’s killing, and all three men were sent to solitary confinement after the fatal attack. Yet questions remain as to why almost four years elapsed before the men were charged.

Geas’ lawyer, Daniel D. Kelly, of Springfield, Massachusetts, said that his client had been held in solitary confinement “since the day of the killing.” While the charges were “serious,” Kelly said that they did not justify the length of Geas’ confinement. He raised concerns about potential bias in the investigation of the killing.

“It’s just troubling,” Kelly said. “Everyone should be a little bit curious as to why it took the FBI four years to investigate the murder of their top echelon informant.”

On Oct. 30, 2018, less than 12 hours after Bulger was transferred to Hazelton from another prison, security camera footage showed at least two inmates rolling Bulger, who was in a wheelchair, out of view into a corner of a room. There, law enforcement officials said, they beat him with a padlock stuffed inside a sock. When guards found him, Bulger had been attacked so severely that he was “unrecognizable,” one law enforcement official said at the time. Guards undertook lifesaving measures, but Bulger was pronounced dead.

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8/21(日)の放送の英文記事と英単語：原子炉、奪う、弾薬

Ukrainian Strikes May Be Slowing Russia’s Advance

degrade　退化させる、品位をおとす
ammunition　弾薬
clandestine　秘密の・内々の
deprive　奪う、拒む
divert　向きを変える、違う目的で使う
reactor　原子炉、反応装置

著者：Marc Santora, Eric Schmitt and Michael Levenson
(c) 2021 The New York Times Company

KYIV, Ukraine — The Ukrainian military extended the fight deeper into Russian-controlled territory Friday, as it sharpens a strategy of trying to degrade Russia’s combat capabilities by striking ammunition depots and supply lines in the occupied Crimean Peninsula and other areas the Kremlin had long thought to be safe.

Crimea, a key staging ground for Russia’s invasion, has been firmly under Kremlin control since it was illegally annexed by Russia in 2014. But it has been rocked by several recent attacks, some carried out by clandestine Ukrainian fighters operating behind enemy lines. Oleksiy Danilov, the head of Ukraine’s national security council, said Friday that Kyiv would target sites in Crimea as part of a “step-by-step demilitarization of the peninsula with its subsequent de-occupation.”

Overnight into Friday, blasts hit at a military airfield outside Sevastopol, the largest city in Crimea and home to Russia’s Black Sea fleet; the Russians later said the booms were the sound of successful anti-aircraft fire. Loud bangs were also reported above the Kerch Strait bridge, the only land link connecting Russia to Crimea. There appeared to be no damage to the bridge, and Russia said that those explosions, too, were the result of anti-aircraft fire.

A large fire also broke out in an ammunition depot in Russia itself, in the border region of Belgorod, forcing the evacuation of two villages, according to the region’s governor, Vyacheslav Gladkov.

It remains unclear whether Ukraine’s recent activity in Russian-held territory is just an isolated flurry or, as Ukrainian officials have said, the first stages of a sustained effort to diminish Russia’s military capability.

The blasts came amid escalating tensions around the sprawling Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant in southeastern Ukraine, Europe’s largest, where Russia and Ukraine have accused each other of planning an attack that could lead to a nuclear disaster.

Ukraine on Friday raised fresh concerns about another safety issue at the Zaporizhzhia plant, warning that Russia was preparing to disconnect the plant’s power lines from Ukraine’s grid. The potentially risky and complicated process could deprive government-controlled territories of power and divert it to Crimea and Russia.

The Russians would have to shut off reactors at the plant to reroute the electricity. That means that power to keep cooling systems functioning at the plant would come from diesel generators, raising the risks of an accident.

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