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。
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目次
8/22(月)の放送の英文記事と英単語：一掃する、主力部門、仕分け
HBO Max Pulls Nearly 200 ‘Sesame Street’ Episodes
purge 一掃する、粛正する、(罪を)あがなう
marger 合併
air 放送する
crown jewel 最も重要な部分、主力部門
assortment 詰め合わせ、仕分け
著者：Amanda Holpuch
(c) 2021 The New York Times Company
Nearly 200 episodes of “Sesame Street” have been pulled from HBO Max, a streaming platform that has been purging films and television shows in recent weeks as it prepares to combine with another streaming service, Discovery+.
Fans of “Sesame Street” were surprised Friday to see that hundreds of episodes, most from the first 40 years of the show, had been removed from HBO Max.
It is the latest shift at HBO Max following the merger of its former parent company, WarnerMedia, with Discovery Inc. in April. Together, the companies formed Warner Bros. Discovery, which is aiming to find $3 billion in savings in an effort to reduce its $55 billion in debt.
This past week, about 70 HBO Max staff members were laid off as a part of the reorganization, and HBO Max announced that 36 titles were being pulled from the platform. The pulled programming included animated series “Infinity Train” and “The Not-Too-Late Show With Elmo,” a “Sesame Street” spinoff.
David Zaslav, the company’s CEO, also told investors this month that the company plans to offer a single paid subscription streaming service, bringing together content from HBO Max and Discovery+.
As of Friday, HBO Max had cut the number of “Sesame Street” episodes it provides to 456 from 650, Variety reported.
Every episode of “Sesame Street” from seasons 39, which aired in 2008, through 52, the latest season, is still available on HBO Max. The newest season, 53, will air on HBO Max in the fall.
HBO said in a statement that the streaming platform was “committed to continuing to bring ‘Sesame Street’ into families’ homes.”
“‘Sesame Street’ is and has always been an important part of television culture and a crown jewel of our preschool offering,” the statement said.
Joe Hennes, editor-in-chief of ToughPigs, a website for fans of “Sesame Street,” the Muppets and other Jim Henson creations, said the “Sesame Street” episodes still available on HBO Max were a “random assortment.”
“The culturally important episodes, or the episodes that maybe a more casual fan would say, ‘I’d like to see that again,’ that stuff is what’s missing,” Hennes said.
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8/23(火)の放送の英文記事と英単語：憤慨している、窒素、家畜
Dairy Farmers in the Netherlands Are Up in Arms Over Emission Cuts
(be) up in arms 憤慨している
manure 肥料、(家畜などの)糞尿
nitrogen 窒素
livestock 家畜
do one’s part ～の役割・務め・責任を果たす (≒do one’s bit)
著者：Claire Moses
(c) 2021 The New York Times Company
WOUDENBERG, Netherlands — The dairy farmers of the Netherlands have had enough.
They have set fire to hay and manure along highways, dumped trash on roads to create traffic jams and blockaded food distribution centers with their tractors, leading to empty shelves in supermarkets.
The anger of the farmers is directed at the government, which has announced plans for a national 50% reduction of nitrogen emissions by 2030 — in line with European Union requirements to preserve protected nature reserves — that they believe unfairly targets them. Factories and cars also emit large amounts of nitrogen and have not been targeted, they say, although the government said that cuts associated with both polluters would be addressed in the future.
Agriculture is responsible for the largest share of nitrogen emissions in the Netherlands, much of it from the waste produced by the estimated 1.6 million cows that provide the milk used to make the country’s famed cheeses, such as Gouda and Edam.
To realize those planned cuts, thousands of farmers will be required to significantly reduce livestock numbers and the size of their farming operations. If they cannot meet the cuts that the government demands of them, they may be forced to close their operations altogether.
The Dutch government has set aside about 25 billion euros (about $26 billion) to carry out its plan, and some of that money will be used to help farmers build more sustainable operations — or buy them out, if possible.
“My livelihood and my network is being threatened,” said Ben Apeldoorn, whose farm in the province of Utrecht has about 120 cows producing milk for making cheese. “You’re just no longer allowed to exist.”
But activists and ecologists say that drastic measures are needed to cut emissions and allow the Netherlands to do its part to address global warming — an aim that has become all the more urgent this summer as Europe faces record temperatures and drought.
And they say the agriculture sector has to change.
“If you have less livestock, you have less manure and less production of nitrogen,” said Wim van der Putten, a researcher at the Netherlands Institute of Ecology.
The World Wide Fund for Nature and other environmental organizations wrote in a letter to the Dutch minister of agriculture this month that “the transition to a sustainable agricultural and food system is urgent and necessary.” The letter also said that consumers in the Netherlands needed to do their part to make sure emissions targets were reached.
“Consumers also have to take responsibility,” it said.
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8/24(水)の放送の英文記事と英単語：高尚な、譲歩、電力会社
After Signing Climate Bill, Biden Prepares More Actions to Cut Emissions
fresh off 〜したばかり
deploy 展開する
loftiest 高尚な、高遠な
concessions 譲歩、容認
regulatory 規制、取り締まる
curtailed 短縮した、削減した
utilities 電力会社 (utility bill 光熱費)
forge ahead 推し進める、進出する
著者：Lisa Friedman and Jim Tankersley
(c) 2021 The New York Times Company
WASHINGTON — Fresh off signing expansive climate legislation, President Joe Biden and his administration are planning a series of executive actions to further reduce greenhouse gas emissions and help keep the planet from warming to dangerous temperatures, senior White House officials said.
Biden is on track to deploy a series of measures, including new regulations on emissions from vehicle tailpipes, power plants and oil and gas wells, the officials said.
In pushing more executive action, Biden is trying to make up for the compromises his party made on climate measures to pass the Inflation Reduction Act, which includes the largest single U.S. investment to slow global warming. Democrats had to scale back some of their loftiest ambitions, including by agreeing to fossil fuel and drilling provisions, as concessions to Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., a holdout from a conservative state heavily dependent on coal and gas.
Gina McCarthy, the White House climate adviser, said regulatory moves, combined with the new legislation and action from states, could help Biden meet his promise to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 50%, compared to 2005 levels, by the end of the decade.
The move toward executive action comes less than two months after the Supreme Court limited the Environmental Protection Agency’s ability to regulate carbon emissions from power plants. The ruling curtailed but did not eliminate the agency’s ability to regulate the energy sector, and the agency may still require measures like emission controls at individual power plants. But the court ruled out more ambitious approaches, like requiring utilities to switch from coal to wind or solar power.
EPA officials have said they are working to develop a new rule for coal-fired power plants as well as gas plants that will conform with the Supreme Court’s mandate but have released no details about how the new policies would work.
McCarthy noted the EPA still has “broad authority” to regulate emissions from electricity generation. She also said the government is forging ahead with new regulations on soot and other traditional air pollutants.
The new law includes about $370 billion in incentives for electric utilities to increase their reliance on low-emission energy sources like solar and nuclear, for consumers to buy electric vehicles and for businesses to invest in energy efficiency.
Officials expect the new law will help companies comply with new regulations at low or no cost by giving them tax incentives to reduce emissions.
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8/25(木)の放送の英文記事と英単語：コスト構造、人員削減、労働力
Ford to Cut 3,000 Jobs to Reduce Costs in Transition to Electric Vehicles
salaried workers サラリーマン
cost structure コスト構造、費用構造
lay off 一時解雇する
job cut 人員削減、人員整理
shed jobs 人員削減する、雇用削減する
workforces 労働力
著者：Neal E. Boudette
(c) 2021 The New York Times Company
Ford Motor is preparing to cut 3,000 jobs as part of a drive to reduce costs and become more competitive amid the auto industry’s transition to electric vehicles.
The company plans to eliminate the jobs of 2,000 salaried workers, mostly in the United States and Canada, and about 1,000 people employed by agencies that work as part of Ford’s operations, Ford told employees in a companywide email Monday.
“We have an opportunity to lead this exciting new era of connected and electric vehicles,” the email said. Making this transition “means redeploying resources and addressing our cost structure, which is uncompetitive versus traditional and new competitors.”
The email was signed by Ford’s executive chairman, William C. Ford Jr., and its chief executive, Jim Farley. The company has about 31,000 salaried workers in North America.
Farley has signaled several times this year that the company was preparing to cut jobs and lower costs. The current round of job cuts follows a smaller one in April, when Ford laid off 580 salaried employees.
The job cuts come as the industry is starting what is widely considered its biggest disruption since Henry Ford introduced mass production and the Model T in 1908. Manufacturers are investing billions of dollars to develop and build electric cars and trucks while trying to maintain profits from gasoline-powered models.
At the same time, the auto industry has been contending with a shortage of computer chips that has slowed and disrupted production at plants around the world.
Mike Ramsey, a Gartner analyst, said it was likely that other automakers would also have to shed jobs to adapt to the electric future. “With EVs you don’t need engineers who build engines and transmissions and exhaust systems,” he said. “Many of the people and skills they need for EVs are not the one they have now. So I’m sure most car companies are facing vast pressures to realign their workforces.”
Ford introduced the Mustang Mach-E, an electric sport utility vehicle, in late 2020, and an electric version of its F-150 pickup truck this year. Those models have made Ford the largest seller of EVs in the United States after Tesla.
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8/26(金)の放送の英文記事と英単語：首長竜、脊椎動物、古生物学者
The Latest Find as Water Levels Fall: Dinosaur Tracks in Texas
Theropod 手が短く足が強い肉食恐竜
Bipedal 二足歩行の
Sauropod 首長竜
Vertebrate 脊椎動物
Paleontologist 古生物学者
Emeritus 名誉退職の
著者：April Rubin
(c) 2021 The New York Times Company
As a punishing drought grips parts of the world this summer, bodies of water have been drying up, exposing submerged World War II relics in Europe, several sets of human remains at Lake Mead outside Las Vegas, and even an entire village in Spain.
The latest find as water levels fall: dinosaur tracks in Texas.
Severe drought conditions at Dinosaur Valley State Park, about 60 miles southwest of Fort Worth, exposed dinosaur tracks from around 113 million years ago that were previously hidden underneath the Paluxy River, according to Stephanie Garcia, a spokesperson for the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department. The tracks, which were discovered this month, belong to Acrocanthosaurus, which are theropods, or bipedal dinosaurs with three toes and claws on each limb.
The dinosaur would have stood 15 feet tall and weighed close to 7 tons as an adult. They would have left their tracks in sediment that hardened into what is now limestone, researchers say.
“Due to the excessive drought conditions this past summer, the river dried up completely in most locations, allowing for more tracks to be uncovered here in the park,” Garcia said in a statement. “Under normal river conditions, these newer tracks are under water and are commonly filled in with sediment, making them buried and not as visible.”
The tracks are likely to be buried again by rain this week. But the finding excited researchers and the public.
“Tracks being buried under layers of sediment do help protect them from natural weathering and erosion,” Garcia said.
Other tracks at Dinosaur Valley State Park belong to a sauropod, or long-necked, small-headed dinosaur, called Sauroposeidon proteles. This species would have stood 60 feet tall and weighed 44 tons as an adult.
Louis Jacobs, a vertebrate paleontologist and an emeritus professor of earth sciences at Southern Methodist University, saw the tracks Saturday. He said these uncovered tracks joined trackways that were already known, and they now add up to about 150 dinosaur steps.
“Those footprints — they’re spectacular because they’re deep,” he said. “You can see the toenails. There’s more than one kind, and there’s a lot of them.”
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8/27(土)の放送の英文記事と英単語：認知症、イヌ科の、相関性
Will Your Dog Get Dementia? A Large New Study Offers Clues.
Dementia 認知症
Canine イヌ科の
Colloquially 口語的に
Analog to 〜〜と類似の
Correlation 相関性
Causation 原因・因果性
Atrophying 機能が退化している
著者：Jan Hoffman
(c) 2021 The New York Times Company
Around the time Dante turned 8, he started to seem a little off. The 70-pound Bernese mountain dog would pace his family’s home in Interlaken, New York, like a caged bear. Then he might stand stock still, staring trance-like at the pedals of the family’s organ. Or at a corner of a room. In the middle of the night, he would wake up and begin barking incessantly, for no obvious reason.
Then the indoor incontinence began.
A brain scan confirmed that Dante had canine cognitive dysfunction, colloquially known as doggy dementia. It is often described as the dog’s analog to Alzheimer’s disease. Some studies have found it can occur in at least 14% to 35% of older dogs. But because the symptoms resemble those in other diseases, its true prevalence is difficult to confirm.
A large new study of 15,019 dogs enrolled in the Dog Aging Project, an ongoing investigation into canine illness and aging, published Thursday in the journal Scientific Reports, identifies the top factors associated with a dog’s risk of getting the disease.
A key finding: Exercise may play a significant preventive role. The odds of a cognitive dysfunction diagnosis were 6.47 times higher in dogs reported as not active compared with those reported to be very active, researchers at the University of Washington found. But they also said that the disease itself could lead to lack of exercise, emphasizing that the study results, which are based on observations by owners, suggest correlation, not causation.
Odds of getting the disease also appear to increase in dogs that have neurological disorders, or impaired hearing or sight. Annette Fitzpatrick, a co-author of the study and a University of Washington research professor with expertise in dementia in people as well as canines, commented, “When you don’t get stimulation from the outside world, it seems to increase the risk of our not even being able to use our brains as well.”
The study, she said, “shows that there may be other things we can be aware of, to try to reduce the onset of cognitive dysfunction.”
And certainly age matters. A dog’s life expectancy often depends on breed, size and body mass: think mastiff (six to 12 years) versus Chihuahua (12 to 20 years). During the later years of a dog’s projected life span, each successive year contributed to the potential for disease onset, the study found.
In fact, the researchers noted, risk factors that correlate with canine cognitive dysfunction mirror some of the factors for humans with dementia, including Alzheimer’s disease.
Earlier studies of canine cognitive dysfunction often drew from veterinary assessments in smaller populations of older dogs; this one is culled from dogs who range in age from puppyhood to mid-20s. In the coming years, as these dogs grow older, the project, which has enrolled more than 40,000 dogs and hopes to reach 100,000, will issue more complex findings on cognitive dysfunction and other diseases.
The results were derived from just one baseline accounting by owners of their dog’s health and lifestyle experience between 2019 and 2020, and a particularly high-threshold cognitive function questionnaire.
Canine cognitive dysfunction is difficult to pinpoint. A dog’s seeming ignorance of a commonplace command could indicate deafness or old-age stubbornness rather than an atrophying brain. Symptoms that look like cognitive dysfunction could actually be from stroke, brain inflammation, diabetes or Cushing’s disease, said Dr. Nicole Ehrhart, a veterinarian and director of the Columbine Health Systems Center for Healthy Aging at Colorado State University. Veterinarians rely initially on keen owner observation, she said, and then perform diagnostic tests.
“Look at your dog looking into your eyes and see how long they hold your gaze, especially if you have a treat by your face,” she said. “Because as dogs get dementia, they can’t focus on things they would normally focus on.”
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8/28(日)の放送の英文記事と英単語：暴騰、制約、分解
Consumer Demand Has Been Key Driver of Inflation in the U.S.
Inflation （物価の）暴騰
Bottleneck （進行を妨げる）障害
Constraint 制約
Decomposition 分解
Wrestle （全力を尽くして）取り組む
著者：Ana Swanson
(c) 2021 The New York Times Company
Supply chain bottlenecks and labor shortages have been a major factor driving inflation in the United States, though surging consumer demand ultimately did more to drive up prices in the last two years, according to researchers at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, the University of Maryland and Harvard University.
In a blog post on Wednesday, Julian di Giovanni, the head of climate risk studies in the New York Fed’s Research and Statistics Group, summarized findings from a paper presented in June that found higher consumer demand for all types of products during the pandemic was responsible for roughly 60% of the inflation in the United States between 2019 and 2021.
Supply shocks — which include shortages of workers, raw materials and shipping containers needed to produce and move goods globally — accounted for the remaining 40% of inflation in the model, with 58 of 66 industrial sectors that the research identified experiencing supply constraints.
The researchers concluded that, without supply bottlenecks, inflation in the United States would have been 6% at the end of 2021, instead of 9%. The research finds that demand shocks played a larger role in explaining inflation in the United States, whereas supply chain bottlenecks have done more to fuel inflation in Europe.
“The bottom line of this decomposition is that supply constraints magnified the impact of higher demand in inflation,” di Giovanni wrote.
The findings provide one answer to a debate that policymakers and politicians have been wrestling with about the nature of inflation, which slowed slightly to 8.5% in July. While many economists point to the government’s generous spending to support Americans during the pandemic as a key factor fueling inflation, the Biden administration has often blamed global supply chain issues and rising fuel prices stemming from the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
There have been signs recently that supply chain shocks are easing, and di Giovanni said that could be good news for the U.S. inflation rate. In the absence of new energy shocks or other surprises, it’s possible that the easing of bottlenecks in the supply chain “will cause a substantial drop in inflation in the near term,” he wrote Wednesday.
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