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9/26(月)の放送の英文記事と英単語：軽く叩く、蛇行する、無線機

Runners and Cyclists Use GPS Mapping to Make Art

dab　軽くたたく、軽く塗る
snake　蛇行する、くねくねと続く
masterpiece　名作、最高傑作、代表作
GPS (Global Positioning System)　全地球測位システム
walkie-talkie　トランシーバー、無線機

著者：Claire Fahy
(c) 2021 The New York Times Company

In 1665, Johannes Vermeer dabbed the last drop of paint onto a canvas in his Dutch studio, completing his masterpiece “Girl With a Pearl Earring.”

On an April day 357 years later, Janine Strong slowed her bike to stop, paused her fitness app, and watched as the snaking line of her cycling route drew the shape of Vermeer’s masterpiece over the streets of Brooklyn, New York.

Strong creates what has come to be known as “GPS art” — a practice that uses the Global Positioning System mapping capabilities of modern phone apps such as Strava to create digital drawings using an athlete’s route across the landscape.

Instead of biking on a straight path or in circles around a park, Strong plans her rides in the shapes of birthday cakes, stars, birds, lions — and the occasional Vermeer.

The hobby has grown with the widespread availability of satellite tracking for use by ordinary people, in fitness apps such as Nike Run Club or MapMyRide. It is particularly popular on Strava and often referred to as “Strava art.” Strava art has existed since that app’s release in 2009, but it experienced a surge in use during the pandemic.

To complete her digital vision of “Girl With a Pearl Earring,” Strong biked almost 50 miles around southern Brooklyn, carefully checking Strava to make sure each turn, circle and straightaway was achieving the iconic earring and head covering of Vermeer’s original.

“I always have a big smile on my face when it works out and I upload it and it’s done,” she said. “It’s a very satisfying feeling.”

The idea has been around since before widespread use of smartphones for fitness. In 2003, The New York Times Magazine “Year in Ideas” issue told of how Jeremy Wood and Hugh Pryor used Garmin GPS devices that looked like walkie-talkies to trace routes resembling butterflies and fish on walks through the English countryside.

“It’s not just walking; you’ve got to be looking at this device,” Pryor said. “People always wonder what you’re doing.”

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9/27(火)の放送の英文記事と英単語：陰謀、魅力、残り

Europe’s Hard Right Appears Set for a Breakthrough in Italy

sow　(うわさ・争いなどの)原因を作る、種をまく
precinct　(行政上の)区域、選挙区
remnant　残り
machination　陰謀、たくらみ
marginalize　(人・ものを)重要視しない、無用のものとして扱う
allure　[名] 魅力

著者：Jason Horowitz
(c) 2021 The New York Times Company

ROME — Italy appeared to turn a page of European history on Sunday by electing a hard-right coalition led by Giorgia Meloni, whose long record of bashing the European Union, international bankers and migrants has sown concern about the nation’s reliability in the Western alliance.

Early projections based on a narrow sampling of precincts, as well as exit polls, on Sunday night suggested that Meloni, the leader of the nationalist Brothers of Italy, a party descended from the remnants of fascism, had led a right-wing coalition to a majority in parliament, defeating a fractured left and a resurgent anti-establishment movement.

The final results would not be clear until Monday, and it will still be weeks before the new Italian parliament is seated and a new government is formed, leaving plenty of time for political machinations. But Meloni’s strong showing, with about 25% of the vote, the highest of any single party, makes her the prohibitive favorite to become the country’s first female prime minister.

Although she is a strong supporter of Ukraine, her coalition partners deeply admire Russian President Vladimir Putin and have criticized sanctions against Russia.

The victory, in an election with lower turnout than usual, comes as formerly taboo and marginalized parties with Nazi or fascist heritages are entering the mainstream — and winning elections — across Europe.

This month, a hard-right group founded by neo-Nazis and skinheads became the largest party in Sweden’s likely governing coalition. In France this year, far-right leader Marine Le Pen — for a second consecutive time — reached the final round of presidential elections. In Spain, the hard-right Vox, a party closely aligned with Meloni, is surging.

But it is Italy, the birthplace of fascism and a founding member of the European Union, that has sent the strongest shock wave across the continent after a period of European-centric stability led by Prime Minister Mario Draghi, who directed hundreds of billions of euros in recovery funds to modernize Italy and helped lead Europe’s strong response to Russia.

Meloni’s victory showed that the allure of nationalism — of which she is a strong advocate — remained undimmed, despite the breakthroughs by EU nations in coming together to pool sovereignty and resources in recent years, first to combat the coronavirus pandemic and then Putin’s initiation of the largest conflict in Europe since World War II.

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9/28(水)の放送の英文記事と英単語：同性婚、国民投票、賛成票

Cuba Approves Same-Sex Marriage in Historic Vote

Same-Sex Marriage　同性婚
adopt　養子にする
referendum　国民投票
voted in favor　賛成投票
overdue　(実行が)遅れた (支払い、返却の)期限が過ぎた 　(出産の)予定日が過ぎた
surrogate　代理人

著者：Eduardo Medina
(c) 2021 The New York Times Company

Cubans overwhelmingly approved a sweeping referendum that will allow same-sex couples to marry and adopt children, the national election commission said on Monday, a resounding victory for advocates of LGBTQ rights in a country that once sent gay men to labor camps.

About 67% of voters, nearly 4 million, voted in favor, according to the Cuban government. About 33%, or 2 million people, opposed the measure.

President Miguel Díaz-Canel, the first non-Castro to lead the nation since its 1959 revolution, celebrated the passage of the 100-page referendum, saying in a statement that “love is now the law.”

Passing the law, he said, was a way to “pay a debt to various generations of Cubans whose domestic plans had been waiting years for this law.”

“As of today,” he added, “we will be a better nation.”

The referendum — which also expands protections for women, children and the elderly — had faced opposition from the Roman Catholic Church.

While the measure passed easily, it did not receive the near-total support typical of government-backed proposals in Cuba, where tallies often exceed 90%.

That opposition is rooted in a growing evangelical movement in Cuba, as well as an entrenched machismo tradition, said Alberto R. Coll, a law professor at DePaul University and an expert on U.S. relations with Cuba.

But the measure passed largely because of the belief among many residents that “these are matters that the law should not regulate strictly,” and its time was past overdue, Coll said.

The law also allows for surrogate pregnancies, includes measures against gender violence and encourages couples to equally share the load with housework.

Other Latin American countries have taken similar steps in recent years to address gay rights. In 2020, Costa Rica legalized same-sex marriage, and in 2019, Ecuador’s Constitutional Court ruled that same-sex couples could marry.

Díaz-Canel and his government had openly supported passage of the referendum. But some critics of his have said that his support was a way for him to show a liberal face in the wake of mounting political and economic discontent on the island.

Officials have been dealing with the worst financial crisis to hit the country since the 1990s, coupled with demands for political and social changes. Last year, those factors propelled the island’s largest demonstrations in decades.

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9/29(木)の放送の英文記事と英単語：小惑星、天体の、一回限りの

NASA Smashes Into an Asteroid, Completing a Mission to Save a Future Day

asteroid　小惑星
hurtle　(猛烈な速さで)飛んでいく
one shot　1回限りの
celestial　天体の
on one’s feet　立っている状態で、元気になって、自立して

著者：Kenneth Chang
(c) 2021 The New York Times Company

LAUREL, Md. — It’s the plot point for more than one Hollywood blockbuster: A rogue asteroid is hurtling toward Earth, threatening tsunamis, mass destruction and the death of every human on the planet.

Humanity has one shot to save itself with brave, self-sacrificing heroes piloting a spacecraft into the cosmos to destroy the asteroid.

But that’s the movies. On Monday evening, NASA showed what the reality would be like.

There was an asteroid, but it wasn’t threatening Earth. And there was a spacecraft, relying solely on sophisticated technology. The human heroes of the mission were actually at a physics and engineering lab between Baltimore and Washington, D.C.

And there was a collision. In this case it was the final act of the Double Asteroid Redirection Test, or DART, a spacecraft that launched in November and then raced around the sun for 10 months as it pursued its target — a small space rock, Dimorphos, 7 million miles from Earth.

“For the first time, humanity has demonstrated the ability to autonomously target and alter the orbit of a celestial object,” Ralph Semmel, director of the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, said during a news conference after the crash. The laboratory managed the mission for NASA.

Hitting an asteroid with a high-speed projectile nudges its orbit. For an asteroid headed toward Earth, that could be enough to change a direct hit to a near miss.

In its last moments, the spacecraft sent back a series of photographs of the asteroid, Dimorphos, as it approached at more than 14,000 mph.

DART had spotted Dimorphos only about an hour earlier, as a dot of light. Then, the pile of celestial rubble grew bigger and bigger, until the picture of the asteroid’s surface strewn with boulders filled the screen. The mission’s engineers were on their feet, cheering.

“Wow, that was amazing, wasn’t it?” Nancy Chabot, a planetary scientist at the laboratory who works on the mission, said during the NASA webcast.

For the engineers on the mission, operated by the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, the impact, at 7:14 p.m. Eastern time, marked the end of their work. The spacecraft, operating autonomously for the last four hours of its existence, successfully locked on Dimorphos.

For asteroid scientists, their work is just beginning.

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9/30(金)の放送の英文記事と英単語：没頭する、同義の、雰囲気

Google to Make Search and Maps More ‘Immersive’

immersive　没頭する
synonymous　同義の
intuitive　直感的
overlay　上に重ねる
vibe　雰囲気

著者：Nico Grant
(c) 2021 The New York Times Company

Google’s search engine looks a little different these days. Results pages are often filled with shopping items, maps, news articles, information bulletins and ads before people can scroll to lists of results — the blue links that became synonymous with the service.

On Wednesday, at an event called Search On in San Jose, California, Google executives signaled that the search engine would keep up with Silicon Valley’s latest trends, continuing the company’s march away from text queries and results to become more focused on images and “immersive” material.

When people look up vacation destinations, for example, they will see what Google calls “visual forward” search results — organized tiles of photographs presented much like Stories on Snapchat or Instagram, along with a map and images from travel sites that link to guides.

Users will be able to search Google using images and text simultaneously, pointing their cameras at an armchair or a shirt, for example, and refining their queries with text. “Your camera is your next keyboard,” Prabhakar Raghavan, a senior vice president at Google, wrote in a blog post.

“We’ve continued to create more natural and intuitive ways to find information,” Raghavan wrote about the changes, which he said the company expected to put into effect in the “coming months.”

Google has routinely made thousands of changes to its search engine per year. The company in 2020 introduced Live View in Google Maps, allowing people to use their cameras to figure out where they are and get directions.

Now, users will be able to search with Live View, lifting their camera so Google can point them to the nearest ATM or cafe, using augmented reality — technology that puts digital overlays on images of the real world.

Cathy Edwards, the vice president and general manager of Google Search, said that while the company knew that Gen Z had a “strong preference for visual,” the company was not interested in building products for just one segment of the population.

Still, the company seemed to take inspiration from young users when naming one new Maps feature, which shares the best attractions in unfamiliar areas based partly on user reviews. Google called it Neighborhood Vibe.

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10/1(土)の放送の英文記事と英単語：破裂、故意の、渦巻く

Pipeline Breaks Look Deliberate, Europeans Say, Exposing Vulnerability

rupture　破裂
deliberate　故意の
swirling　渦巻く
blamed　非難し咎める
sabotage　破壊工作
seismologist　地震学者
conduits　道管

著者：Melissa Eddy
(c) 2021 The New York Times Company

BERLIN — Explosions under the Baltic Sea and the rupture of major natural gas pipelines from Russia to Germany appeared to be a deliberate attack, officials across Europe said Tuesday, deepening uncertainty about European energy security amid soaring prices and fears of running short of fuel over the winter.

Three separate leaks erupted from the Nord Stream 1 and 2 pipelines, which were already caught up in the conflict over Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, sending swirling streams of methane to the surface of waters off Denmark and Sweden. Top Polish and Ukrainian leaders blamed Moscow, while Russian state media suggested U.S. or Ukrainian involvement.

“It’s hard to imagine that it’s accidental,” Denmark’s prime minister, Mette Frederiksen, told reporters while on a trip to Poland to open a new undersea pipeline that will carry Norwegian gas — a judgment echoed by officials in several countries.

On Tuesday evening, Jake Sullivan, President Joe Biden’s national security adviser, called the incident “apparent sabotage” in a tweet, only hours after the White House press secretary had declined to say whether the United States thought the pressure loss was deliberate or accidental.

Sullivan wrote that he spoke to his “counterpart Jean-Charles Ellermann-Kingombe of Denmark about the apparent sabotage of Nord Stream pipelines.”

“The U.S. is supporting efforts to investigate and we will continue our work to safeguard Europe’s energy security,” he wrote.

Swedish seismologists reported detecting the underwater explosions Monday, and pipeline monitors registered a swift drop in the conduits’ pressure. Later, patches of sea surface in the same areas as the explosions began roiling with dangerously combustible gas, forcing shipping to steer clear. Several countries said they were investigating the cause.

The apparent attack had no immediate effect on European energy supplies; Nord Stream 2 has never gone into service, and Nord Stream 1 has been shut down since August. But it raises the stakes — and European jitters — in a simmering energy war between Russia and the West prompted by the invasion of Ukraine. Repairs could take up to several months, experts say.

The CIA delivered a vague warning in June to several European nations, including Germany, that the Nord Stream pipelines could be attacked, according to several senior U.S. officials. They declined to say whether that warning identified Russia as a possible attacker, and said they had reached no conclusion about who was responsible for the incidents Monday.

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10/2(日)の放送の英文記事と英単語：併合、主権、侵略者

Biden Calls on World to Punish Russia for Attempt to Annex Ukrainian Land

annexation　併合、併合地
asserting　主張する
contempt　軽蔑、侮蔑する
sovereignty　主権
aggressor　侵略者
resounding　反響する、共鳴する

著者：Michael Crowley and Edward Wong
(c) 2021 The New York Times Company

WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden condemned Russia’s claimed annexation of captured Ukrainian territory on Friday, responding to Moscow’s latest escalation with a range of sanctions and a warning to President Vladimir Putin that the United States would defend “every single inch” of NATO territory from a potential attack.

Hours after Putin gave a speech asserting Russian control over four eastern Ukrainian regions, Biden called the action a “fraudulent” violation of international law that showed “contempt for peaceful nations everywhere.”

“The United States is never going to recognize this, and quite frankly, the world is not going to recognize it either,” Biden said from the White House. “He can’t seize his neighbor’s territory and get away with it. It is as simple as that.”

World leaders rallied around Biden in a forceful collective denunciation of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

French President Emmanuel Macron said Russia had committed a “serious violation of international law and Ukrainian sovereignty,” and he vowed on Twitter to help Ukraine “recover its full sovereignty over its entire territory.”

Jens Stoltenberg, NATO’s secretary-general, called Putin’s move “an illegal and illegitimate land grab” and pledged to continue assisting Ukraine until it defeated the aggressor.

Even among Russia’s traditional allies, no country stepped forward to recognize the annexation. Uzbekistan, a former Soviet republic in Central Asia, issued a statement before Putin’s speech calling for “respect for sovereignty, territorial integrity and the noninterference in the internal affairs of other states.”

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy responded to Russia’s claims by announcing that he was fast-tracking his country’s application to NATO. In a video, he accused the Kremlin of trying to “steal something that does not belong to it.”

“Ukraine will not allow that,” he said.

But Zelenskyy’s request to join the alliance drew a less-resounding response.

“Right now, our view is that the best way for us to support Ukraine is through practical, on-the-ground support in Ukraine,” said Jake Sullivan, Biden’s national security adviser.

The Biden administration’s new sanctions aim to further cripple Russia’s defense and technology sectors and other industries, and cut off more top officials and their families from global commerce. Those officials include two governors of Russia’s central bank.

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