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10/3(月)の放送の英文記事と英単語：希釈、管轄、製菓

Backing Lindt, Swiss Court Orders Lidl to ‘Destroy’ Its Chocolate Bunnies

venerable　敬うべき、神々しい
confectionary　製菓、砂糖菓子
dilution　希釈、弱体化
jurisdiction　管轄、権限、司法
deter　阻止する、思いとどまらせる

著者：Michael Levenson
(c) 2021 The New York Times Company

The face-off pitted two chocolate bunnies against each other and only one, it seemed, could survive.

In one corner was the chocolate bunny wrapped in gold foil and made by German discount retailer Lidl. In the other corner was the chocolate bunny, also wrapped in gold foil, but made by venerable Swiss chocolatier Lindt & Sprüngli.

After a yearslong legal battle, the Federal Supreme Court of Switzerland sided with Lindt and found that Lidl’s chocolate bunnies could be confused with Lindt’s chocolate bunnies, which are protected under Swiss trademark law.

As a result, the court decreed that Lidl can no longer sell its bunnies in Switzerland and “must destroy” the chocolate bunnies it still has in stock, according to a statement from the court.

The ruling was a victory for Lindt’s confectionary hares in a country internationally known for its premium chocolates. It raised questions about whether Lidl’s banned bunnies could be melted down and formed into less offensive shapes.

Christoph Gasser, a lawyer for Lidl, said that the Supreme Court had returned the case to a lower court for further review, in particular to evaluate whether Lindt may be entitled to monetary compensation.

“In essence, it appears as if the Swiss Federal Supreme Court had adopted a result-oriented approach in its legal reasoning, trying to protect Lindt’s Easter bunny, despite some significant departures from prior case law,” he wrote in an email. “While we accept the Swiss Federal Supreme Court’s decision, we feel that it has done a disservice to Swiss intellectual property law.”

Lindt praised the ruling, saying it would safeguard its “Gold Bunny,” which it has been making since 1952.

“The ruling of the federal court is of great importance for the protection of the Lindt Gold Bunny on the Swiss market,” the company said in a statement. “It will help to further protect the iconic form of the Lindt Gold Bunny against dilution from unauthorized copies and will likely serve as a precedent also in other jurisdictions.”

Gasser indicated that the ruling would not deter Lidl from making chocolate rabbits. He said the look of its chocolate bunnies changes “almost every year” and it was his understanding that Lidl would make bunnies again next Easter.

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10/4(火)の放送の英文記事と英単語：反体制者、反抗、事実上の

OPEC+ Considering Major Production Cut to Prop Up Oil Prices

prop up　テコ入れする、支える、押し上げる
de facto　事実上の
meet one’s goal　目標に達する
defiance　(公然たる)反抗、挑戦の態度
keep a lid on　～をコントロールする
dissident　反体制者、反体制派

著者：Stanley Reed
(c) 2021 The New York Times Company

OPEC+, an oil producers group, is considering announcing a major cut in production when it meets Wednesday, according to a person familiar with the thinking of Saudi Arabia, the group’s de facto leader. Such a move, which analysts say is widely expected, would be a blow to the Biden administration, after it lobbied the Saudis to increase output.

A cut would also mark a major turnaround in policy for OPEC+, which includes Russia. Since the group slashed oil production in early 2020 when demand collapsed because of the coronavirus pandemic, the producers have announced a series of steady monthly increases, although they have generally not met those goals.

Analysts say that the Saudis appear determined to bring oil prices up to about $90 a barrel. Oil prices, now about $85 a barrel for Brent crude, the international benchmark, have fallen by roughly one-fourth since their June high.

“We certainly see a significant chance that the producer group will opt for a substantial cut to try to signal that there is indeed an effective circuit breaker in the market,” Helima Croft, head of commodity strategy at RBC Capital Markets, an investment bank, said last week. Croft estimated that the group was considering announcing a cut of 500,000 to 1 million barrels a day, roughly 1% of the global supply.

The person familiar with the thinking of Saudi Arabia also said a cut of that size seemed likely. In his view, he said, the oil market is oversupplied and demand is weakening because of a flagging world economy.

The Saudis signaled a hawkish posture last month with a largely symbolic cut of 100,000 barrels a day. Now, analysts say, they may think it is time to make a stronger statement.

A sizable cut by Saudi Arabia would appear to be an act of defiance of the Biden administration, which has pushed the Saudis and other OPEC members to supply enough oil to keep a lid on prices. President Joe Biden visited Saudi Arabia in July despite his disapproval of the 2018 murder of the Saudi dissident Jamal Khashoggi by Saudi operatives.

OPEC+ appears to be trying to intervene in a market that is difficult to read. Much of the recent fall in prices may be the result of worries about factors such as rising interest rates by central banks around the world rather than oil market fundamentals.

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10/5(水)の放送の英文記事と英単語：公表する、調整する、ナトリウム

Biden Administration Unveils Plan Aiming to End Hunger in U.S. by 2030

unveil　公表する、明かす
hinge on　〜にかかる、〜次第である
sodium　ナトリウム
tailor　〜を(必要・状況などに)合わせる、調整する
congressional　(米国の)国会

著者：Alan Rappeport
(c) 2021 The New York Times Company

WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden promised Wednesday to end hunger in the United States by the end of the decade, unveiling an expansive government effort during the first White House conference on health and nutrition in 50 years.

The meeting of hundreds of policymakers, health activists, farmers and business leaders came at a time of steep inflation in the United States. Lines at food banks are swelling. Food prices are rising at their fastest rate in four decades. And fears of a recession that could toss more Americans into unemployment lines are growing.

The White House plan hinges on $8 billion in commitments from the private sector to help fight hunger, including $4 billion that will be dedicated by philanthropies that are focused on expanding access to healthy food. The investments will come from some of the largest corporations in America, including Google, Tyson Foods and Walgreens.

Other actions include expanding nutrition research and encouraging the food industry to lower sodium and sugar.

But some of the most ambitious proposals — such as expanding food stamps (formally known as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP) and introducing coverage of “medically tailored” meals to Medicare — would require congressional action, a difficult prospect at a time of deep political divisions.

The Biden administration is casting the summit and its focus on food as a key part of its “equity agenda,” noting that diet-related diseases disproportionately affect communities of color and people in rural areas.

It is not clear how quickly some of the proposals could take effect, but there is added urgency, as Russia’s war in Ukraine has pushed energy and food prices higher around the world.

In his remarks Wednesday, Biden noted that the expanded child tax credit that was part of the American Rescue Plan of 2021 succeeded in reducing poverty and hunger in the United States. Democrats were unable to make that measure permanent in the Inflation Reduction Act that they passed this year, but Biden said he intended to keep trying.

The White House has made an effort to get buy-in from the food industry, which often resists new regulation. Many of the guidelines in the Biden administration’s plan are voluntary.

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10/6(木)の放送の英文記事と英単語：暗号通貨、監視、脆弱性

Crypto Needs More Rules and Better Enforcement, Regulators Warn

enforcement　(法律などの)施行
cryptocurrency　暗号通貨、仮想通貨
oversight　監視
vulnerabilities　脆弱性
volatility　ボラティリティ
jurisdiction　管轄、権限

著者：Ephrat Livni
(c) 2021 The New York Times Company

A federal panel responsible for monitoring financial system risks sounded a warning Monday about cryptocurrency markets, saying that the widespread adoption of digital assets poses risks if the market continues to grow without better oversight and enforcement.

It is the first major report on cryptocurrencies by the Financial Stability Oversight Council, which is led by the Treasury Department and was created after the 2008 financial crisis to help identify and mitigate threats to the financial system.

Concerns about vulnerabilities in the crypto markets have become more pronounced in recent months, in the wake of wild swings in price and serious losses in the industry.

When the cryptocurrency market exploded and reached about $3 trillion in value around this time last year, officials feared that rampant speculation and insufficient oversight of digital asset activity could infect the wider system and called for an assessment. Although about $2 trillion in value has been wiped out since then, the risks are no less pressing now.

A Treasury spokesperson said that recent volatility has highlighted the need for more action.

The panel, which includes the leaders of all U.S. banking and financial agencies, repeatedly emphasized that existing laws already cover many of the activities in crypto markets. The report urged all agencies, including the Securities Exchange Commission and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, to prioritize crypto enforcement and recommended that Congress provide regulatory agencies with more resources to police crypto.

The report also outlined gaps where regulators say more legislation is needed, particularly for issuers of a type of digital asset known as a stablecoin.

The report also recommends legislation to increase oversight of crypto tokens like bitcoin and ethereum that don’t explicitly fall under the jurisdiction of the Securities and Exchange Commission or any other agency. A bill recently introduced by bipartisan members of the Senate Committee on Agriculture sought to address this gap by granting authority to the CFTC. Treasury officials declined to endorse any particular legislation in a briefing with reporters, saying only that they are “heartened” by bipartisan efforts in Congress.

Regulators are also calling for new authority that would give Washington better visibility across the entirety of crypto businesses, including the ability to look at various, seemingly disconnected entities in order to better understand risks and conflicts.

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10/7(金)の放送の英文記事と英単語：前哨、大袈裟な、熟考する

SpaceX Launches to Space Station With Russian Astronaut Among Crew of 4

space agency　宇宙機構
contemplate　熟考する
outpost　前哨
bombastic　大げさな

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

A SpaceX rocket carrying four astronauts to the International Space Station launched Wednesday.

The rocket lifted off from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida just after noon Wednesday. It is to arrive at the space station shortly before 5 p.m. Thursday.

One of the passengers of the mission, Crew-5, is a Russian astronaut, Anna Kikina. Her presence on the spacecraft shows that cooperation is continuing between the United States and Russia on the International Space Station in the face of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

The other crew members on Wednesday’s flight are Nicole Mann and Josh Cassada of NASA and Koichi Wakata of JAXA, the Japanese space agency. The four will spend half a year in orbit on the space station.

In July, NASA and Roscosmos, the state corporation that oversees the Russian space industry, completed an agreement to fly Russian astronauts on American rockets and NASA astronauts on Russian Soyuz rockets. As part of the arrangement, Frank Rubio, a NASA astronaut, launched on a Soyuz last month. Kikina is the first Russian to ride in a SpaceX rocket.

In recent years, even before the war of Ukraine, Russian and American officials contemplated the future of the International Space Station. The outpost in orbit has been continuously occupied since 2000 and is jointly managed by both countries.

The current agreement to manage the station ends in 2024. During the Trump administration, NASA officials proposed retiring the International Space Station and turning to commercial alternatives. However, no private space stations seemed likely to be launched that quickly, and NASA now says it would like to extend operations on the ISS through 2030.

Russia has said it will build its own space station, but it has also indicated that it will not leave the ISS until that is ready. While Dmitry Rogozin, the former director general of Roscosmos, made bombastic threats that Russia would leave the project, Russia never gave official notice that it would leave before the end of the agreement in 2024.

Russia, like the other countries involved with the space station, is currently talking with NASA about the proposed 2030 extension. Russia has suggested its participation might not continue for so long, but it has also said that it would not leave until its future space station is operational.

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10/8(土)の放送の英文記事と英単語：量子テクノロジー、もっとおかしい、逆説的

Nobel Prize in Physics Is Awarded to 3 Scientists for Work in Quantum Technology

Quantum Technology　量子テクノロジー
Weirder　もっとおかしい
Paradoxical　逆説的
Spooky　気味の悪い
Burgeoning　急成長中の（芽吹いている）
Encouragement　刺激になる

著者：Isabella Kwai, Cora Engelbrecht and Dennis Overbye
(c) 2021 The New York Times Company

Three physicists whose works each showed that nature is even weirder than Albert Einstein had dared to imagine have been named winners of the 2022 Nobel Prize in physics.

John Clauser, of J.F. Clauser and Associates in Walnut Creek, California; Alain Aspect of the Institut d’Optique in Palaiseau, France; and Anton Zeilinger of the University of Vienna in Austria, will split a prize of 10 million Swedish kronor.

Their independent works explored the foundations of quantum mechanics, the paradoxical rules that govern behavior in the subatomic world. In experiments conducted over the past 50 years, they confirmed the reality of an effect that Einstein had disdained as “spooky action at a distance.” Measuring one of a widely separated pair of particles could instantaneously change the results of measuring the other particle, even if it was light-years away. Today, physicists call this strange effect quantum entanglement, and it is the basis of the burgeoning field of quantum information. When the award winners were announced Tuesday, Eva Olsson, a member of the Nobel Committee for Physics, noted that quantum information science had broad implications in areas like cryptography and quantum computing.

Quantum information science is a “vibrant and rapidly developing field,” she said. “Its predictions have opened doors to another world, and it has also shaken the very foundation of how we interpret measurements.”

In a conversation with the Nobel committee Tuesday morning, Aspect said he had been looking for a limit on quantum mechanics but had not found it.

“I am accepting in my mental images something which is totally crazy,” he said.

When receiving the Nobel Prize on Tuesday, Zeilinger acknowledged the more than 100 young people who had worked for him over the years and described receiving the award as “an encouragement to young people.”

Although he acknowledged that the award was honoring the future applications of his work, he said, “My advice would be: Do what you find interesting, and don’t care too much about possible applications.”

In his interview with AIP, Clauser said, “I confess even to this day that I still don’t understand quantum mechanics, and I’m not even sure I really know how to use it all that well. And a lot of this has to do with the fact that I still don’t understand it.”

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10/9(日)の放送の英文記事と英単語：弾道ミサイル、緊張を高める、諸島

North Korea Fires Missile Over Japan in Major Escalation

ballistic missile　弾道ミサイル
raise the stakes　緊張を高める
archipelago　諸島
exclusive economic zone　排他的経済水域
ironclad　厳格な・鉄壁の

著者：Motoko Rich and Choe Sang-Hun
(c) 2021 The New York Times Company

SEOUL, South Korea — North Korea on Tuesday fired an intermediate-range ballistic missile over Japan for the first time in five years, prompting a rare warning by the Japanese government for residents in two northern prefectures to seek shelter.

The launch represented a major escalation by North Korea, which has conducted a flurry of missile tests in recent days as the United States held military drills in the region with South Korea and Japan. By launching a missile over Japan and toward the Pacific, North Korea heightened regional concerns over its growing nuclear capabilities, and raised the stakes in stalled diplomatic talks with Washington.

The intermediate-range missile was fired from Mupyong-ri, near North Korea’s central border with China, according to the South Korean military. It was launched at 7:22 a.m. and landed in the Pacific Ocean 22 minutes later, Japan’s chief Cabinet minister, Hirokazu Matsuno, said. It crashed about 1,864 miles — or 3,000 kilometers — east of the archipelago, outside Japan’s exclusive economic zone, which extends 200 nautical miles from its shores.

The test was seen as a direct challenge to South Korea’s effort to strengthen its alliance with the United States and improve ties with Japan, a former colonial ruler of Korea with long-standing historical disputes with Seoul. The missile flew about 2,800 miles, the longest distance ever traveled by a North Korean missile, officials in Tokyo and Seoul said.

Although North Korea has developed and tested increasingly powerful ballistic missiles in recent years, it has rarely fired them over Japan, an act considered extremely provocative by both Tokyo and Washington. Instead, North Korea has usually launched its missiles at a deliberately steep angle, with the projectile soaring high into space before falling into waters west of Japan.

North Korea has only fired missiles over Japan twice before, both times in 2017.

Adrienne Watson, a spokesperson for the White House’s National Security Council, called the launch a “dangerous and reckless decision.” Unlike the South Korean government, she described the North Korean weapon as “a long-range ballistic missile.” National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan spoke with his Japanese and South Korean counterparts Tuesday to discuss “robust joint and international responses” and reinforced Washington’s “ironclad commitments” to the defense of its allies, Watson said.

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