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。

このVoicy Journalでは、毎週月曜日に前の1週間分のスクリプトをまとめて紹介しています。放送はアプリやWebページからいつでもご視聴いただけます。Voicy News Brief Season3の記事は2/7(月)以降をご覧ください！

10/17(月)の放送の英文記事と英単語：購読者、選ぶ、人口統計

Netflix to Offer Cheaper Ad Option Beginning Nov. 3

subscriber　購読者、契約者
opt　選ぶ、決める
verification　検証、証明
demographic　層、人口統計
linear　線上の、直線の

著者：Nicole Sperling
(c) 2021 The New York Times Company

Netflix’s ad tier is here.

The streaming company Thursday unveiled the details of its effort to jump-start subscriber growth after the company’s first-quarter revelation that it had lost paying customers for the first time in a decade. Beginning Nov. 3 in the United States, Netflix will offer a $6.99 advertising-supported subscription called “Basic with Ads,” in which people opting for a lower-cost option will be shown four to five minutes of ads per hour of content they watch.

This tier will be available in 12 countries in November, including Australia, Brazil, Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, South Korea, Mexico and Spain.

The ads, ranging in length from 15 to 30 seconds, will play before and during television shows and films. For new films, the ads will only play before the movie begins. Older titles will see ads play before and during the movie, similar to how they are shown on basic cable.

Subscribers opting for this less expensive tier will not be able to download titles for later viewing, a prohibition based primarily on technical challenges. The company also indicated that “a limited number of movies and TV shows,” between 5% and 10% of those on the service, won’t be available when the ad tier begins because of “licensing restrictions.”

The advertising is being managed by Microsoft, and Netflix is partnering with two verification companies to ensure that the ads are being seen as intended. The company also said Nielsen would be able to analyze audience reach and specific viewer demographics in the United States. Those partnerships will begin in 2023.

Jeremi Gorman, Netflix’s newly hired president of worldwide advertising, said that advertising on Netflix would allow companies a chance to “reach a diverse audience, including younger viewers who increasingly don’t watch linear TV.”

Netflix hopes the lower-priced offering will bring in new customers and perhaps encourage those who have been sharing passwords with friends and family, a user number the company believes could be as high as 100 million, to stop using others’ accounts and pay for their own.

For existing Netflix customers, the programming will not change at all. Those looking for the cheaper tier will have to actively choose it.

音声はこちら

10/18(火)の放送の英文記事と英単語：火つけ役、最終行程、ホワイトハウス

Democrats in Tight Races Are Asking for Biden’s Help (No, Not That Biden)

firebrand　(紛争・騒ぎの）火つけ役，扇動者
the last leg of (a long journey)　(長旅の) 最終行程(こうてい)、最終区間
surrogate　代理人
intertwine　からみ合う
The West Wing　ホワイトハウス西棟、ホワイトハウス

著者：Katie Rogers
(c) 2021 The New York Times Company

ORLANDO, Fla. — Jill Biden’s weekend included five flights, 11 events and three appearances with Democrats who all requested her help before the midterm elections. There was also a spin class in there somewhere.

During one particularly busy 27-hour chunk of time, Biden, the first lady, appeared in Atlanta, where voting rights activist Stacey Abrams is in an uphill race against Brian Kemp, the Republican governor. Then it was on to Florida, where she toured a breast cancer research facility and gave an interview to Newsmax, a conservative network. After that, she appeared with Rep. Val Demings, D-Fla., who hopes to unseat Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., and Charlie Crist, a centrist Democrat, trails Gov. Ron DeSantis, a conservative firebrand.

“It’s not going to be easy,” Biden, on the last leg of a 15-hour day, told a group of people at a second event to support Demings on Saturday. “But we know how to win because we’ve done it before.”

With President Joe Biden’s job approval hovering at about 40% at a moment when Democrats are struggling to hold onto the House and Senate, Jill Biden, 71, has become a lifeline for candidates trying to draw attention and money but not the baggage that an appearance with her husband would bring. According to a senior White House official, she is the most requested surrogate in the administration.

“She does not offend people in a way that a president can because she’s much less polarizing and political,” said Michael LaRosa, a communications strategist and her former press secretary. “It’s why she was sent all over rural Iowa and New Hampshire during the campaign and why she can go places now that the president can’t.”

Modern first ladies are usually relied on to humanize their husbands or translate their policies, but how much they decide to engage is almost always up to them.

Lauren Wright, a professor at Princeton who has written extensively about political appearances by first ladies, said the East Wing under Jill Biden, who kept teaching as an English professor as first lady, has become completely intertwined with the political efforts of the West Wing.

“This role has become so serious and political,” she said. “It must be part of the strategic White House planning and effort. Otherwise you’re wasting opportunities.”

音声はこちら

10/19(水)の放送の英文記事と英単語：口語で、有限の、文学の

MacArthur Foundation Announces 25 New ‘Genius’ Grant Winners

colloquially　口語で、話し言葉で　(=spoken language)
no-strings-attached　条件なしに
cancel culture　キャンセル・カルチャー
finite　有限の　(infinite: 無限の)
literary　文学の、文語　(literally: 文字通りに)

著者：Matt Stevens
(c) 2021 The New York Times Company

The 25 winners of the 2022 MacArthur fellowship, announced Wednesday, study things as small as molecular materials and as vast as outer space. They are esteemed in their fields, if not yet all household names. And now, in addition to being publicly celebrated for their work, they will have more funding to keep it going.

Known colloquially as the “genius” award — to the sometime annoyance of the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation — the MacArthur Fellowship comes with a no-strings-attached grant of $800,000 to be awarded over five years.

The class includes scholars tackling some particularly timely topics. Jennifer Carlson, 40, investigates the motivations and assumptions that shape gun culture in America. Longtime activist Loretta J. Ross teaches a class that works to combat so-called cancel culture. And some of Yejin Choi’s work involves using computational linguistics to help detect everything from fake consumer reviews to fake news.

“I thought this award was supposed to be for other people out there — not ever for me,” said Choi, 45. “Being an immigrant, being a woman — I had to overcome a lot. I had impostor syndrome.”

Few honors carry the prestige — and mystique — of the MacArthurs. The fellowship is meant for those who “show exceptional creativity in their work and the prospect for still more in the future,” according to the foundation.

Much of the winners’ work feels urgent. Jenna Jambeck, an environmental engineer, investigates the scale and pathways of plastic pollution and is among the researchers who provided the first estimate of the amount of plastic waste entering the ocean annually (8 million metric tons).

Moriba Jah, 51, an astrodynamicist, is an advocate for a different kind of environmentalism: space environmentalism, which calls for treating Earth’s orbit, which now contains almost 30,000 human-made objects, as a finite natural resource.

Priti Krishtel, 44, a lawyer, is trying to change the patent system so that pharmaceutical companies can no longer file multiple patents on small changes to existing drugs — a move aimed at increasing access to affordable medications.

In some cases, the urgent work is the study of the past. Literary historian P. Gabrielle Foreman founded the Colored Conventions Project, a digital initiative that documents Black organizing efforts between 1830 and the 1890s.

The youngest fellow is Steven Prohira, 35, a physicist engineering new tools to detect subatomic particles. The oldest, at age 69, are Ross and Robin Wall Kimmerer, a plant ecologist known for environmental stewardship.

音声はこちら

10/20(木)の放送の英文記事と英単語：右派、権威主義、保守主義的な

Kanye West to Buy Parler, Joining Crowd of Right-Wing Social Media

right-wing　右派、保守派
cancel culture　キャンセル・カルチャー
authoritarianism　権威主義
antisemitic　反ユダヤ主義の
conservative　（政治的に）保守主義的な

著者：Tiffany Hsu and Jenny Gross
(c) 2021 The New York Times Company

Kanye West, the rapper, fashion designer and firebrand increasingly known for divisive cultural and political commentary that has been called racist, appears set to become the owner of a social media service known for its right-wing audience.

The parent company of Parler, which bills itself as a platform for uncancelable free speech, said Monday that West, who now goes by Ye, would acquire the site for an undisclosed sum of money.

In buying Parler, Ye will help “continue the fight against censorship, cancel culture and authoritarianism,” George Farmer, CEO of Parler’s parent company, Parlement Technologies, said in a statement. The deal was announced a little over a week after Twitter and Instagram restricted Ye’s accounts in response to antisemitic remarks that he posted.

The announcement adds another shot of name recognition to the crowded cluster of social media alternatives that have emerged in recent years to take on Twitter and Facebook, which critics have long argued unfairly censor conservative voices.

Former President Donald Trump recently started Truth Social, which advertises itself as a platform that “encourages an open, free and honest global conversation.” Jason Miller, Trump’s former spokesman, began running Gettr, a similar service, last year. And for the past six months, Elon Musk has been locked in a battle to take over Twitter, saying he wants to transform the site by better promoting free speech.

“In a world where conservative opinions are considered to be controversial, we have to make sure we have the right to freely express ourselves,” Ye said in a statement released by Parlement.

Parler, which was started in 2018 and is based thousands of miles from Silicon Valley in Nashville, Tennessee, has been among the most notable alternatives. Backed by right-wing activist and heiress Rebekah Mercer, it was once the most downloaded app on Apple’s App Store, fashioning its resistance to stringent content rules into a selling point and drawing millions of Trump’s fans.

The company said last month that it had more than 16 million users, though it did not disclose how many used it regularly. Twitter has more than 230 million daily users.

On Monday, a Parler account in Ye’s name went online. Within a few hours, he had amassed more than 8,000 followers. He had no posts.

音声はこちら

10/21(金)の放送の英文記事と英単語：課金ユーザー、回れ右、転落

Netflix Reverses Decline, Adding 2.4 Million Subscribers

Subscriber　課金ユーザー
Streak　傾向
After-hours trading　時間外取引
About-face　回れ右
Tumble　転落

著者：Benjamin Mullin
(c) 2021 The New York Times Company

Netflix said Tuesday that it added more than 2.4 million subscribers in the third quarter — mainly from outside the United States — snapping a streak of customer losses this year that spurred unease among investors and questions about how much more the streaming business could grow.

The streaming giant said it now has 223 million subscribers worldwide, after beating its earlier forecast of about 1 million additions for the quarter. Netflix lost 200,000 subscribers in the first quarter and nearly 1 million in the second.

“After a challenging first half, we believe we’re on a path to re-accelerate growth,” Netflix said in its quarterly letter to shareholders.

Netflix is preparing to introduce advertising on its service Nov. 3, part of a bid to attract more customers with a lower-cost subscription. The advertising-supported tier, priced at $6.99 a month in the United States, will show subscribers four to five minutes of ads per hour of content they watch.

Netflix generated about $7.9 billion in revenue in the third quarter, a nearly 6% increase from the same period last year. The company generated about $1.4 billion in profit, a 3% decrease from a year earlier.

Netflix shares were up more than 10% in after-hours trading.

The decision to introduce an advertising option on Netflix was an about-face for the company, which for years had highlighted its ad-free experience as a selling point for customers. But this year, after announcing subscriber losses on the company’s first-quarter earnings call, co-CEO Reed Hastings reversed course, saying that an advertising-supported plan would allow customers to choose their experience.

Netflix told employees this year that it was also planning to crack down on password sharing, which allows users to watch content without paying for a subscription.

The company has also cut costs. In May, Netflix laid off about 150 workers across the company, or about 2% of its total workforce. Netflix said that the cuts had been spurred by the company’s slower revenue growth.

Despite the changes, Netflix hasn’t yet been able to reverse a decline in its share price. The company’s stock has tumbled more than 60% over the past year amid a broader market slump.

音声はこちら

10/22(土)の放送の英文記事と英単語：パン屋、巨大な、主食

Bread Prices Skyrocket as Inflation Grips Europe

boulangeries　パン屋
stratosphere　成層圏
mammoth　巨大な
revolution　革命
food staple　主食
squeeze　（経済的）圧迫

著者：Liz Alderman
(c) 2021 The New York Times Company

VERDELOT, France — Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the price of the wheat that Julien Bourgeois grinds for boulangeries at his family’s flour mill in central France has increased more than 30%. The bill for the electricity needed to run the mill has tripled. Even the price of paper used for flour sacks has hit the stratosphere.

All of which are driving up the price of a loaf of bread.

“Inflation is brutally high,” said Bourgeois, inspecting the mill’s mammoth crushers as they ground wheat into flour. He has urged the 1,000 bakeries that his company, Moulins Bourgeois, supplies to mark up the iconic French baguette by 10 cents, from a current range of 1 euro to 1.30 euros ($1.27), to offset the higher costs that he has had to pass along.

“Consumers can afford to pay more for now, but prices will keep rising,” Bourgeois said. “It’s worrisome.” In France, where baguettes already cost over 8% more than they did a year ago, he added, “we remember that the revolution started over the price of bread.”

There are signs that inflation in Europe is getting worse. Data released Wednesday showed that overall consumer prices rose at a rapid pace in September from a year earlier, climbing nearly 11% in the European Union and 10.1% in Britain. The cost of food jumped nearly 16% in the European Union and more than 14% in Britain, while energy prices surged around 40% across both places.

Few matters are causing more concern than the cost of a basic loaf. Prices for the most essential food staple have never been higher, and are now up nearly 19% from a year ago, the fastest rise on record, according to Eurostat, Europe’s statistics agency.

Russia’s war in Ukraine has been a major factor behind the increase, Eurostat said, by roiling energy markets and driving up prices for grains, oilseeds and fertilizers.

The broad nature of inflation is feeding into the anxiety of policymakers and economists that price rises are becoming embedded and will prove harder to contain.

When the price of bread rises, people feel it right away. The squeeze has been sharpest in countries nearest to the conflict zone, especially Hungary, where the cost of a basic loaf surged in September by 77% from a year ago, according to Eurostat. In Croatia, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland and Slovakia, bread prices are up over 30%.

音声はこちら

10/23(日)の放送の英文記事と英単語：大企業優先の経済成長、派手な、有利な位置

Liz Truss Resigns After 6 Chaotic Weeks, Igniting New Leadership Fight

trickle-down economics　大企業優先の経済成長
in tatters　ボロボロになって
flamboyant　派手な
threshold　（判断・判定などの）基準値、境界値
pole position　有利な位置

著者：Mark Landler and Stephen Castle
(c) 2021 The New York Times Company

LONDON — Prime Minister Liz Truss of Britain announced her resignation Thursday, bringing a swift end to a six-week stint in office that began with a radical experiment in trickle-down economics and descended into financial and political chaos, as most of those policies were reversed.

With her tax-cutting agenda in tatters, her Conservative Party’s lawmakers in revolt and her government in the hands of people who did not support either her or her policies, Truss, 47, concluded that she could no longer govern. She departs as the shortest-serving prime minister in British history.

Truss said she would remain in office until the party chooses a successor, by the end of next week. Among the likely candidates is Boris Johnson, the flamboyant previous prime minister she succeeded after he was forced out in a string of scandals.

The opposition Labour Party called for an immediate general election. But under British law, the Conservatives are not required to call one until January 2025.

If enough Conservative lawmakers joined with the opposition, they could force an election, but with the party’s support collapsing in opinion polls, it is in their interests to delay any encounter with the voters. British political convention also allows them to change party leaders — and therefore the prime minister — using their own flexible rule book.

The Conservatives announced rules for the new leadership contest, including a minimum threshold of 100 nominations from lawmakers, which will limit the number of candidates to a maximum of three.

From a shortlist of two, selected by lawmakers, Conservative Party members will then vote online to choose the victor, with the goal of avoiding the prolonged, multistage campaign last summer that resulted in Truss. In fact, the contest might not get that far: if only one candidate passes the threshold of 100 nominations, or if the second-place contender drops out, there will be a decision on Monday.

Rishi Sunak, a former chancellor who ran against Truss last summer and warned that her proposals would produce chaos, should be in the pole position, having led the Treasury and performed well under pressure in the leadership campaign. But he lost that contest largely because many party members blamed him for bringing down Johnson, from whose Cabinet he resigned.

音声はこちら

「Voicy News Brief with articles from New York Times」は毎朝6時30分にVoicyで更新中！いつでも無料で聴けるVoicyの英語チャンネルを活用して、英語力向上にお役立てください。