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！

11/7(月)の放送の英文記事と英単語：偽情報、番犬、高潔

YouTube May Have Misinformation Blind Spots, Researchers Say

disinformation　偽情報、ガセネタ
watchdog　番犬、監視人
scrunitize　精査する、吟味する、観察する
integrity　誠実、高潔、完全性
moderator　仲裁者、司会者

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

Ahead of the midterm elections, disinformation watchdogs say they are concerned that what has been described as an aggressive effort by YouTube to confront misinformation on the Google-owned platform has developed blind spots. In particular, they are worried about YouTube’s TikTok-like service that offers very short videos, and about the platform’s Spanish-language videos.

But the situation is difficult to understand clearly, more than a dozen researchers said in interviews with The New York Times, because they have limited access to data and because examining videos is time-intensive work.

While Facebook and Twitter are closely scrutinized for misinformation, YouTube has often flown under the radar, despite the broad influence of the video platform. It reaches more than 2 billion people and houses the web’s second-most popular search engine.

YouTube banned videos that claimed widespread fraud in the 2020 presidential election, but it has not established a comparable policy for the midterms, a move that prompted criticism from some watchdogs.

YouTube spokesperson Ivy Choi said the company disagreed with some of the criticism of its work fighting misinformation. “We’ve heavily invested in our policies and systems to make sure we’re successfully combating election-related misinformation with a multilayered approach,” Choi said in a statement.

YouTube said that it removed a number of videos that the Times flagged for violating its policies on spam and election integrity and that it determined that other content did not violate its policies. The company also said that from April to June it took down 122,000 videos that contained misinformation.

YouTube committed $15 million to hire more than 100 additional content moderators to help with the midterm elections and the presidential election in Brazil, and the company has more than 10,000 moderators stationed around the world, according to a person familiar with the matter who was not authorized to discuss staffing decisions.

YouTube has also struggled to rein in Spanish-language misinformation, according to research and analysis from Media Matters and Equis, a nonprofit focused on the Latino community.

Almost half of Latinos have turned to YouTube weekly for news, more than they have any other social media platform, said Jacobo Licona, a researcher at Equis. Those viewers have access to a profusion of misinformation and one-sided political propaganda on the platform, he said, with Latin American influencers based in countries including Mexico, Colombia and Venezuela wading into U.S. politics.

音声はこちら

11/8(火)の放送の英文記事と英単語：多数の、不利、全速力で

Apple Could Be Short of iPhones Because of Factory Disruptions in China

legions of/ a legion of　多くの、多数の
crank out　(機械的に)どんどん作り出す
liability　不利、マイナス　(*assets資産 ⇔ liabilities負債)
woe　苦悩、災難、苦境
falter　弱る、にぶる、伸び悩む
at full tilt　全速力で、フル稼働して

著者：Tripp Mickle
(c) 2021 The New York Times Company

Weeks after expressing optimism about the global economy and its business, Apple on Sunday warned that its sales would fall short of expectations because a key iPhone factory in China had been shut down by a coronavirus outbreak.

The abrupt change in its business prospects are the latest reminder of the risks of the company’s concentrated manufacturing supply chain in China. Once an operational strength that afforded Apple the flexibility to have legions of workers crank out iPhones to meet global demand, its reliance on China has become a liability as the country’s commitment to a zero COVID-19 policy has led it to lock down cities, businesses and factories.

In mid-October, Apple’s largest iPhone manufacturer, Foxconn, shut off the primary plant in Zhengzhou as coronavirus cases spiked. Foxconn closed the facility to the outside world and walled roughly 200,000 workers inside its grounds. Production of iPhones has continued at “a significantly reduced capacity,” Apple said in a statement Sunday. The company added that its production woes would mean that customers would face longer wait times between the purchase and delivery of its high-end iPhone 14 Pro and 14 Pro Max.

“We are working closely with our supplier to return to normal production levels while ensuring the health and safety of every worker,” Apple said in its statement.

The shutdown is the second to affect Apple this year. It lost about $4 billion in sales of iPads and Macs over the spring and summer after factories outside of Shanghai were closed to limit the spread of COVID-19.

Apple’s setback comes amid a larger downturn in the prospects for the tech industry. Shares of Alphabet, Amazon and Meta have tumbled this year amid an economic slowdown that has caused e-commerce and advertising sales to falter. Apple’s share prices has slipped but avoided the steep declines of its peers in large part because it continued to deliver strong business results.

Apple’s presence in China is so prominent that locals refer to Zhengzhou as “iPhone City.” At full tilt, the Foxconn factory there was capable of producing 500,000 iPhones a day. It is the largest single plant for the iPhone, which accounts for more than half of Apple’s annual sales.

音声はこちら

11/9(水)の放送の英文記事と英単語：功績を与える、暫定的に、微調整する

Switzerland Is Paying Poorer Nations to Cut Emissions on Its Behalf

Switzerland　スイス
on behalf　〜の代わりに、〜のために
give credit　功績を与える
tentatively　暫定的に、仮に
fine-tune　微調整する

著者：Hiroko Tabuchi
(c) 2021 The New York Times Company

Switzerland, one of the world’s richest nations, has an ambitious climate goal: It promises to cut its greenhouse gas emissions in half by 2030.

But the Swiss don’t intend to reduce emissions by that much within their own borders. Instead, the European country is dipping into its sizable coffers to pay poorer nations, such as Ghana or Dominica, to reduce emissions there — and give Switzerland credit for it.

Here is an example of how it would work: Switzerland is paying to install efficient lighting and cleaner stoves in up to 5 million households in Ghana; these installations would help households move away from burning wood for cooking and rein in greenhouse gas emissions.

Then Switzerland, not Ghana, will get to count those emissions reductions as progress toward its climate goals.

Veronika Elgart, deputy head of international climate policy at the Federal Office for the Environment in Switzerland, said these sorts of arrangements could bring on additional climate action while benefiting the host countries.

Still, there are questions over whether this mechanism is fair. If other nations follow suit, critics say, it could delay climate action in the wealthier countries already responsible for producing a vast majority of the greenhouse gases that are warming the world, while shifting the work of reducing emissions toward the global poor. In addition, it could take advantage of projects in poorer countries that would have proceeded anyway, with or without foreign funding.

“It’s a way of passing on the responsibility to reduce emissions,” said Crispin Gregoire, a former ambassador to the United Nations from Dominica, a tiny island nation of 72,000 people that made an agreement with Switzerland last year. “Instead of reducing emissions itself, Switzerland is going to other countries — ones that have very low emissions — to fulfill that obligation.”

At last year’s global climate summit in Glasgow, Scotland, Bolivian President Luis Arce called the idea tantamount to “carbon capitalism.”

The 2015 Paris Agreement tentatively allowed countries to cooperate in reducing their greenhouse gas emissions. And nations have made progress in laying down some of the rules at global talks — for example, creating guidance to make sure emissions reductions aren’t double counted. But much of how that would work needs to be fine-tuned, including how projects will be assessed and monitored. The issues are part of a wide-ranging agenda at this week’s United Nations climate conference in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt.

音声はこちら

11/10(木)の放送の英文記事と英単語：投票率、下院、期日前投票

Control of Senate and House at Stake as Candidates Make Last Appeals

turnout　投票率
balloting / ballot　票、投票
the House　下院
the Senate　上院
early vote　期日前投票

著者：Jonathan Weisman
(c) 2021 The New York Times Company

Republican and Democratic candidates made their final pitches to voters Monday, trying fervently to bring out their party faithful as one of the most consequential midterm campaigns in modern American history draws to a close with what looks like record-shattering turnout and remarkable uncertainty.

The outcome of Tuesday’s election will determine the future of Joe Biden’s presidency and — with the memories of the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol hanging over the balloting and election conspiracy theorists running for key posts — could shape the nation’s representative democracy for years to come.

Republican candidates were sticking to their central campaign themes of inflation, crime and immigration, tapping into mounting voter concerns over issues pressing to daily life. Democrats also nodded to rising prices, insisting they were the party that was trying to do something about inflation, but they also appealed to loftier worries: the rights of women to end a pregnancy and the fate of democracy itself.

On Monday, Republicans said the 2022 midterm campaign was concluding the way they had predicted it would, despite a seesaw cycle: with their party positioned to regain power in at least one, if not both, chambers of Congress.

Any other option would defy history, as the party that controls the presidency usually loses the House and the Senate during the midterms. In the 22 midterm elections since 1934, the president’s party has averaged a loss of 28 House seats and four Senate seats, a pattern that if repeated would be more than enough to give Republicans control of both chambers. And this year, Democrats face the headwinds of an unpopular president and the worst inflation in four decades.

But Democrats are convinced they can make history — or at least mitigate their losses, not only in congressional races but in state-level fights from governorships to secretaries of state, down to state legislatures. The 2022 elections have stakes unlike any midterms in recent memory, with former President Donald Trump teasing his power over the Republican Party even on the last day of campaigning, and with the fate of legal abortion on ballots across the country. And a record-breaking early vote for midterm elections has convinced Democratic leaders they can shock the world Tuesday.

音声はこちら

11/11(金)の放送の英文記事と英単語：大量に集める、役得、取っ組み合う

Meta Lays Off More Than 11,000 Employees

Amass　大量に集める
Enviable　ねたましい
Perk　役得
Immersive　没頭させる
Grapple　取っ組み合う

著者：Sheera Frenkel, Adam Satariano and Ryan Mac
(c) 2021 The New York Times Company

SAN FRANCISCO — Since Mark Zuckerberg founded Facebook in 2004, the Silicon Valley company has steadily hired more employees. At the end of September it had amassed its largest-ever number of workers, totaling 87,314 people.

But Wednesday, the company — now renamed Meta — began cutting jobs, and deeply.

Meta said it was laying off more than 11,000 people, or about 13% of its workforce, in what amounted to the company’s most significant job cuts. The layoffs were made across departments and regions, with areas such as recruiting and business teams affected more than others. The divisions that were not cut as steeply included engineers working on projects related to the metaverse, the immersive online world that Zuckerberg has bet big on, two people with knowledge of the matter said.

The cuts — nearly triple the number that Twitter slashed last week, though not as deep percentage-wise — represent a stunning reversal of fortune for a once high-flying company whose ambition and room for growth had seemed limitless. Meta spent lavishly over the years, accumulating users, buying companies such as Instagram and WhatsApp, and showering its employees with enviable perks. Not even scrutiny over its data privacy practices and the toxic content on its apps could dent its financial performance, as its stock continued climbing and its revenues soared. At one point last year, Meta was valued at $1 trillion.

But the company has struggled financially this year as it has tried to move into a new business — the immersive world of the so-called metaverse — while also grappling with a global economic slowdown and a decline in digital advertising, the main source of its revenue. Last month, Meta posted a 50% slide in quarterly profits and its second straight sales decline, even as its spending soared 19%. Its stock has dropped roughly 70% this year.

Zuckerberg attributed the cuts Wednesday to growing too quickly during the pandemic. He said he thought the shift would be permanent, leading him to significantly increase spending. Meta’s number of employees at the end of September was 28% higher than a year earlier.

Zuckerberg said budgets would be reduced, and the company would cut back on real estate. A hiring freeze was extended until March.

音声はこちら

11/12(土)の放送の英文記事と英単語：カブトガニ、岸辺の鳥、保護主義者

Fishing Regulator Rejects Lifting Ban on Female Crab Harvest

horseshoe crabs　カブトガニ
red knot　コオバシギ
shorebird　岸辺の鳥（チドリ・シギ）
conservationists　保護主義者
under pressure　圧迫されている
tally　計算

著者：Jon Hurdle
(c) 2021 The New York Times Company

A fisheries regulator on Thursday unexpectedly extended a ban on harvesting female horseshoe crabs from the Delaware Bay to help protect a vital food source for the red knot, a threatened shorebird that migrates via the bay’s beaches.

A board at the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission voted to maintain a decade-old zero-quota on female crabs at a closely watched meeting that set next year’s crab catch by the fishing industry in New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland and Virginia.

The decision rejected a plan that would have allowed the industry to catch about 150,000 female crabs in 2023, the first proposed female harvest in 10 years.

The plan had been attacked by conservationists who argued that resuming the female harvest would further reduce food for the red knot and other migrating shorebirds that depend on the bay’s crab eggs to complete a long-distance flight each spring from South America to breeding grounds in the Canadian Arctic.

The birds’ population is also under pressure from the biomedical industry, which uses an extract of crab blood to detect bacteria in medical products and takes blood from an undisclosed number of Delaware Bay crabs each year. Although crabs are returned to the water after being bled, some die or are unable to breed, contributing to the lessening food supply for shorebirds, conservationists say.

The knot population dropped sharply starting in the early 2000s in response to an over-harvest of horseshoe crabs for bait from the bay beaches. The number of birds declined to a record low of 6,880 in 2021 from around 90,000 in the 1990s, according to a count by conservationists.

The commission, using a model-based method for population counts, disputed the conservationists’ tally and estimated that the knot population was stable at about 45,000.

Still, the board dropped its plan to restart the female harvest, saying that it wanted to balance the needs of fisheries and the bay’s ecosystem and in recognition of public demand for protecting the knot.

音声はこちら

11/13(日)の放送の英文記事と英単語：画一的な、にわか雪、煩わしい

China Adjusts Some Pandemic Policies, While Sticking to ‘Zero-COVID’

Buoy　ブイ、浮かされる
Apparatus　装置・道具
One-size-fits-all　画一的な、一律の
Flurry　にわか雪、短期間の活動・興奮・興味
Provoke　怒らせる、ネガティブな感情を引き起こす
Discontent　ネガティブな感情・不平・不満
Onerous　煩わしい、面倒な

著者：Alexandra Stevenson
(c) 2021 The New York Times Company

As China’s economy continues to be squeezed by the cost of the country’s zero-tolerance approach to COVID-19, the government softened some of its restrictions Friday, even as it remained committed to its strict pandemic policy.

The shift, while modest, was enough to excite investors who have been searching for any sign that China was ready to ease its rules. The announcement sent Hong Kong’s stock market soaring nearly 8% and buoyed mainland financial markets that have been in a depression over when China will abandon an approach many investors say has hurt the economy.

The move to narrow the scope of China’s vast pandemic apparatus comes a day after its top leader, Xi Jinping, held a meeting with his newly appointed Politburo Standing Committee to discuss COVID-19.

Responding to the group’s call to “optimize” and adjust a “one-size-fits-all” approach to containing the virus, China’s National Health Commission announced a flurry of changes Friday. The moves appear to reflect a growing recognition at the highest levels that a more targeted approach is needed.

People entering China will now be required to quarantine in a hotel for five days followed by three days of isolation at home. Previously, visitors had to spend 10 days in quarantine, with seven of those in a hotel or government facility.

Officials also scrapped a penalty system for airlines bringing in travelers with COVID-19 and reduced some of their more burdensome testing requirements, which effectively limited the number of people entering China. Several Chinese travel platforms said searches for international flights surged Friday.

Domestically, the government limited its contact tracing, part of a broader strategy of mass testing that has led to hundreds of millions of people being thrown into quarantine under heavy guard, provoking anger and discontent. It also got rid of other measures that had left many people stuck at home for weeks just because they lived in a neighborhood where a COVID-19 case had been detected.

While the moves could lift parts of the Chinese economy, analysts cautioned that the changes are incremental, and the country’s overall pandemic strategy remains onerous. China remains the last major holdout to strict pandemic rules, and it remains unclear how and when Beijing will end its “zero-COVID” policies.

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。