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！

11/21(月)の放送の英文記事と英単語：まとめる、醸造する、大虐殺

Lab-Grown Meat Receives Clearance From FDA

slaughter　大虐殺、食肉処理、完敗
greenlight　青信号、許可
rally　まとめる、再結集させる
brew　醸造する、(お茶やコーヒーを)入れる、たくらむ
cardiologist　心臓病専門医

著者：Clare Toeniskoetter
(c) 2021 The New York Times Company

The Food and Drug Administration has cleared a California company’s “slaughter-free” chicken, putting lab-grown meat one step closer to restaurant menus and grocery store shelves in the United States.

On Wednesday afternoon, the agency said it had completed an evaluation of chicken from the company, Upside Foods, and had “no further questions” about the product’s safety, signaling that the agency considered it safe for consumption. It will probably take months, if not longer, before the product reaches consumers, and it first must get additional clearance from the Department of Agriculture.

“This is huge for the industry,” said Liz Specht, vice president of science and technology at the Good Food Institute, a nonprofit focused on cell- and plant-based meat. “For the very first time, this is the FDA giving the greenlight to a cultivated meat product.”

For nearly a decade, companies have been competing to bring the first lab-grown meat (or “cultivated” meat, the term the industry has recently rallied around) to market. In a process often compared to brewing beer, animal cells are grown in a controlled environment, creating a product that is biologically identical to conventional meat. But until now, cultivated meat had received regulatory approval only in Singapore.

Dr. Uma Valeti, founder and CEO of Upside Foods, said he was traveling in India for his father’s memorial service when he received the news from an employee, who he said had promised not to call him unless it was important.

“I don’t think I’m going to sleep anytime soon,” he said in an interview at 2:30 a.m. local time.

Valeti, a cardiologist, said he got the idea to create cell-cultured meat after using stem cells to repair patients’ hearts. He quit his job, moved to California and founded the company, formerly known as Memphis Meats, in 2015. The company has attracted prominent investors, including Tyson Foods.

音声はこちら

11/22(火)の放送の英文記事と英単語：復帰させる、大刷新、～に関する

Elon Musk Reinstates Trump’s Twitter Account

reinstate　(人を)復帰させる・復職させる、(～を)元に戻す
shake-up　大刷新、大改革
pertain to　～に関する、～に適する
get-out-the-vote　投票推進運動の　(GOTV)
smile from ear to ear　満面の笑みを浮かべる

著者：Ryan Mac and Kellen Browning
(c) 2021 The New York Times Company

Elon Musk said on Twitter on Saturday that he would reinstate former President Donald Trump to the platform as part of a shake-up of the social media service, with Trump’s account quickly showing up again on the site.

Musk, who bought Twitter for $44 billion last month, had asked users on the platform starting late Friday afternoon about whether to allow Trump back onto the service. Twitter had barred Trump after the riot on Jan. 6, 2021, at the U.S. Capitol, saying his posts had run the risk of inciting violence.

More than 15 million votes were logged in answer to Musk’s question about whether to reinstate Trump, according to the results that Musk included in his tweet, with nearly 52% in favor of the former president returning to Twitter. Trump’s Twitter account went live shortly after, though the former president’s last tweet was from Jan. 8, 2021.

“The people have spoken,” Musk said on Twitter. “Trump will be reinstated.”

Musk and Twitter did not immediately return requests for comment.

Trump, who did not immediately return a request for comment, had announced Tuesday that he planned to seek the White House again in 2024. Whether Trump will agree to return to Twitter is not clear. He has started his own social network, Truth Social, in which he has a financial stake.

Trump is obligated to make his posts available exclusively on Truth Social for six hours before sharing them on other sites, according to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. He can post to any site immediately if the messages pertain to political messaging, fundraising, or get-out-the-vote initiatives. Truth Social did not return a request for comment.

“I like Elon, but I’m staying on Truth,” Trump said during a Fox News interview after Musk’s takeover.

Conservatives cheered Musk’s decision, saying it was a victory for the freedom of speech. The phrase “He’s Back” was trending on the platform Saturday evening.

“Elon Musk reinstating Donald Trump’s Twitter account is a middle finger to all of mainstream media, woke leftists & Big Tech,” tweeted Steven Crowder, a conservative commentator. “If you claim to support free speech, this should have you smiling from ear to ear.”

音声はこちら

11/23(水)の放送の英文記事と英単語：非営利、絶滅危惧、支払い

In a First, Nonprofit Buys Insurance for Hawaii’s Threatened Coral Reefs

nonprofit　 非営利
threatened　絶滅危惧 　
coral reefs　珊瑚礁
payout　支払い
dune　(海浜などの低い)砂丘
pilot　試験的な

著者：Christopher Flavelle and Catrin Einhorn
(c) 2021 The New York Times Company

As climate change makes coastal storms more destructive, an environmental group is trying a new approach to protecting Hawaii’s coral reefs. It could become a model for defending natural structures around the country — if it works.

The plan involves an urgent sequence of actions that, in theory, will unfold like this:

— Step 1: The Nature Conservancy, a large environmental nonprofit, takes out an insurance policy for all 400,000 acres of coral reefs surrounding Hawaii’s 137 islands, despite not owning those reefs, which are on public land.

— Step 2: If Hawaii experiences a storm strong enough to damage the reefs, the Nature Conservancy will get a payout from the insurance company within about two weeks. (Compared with most insurance policies, that is the approximate equivalent of light speed.)

— Step 3: The Nature Conservancy will ask the state of Hawaii, which owns the reefs, for a permit to repair the storm damage. Although permission isn’t guaranteed, the odds seem good considering Hawaii doesn’t have the money to do the work itself.

— Step 4: If state officials say yes, the conservancy will use the insurance money to pay teams of divers to start repairing the damage. This stage most closely resembles a race: They have about six weeks, starting from the storm. After that, the broken coral dies, further shrinking Hawaii’s best protection against future storms.

On Monday, the Nature Conservancy, which is based near Washington, D.C., completed the first step and bought a $2 million insurance policy on Hawaii’s coral reefs. It is the first insurance policy in the United States for a natural structure, according to the group, following similar efforts in Latin America. The conservancy says that if the experiment is successful, it will look at expanding the model to other states and include other natural features that shield against storms, such as mangroves, wetlands and coastal dunes.

“We think we can help our Hawaii state government put this into place as a pilot project,” said Makale’a Ane, who leads community engagement and partnerships in Hawaii for the Nature Conservancy. “It’s not simple.”

音声はこちら

11/24(木)の放送の英文記事と英単語：国歌、召喚される、神政主義の

In Silence or Aloud, High-Profile Iranians Signal Support for Protests

national anthem　国歌
be summoned for　召喚される、呼び出される
flout　ばかにする、無視する
theocratic　神政主義の、神権政治
morality police 　道徳警察、風紀警察

著者：Cora Engelbrecht and Jeré Longman

At the World Cup in Qatar, Iran’s soccer players Monday declined to sing their country’s national anthem. In Tehran, two well-known actresses were arrested over the weekend for defiantly removing their headscarves. And at least nine prominent Iranians were summoned for questioning for daring to criticize the authorities.

High-profile Iranians are increasingly making public gestures of support for the protests that have gripped the country for the past two months, criticizing the government on social media or flouting the country’s strict hijab laws.

In perhaps the most dramatic display, Iran’s national soccer team stood silently as the national anthem was played before a game against England on Monday, while some Iran fans in the stands sang the pre-revolutionary national anthem instead.

Fans carrying the pre-revolutionary flag — viewed as a symbol of protest against Iran’s theocratic government — were barred from entering the stadium in Qatar on Monday for the Iranian team’s opening match against England unless they surrendered the flags. At least one fan held up a “Woman! Life! Freedom!” sign during the match, and some Iranian fans could be heard chanting “without honor” — both slogans adopted by protesters in Iran to condemn the Iranian regime and security forces.

The displays at the World Cup highlighted the extent to which many prominent Iranians have publicly come out in support of the protest movement. The protests were sparked by the death of Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old Iranian Kurdish woman, in the custody of the morality police in September.

Some 15,000 Iranians have been arrested and several hundred killed after two months of protests and a heavy crackdown by the authorities in dozens of cities, according to rights groups.

Many high-profile Iranians have been targeted by authorities for coming out in support of the protesters. Two prominent actresses, Hengameh Ghaziani and Katayoun Riahi, were arrested Sunday for removing their headscarves and participating in the protests, according to state-run news media.

A number of prominent Iranians, including “five movie personalities” were summoned to the prosecutor’s office Saturday for publishing “provocative material in support of street riots,” according to Mizan, a news agency owned by the Iranian judiciary. The agency did not give a total number for those summoned but named nine people, including a former defender on Iran’s national soccer team, Yahya Golmohammadi.

音声はこちら

11/25(金)の放送の英文記事と英単語：興味がそそられる、配備、存在の

Lawsuit Takes Aim at the Way AI Is Built

Intrigued　興味がそそられる
deploy　配備
cutting-edge　最前線
poise　釣り合いを取る
pundit　専門家
existential　存在の

著者：Cade Metz
(c) 2021 The New York Times Company

In late June, Microsoft released a new kind of artificial intelligence technology that could generate its own computer code.

Called Copilot, the tool was designed to speed the work of professional programmers by suggesting ready-made blocks of computer code they could instantly add to their own.

Many programmers loved the new tool or were at least intrigued by it. But Matthew Butterick, a programmer, designer, writer and lawyer in Los Angeles, was not one of them. This month, he and a team of other lawyers filed a lawsuit seeking class-action status against Microsoft and other high-profile companies that designed and deployed Copilot.

Like many cutting-edge AI technologies, Copilot developed its skills by analyzing vast amounts of data. In this case, it relied on billions of lines of computer code posted to the internet. Butterick, 52, equates this process to piracy, because the system does not acknowledge its debt to existing work. His lawsuit claims that Microsoft and its collaborators violated the legal rights of millions of programmers who spent years writing the original code.

The suit is believed to be the first legal attack on a design technique called “AI training,” which is a way of building artificial intelligence that is poised to remake the tech industry. Many artists, writers, pundits and privacy activists have complained companies are training their AI systems using data that does not belong to them.

In the 1990s and into the 2000s, Microsoft fought the rise of open source software, seeing it as an existential threat to the future of the company’s business. As the importance of open source grew, Microsoft embraced it and acquired GitHub, a home to open source programmers and a place where they built and stored their code.

Copilot is based on technology built by OpenAI, an artificial intelligence lab in San Francisco backed by $1 billion in funding from Microsoft. OpenAI is at the forefront of the increasingly widespread effort to train artificial intelligence technologies using digital data.

After Microsoft and GitHub released Copilot, GitHub’s CEO, Nat Friedman, tweeted that using existing code to train the system was “fair use” of the material under copyright law. But no court case has yet tested this argument.

“The ambitions of Microsoft and OpenAI go way beyond GitHub and Copilot,” Butterick said in an interview. “They want to train on any data anywhere, for free, without consent, forever.”

音声はこちら

11/26(土)の放送の英文記事と英単語：振り回す、通路、トラブル

Utah Man Charged With Assault After Brandishing Razor on Flight, U.S. Says

brandishing （脅すように）振り回す
razor　カミソリ
aisle　通路
lunged　突っ込んで
Disruptions　トラブル
Unruliness　秩序を無視した行為

著者：Vimal Patel
(c) 2021 The New York Times Company

A Utah man was charged with carrying a weapon on an airplane and assault with a deadly weapon after he held a razor near the throat of the passenger sitting next to him, federal prosecutors said this week.

The man, Merrill Darrell Fackrell, 41, of Syracuse, Utah, was on a JetBlue flight from Kennedy International Airport in New York to Salt Lake City on Monday when he put his hand in front of the video screen of the woman sitting next to him and told her to pause her movie, prosecutors said.

The woman took off her headphones and realized that Fackrell was holding what appeared to be a knife — it was later identified as a wood-handled razor with a 1- to 2-inch blade — inches from her throat, according to a statement issued Wednesday by the U.S. Attorney’s Office for Utah.

Fackrell, who was sitting in the window seat, then stood up and started yelling, “She’s going to be OK,” and, “No one needs to worry,” according to a complaint filed Tuesday in U.S. District Court in Utah. He also told the woman’s husband, who was sitting in the aisle seat, to “get out of there,” punctuating the demand with an expletive, charging documents state.

The woman’s husband went to the front of the aircraft to find a flight attendant, and the woman “lunged” for the aisle to escape while Fackrell tried unsuccessfully to stop her by grabbing her shoulder, according to the complaint.

A passenger who saw the encounter was able to persuade Fackrell to place the razor on the seat next to him, according to charging documents. The passenger then grabbed the razor before sitting next to Fackrell for the rest of the flight.

According to the complaint, Fackrell, who had “a long and varied” conversation with the woman before the encounter, consumed “several” alcoholic drinks.

A lawyer listed for Fackrell, L. Clark Donaldson, did not immediately return phone and email messages Thursday.

The charges against Fackrell came as airline crews continued to face an unusually high number of disruptions since the start of the pandemic. In 2019, 146 investigations were initiated into unruliness on planes. As of Nov. 1, there have been 767 such investigations in 2022, according to data from the Federal Aviation Administration.

It was not immediately clear Thursday how Fackrell had been able to get the razor onto the airplane.

音声はこちら

11/27(日)の放送の英文記事と英単語：派閥、頂点、有権者

Malaysia’s King Names a Prime Minister, but Political Uncertainty Persists

electorate　有権者
faction　派閥
culmination　頂点、全盛
stint　期限付きの仕事・経歴
battle cry　ときの声、スローガン
coalition　連立、特定目的のための同盟

著者：Sui-Lee Wee
(c) 2021 The New York Times Company

After days of political chaos, Malaysia has a new prime minister, its fifth in less than five years.

The country is now relying on a veteran politician to bring back political stability while leading a polarized electorate — split between one faction that sees itself as modern and multicultural, and another that is driven by a conservative Muslim base — into the post-pandemic world.

This is the task ahead for Anwar Ibrahim, 75, whom the king appointed prime minister Thursday. It was the culmination of a stunning comeback for Anwar, whose career has included a stint as deputy prime minister, two jail terms that were considered politically motivated and, finally, the role of longtime opposition leader.

When Anwar arrived to a news conference late Thursday, his supporters chanted, “Reformasi,” or “Reform,” echoing his battle cry after he was ousted from government more than two decades ago.

Anwar made light of his long, winding journey to power, telling reporters that his grandson had asked him how long he had to wait for his oath-taking ceremony.

“I said: ‘Not too long, only 24 years,’” Anwar said, smiling.

His appointment ended, at least for now, a crisis that has engulfed Malaysia for almost a week: Saturday’s national elections, the first since 2018, led to Malaysia’s first ever hung Parliament, with none of the three main competing groups winning a majority of the 222 seats.

Anwar told reporters that he now had a “convincing majority” with his multiethnic coalition, Pakatan Harapan (Alliance of Hope), Barisan Nasional — the incumbent coalition that includes Anwar’s former party, the United Malays National Organization, or UMNO — and the Sarawak Parties Alliance.

Former Prime Minister Muhyiddin Yassin, the head of Perikatan Nasional (National Alliance), said that he would not accept Anwar’s appointment, arguing that he himself had 115 votes in Parliament. Anwar said it was “not necessary” for Muhiyiddin to dispute his appointment but added that he was still open to talks.

“It is a challenge because no one in Malaysian history has come in with this divided a mandate, in this context,” said Bridget Welsh, an honorary research associate with the University of Nottingham Asia Research Institute Malaysia.

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。