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目次
5/4(月)の放送の英文記事と英単語:散る、くぼみ、聞き入れる
‘We Had to Do Something’: Trying to Prevent Massive Food Waste
plow under すきで地面の中に埋める、〜を破壊する
subsidize 助成金を払う、~を支援[援助]する
Other than ~以外にない
co-op consumer cooperative 生活協同組合
dissipate 散る、消散する、消える
manure 肥料
pit くぼみ、穴
manure pit ふん尿だめ
scale back 規模を縮小する、減らす
heed〔助言・警告・忠告などを〕心に留める、聞き入れる
著者:Michael Corkery and David Yaffe-Bellany
(c) 2020 The New York Times Company
While millions of Americans are worried about having enough to eat and lines at food banks grow, farmers have been plowing under vegetable fields, dumping milk and smashing eggs that cannot be sold because the coronavirus pandemic has shut down restaurants, hotels and schools.
Now, the destruction of fresh food on such a scale has prompted action by the Trump administration and state governments, as well as grassroots efforts like a group of college students who are renting trucks to rescue unsold onions and eggs from farms. But they most likely won’t be enough to address the problem if businesses remain closed for months.
Over the next few weeks, the Department of Agriculture will begin spending $300 million a month to buy surplus vegetables, fruit, milk and meat from distributors and ship them to food banks. The federal grants will also subsidize boxing up the purchases and transporting them to charitable groups — tasks that farmers have said they cannot afford, giving them few options other than to destroy the food.
The Dairy Farmers of America, the largest dairy co-op in the United States, has diverted almost a quarter of a million gallons of milk to food banks.
“It’s just a drop in the bucket,” said Jackie Klippenstein, a senior vice president at the co-op. “But we had to do something.”
There are some signs that the waste is starting to dissipate. At the beginning of April, farmers were dumping 3.7 million gallons of milk each day, draining it into manure pits, where it mixed with fertilizer used in the fields. Now, the waste is closer to 1.5 million gallons, according to the dairy co-op, as farmers scale back production and restaurant chains like Papa John’s heed the industry’s call to add extra cheese to every pizza.
The need at food banks is only increasing as the economic crisis intensifies. There are still long lines outside many food banks, as the charities struggle with a surge in need and a scarcity of volunteers because of stay-at-home orders.
U.S. Women’s Soccer Team’s Equal Pay Demands Are Dismissed by Judge
crushing blow 強烈な一撃
summary judgment 略式判決 ◆米国において正式事実審理を省略して行われる裁判のこと
substantiate ~を立証する
appeal decision 裁判所の決定について上訴する
pit against ~に対抗させられる
著者:Andrew Das
(c) 2020 The New York Times Company
The judge in the United States women’s soccer team’s equal pay lawsuit rejected the players’ most important claims Friday, delivering a crushing blow to the team’s four-year legal campaign against the U.S. Soccer Federation.
The judge, R. Gary Klausner of U.S. District Court for the Central District of California, accepted the federation’s argument in what is called a motion for summary judgment. In his ruling, he dismissed the players’ arguments that they were systematically underpaid by U.S. Soccer in comparison with the men’s national team. In fact, Klausner wrote, U.S. Soccer had substantiated its argument that the women’s team had actually earned more “on both a cumulative and an average per-game basis” than the men’s team during the years at issue in the lawsuit.
The players, through a spokeswoman, said they would appeal the decision. U.S. Soccer, in a brief statement, appeared to take little pleasure in what was a significant, though most likely unpopular, victory.
“We look forward to working with the women’s national team to chart a positive path forward to grow the game both here at home and around the world,” the statement said. “U.S. Soccer has long been the world leader for the women’s game on and off the field, and we are committed to continuing that work to ensure our women’s national team remains the best in the world and sets the standard for women’s soccer.”
Klausner’s ruling preserved the players’ claims about unequal treatment in areas like travel, hotel accommodations and team staffing. A trial on those issues is scheduled to begin June 16.
But in dismissing the equal pay argument that had been the heart of the players’ case, Klausner brought to an end — for the moment — a yearslong fight that had pitted the players against their employer and transformed them from merely the world’s best women’s soccer team into global standard-bearers for pay equity, women’s rights and support for women’s sports.
“If you know this team at all you know we have a lot of fight left in us,” defender Becky Sauerbrunn wrote on Twitter. “We knew this wasn’t going to be easy, change never is.”
But never far from view was the fact that tens of millions of dollars were potentially at stake, costs the federation said would be ruinous for its efforts to develop the sport in the U.S.
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5/5(火)の放送の英文記事と英単語:反発、償い
Global Backlash Builds Against China Over Coronavirus
backlash 反発、反感
anew 改めて
reparation 償い、補償
set back 戻す、あと戻りさせる、後退させる
mistrust 不信、疑惑
summon 喚問する
mistreatment 不当な扱い、虐待
withhold ~を抑える、差し控える、保留する
spar with 論戦する
steer を導く、~を誘導する
著者:Steven Erlanger
(c) 2020 The New York Times Company
BRUSSELS — Australia has called for an inquiry into the origin of the coronavirus. Germany and Britain are hesitating anew about inviting in Chinese tech giant Huawei. President Donald Trump has blamed China for the contagion. Some governments want to sue Beijing for damages and reparations.
Across the globe a backlash is building against China for its initial mishandling of the crisis, creating a deeply polarizing battle of narratives and setting back China’s ambition to fill the leadership vacuum left by the United States.
China has responded aggressively, combining medical aid to other countries with harsh nationalist rhetoric and mixing demands for gratitude with economic threats. The result has only added momentum to the blowback and growing mistrust of China.
With clear encouragement from President Xi Jinping and the powerful propaganda department of the Chinese Communist Party, a younger generation of Chinese diplomats have been proving their loyalty with nationalist and sometimes threatening messages in the countries where they are based.
In the past several weeks, at least seven Chinese ambassadors — to France, Kazakhstan, Nigeria, Kenya, Uganda, Ghana and the African Union — have been summoned by their hosts to answer accusations ranging from spreading misinformation to racist mistreatment.
Just last week, China threatened to withhold medical aid from the Netherlands for changing the name of its representative office in Taiwan to include the word Taipei. And before that, the Chinese Embassy in Berlin sparred with the German newspaper Bild after the tabloid demanded $160 billion from China for damages to Germany from the virus.
Trump said last week that his administration was conducting “serious investigations” into Beijing’s handling of the coronavirus outbreak. He has pressed U.S. intelligence agencies to find the source of the virus, suggesting it might have emerged accidentally from a Wuhan weapons lab, although most intelligence agencies remain skeptical. And he has expressed interest in trying to sue Beijing for damages.
It has been imperative for Xi to turn the narrative around, steering it from a story of incompetence and failure into one of victory over the illness, achieved through the unity of the party. In the latest iteration of the new Chinese narrative, the enemy — the virus — did not even come from China, but from the U.S. military, an unsubstantiated accusation made by China’s Foreign Ministry spokesman, Zhao Lijian.
Man Camped on Disney World Island at Shuttered Park, Police Say
trespass 不法侵入する
deputy 代理人
foliage 葉
aviary 鳥小屋
remnant 残された物、名残、面影
misdemeanor 非行
著者:Johnny Diaz
(c) 2020 The New York Times Company
(Florida)
It had the makings of an adventure straight from Disney’s “Swiss Family Robinson”: being on an uninhabited island and living off the land.
But for one Alabama man, the adventure — on a former island attraction at Walt Disney World in Florida — was short-lived and ended in an arrest.
The man, Richard McGuire, 42, of Mobile, Alabama, was accused of trespassing at the theme park after he tried to camp on Discovery Island, a former zoological park that was closed in 1999, authorities said.
On Thursday, an Orange County sheriff’s deputy responded to a report of a trespasser on the island, which is east of Disney’s Contemporary Resort, in Bay Lake. A security representative for Disney told deputies that she had seen a man using a boat earlier that day and that the area was closed to the public, with signs warning against trespassing.
McGuire told authorities that he had reached the island Monday or Tuesday to go camping and that he planned to stay there for “approximately one week,” the report said.
Told that the area was restricted, McGuire said he was unaware of that and described the island as looking “like a tropical paradise,” the report said.
McGuire on Sunday denied that he was camping on the island and said he was there as an urban explorer recording video footage for his YouTube channel.
Since mid-March, all Disney theme parks worldwide have been closed, including Disney World in Florida and Disneyland in California, because of the coronavirus pandemic.
Discovery Island, which was originally called Treasure Island, was an 11-acre zoological park that featured aromatic foliage, trees and flowers and walk-through aviaries with more than 500 species of birds.
Online maps show that the park, which opened in 1974, had a flamingo lagoon, a turtle beach and alligator swamp. It closed 25 years later, and photos and a 2017 video show the remnants of the abandoned attraction: deteriorating buildings, overgrown trees, a former animal hospital and an abandoned dock.
McGuire was charged with a misdemeanor count of trespassing and was banned from Disney properties.
“This serves as a reminder that trespassing is not permitted at Walt Disney World Resort,” a Disney representative said Sunday.
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5/6(水)の放送の英文記事と英単語:損害、一定の〜
U.S. Quietly Fears Virus’ Daily Toll Will Soon Double
toll 犠牲者、損害
steady 〔流れや発達の程度が〕一定の、不変の、着実な
carnage 大虐殺
fatality 死亡者
sobering 酔いも覚めるような、ハッとするような
hunker down〈話〉〔仕事などに〕本腰を入れる、傾注する
prognosis 予測、予想
tally ~を勘定する、〔投票数などを〕集計する
著者:Sheryl Gay Stolberg and Eileen Sullivan
(c) 2020 The New York Times Company
WASHINGTON — As President Donald Trump presses states to reopen their economies, his administration is privately projecting a steady rise in coronavirus infections and deaths over the next several weeks, reaching about 3,000 daily deaths on June 1 — nearly double the current level.
The projections, based on data collected by various agencies, including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and laid out in an internal document obtained Monday by The New York Times, forecast about 200,000 new cases each day by the end of May, up from about 30,000 cases now. There are currently about 1,750 deaths per day, the data shows.
They are not the only ones forecasting more carnage. Another model, closely watched by the White House, raised its fatality projections on Monday to more than 134,000 American deaths from COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus, by early August. The Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington more than doubled its previous projection of about 60,000 total deaths, an increase that it said partly reflects “changes in mobility and social distancing policies.”
The numbers underscore a sobering reality: While the United States has been hunkered down for the past seven weeks, the prognosis has not markedly improved. As states reopen — many without meeting White House guidelines that call for a steady decline in coronavirus cases or in the number of people testing positive over a 14-day period — the cost of the shift is likely to be tallied in funerals.
The White House distanced itself from the internal projections, saying the document, dated May 2, was not produced by or presented to the president’s coronavirus task force, which does its own modeling.
On Sunday, the president offered his own projections, saying that deaths in the United States could reach 100,000, twice as many as he had forecast only two weeks ago. But that figure falls short of what his own administration is now predicting to be the total death toll by the end of May — much less in the months that follow.
An Amazon Vice President Quit Over Firings of Employees Who Protested
dismay 〔人を〕やる気をなくさせる、がっかり[幻滅]させる
whistleblower 内部告発[通報]者
vein 静脈
toxicity 毒性
fungible 代替[交換]可能な
著者:Mihir Zaveri
(c) 2020 The New York Times Company
A prominent engineer and vice president of Amazon’s cloud computing arm said Monday that he had quit “in dismay” over the recent firings of workers who had raised questions about workplace safety during the coronavirus pandemic.
Tim Bray, an engineer who had been a vice president of Amazon Web Services, wrote in a blog post that his last day at the company was Friday. He criticized a number of recent firings by Amazon, including that of an employee in a New York City warehouse, Christian Smalls, who had led a protest in March calling for the company to provide workers with more protections.
Small’s firing has drawn the scrutiny of New York state’s attorney general.
Bray also criticized the firing last month of two Amazon employees, Maren Costa and Emily Cunningham, who circulated a petition in March on internal email lists that called on Amazon to expand sick leave, hazard pay and child care for warehouse workers. They had also helped organize a virtual event for warehouse employees to speak to tech workers at the company about its workplace conditions and coronavirus response.
Bray, who had worked for the company for more than five years, called the fired workers whistleblowers, and said that firing them was “evidence of a vein of toxicity running through the company culture.”
“I choose neither to serve nor drink that poison,” he wrote.
Amazon declined to comment Monday. The company had previously said it fired Smalls because he had violated its policies by leaving a quarantine — he had previously been exposed to a sick worker — to attend the protest at the site.
Amazon told Costa and Cunningham that they had violated a policy that forbids Amazon workers from asking their co-workers to donate to causes or sign petitions.
The company has rolled out various safety measures at its warehouses across the country, such as temperature checks and mandatory masks.
Bray acknowledged in his blog post that Amazon was prioritizing warehouse safety. But he said he also believed the workers.
“At the end of the day, the big problem isn’t the specifics of COVID-19 response,” he wrote. “It’s that Amazon treats the humans in the warehouses as fungible units of pick-and-pack potential. Only that’s not just Amazon, it’s how 21st-century capitalism is done.”
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5/7(木)の放送の英文記事と英単語:追い越す、急落
The New York Times Tops 6 Million Subscribers as Ad Revenue Plummets
top ~を超える、追い越す、上回る
plummet 急落、急な下落
ravage ~を荒廃させる、~をひどく破壊する
bolster ~を元気づける、〜を増強する
financially sound 財政が健全である
著者:Marc Tracy
(c) 2020 The New York Times Company
In the first three months of the year, The New York Times Co. added more digital subscribers than it had gained during any quarter since it started charging readers for online content in 2011. But that increase was driven by widespread interest in news of the coronavirus pandemic, which has ravaged the U.S. economy and cut deeply into The Times’ advertising revenue.
By the end of a dramatic quarter, Times employees had grown accustomed to working remotely, and readers were flocking to the newspaper’s website, drawn by articles on the coronavirus that were offered at no charge.
Many of those readers bought subscriptions. The company reported Wednesday that it had netted 587,000 new digital subscriptions during the quarter. The majority — 468,000 — were for the core news product, and the remaining 119,000 were for other digital products, including apps like Cooking and Crossword.
At the end of March, The Times had more than 5 million digital subscribers, a high. Of those, there were 3.9 million subscriptions for news and 1.1 million for apps. The total number of subscriptions, including those to the print newspaper, stood at 5,841,000. Overall subscription revenue rose 5.4% during the three-month period, to $285.4 million. Total revenue rose 1%, to $443.6 million.
By the end of April, the company noted in a news release, the number of total subscriptions, including digital and print, had surpassed 6 million.
In keeping with a trend that has affected other news organizations during the pandemic, The Times attracted new readers while the money it brought in from advertising plummeted. Overall ad revenue fell more than 15%, to $106.1 million, in the quarter. Digital ad revenue declined 7.9%, while print ad revenue had a drop of 20.9%.
Overall, adjusted operating profit for the quarter was $44.3 million, a decline from the $52.4 million the company made during the equivalent period last year.
Looking ahead, chief executive Mark Thompson said ad revenue would continue to fall by as much as 55% in the second quarter. But he predicted that the subscription business would
Thompson described the company as “financially sound” and said it would “safely invest in our digital growth strategy and continue to hire new talent to help execute it.”
California Sues Uber and Lyft, Claiming Workers Are Misclassified
coalition 合同
gig〔一時的な〕仕事
withhold ~を抑える、差し控える
ballot 投票
hail〔タクシーなどを〕呼び止める、〔タクシーを〕拾う
ground rules 基本原則
exert 〔影響力や権力を〕行使する、振るう
著者:Kate Conger
(c) 2020 The New York Times Company
OAKLAND, Calif. — California’s attorney general and a coalition of city attorneys in the state sued Uber and Lyft on Tuesday, claiming the companies wrongfully classified their drivers as independent contractors in violation of a state law that makes them employees.
The law, known as Assembly Bill 5, requires companies to treat their workers as employees instead of contractors if they control how workers perform tasks or if the work is a routine part of a company’s business.
At least 1 million gig workers in the state are affected by the law, which is supposed to give them a path to benefits like a minimum wage and unemployment insurance that have been traditionally withheld from independent contractors.
Although AB 5 took effect Jan. 1, Uber, Lyft and other gig economy companies that operate in California have resisted and are not taking steps to reclassify their drivers. Uber, Lyft and DoorDash have poured $90 million into a campaign for a ballot initiative that would exempt them from complying with the law.
The lawsuit also claims the ride-hailing companies are engaging in an unfair business practice that harms other California companies that follow the law. By avoiding payroll taxes and not paying minimum wage, Uber and Lyft are able to provide rides at “an artificially low cost,” the suit claims, giving them a competitive advantage over other businesses. The suit seeks civil penalties and back wages for workers that could add up to hundreds of millions of dollars.
“California has ground rules with rights and protections for workers and their employers. We intend to make sure that Uber or Lyft play by the rules,” Xavier Becerra, California’s attorney general, said. The city attorneys of San Francisco, Los Angeles and San Diego joined in the lawsuit.
Although Uber and Lyft have argued their drivers have independence and decide when to work, the lawsuit claims both ride-hailing companies exert enough control over drivers to make them employees.
Because ride-hailing companies and app-based food delivery services do not employ drivers, they avoid the costs of insurance and vehicle maintenance, sick leave and unemployment. But the coronavirus pandemic has exposed gaps in the gig economy, as drivers have abruptly lost their income and struggled to get unemployment insurance.
5/8(金)の放送の英文記事と英単語:断固たる、騒ぎ立てる
Gap Plans to Reopen Up to 800 Stores by the End of May
stalwart 忠誠心のあつい、断固たる、断固とした
clamor 大騒ぎする、騒ぎ立てる、やかましく要求する
suffice it to say 〜と言うにとどめておく、あえて言うなら〜である
remains to be seen 今後の課題である、現時点では[今のところ]不明である
著者:Sapna Maheshwari
(c) 2020 The New York Times Company
Gap Inc., the mall stalwart that owns its namesake brand, Old Navy, Banana Republic and Athleta, said it plans to reopen up to 800 stores in North America by the end of the month as retailers clamor to return to business after temporarily shutting down because of the coronavirus pandemic.
“Our goal is to be responsibly aggressive,” Sonia Syngal, chief executive of Gap, said Tuesday. “Every retailer will have its own opening strategy, but suffice it to say we are looking to open where we’re legally allowed to open as soon as we can.”
The plan follows similar strategies announced in recent weeks by Macy’s, owner of Bloomingdales and Bluemercury, and Simon Property Group; the biggest mall operator in the United States.
Retailers that sell nonessential goods, especially clothing, have been eager to reopen as their sales have plummeted, promising new safety protocols for the pandemic era, including plexiglass partitions, hand sanitizer stations and face masks for their employees.
Foot traffic to stores had been down even before the virus outbreak, and it remains to be seen how quickly shoppers will return to the newly refashioned environments while the country continues to grapple with a highly contagious virus.
Syngal emphasized that most of Gap’s revenue did not come from indoor malls, pointing to Old Navy locations at strip malls, its outlet business and online business. Old Navy, in particular, was “very, very relevant for what people are wanting right now,” she added, with apparel for families and activewear available at off-mall stores.
Gap said it would start reopening stores this weekend in Texas, though it declined to share the number of locations that would welcome customers. The company said it anticipated 800 reopenings this month. The figure represents nearly one-third of Gap’s locations in North America.
At the chains operated by the Gap, fitting rooms and restrooms will not be available when stores reopen. Returns will be quarantined for 24 hours. The company will encourage, though not require, customers to wear face coverings while shopping, and monitor the flow of customers in stores while encouraging social distancing.
The European Union Is Facing Its Worst Recession Ever. Watch Out, World.
grim 気味の悪い、恐ろしい、厳しい
subside 弱まる、低下する
elusive うまく逃げる、捕まえにくい、とらえ[つかみ]どころのない
anemic 〔経済などが〕元気のない、沈滞した
spell ~を意味する
brittle もろい、壊れやすい
inextricably 結合・連結などの程度が〕分離不可能なほどに、切り離せないほどに
著者:Matina Stevis-Gridneff and Jack Ewing
(c) 2020 The New York Times Company
BRUSSELS — The good news for Europe is that the worst of the pandemic is beginning to ease. This week deaths in Italy hit a nearly two-month low. And the German leader Angela Merkel announced that schools, day care centers and restaurants would reopen in the next few days.
But the relief could be short-lived.
The European Commission released projections on Wednesday that Europe’s economy will shrink by 7.4% this year. A top official told residents of the European Union, first formed in the aftermath of World War II, to expect the “deepest economic recession in its history.”
To put this figure in perspective, the 27-nation bloc’s economy had been predicted to grow by 1.2% this year. In 2009, at the back of the global financial crisis, it shrank by 4.5%.
It’s a grim reminder that even if the virus dissipates, the economic fallout could pressure the world economy for months, if not years.
In China, where the outbreak has subsided in recent weeks, the factories that power the global supply chain have been fired up. But with few global buyers for its goods, its economy has been slow to recover.
In the United States, where the growth of new cases in the hardest-hit areas shows signs of slowing and there is a push to lift lockdowns, there are also signs that a recovery may be elusive. The government on Friday is set to release the monthly employment report, and some forecasts predict a loss of more than 20 million jobs in April — a number that would wipe out a decade’s worth of job gains.
The European Union, home to 440 million people, is the United States’ No. 1 trading partner, and China’s second-largest. It’s the biggest foreign investor in sub-Saharan Africa and other parts of the developing world.
A prolonged European recession, a second wave of the virus or an anemic economic recovery would spell added misery for many Europeans, and hurt companies, banks and people the world over. The crisis is also reigniting political divisions between a wealthier north and a poorer south, threatening to break the brittle balance between divergent nations with inextricably linked economies.
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