Voicy初の公式英語ニュースチャンネル「Voicy News Brief with articles from New York Times」。チャンネルでは、バイリンガルパーソナリティがThe New York Timesの記事を英語で読み、記事の中に出てくる単語を日本語で解説しています。

Voicy Journalでは、毎週金曜日にその週に読んだ記事を、まとめて紹介します！１週間の終わりに、その週の放送をもう１度聞いて復習するのも良いかもしれません。VoicyのPCページやアプリでは、再生速度も変えられるので、自分の理解度に応じて、調整してみましょう。

8/22(土)の放送

Bannon Is Charged With Fraud in We Build the Wall Campaign

著者：Alan Feuer, William K. Rashbaum and Maggie Haberman
(c) 2020 The New York Times Company

Stephen Bannon, President Donald Trump’s former adviser and an architect of his 2016 general election campaign, was charged Thursday with defrauding donors to a private fundraising effort called We Build the Wall, which was intended to bolster the president’s signature initiative along the Mexican border.

Bannon, working with a wounded Air Force veteran and a Florida venture capitalist, conspired to cheat hundreds of thousands of donors by falsely promising that their money had been set aside for new sections of wall, according to a federal indictment unsealed in Manhattan.

The fundraising effort collected more than $25 million, and prosecutors said Bannon used nearly $1 million of it for personal expenses.

Despite the populist aura he tries to project, Bannon is known to enjoy the high life, and he was arrested at 7:15 a.m. on a $35 million, 150-foot yacht belonging to one of his business associates, fugitive Chinese billionaire Guo Wengui, law enforcement officials said.

Working with the Coast Guard, special agents from the U.S. attorney’s office in Manhattan and federal postal inspectors boarded the yacht off Westbrook, Connecticut, the officials said. Bannon, 66, was on deck, drinking coffee and reading a book, when the raid occurred.

As chief strategist, Bannon was one of the most powerful figures in the White House early in the Trump administration, but he stepped down in August 2017 after frequently clashing with other aides.

With the indictment, Bannon became the seventh Trump associate to have been charged with federal crimes, a list that includes Paul Manafort, Trump’s former campaign manager; Michael Flynn, the former national security adviser; and Michael Cohen, Trump’s onetime lawyer and fixer.

At a brief arraignment Thursday, Bannon, sunburned and his hair unbrushed, pleaded not guilty to charges of wire fraud conspiracy and money laundering conspiracy, each of which carries a maximum penalty of 20 years in prison. The government agreed to release him from custody on a $5 million bond.

Walking to his car after being freed, Bannon said, “This entire fiasco is to stop people who want to build the wall.”

Shortly after the charges were announced, Trump had sought to distance himself from Bannon and the fundraising initiative, though the president also expressed sympathy for his former adviser.

“I feel very badly,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office. “I haven’t been dealing with him for a very long period of time.”

Trump Meets With Iraqi Leader Amid Negotiations Over U.S. Troop Levels

著者：Katie Rogers and Eric Schmitt
(c) 2020 The New York Times Company

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump met with Mustafa al-Kadhimi, the Iraqi prime minister, at the White House on Thursday, continuing months of negotiations between the two governments over the presence of U.S. troops in the country.

Trump’s meeting with al-Kadhimi, a former intelligence chief, culminated two days of high-level gatherings between senior U.S. and Iraqi officials that covered a range of security, energy, economic and health issues. But a central focus of the prime minister’s visit is the negotiations, which started in May, on resetting the U.S. military mission in Iraq.

“We will be discussing military,” Trump said. “We’re also involved in many oil projects and oil development within their country. And I think we’ve had a very, very good relationship since we started. We’re down to a very small number of soldiers in Iraq now.”

There are about 5,200 U.S. troops in Iraq, whose main missions are counterterrorism and training Iraqi forces. Some of these forces also support roughly 500 U.S. troops in neighboring Syria.

Both leaders have emphasized their desire for troop reductions, but the details of how that would happen are murky. The Iraqis have said they want assistance from the Americans without a sizable military presence, while the Trump administration, fixated on the threat of Iranian influence, has been advised to keep a small number of troops on the ground.

“So at some point, we obviously will be gone,” Trump said Thursday. “We look forward to the day when we don’t have to be there, and hopefully Iraq can live their own lives and they can defend themselves, which they’ve been doing long before we got involved.”

In a meeting with journalists after the White House gathering, al-Kadhimi reaffirmed the need for continued U.S. military assistance to help fight remnants of the Islamic State.

The prime minister sidestepped the question of how long and precisely how many U.S. troops should stay in Iraq, saying conditions on the ground would dictate that. But he underscored that the role of American forces in the country was already shifting.

“We definitely don’t need combat troops in Iraq,” al-Kadhimi said. “But we do need training.”

culminate　最高点に達する、頂点を成す
counterterrorism　反テロリズム、テロへの対抗措置
murky 　 暗い、見通せない、濁った
fixated on  (be-) ～に執着する、～に固執する　 reaffirm ～を再確認する
remnant 残された物、残存者
sidestep (決定・問題などを) 避ける、回避する

8/23(日)の放送

Uber and Lyft Get Reprieve After Threatening to Shut Down

著者：Kate Conger
(c) 2020 The New York Times Company

OAKLAND, Calif. — Uber and Lyft threatened to suspend ride-hailing services throughout California on Thursday night, a defiant reaction to a judge who ordered the companies to reclassify their drivers as employees.

But hours before the ride-hailing blackout was set to begin, an appeals court granted Uber and Lyft a temporary reprieve, allowing them to continue operating while the court weighs their appeal. Oral arguments in the case are set for mid-October.

“We are glad that the court of appeal recognized the important questions raised in this case, and that access to these critical services won’t be cut off while we continue to advocate for drivers’ ability to work with the freedom they want,” said Matt Kallman, a spokesman for Uber.

The fight could drag on for months, as Uber and Lyft battle a state labor law intended to give employment benefits to gig workers. An appeals court is weighing the companies’ requests to overturn a judge’s order to employ drivers, but it is not clear when the court will issue a ruling. The court has ordered Uber and Lyft to submit plans for hiring employees by early September, in case the court does not decide in their favor.

State officials said the companies must comply with the law, known as Assembly Bill 5, so workers have access to sick leave, overtime and other benefits — a need that has become more dire during the coronavirus pandemic.

But Uber and Lyft have argued that employing drivers would have a catastrophic effect on their businesses, forcing them to raise fares and hire only a small fraction of the drivers who currently work for them. They would temporarily shutter the businesses rather than comply, they said.

Uber and Lyft have long categorized drivers as independent contractors. But this model imposes a financial burden on drivers, who are responsible for their own vehicle maintenance, health insurance and other expenses that employers traditionally cover.

Last year, the California Legislature passed AB 5 in an attempt to set clearer employment standards for the state and rein in gig-economy giants like Uber.

Although the law went into effect in January, Uber and Lyft did not change their practices. They argued that AB 5 did not apply to them and spent tens of millions of dollars on a ballot initiative that, if passed in November, would exempt them from the law.

Reprieve 執行を延期
Ride-hailing タクシー等の配車
Defiant 反抗的な、けんか腰の
Gig workers ギグワーカー、独立業務請負人
Dire 恐ろしい、悲惨な
Catastrophic 破滅的な

Xi Declares War on Food Waste, and China Races to Tighten Its Belt

著者：Bella Huang and Amy Qin
(c) 2020 The New York Times Company

Chinese regulators are calling out livestreamers who binge-eat for promoting excessive consumption. A school said it would bar students from applying for scholarships if their daily leftovers exceeded a set amount. A restaurant placed electronic scales at its entrance for customers to weigh themselves to avoid ordering too much.

China’s top leader, Xi Jinping, has declared a war on the “shocking and distressing” squandering of food, and the nation is racing to respond, with some going to greater extremes than others.

Xi’s edict is part of a broader message from the leadership in recent weeks about the importance of self-reliance in a time of tensions with the United States and other trading partners. The concern is that import disruptions caused by the global geopolitical turmoil and the pandemic, as well as some of the country’s worst floods this year, could cut into food supplies.

But like so many top-down orders in China, the vaguely worded directive prompted a flurry of speculation. State news media moved quickly to tamp down panic about imminent food shortages, reporting that China had recently seen consecutive bumper grain harvests and record high grain output.

Xi’s “clean plate” campaign strikes at the heart of dining culture in China. Custom dictates that ordering extra dishes and leaving food behind are ways to demonstrate generosity toward one’s relatives, clients, business partners and important guests.

Such habits have contributed to an estimated 17 million to 18 million tons of food being discarded annually, an amount that could feed 30 million to 50 million people for a year, according to a study by the Chinese Academy of Science and the World Wildlife Fund.

For Xi, the issue of food security has taken on more importance as China grapples with overlapping crises including a shaky economy and severe floods that have left large swaths of the country’s farmland under water.

Food prices climbed about 13% in July compared with a year ago, according to official statistics. The price of pork, a staple food for many Chinese families, increased by about 85% during that same period, in part because the floods affected production and transportation.

As tensions with other countries have risen, the Communist Party has been girding itself for the possibility of being cut off internationally — and making sure it can produce enough food to feed China’s 1.4 billion people.

Binge-eat 暴食
Squandering 浪費する
Edict 布告、勅令
Turmoil 騒ぎ、騒動
Flurry 突風、突然の動揺
Grapple 取っ組み合う、取り組む
Swaths ひと刈り分の牧草
Gird 巻く、 締める、袖まくり

8/24(月)の放送

President’s Sister Describes Trump as Liar With ‘No Principles’ in Recordings

著者：Michael D. Shear
(c) 2020 The New York Times Company

WASHINGTON — Maryanne Trump Barry, President Donald Trump’s older sister and a former federal judge, described him as a liar who has “no principles” in a series of audio recordings made by her niece, Mary Trump, in 2018 and 2019.

The recordings were provided to The Washington Post, which published them online Saturday night. In the recording, Barry can be heard disparaging her brother’s performance as president.

“His goddamned tweet and the lying, oh, my God,” she says in one of the recordings posted by the newspaper. “I’m talking too freely, but you know. The change of stories. The lack of preparation. The lying.”

Mary Trump is the author of the recently published book, “Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World’s Most Dangerous Man.” In it, she recounted how the president’s upbringing turned him into what she called a reckless leader.

According to The Post, Mary Trump secretly recorded 15 hours of face-to-face conversations with Barry about the president and his upbringing. The paper said she provided transcripts and audio excerpts.

In a statement provided by a White House spokesman, Donald Trump dismissed the accusations and referred to the recent death of his younger brother, Robert Trump. “Every day it’s something else, who cares,” the president said. “I miss my brother, and I’ll continue to work hard for the American people. Not everyone agrees, but the results are obvious. Our country will soon be stronger than ever before.”

Barry, who was appointed to the federal bench by President Ronald Reagan, says in one conversation that Donald Trump helped her get that appointment by asking his lawyer, Roy Cohn, to urge Reagan to appoint more female judges. Barry says the president once said to her, “Where would you be without me?”

“You say that one more time and I will level you.” Barry said she told her younger brother at the time. She said she was angry that he was trying to “take credit” for her accomplishments as a judge.

The Post says that in one conversation, Barry criticized the Trump administration’s policy of separating migrant children from their parents when they tried to cross the border from Mexico.

“All he wants to do is appeal to his base,” Barry told Mary Trump, according to the paper. “He has no principles. None. None. And his base, I mean my God, if you were a religious person, you want to help people. Not do this.”

principle 信念
disparage 批判する、けなす
recount 詳しく述べる
upbringing 育ち、養育
excerpt 抜粋
the federal bench 連邦判事
level (人を) 打ち倒す
take credit 自分の功績、手柄にする

8/25(火)の放送

With ‘Unhinged,’ Hollywood Cautiously Returns to Movie Theaters

著者：Nicole Sperling
(c) 2020 The New York Times Company

Hollywood took a toe dip back into theaters with the wide release of “Unhinged,” the Russell Crowe thriller that opened Friday in 1,823 locations across the country, including drive-ins in California and large cineplexes in Orlando and San Antonio, Texas.

The film cost $33 million to make and earned just $4 million its opening weekend — a figure that would normally disappoint. But with theaters operating at a maximum of 50% capacity, it is seen as a relative success. Five months after all theaters closed because of the coronavirus, the weekend showed the country’s cautious interest in returning to the movies.

Mark Gill, chief executive of Solstice Studios, the independent studio behind the film, said he expected “Unhinged” to generate at least $30 million in North American box office receipts. It has already earned $8 million internationally.

“The fact that we will get to our goal in these crazy uncertain times feels like a gigantic relief,” he added.

Twenty-six percent of U.S. screens were open this past weekend in some 44 states, each operating at limited capacity with additional safety protocols. Seven states, including California, New Jersey and New York, which account for close to 25% of the national box office, are still not permitted to open their cineplexes. Drive-in theaters in three California locales, including Los Angeles and San Francisco, generated the highest grosses of the weekend.

Next weekend, Disney will open its long-delayed X-Men spinoff, “New Mutants,” in theaters, while “Unhinged” adds 500 screens to its release. On Sept. 3, Warner Bros. will debut the highly anticipated and oft-delayed Christopher Nolan thriller, “Tenet,” in the United States. The theater industry hopes to have 70% of the nation’s screens open by that date.

The other wide release for the weekend, the young-adult drama “Words on Bathroom Walls,” generated just $462,050 on 925 screens, despite overwhelmingly positive reviews.

Many of Hollywood’s largest films, including the next installment of James Bond and the ninth iteration of the “Fast And Furious” franchise, have exited the 2020 calendar completely, while others, like Disney’s “Mulan,” are moving straight to streaming services.

＜Pickup Vocabs Part 1>
Unhinged　精神が錯乱した状態
　☝️hinge(蝶番)が外れる
a toe dip　(慎重に)足を踏み入れる
　☝️toe(足の指)+dip(漬ける)
figure　数値
　☝️想像を形にしたらfigure（アニメのフィギュア、フィギュアスケ――ト）
　☝️figure out 理解する
capacity　客席数(キャパ)
relative　相対的な
gigantic　巨大な
protocols　手順
grosses　総数
long-delayed　ながらく延期されてきた anticipated　予測する
oft-delayed　たびたび延期されてきた
　☝️oft(度々)はoftenの元の単語

<Pickup Vocabs Part 2>
despite　にもかかわらず
overwhelmingly　圧倒的に
　☝️underwhelming　期待外れ
installment　連載物の一回分
　[語源：in(〜に入れる)+stall(仕切られた一つ分のスペース)]
iteration　繰り返し、反復
　[親戚：reiterate(何度も何度も繰り返す、言う)]

8/27(木)の放送

Messi Tells Barcelona He Wants to Leave

著者：Rory Smith
(c) 2020 The New York Times Company

Lionel Messi, arguably the greatest player in soccer history, has informed Barcelona that he intends to leave the club with immediate effect, and to do so by activating a clause in his contract that would mean the team where he has spent his entire career would not receive a cent in compensation.

Messi, 33, has spent the days since Barcelona’s humiliation by Bayern Munich, in the Champions League quarterfinals just over a week ago, watching his club descend into yet another bout of internal turmoil. Quique Setién, the manager, and the sporting director, Eric Abidal, both departed, and Ronald Koeman, a former Barcelona player, was appointed as coach.

Among his first acts was to tell several senior players — Samuel Umtiti, Arturo Vidal, Ivan Rakitic and Messi’s neighbor and close friend, Luis Suárez — that their services were no longer required.

Koeman also spoke with Messi, who at that point had stopped short of committing his future to the club. News reports in Spain suggested that Koeman had warned Messi that he would no longer receive special treatment — a threat, it was suggested, that made up the Argentine’s mind.

Regardless of the trigger, Messi put his decision in writing on Tuesday. Messi’s representatives believe he can act unilaterally, thanks to a clause in his contract that enables him to leave free as long as he announces his intention to do so before the end of the season.

Barcelona is expected to contest quite when the end of the season is. The club probably will argue that the clause expired at the end of June, when the Spanish and European campaigns were scheduled to finish. Messi’s side is reportedly convinced that the exceptional circumstances of a pandemic-delayed season rendered that timing irrelevant.

As Messi developed first into the best player of his generation and then, possibly, into the best in history, so Barcelona was transformed into arguably the most popular sports team in the world.

Messi has previously insisted that he wanted to finish his career at Barcelona — despite suggestions that he would, eventually, return for a season at Newell’s Old Boys, his hometown team — but the chaos of the last few seasons, in which Barcelona has suffered a succession of haunting defeats in the Champions League and run through three managers in the last eight months, appears to have been too much to bear.

with immediate effect ただちに効力を発して clause (条約・法律の)条項
contract 契約
compensation 補償(金)、賠償(金)
humiliation 恥をかかせる/かかされること、屈辱
quarterfinal 準々決勝
bout 一期間
turmoil 騒動、混乱
no longer もはや〜ない
regardless of 〜に関係なく
trigger 引き金、きっかけ
unilaterally 一方的に
exceptional 例外的な
render A B AをBの状態にする

8/28(金)の放送

Hurricane Laura Strikes Coast After Days of Dire Warnings

著者：The New York Times
(c) 2020 The New York Times Company

Hurricane Laura pounded the Louisiana and Texas coasts as it made landfall near Cameron, Louisiana, as a Category 4 storm early Thursday, delivering a barrage of 150-mph winds and a wall of water that was predicted to reach as high as 20 feet.

Landfall came after officials in both states issued the gravest of warnings, sounding the alarm about a storm that, in many ways, could be one of the worst to hit the region in decades.

The National Hurricane Center called the expected storm surge “unsurvivable” and said that it could push as far as 40 miles inland. Officials also said that low-lying areas facing the brunt of the storm, like Cameron Parish in Louisiana, would essentially be annexed by the Gulf of Mexico until floods receded.

“I’m asking people right now to pay attention to this storm, to get out of harm’s way,” Gov. John Bel Edwards of Louisiana told residents during a briefing ahead of the storm’s arrival. “Understand, our state has not seen a storm surge like this in many, many decades. We haven’t seen wind speeds like we’re going to experience in a very, very long time.”

In Calcasieu Parish, Louisiana, winds reached 93 mph with gusts of 126 mph, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said.

The National Weather Service said heavy rain had hit Lake Charles, Jennings, Lafayette and New Iberia. People in Lake Charles posted Twitter videos of sheets of rain blowing across the streets and trees buckling over in the background.

Laura was among the strongest storms to ever hit the United States, according to data compiled by Philip Klotzbach, a research scientist at Colorado State University who studies hurricanes.

Now that the storm has hit, residents who did not flee a vast stretch of the Gulf Coast spanning from west of Galveston, Texas, to near Lafayette, Louisiana, were hunkered down as the storm tore through the dark of night. Officials had said those people would be on their own, as the police and emergency workers would not be able to reach them until the storm had passed.

“Know that it’s just you and God,” Mayor Thurman Bartie of Port Arthur, Texas, warned residents who were staying behind.

dire （8/23の復習） 恐ろしい／悲惨な
pound　　強襲する／ドンドン叩く
make landfall　上陸する
barrage　　弾幕／雨あられ
grave　深刻な／重大な
sound the alarm　　警報を鳴らす
the brunt of (____)　　〜の矢先
annex　　併合する／付加する
storm surge　　高潮
sheets of rain　　しのつく雨／土砂降り
buckling (over)　曲がる／倒れる
hunker down　しゃがむ／身をひそめる／避難する