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。
8/29(土)の放送
Shinzo Abe, Japan’s Longest-Serving Leader, to Resign Because of Illness
著者：Motoko Rich
(c) 2020 The New York Times Company
TOKYO — Prime Minister Shinzo Abe of Japan will resign because of ill health, the country’s national broadcaster reported Friday, just four days after he exceeded the record for the longest consecutive run as leader in Japanese history.
Abe, 65, has been prime minister for nearly eight years. During his tenure, he oversaw Japan’s recovery from a devastating earthquake, tsunami and nuclear disaster, restored a semblance of economic health and curried favor with an unpredictable American president, Donald Trump.
Yet despite his long hold on power — his second stint as prime minister — Abe failed to reach some of his signature goals. He was unable to revise the pacifist constitution installed by postwar American occupiers or to secure the return of contested islands claimed by both Japan and Russia so that the two countries could sign a peace treaty to officially end World War II.
The governing Liberal Democratic Party will appoint an interim leader who will serve until the party can hold a leadership election. Abe’s term was set to expire in September 2021.
The Japanese news media had been speculating about Abe’s health for weeks, particularly after he significantly dialed back public appearances. When Abe visited a hospital twice in the span of a week, the rumor mill went into overdrive.
Abe, the grandson of a prime minister accused of war crimes and the son of a former foreign minister, began his first, yearlong stint as prime minister in 2006. As he resigned in 2007 under a cloud of scandal, he cited the debilitating effects of ulcerative colitis, a bowel disease.
It was unclear whether Abe was suffering again from the effects of that disease or had contracted another ailment.
During his second period in office, which began in late 2012, Abe survived a few influence-peddling scandals and rode out numerous elections. In 2015, he pushed through contentious security legislation that permitted Japanese troops to engage in overseas combat missions alongside allied forces.
His power peaked in 2017 when his party won a landslide victory that gave it, along with its coalition partners, two-thirds of the seats in Parliament. That was the supermajority required to push through a constitutional revision, but Abe never brought that dream to fruition, with public opposition to such a change remaining high.
tenure 在職［在任］（期間）
semblance 外見、外観、うわべ
curry favor with〜 〜の機嫌を取る
stint 〔仕事・活動などに従事していた〕期間
pacifist constitution 平和主義憲法
install 設置する
contested 争点となる
interim 暫定の
go into overdrive 過熱する、大騒ぎになる
debilitate 〔病気などが人を〕衰弱させる
ulcerative colitis 潰瘍性大腸炎
ailment 〔重度ではないが慢性的な〕病気
influence-peddling 地位を悪用した、利益誘導
contentious 〔問題などが〕議論を引き起こす
supermajority 圧倒的多数
fruition 達成、実現
8/30(日)の放送
Movies Are Returning to Theaters. Will Audiences Follow?
著者：Brooks Barnes
(c) 2020 The New York Times Company
HENDERSON, Nev. — The Regal Sunset Station multiplex in suburban Las Vegas reopened Thursday night after sitting empty for five months in eerie pandemic-forced exile. One of the first people to take a center seat, popcorn and orange soda in hand, was Brian Truitt, who bought tickets to “The New Mutants,” a Marvel superhero movie, a week in advance.
“I figured it would be jammed, with pent-up demand to come to the movies again,” Truitt, 38, said as he sat back in his reclining seat and tugged at his face mask. He looked around the mostly empty auditorium, with capacity for 172, and shrugged in surprise. “I guess not.”
For the first time since March, big-budget movies are being released again in theaters. “The New Mutants” cost at least $70 million to make and market. Coming next week is Christopher Nolan’s “Tenet,” a hotly anticipated $200 million thriller. But the willingness of Americans to return to theaters — to sit inside a closed room with strangers for hours, regardless of the safety protocols — remains anything but certain. For Hollywood, which has come to rely on superheroes and star directors like Nolan as relatively sure bets, releasing these films is like stepping off a ledge without knowing where the ground lies.
If Thursday night at Regal Sunset Station was any indication, the drop could be considerable. By the time the lights dimmed for the 7 p.m. show and trailers started to play, the sound system jouncing everyone’s insides, only 28 people had turned up, including myself.
Maybe it was the movie. “The New Mutants,” a long-delayed “X-Men” thriller, has been beleaguered by bad buzz and was lightly marketed by Walt Disney Studios.
Theater executives have pointed to “Tenet” as the film that will send people cascading back into seats and restore a sense of normalcy to an industry that was essentially brought to a standstill by the pandemic. The economics for “Tenet” and other megamovies work only if lots of people leave their houses and buy tickets to see them in theaters.
Maybe it was the still-threatening coronavirus. Studio research has indicated that the majority of Americans are not ready to immediately return to theaters, even with theater companies promoting a wide array of safety procedures: capacity limited to 50%, enhanced air filtration, aggressive cleaning, masks required except when eating or drinking.
Or maybe moviegoing has changed forever.
Multiplex 多様な、複合の
Suburban 郊外の、市外の
Jammed 詰め込む、嵌る
Pent-up 鬱積した、心にたまる
Auditorium 講堂、公会堂
Protocol 要綱、協定
Sure bet 本命、間違いない
Jouncing ガタガタ揺れる
Beleaguer 取り巻く、つきまとう
Cascade 階段状に連続する滝、五月雨式に
Standstill 停止、休止、行き詰まり
Array 配列
8/31(月)の放送
Humans Take a Step Closer to ‘Flying Cars’
著者：Derrick Bryson Taylor
(c) 2020 The New York Times Company
In the 1880s, the first automobile was developed, and about two decades later, the Wright brothers in North Carolina invented the first successful airplane. Today, the world is closer to combining those two concepts as a Japanese tech company said it completed a manned test flight of a “flying car.”
The company, SkyDrive, said in a news release Friday that it had completed a flight test using “the world’s first manned testing machine,” its SD-03 model, an electrical vertical takeoff and landing (eVTOL) vehicle. The flight time was four minutes, the company said.
The aircraft has one seat and operates with eight motors and two propellers on each corner. It lifted about 10 feet into the air and was operated by a pilot, the company said.
Tomohiro Fukuzawa, SkyDrive’s chief executive, said Saturday that five years ago there were various prototypes of flying cars, usually with fixed wings. SkyDrive’s product, he said, was one of the most compact in size and was lighter compared with other designs.
SkyDrive was started in 2012 by members of a volunteer organization called Cartivator, and the company began developing a “flying car” in 2014, according to its website.
This year, SkyDrive received funding from the Development Bank of Japan and other investors, the company said.
Several companies are developing similar technology, including Boeing and Airbus, as well as automakers Toyota and Porsche. In January, Hyundai and Uber announced they were collaborating on an all-electric air taxi.
Analysts with Morgan Stanley have said they expect urban air taxis to be common by 2040, with the global market projected to be $1.4 trillion to $2.9 trillion by then.
Safety is one of two challenges preventing the technology from becoming widely used, said Derya Aksaray, an assistant professor of aerospace engineering and mechanics at the University of Minnesota. Safe autonomous technology for eVTOL aircrafts is still being developed, Aksaray said.
The other challenge is design: The vehicles should be powerful enough to carry any necessary weight, yet quiet enough to fly at undetermined low altitudes, she said.
the Wright brothers ライト兄弟
manned test flight 有人飛行試験
vertical takeoff and landing (eVTOL) vehicle 電動垂直離着陸型無操縦者航空機
aircraft 航空機
propeller プロペラ
prototype 試作品
fixed (形)固定された
volunteer ボランティア
funding 資金
collaborate 協働する (*co 一緒に、labor 働く)
all-electric 全電動式
project (動) 予想する
challenge 課題
autonomous 自律的な (*autonomous region 自治区)
altitude 高度 (*altitude/mountain sickness 高山病)
9/1(火)の放送
Israeli Airliner Completes First Direct Flight to Arab Emirates
著者：David M. Halbfinger
(c) 2020 The New York Times Company
JERUSALEM — A chartered El Al airliner carrying Israeli and U.S. diplomats landed in the United Arab Emirates at 3:38 p.m. local time Monday, completing a symbolic first direct flight from Tel Aviv to Abu Dhabi that officials said would pave the way for formal diplomatic and commercial ties and might inspire other Arab nations to follow suit in normalizing relations with the Jewish state.
The Israeli and U.S. delegations, led by Jared Kushner for the Trump administration and Israel’s national security adviser, Meir Ben Shabbat, arrived in Abu Dhabi for a day and a half of what were billed as “professional” meetings with Emirati counterparts on matters including health, commerce and security.
But the substance of those meetings seemed secondary, and not a close second, to the spectacle of the Israeli-marked El Al jet on the tarmac in Abu Dhabi. The plane flew the flags of all three nations and with “peace” newly stenciled above the pilot’s side window in English, Hebrew and Arabic, providing the backdrop as a coterie of Israeli diplomats descended onto an Emirati red carpet, with Emirati television broadcasting the pageantry live.
Driving home the point, Ben Shabbat, a religious Jew who wears a kippa, spoke in fluent Arabic.
“I’m proud and very happy to be here as the head of the Israeli delegation,” he said. “We came here to transform a vision into a reality. There are no limits to the cooperation that we can develop in the fields of science, innovation, tourism, aviation, agriculture, energy and many other areas.”
“While this is a historic flight, we hope that this will start an even more historic journey for the Middle East and beyond,” said Kushner, a senior White House adviser and President Donald Trump’s son-in-law.
The 3 hour, 20 minute flight from Ben-Gurion Airport — given the flight number LY971, a nod to the Emirati country code — marked another important first: About half an hour in, the pilot announced that the plane had entered Saudi airspace with Riyadh’s explicit permission. While Saudi Arabia has allowed Air India jetliners to use its airspace to reach Israel, until now it had refused to allow Israeli commercial jets to transit its skies.
Avoiding Saudi airspace would have meant about a 7-hour flight, said the captain, Tal Becker, who was given the honor of making history as El Al’s most senior pilot.
diplomats 外交官
☝️駆け引き上手な人、という意味も
symbolic 象徴的な
☝️symbol(記号)
pave the way 道を拓く
☝️pave(敷く、舗装する)/ pavement(アスファルト)↔︎blacktop
follow suit 先例に従う
☝️suit(同じ制服→同じ柄)
[語源：トランプで続けて同じ柄を出すことから]
delegations 代表団
billed 広告された
counterparts 形・機能が似た対照物
tarmac 滑走路
☝️ (英)アスファルト
stenciled 型板でつけられた(文字)
coterie グループ
☝️ルーツはフランス語
pageantry 見もの、ショー
[語源：pageant(野外劇)]
aviation 航空機産業
☝️衣料品ブランドのAVIREXはAVI(飛行機の)+REX(王様)
a nod to ~ 〜にちなんで
☝️nod(うなづく)
explicit 明白な
[語源；ex(外に出す)+plicit(折る)→折られたものを開くイメージ]
9/2(水)の放送
Federal Government Relaxes Rules on Feeding Low-Income Students
著者：Kate Taylor
(c) 2020 The New York Times Company
he Agriculture Department, under pressure from Congress and officials in school districts across the country, said Monday it would allow schools to provide free breakfast and lunch to any child or teenager through the end of 2020, provided funding lasts. Advocates for the poor hailed the announcement as an important step to ensure that more needy children are fed during the coronavirus pandemic.
It was a partial reversal by the department. Previously, the agency had said that when schools returned to session, whether remote or in person, it would require them to resume serving meals only to students enrolled in their district — and to charge students who did not qualify for free or reduced-price meals.
But the department’s announcement Monday still fell short of what advocates and many officials had been pushing for, namely to extend the special rules through the end of the school year, in 2021.
When schools shut down in the spring because of the coronavirus, the department authorized districts to distribute subsidized to-go meals to any child or teenager under 19. The change was intended to make it easier to get meals to low-income children while they were stuck at home. Some districts offered meals at curbside pickup, while others brought them to bus stops or delivered them to students’ homes.
Officials in districts where schools started remotely in August said that going back to the regular rules had created hurdles for low-income parents and had led to huge drops in the number of subsidized meals they were serving. Unlike in the spring and summer, some parents had to go to each school where they had a child enrolled, rather than a single location, to pick up meals. And parents could no longer get meals for siblings below school age.
About 20 million children in the United States normally receive free lunches at school, and 2 million more receive meals at reduced prices, making the school lunch program the nation’s second-largest nutrition assistance program, after food stamps.
With a substantial number of schools, including almost all major urban districts, returning to school this fall with remote instruction only, members of Congress from both parties had urged the Agriculture Department to extend the special rules through the end of the school year.
But Sonny Perdue, secretary of agriculture, had asserted that his department had neither the money nor the authority to do that.
agriculture 農業
Congress アメリカ連邦議会
advocates 擁護者、支持者
hail 歓迎する、称賛する
ensure 保証する
reversal （方向や状況が）逆転すること
fall short 〜に達しない、届かない
subsidized 補助を受けている
intended 意図された、計画された
curbside 道路の縁石側
siblings 兄弟姉妹
substantial かなりの、相当な
9/3(木)の放送
Facebook Could Block Sharing of News Stories in Australia
著者：Daisuke Wakabayashi and Mike Isaac
(c) 2020 The New York Times Company
With each passing day, the World Wide Web is becoming an outdated name.
Facebook warned Monday that it would block users and news organizations in Australia from sharing local and international news stories on its social network and Instagram if the country passed a proposed code of conduct aimed at curbing the power of Facebook and Google.
The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission, the country’s top competition authority, is drafting a bill for Parliament that would require both companies to negotiate with media publishers and pay them for content that appears on their sites.
Google also hinted that it might have to cut off its services in Australia in an open letter to users on Aug. 17. Google said the government’s draft legislation would give large media companies “special treatment” so they could make unreasonable demands that would make it difficult to keep Google search and YouTube videos free. Google, which owns YouTube, didn’t indicate how it would respond, but said its free services would be “at risk.”
The situation in Australia, while still playing out, demonstrates how government measures to diminish the influence of technology companies are creating digital fences between countries. While China has imposed restrictions on companies operating there for years, the United States has shown a recent willingness to exercise exclusionary tactics on popular services from Chinese internet companies.
The proposed changes in Australia could also contribute to the spread of disinformation, since news from legitimate news sources would be harder to find.
Facebook said publishers and users in Australia trying to share news on its site would be greeted with a notification saying they were no longer able to do so and pointing to the legislation.
“The proposed law is unprecedented in its reach and seeks to regulate every aspect of how tech companies do business with news publishers,” Will Easton, managing director of Facebook in Australia and New Zealand, said in a company blog post Monday evening.
Easton added that it would force Facebook to pay news organizations for content that the publishers voluntarily placed on its services.
outdated (情報・考え・制度などが) 時代遅れの
a code of conduct 行動規範
curb (好ましくない行動を) 抑制する
draft 起草する
Parliament 国会
hint ほのめかす、暗示する
cut off (ガス・電気・援助などの供給)を断つ
diminish 弱める
willingness 厭わずにすること、快くすること
exercise 行使する
exclusionary 排他的な
notification 通知
9/4(金)の放送
Steroids Can Be Lifesaving for COVID-19 Patients, Scientists Report
著者：Roni Caryn Rabin
(c) 2020 The New York Times Company
International clinical trials published Wednesday confirm the hope that cheap, widely available steroid drugs can help seriously ill patients survive COVID-19, the illness caused by the coronavirus.
The new studies include an analysis that pooled data from seven randomized clinical trials evaluating three steroids in over 1,700 patients. The study concluded that each of the three drugs reduced the risk of death.
That paper and three related studies were published in the journal JAMA, along with an editorial describing the research as an “important step forward in the treatment of patients with COVID-19.”
Corticosteroids should now be the first-line treatment for critically ill patients, the authors added. The only other drug shown to be effective in seriously ill patients, and only modestly at that, is remdesivir.
On Wednesday, the World Health Organization is expected to release new guidelines encouraging the use of steroid drugs in critically ill patients.
Steroids like dexamethasone, hydrocortisone and methylprednisolone are often used by doctors to tamp down the body’s immune system, alleviating inflammation, swelling and pain. Many COVID-19 patients die not of the virus but of the body’s overreaction to the infection.
In June, researchers at Oxford University discovered that dexamethasone seemed to improve survival rates in severely ill patients. Researchers had hoped that other inexpensive steroids might help these patients.
Steroids can have harmful side effects, especially in elderly patients, who make up the majority of very ill coronavirus patients. The drugs may leave patients vulnerable to other infections, may raise blood glucose levels, and may cause confusion and delirium.
In the clinical trials, only the sickest patients were treated with steroids, and it is not certain that those who are less ill will benefit or be harmed. The optimal doses and duration of treatment also need to be identified.
But overall, the scientists said, the new studies appeared to confirm the promise of this class of drugs for patients severely ill with COVID-19.
The analysis of pooled data found that steroids were linked with a one-third reduction in deaths among COVID-19 patients. Dexamethasone produced the strongest results: a 36% drop in deaths in 1,282 patients treated in three separate trials.
COVID-19 コビッド • ナインティーン（病気の正式名称）
Corona Virus Disease 2019 → COVID-19 SARS-CoV-2 サーズシーオーブイツー （新型コロナウイルスの正式名称）
SARS Corona Virus 2 → SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus コロナウイルス
pool 集める／溜まる
editorial 論説／社説
corticosteroids 副腎皮質ホルモン／コルチコステロイド
first-line 最前線／第一選択
tamp down 抑制する
alleviate 緩和する／楽にする
side effects 副作用
blood glucose levels 血糖値
delirium せん妄／精神錯乱
