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。
2/13(土)の放送
Tokyo Olympics Chief Resigns Over Sexist Comments
著者：Motoko Rich
(c) 2021 The New York Times Company
Yoshiro Mori, president of the Tokyo Olympic organizing committee, resigned Friday, a little over a week after he unleashed a firestorm by suggesting that women talk too much in meetings.
His resignation followed unrelenting international criticism of his sexist remarks, which presented another challenge to Japan’s efforts to carry off the postponed games amid a pandemic.
Mori, who is 83 and a former prime minister of Japan, had made the remarks after an executive meeting Feb. 3 of the Japanese Olympic Committee. During the session, which was streamed online, he addressed efforts to increase female representation on the panel by expressing worries that meetings would drag on as women vied against each other to speak the longest.
“Just when we were preparing to definitely hold the Games, I, as president, said something I shouldn’t have said,” Mori told reporters before an executive committee meeting Friday in Tokyo.
Yet Mori suggested that he did not agree with the criticism levied against him, saying he had been misinterpreted. “I didn’t mean it in that way, although it was said to be discrimination against women,” he said. “I have been praising women, promoting them to speak out more.”
He added that he believed he had been unfairly criticized because of his age.
Mori did not announce a successor. On Thursday, reports emerged that the leading candidate was Saburo Kawabuchi, 84, a former president of the governing body for Japanese soccer. But on Friday, the Japanese media reported that Kawabuchi would not be taking the post.
Speculation then turned to a woman, Seiko Hashimoto, 56, the Cabinet minister for the Olympics.
After Mori made his sexist remarks last week, a backlash swiftly followed, and he apologized the next day at a news conference. He said he expected to remain in his post but said he would resign if he was deemed “an obstacle.”
Mori’s fate seemed to turn Tuesday evening, when the International Olympic Committee, which had previously called the issue “closed” after his apology, called his remarks “absolutely inappropriate.”
Mori’s resignation came a little over five months before the Games are scheduled to open July 23. Even without the uproar and the headache of appointing a successor, the organizing committee has been scrambling to convince a skeptical Japanese public that it could safely proceed with the Games as the pandemic continues.
resign 辞める、辞任する resignation 辞職
unleash (～を) 引き起こす
unrelenting 弱まることのない、たゆまない、容赦しない【同】relentless
carry off (賞・栄誉などを) 獲得する
vie 競う、争う、張り合う vies ｜ vying ｜ vied
levy 課す、取り立てる levies ｜ levying ｜ levied
successor 後継者、後任者 【対】predecessor
speculation (不確かな情報に基づく) 推論、臆測
deem (～を…と) 考える、見なす、判断する
inappropriate 不適当な、不適切な
2/14(日)の放送
Maryland Approves Country’s First Tax on Big Tech’s Ad Revenue
著者：David McCabe
(c) 2021 The New York Times Company
State politicians, struggling with yawning budget gaps from the pandemic, have made no secret about their interest in getting a bigger piece of the tech industry’s riches.
Now, Maryland’s lawmakers are taking a new slice, with the nation’s first tax on the revenue from digital advertisements sold by companies like Facebook, Google and Amazon.
The state Senate voted Friday to override the governor’s veto of the measure, following in the footsteps of the state’s House of Delegates, which gave its approval Thursday. The tax will generate as much as an estimated $250 million in the first year after enactment, with the money going to schools.
The approval signals the arrival in the United States of a policy pioneered by European countries, and it is likely to set off a fierce legal fight over how far communities can go to tax the tech companies.
Other states are pursuing similar efforts. Lawmakers in Connecticut and Indiana, for example, have already introduced bills to tax the social media giants. Several other states, like West Virginia and New York, fell short of passing new taxes on the tech giants last year, but their proponents may renew their push after Maryland’s success.
The largest tech companies have had milestone financial performances as social distancing moved commerce further online. But cities and states saw their tax revenues plummet as the need for their social services grew.
“They’re really getting squeezed,” said Ruth Mason, a professor at the University of Virginia’s law school. “And this is a huge way to target a tax to the winners of the pandemic.”
Lobbying groups for Silicon Valley companies like Google and Facebook joined other opponents of the law — including Maryland Republicans, telecom companies and local media outlets — in arguing that the cost of the tax would be passed along to small businesses that buy ads and their customers.
The Maryland tax, which applies to revenue from digital ads that are displayed inside the state, is based on the ad sales a company generates. A company that makes at least $100 million a year in global revenue but no more than $1 billion a year will face a 2.5% tax on its ads. Companies that make more than $15 billion a year will pay a 10% tax. Facebook’s and Google’s global revenues far exceed $15 billion.
Piece 取り分
Slice 取り分
Override 覆す
Veto 拒否、拒否権
House of Delegates 下院
Enactment 法の制定
Bill 法案
Proponent 提議者
Plummet 急落
2/15(月)の放送
Powerful Earthquake Strikes Japan
著者：Motoko Rich
(c) 2021 The New York Times Company
TOKYO — A large earthquake shook a broad area across eastern Japan late Saturday night, with its epicenter off the coast of Fukushima, near where three nuclear reactors melted down after a quake and tsunami nearly 10 years ago.
The earthquake left nearly 1 million households without power across the Fukushima region and forced the closure of roads and suspension of train services. While rattled residents braced for aftershocks, a landslide cut off a chunk of a main artery through Fukushima prefecture.
Japan’s meteorological service reported the quake’s magnitude as 7.3, up from the initial report of 7.1, but said there was no danger of a tsunami.
Coming a little less than a month before the 10th anniversary of what is known as the Great East Japan earthquake and Fukushima nuclear disaster, the quake rattled the greater Tokyo area for about 30 seconds starting at 11:08 p.m. and was felt powerfully in Fukushima and Sendai.
The strong quake was an unnerving reminder of the 8.9-magnitude earthquake and tsunami that devastated Japan in 2011, killing 16,000 people. After the subsequent nuclear disaster in Fukushima, 160,000 people fled or were evacuated from around the plant.
The prime minister’s office immediately set up a crisis management office and the Tokyo Electric Power Co., or Tepco, which operates the nuclear plants, said it was checking its monitoring posts in Fukushima to ensure that there were no radiation leaks.
Shortly after midnight, public broadcaster NHK reported that Tepco had detected “no major abnormalities” at any of the Dai-ichi reactors where the meltdowns occurred in 2011 or at the Dai-ni plant a few miles away in Fukushima.
Speaking on NHK, Takashi Furumura, a professor at the Earthquake Research Institute at the University of Tokyo, warned that a quake of this size could be followed within two or three days by another of similar scale.
epicenter 震源地
suspension 停止 (*suspend: 2/2復習)
rattle （受け身で）混乱させる/ ガタガタ揺らす
brace for … (困難・不快なことに)備える
aftershock 余震、（事件などの）余波
landslide 土砂崩れ
artery 主要道路、幹線
meteorological 気象上の
*気象庁： Japan Meteorological Agency
unnerving 気力を奪う、恐怖を呼び起こさせる
subsequent 続いて起こる、その後の
abnormality 異常なこと
2/16(火)の放送
Japan’s Growth Rebounds, but Virus-Related Weakness Looms
著者：Ben Dooley and Makiko Inoue
(c) 2021 The New York Times Company
TOKYO — Japan’s economy rebounded sharply in the last three months of 2020, government data showed Monday, extending its recovery from the coronavirus’ devastating impact in the first half of the year.
But the growth was fragile and could be easily disrupted, analysts warned, at least in the short term. A second state of emergency declared at the end of last year is likely to drag the economy down again, and — as with many countries — it will most likely take years for certain business sectors, such as tourism, and consumer confidence to recover.
Japan’s economy, the world’s third largest after the United States and China, grew 3% during the October to December period, for an annualized growth rate of 12.7%. It was the country’s second consecutive quarter of growth.
The economy had jumped 5.3% in the fiscal third quarter as the country emerged from a national emergency and regained a semblance of normalcy.
“The biggest drivers of this quarter’s growth were exports and consumer spending,” said Toshihiro Nagahama, senior economist at the Dai-Ichi Life Research Institute, as economies released pent-up demand for Japanese goods that had built up during the early months of the pandemic.
The Japanese economy had entered 2020 in a weakened state brought about by a rise in the national consumption tax, a stark drop in trade with China and a devastating typhoon. The pandemic then struck a major blow. As other economies crashed, Japan’s shrank in its worst performance since 1955, when the country began using gross domestic product to measure its economy.
But thanks in large part to the country’s efforts to keep the pandemic under control, Japan avoided the worst of the economic damage that savaged the United States and much of Europe.
This fall, while many consumers in the West sheltered in place, people in Japan were traveling, eating out and going to movies. At the same time, huge government stimulus efforts helped keep people in jobs and companies in business.
Still, the economy ended down 4.8% for the year, the first annual contraction since 2009, when the country was suffering from the fallout of the global financial crisis.
devastating 破壊的な
👆devastation(惨状) [原形: devastate(途方に暮れさせる)]
fragile 脆弱な
👆fragility(脆さ)
👆FRAGILE! (割れ物注意！)
disrupted 崩壊させられた
consumer confidence 消費者信頼感
annualized 一年単位にした
👆annual(毎年の、年一回の)
consecutive 連続した
fiscal 会計の
👆仏語で「国庫の」→アメリカで「会計の」
emerged from 脱却した
semblance 〜に姿が似たもの [語源: semble (〜に見える) [親戚: resemble(~に似ている)]
normalcy 平常の様子
drivers of 〜の牽引役
👆drive(前に推し進める)
pent-up 積り重なった [語源: penned-up→pen(檻)に入れられた)]
national consumption tax (全国的な)消費税
👆アメリカではState & Local “Sales Tax”
thanks to ~ 〜のおかげで
👆Thanks to you, we won the game.
avoided the worst of 最悪を免れた
savaged 襲った
👆savage [名詞] 野蛮人
👆savage [形容詞] 残酷な、残忍な
contraction 収縮
[語源: con(一緒に)+tract(引く)]
[親戚: subtract(引き算する)]
fallout 予期せぬ、悪い影響
👆核爆発後の放射性下降物(死の灰)をさす
2/17(水)の放送
Parler, a Social Network That Attracted Trump Fans, Returns Online
著者：Jack Nicas
(c) 2021 The New York Times Company
SAN FRANCISCO — Parler, the social network that drew millions of Trump supporters before disappearing from the internet, is back online a month after Amazon and other tech giants cut off the company for hosting calls for violence around the time of the Capitol riot.
Getting iced out by the tech giants turned Parler into a cause celebre for conservatives who complained they were being censored, as well as a test case for the openness of the internet. It was unclear if the social network, which had positioned itself as a free speech and lightly moderated site, could survive after it had been blacklisted by the biggest tech companies.
For weeks, it appeared the answer was no. But on Monday, for the first time since Jan. 10, typing parler.com into a web browser returned a page to log into the social network — a move that had required weeks of work by the small company and that had led to the departure of its chief executive.
It was unclear how Parler had figured out how to host its site on computer servers, the central technology underpinning any website. Many of the large web-hosting firms had previously rejected it. For other services required to run a large website, Parler relied on help from a Russian firm that once worked for the Russian government and a Seattle firm that once supported a neo-Nazi site.
Parler’s return appeared to be a victory for small companies that challenge the dominance of Big Tech. The company had sought to make its plight about the power of companies like Amazon, which stopped hosting Parler’s website on its computer servers, and Apple and Google, which removed Parler’s mobile app from their app stores.
Parler had become a hub for right-wing conversation over the past year, as millions of people on the far right had flocked to the platform over what they perceived as censorship of conservative voices by Facebook, Twitter and Google. Much of the content on Parler was benign, but for months before the Jan. 6 Capitol riot, the site also hosted calls for violence, hate speech and misinformation.
Parler had more than 15 million users when it went offline. It is largely financed by Rebekah Mercer, one of the Republican Party’s biggest benefactors.
disappear 消える
ice out 冷たくされる、突き放される
cause celebre 世間の注目を集める事件
moderated 議論が管理されている
it appeared〜 〜のように見受けられた
dominance 優位性
flock 群れ、群衆
benign 無害な、安全な
2/18(木)の放送
Vox Finds Its Next Top Editor at The Atlantic
著者：Marc Tracy
(c) 2021 The New York Times Company
Swati Sharma, a managing editor of The Atlantic, will be the next editor-in-chief of Vox.com, the Vox Media site known for explanatory journalism and podcasts, in a changing of the guard at the pioneering digital outlet nearly three months after two of its founders left and its previous top editor announced her departure.
Sharma, 34, is scheduled to start in her new role next month. She will be taking over the site, which reaches nearly 30 million readers a month, from Lauren Williams, who is starting a nonprofit news outlet for Black communities called Capital B. Williams was also a senior vice president at Vox, and the company is still searching for someone to fill that position.
Sharma, in her last two years at The Atlantic, helped lead the publication’s day-to-day digital coverage. The magazine and its website have added more than 400,000 paid subscribers since September 2019, when The Atlantic started charging readers for online access, thanks to its wide-ranging essays and its news coverage of the presidential race, social unrest and the coronavirus pandemic.
Before joining The Atlantic, Sharma was The Washington Post’s deputy general assignment editor and the digital editor of its international and national security departments. She started her journalism career at The Boston Globe, where she coordinated breaking-news coverage of the Boston Marathon bombing.
Sharma said in an interview that she was not looking to reinvent Vox, which has a staff of roughly 90 newsroom employees. “Vox provides clarity,” she said. “That’s the most important thing we need in our industry and that we can provide readers.
“The work I want to do at Vox with the team in place is figure out how to keep sharpening it, making it more distinctive,” Sharma added.
Melissa Bell, the publisher of Vox Media, the company behind Vox, The Verge, New York Magazine and other publications, issued a statement praising Sharma’s “deep respect for great journalism with a profound understanding for audience needs.”
Founded by Bell, Matthew Yglesias and Ezra Klein in 2014, Vox started with an emphasis on general news and politics. It distinguished itself with its so-called explainers, articles that boiled down complex issues to their essence in clear, often entertaining prose. In 2019, Vox’s areas of coverage expanded when Vox Media folded into it another one of its sites, the business- and tech-focused Recode.
editor-in-chief 編集長 (12/12復習)
explanatory 解説の、説明的な
changing of the guard （政府・企業などの）首脳の交代、政権交代 (2/4復習）
start in～new role 新たな役割に取りかかる、始める
take over 業務を引き継ぐ、引き取る
fill a position ポジションを埋める、補充する
distinctive 独特の、特色を示す
distinguish oneself 目立つ、著名になる
boil down～to ～を要約する
entertaining prose 面白い文（散文）
fold into ～ （小さなビジネスを大手が）吸収する、統合する
2/19(金)の放送
Desperate for Light and Warmth, Texans See No End for Winter Storm
著者：Maria Jimenez Moya, Campbell Robertson and Allyson Waller
(c) 2021 The New York Times Company
Halfway through the week that Texas froze over, everything seemed to be in a state of frigid chaos.
Some homes had no water at all, while others watched it gush from burst pipes into their hallways and living rooms. In Galveston, Texas, where dozens had huddled on Monday and Tuesday in a county-run warming center, the newest pressing need was refrigerated trucks — to hold the bodies expected to be found in the days ahead. And on Wednesday, more than 2.5 million people were still without power, while at least twice as many were being told to boil their water.
In central Texas, where many roads have already been impassible for days, another barrage of sleet and snow was expected late into Wednesday evening. The new storm was forecast to march toward the Mid-Atlantic states, hitting parts of North Carolina and Virginia that are already laboring under the ice from the last storm.
As the storm moved east, Duke Energy warned its customers in the Carolinas that there could be 1 million power outages in the days ahead. Maryland’s governor, Larry Hogan, gave a similar warning, telling residents to keep their phones charged and to prepare themselves for the coming snow and ice.
Already, at least 31 people have died nationwide since the punishing winter weather began last week.
Across the country, homes were still without power — more than 150,000 outages in Oregon, 111,000 in Louisiana and 88,000 in Kentucky as of Wednesday afternoon — but nowhere was it as bad as it is in Texas. The Electric Reliability Council of Texas, which manages the state’s power grid, said Wednesday that about 700,000 homes had electricity restored overnight. The Houston mayor’s office posted on Twitter Wednesday that the remaining power outages there would “likely last another few days.”
Almost 7 million Texans were under a boil water advisory, and about 263,000 people were affected by nonfunctioning water providers.
The crisis highlighted a deeper warning for power systems throughout the country. As climate change accelerates, many electric grids will face novel and extreme weather events that go beyond the historical conditions those grids were designed for.
frigid 極寒の／冷淡な
gush 噴出する／どっと流れ出る
huddle 集まる／体を寄せ合う
pressing 緊急の／差し迫っている
impassible 通行できない／越せない
barrage 弾幕／嵐
sleet みぞれ
forecast 予報する／予想する
Mid-Atlantic アメリカ合衆国中部大西洋岸
advisory 警告／忠告
nonfunctioning 機能しない／効果のない
(electric) grid 電力網／電力系統
☝️power gridとも呼ばれます
