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。
1/4(月)の放送
Tesla Says It Hit Goal of Delivering 500,000 Cars in 2020
著者：Neal E. Boudette
(c) 2021 The New York Times Company
Electric carmaker Tesla reported Saturday that it had produced more than half a million cars in 2020, a goal that seemed unreachable just three years ago.
In a news release posted on its website, the company said it had delivered 180,570 cars in the fourth quarter, bringing its total for 2020 to 499,550, a new milestone for the electric carmaker.
The 2020 sales total represents a 36% increase from 2019. And Tesla’s production of 509,737 cars in 2020 was up 40% from 2019.
It is the latest success for a company that excelled in 2020. While some carmakers have seen increases in sales in the pandemic, none has seen as big an increase as Tesla.
Even without the sales record, Tesla’s CEO, Elon Musk, had plenty to crow about — a buoyant stock, new factories and a string of profitable quarters.
“We believe, given the underlying strength we are picking up in China, as well as a late push in Europe and the U.S., that 190,000 to 200,000 is well within reach” for the fourth quarter, Dan Ives, a Wedbush analyst, wrote in a recent note to investors.
The upstart automaker will probably face stiffer competition in 2021. Ford Motor Co. recently began delivering the Mustang Mach-E electric SUV to customers. And Rivian, a well-regarded startup, will begin selling an electric pickup truck and an SUV next summer. Several other automakers will also join the fray.
And Tesla still faces its own challenges. Sales of its most profitable vehicles, the Model S luxury sedan and Model X SUV, have faltered and remain low. Federal safety regulators are looking into suspension failures in those vehicles. And Tesla seemed to make little progress toward Musk’s ambitious promise to have 1 million self-driving Teslas by the end of 2020.
Still, the company reported profits in the last four quarters. Its stock was added to the S&P 500 index, and its stock price ended last year at more than $700, up from less than $100 at the end of 2019.
milestone 画期的な・重大な事件
excel …で…に勝る、優れる
as+形容詞+a(n)+名詞+as A Aほどに [形容詞]な [名詞]
*No one has seen as great an artist as Picasso.
crow （動）自慢する、得意げに話す
buoyant 軽快な、上がり気味の
upstart 新興の、成りあがりの
well-regarded 非常に尊敬された、大変評判が良い
fray 争い
falter つまづく
S&P 500 index エスアンドピー500種指数
1/5(火)の放送
Trump, in Taped Call, Pressured Georgia Official to ‘Find’ Votes to Overturn Election
著者：Michael D. Shear and Stephanie Saul
(c) 2021 The New York Times Company
President Donald Trump pressured Georgia’s Republican secretary of state to “find” him enough votes to overturn the presidential election and vaguely threatened him with “a criminal offense” during an hourlong telephone call on Saturday, according to an audio recording of the conversation.
Trump, who has spent almost nine weeks making false conspiracy claims about his loss to President-elect Joe Biden, told Brad Raffensperger, the state’s top elections official, that he should recalculate the vote count so Trump, not Biden, would end up winning the state’s 16 electoral votes.
“I just want to find 11,780 votes, which is one more than we have,” Trump said during the conversation, according to a recording first obtained by The Washington Post, which published it online Sunday. The New York Times also acquired a recording of Trump’s call.
The president, who will be in charge of the Justice Department for the 17 days left in his administration, hinted that Raffensperger and Ryan Germany, the chief lawyer for the secretary of state’s office, could be prosecuted criminally if they did not do his bidding.
“You know what they did and you’re not reporting it,” the president said during the call. “You know, that’s a criminal — that’s a criminal offense. And you know, you can’t let that happen. That’s a big risk to you and to Ryan, your lawyer. That’s a big risk.”
The effort to cajole and bully elected officials in his own party — which some legal experts said could be prosecuted under Georgia law — was a remarkable act by a defeated president to crash through legal and ethical boundaries as he seeks to remain in power.
Raffensperger politely but firmly rejected the president’s entreaties, standing by the election results in his state and repeatedly insisting that Trump and his allies had been given false information about voter fraud.
“Well, Mr. President, the challenge that you have is the data you have is wrong,” he said.
<Pickup Vocabs 1>
Secretary of State 州務長官
[語源: 信頼してsecret(秘密)を任せられる人]
☝️stateは「州」と「国」どちらにも使われる
overturn 覆す、転覆させる
☝️シンプルにひっくり返す、の意味でも
vaguely あいまいに
[対義語: clearly(明確に)]
criminal offense 刑事犯罪
hourlong 一時間にわたる
☝️yearlong(一年間にわたる)
false 偽りの (10/6)
conspiracy 陰謀
[語源: con+spire(一緒に+息をする)]
end up 最後に〜となって終わる
☝️~ up(〜し尽くす): eat up, clean up
＜Pickup Vocabs 2＞
acquired 入手する
prosecuted 起訴される
☝️process(プロセス)を進める
bidding 命令
☝️bid(告げる)
You know, わかるでしょう
cajole 甘言でつる
bully いじめる、脅す
☝️動詞でも使えます
remarkable 驚くべき
firmly 確固として
☝️物理的にも抽象的にも使える
entreaties 懇願
[語源: en(入る)+treat(交渉に)]
standing by 守っている
☝️信念や決まりなどを守る、の意
1/6(水)の放送
Indiana to Host Entire 2021 NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament
著者：Gillian R. Brassil
(c) 2021 The New York Times Company
The NCAA, in an attempt to limit the threat of coronavirus among teams, announced an agreement Monday to hold its signature men’s basketball tournament entirely in Indiana in March and early April.
The tournament consists of 67 games and is usually held at sites across the United States, culminating with the Final Four in one city in April. This year’s Final Four — the tournament’s semifinals and final — was already scheduled for Indianapolis before the pandemic widely shut down American sports last year.
The NCAA, which has its headquarters in Indianapolis, said the tournament would play out across six venues, detailing a plan it announced in November. The teams are scheduled to be selected on March 14, but the early rounds of the tournament have not been fully scheduled. With fewer courts, it will require some juggling to fit in all the games and practices.
While most games will be in Indianapolis, some will be held in Bloomington and West Lafayette.
The NCAA is working with health officials in Marion County, where Indianapolis is, to determine safety protocols and to facilitate coronavirus testing throughout the tournament. Indiana has had a 17% decrease in new cases of the virus in the past two weeks, according to a New York Times database.
A limited number of family members of participants will be allowed at games, according to the announcement. But the organization said officials would decide later whether to allow other spectators.
Teams will practice in the Indiana Convention Center and stay in hotels connected to it, with teams separated by hotel floors, unique dining and meeting rooms and “secure transportation to and from competition venues,” the NCAA said.
The 2021 women’s tournament is also set to play in one, centralized region, with the NCAA announcing in December that it was in preliminary discussions with officials in the San Antonio area to host it. As of Monday, the committee in charge of the women’s tournament was still in talks with those officials.
attempt 試み
signature 特徴的な
entirely 完全に、全ての
venues 会場
detailing 詳細が記された
juggling やりくりする、調整する
determine 決定する
facilitate 促進する
spectators 観客
unique 独自の
1/7(木)の放送
Hundreds of Google Employees Unionize, Culminating Years of Activism
著者：Kate Conger
(c) 2021 The New York Times Company
More than 400 Google engineers and other workers have formed a union, the group revealed Monday, capping years of growing activism at one of the world’s largest companies and presenting a rare beachhead for labor organizers in staunchly anti-union Silicon Valley.
The union’s creation is highly unusual for the tech industry, which has long resisted efforts to organize its largely white-collar workforce. It follows increasing demands by employees at Google for policy overhauls on pay, harassment and ethics, and is likely to escalate tensions with top leadership.
The new union, called the Alphabet Workers Union after Google’s parent company, Alphabet, was organized in secret for the better part of a year and elected its leadership last month. The group is affiliated with the Communications Workers of America, a union that represents workers in telecommunications and media in the United States and Canada.
But unlike a traditional union, which demands that an employer come to the bargaining table to agree on a contract, the Alphabet Workers Union is a so-called minority union that represents a fraction of the company’s more than 260,000 full-time employees and contractors. Workers said it was primarily an effort to give structure and longevity to activism at Google, rather than to negotiate for a contract.
Chewy Shaw, an engineer at Google in the San Francisco Bay Area and the vice chair of the union’s leadership council, said the union was a necessary tool to sustain pressure on management so that workers could force changes on workplace issues.
“Our goals go beyond the workplace questions of, ‘Are people getting paid enough?’ Our issues are going much broader,” he said.
In response, Kara Silverstein, Google’s director of people operations, said: “We’ve always worked hard to create a supportive and rewarding workplace for our workforce. Of course, our employees have protected labor rights that we support. But as we’ve always done, we’ll continue engaging directly with all our employees.”
The Alphabet Workers Union, which represents employees in Silicon Valley and cities like Cambridge, Massachusetts, and Seattle, gives protection and resources to workers who join. Those who opt to become members will contribute 1% of their total compensation to the union to fund its efforts.
Although they will not be able to negotiate a contract, the Alphabet Workers Union can use other tactics to pressure Google into changing its policies, labor experts said. Minority unions often turn to public pressure campaigns and lobby legislative or regulatory bodies to influence employers.
Culminating 最高点に達する、ついに～する
beachhead 出発点，足がかり
staunchly 忠実に、断固として
the better part of a year 1年の大半
affiliated with ～傘下である、～に加盟している
so-called いわゆる、名ばかりの、なんちゃって
a fraction of 一部分の、わずかな
broader 幅の広い、 広範囲な
1/8(金)の放送
Twitter Locks Trump’s Account After Violence on Capitol Hill
著者：Kate Conger, Mike Isaac and Sheera Frenkel
(c) 2021 The New York Times Company
Twitter on Wednesday locked the account of President Donald Trump, which prevents him from posting messages to his more than 88 million followers, after a day of violence in the nation’s capital and a string of inaccurate and inflammatory posts from the president.
The move was an unprecedented rebuke of Trump by Twitter, which has long been a preferred megaphone for the president. Twitter said Trump’s account would remain locked for 12 hours and the ban could be extended if Trump did not agree to delete several tweets that rejected the election results and appeared to incite violence. The company also said it would permanently suspend Trump’s account if he continued to violate its policies against violent threats and election misinformation.
Twitter’s action followed a torrent of criticism aimed at social media companies for their role in spreading misinformation and being a bullhorn for Trump as a pro-Trump mob stormed the Capitol building on Wednesday and halted the certification of Electoral College votes.
On Twitter, users had called for the company’s chief executive, Jack Dorsey, to take down Trump’s account. Civil rights groups weighed in, saying action by social media companies against calls for political violence was “long overdue.” And even venture capitalists who had reaped riches from investing in social media urged Twitter and Facebook to do more.
“For four years you’ve rationalized this terror. Inciting violent treason is not a free speech exercise,” Chris Sacca, a tech investor who had invested in Twitter, wrote to Dorsey and Facebook’s chief executive, Mark Zuckerberg. “If you work at those companies, it’s on you too. Shut it down.”
Twitter, Facebook and others had long resisted cracking down on Trump’s posts and other toxic content. While the platforms had started taking more steps against political misinformation in the months before the election, they declined to remove Trump’s posts and instead took half steps, such as labeling his posts.
So when violence broke out in Washington on Wednesday, it was, in the minds of longtime critics, the day the chickens came home to roost for the social media companies. After the onslaught of questions began, Twitter and Facebook started proactively removing several of Trump’s posts from their sites, including one where the president falsely said that “a sacred landslide election victory” had been “unceremoniously & viciously stripped away.”
Capitol Hill 議会議事堂
a string of 一連の〜／次々と来る〜
inflammatory 扇動的な／激昂させる
rebuke 叱責／譴責
megaphone メガホン／拡声器
venture capitalist ベンチャーキャピタリスト／投資資本家
reap 得る／収穫する
urge 促す／催促する
crack down on 〜を取り締まる／鉄槌を下ろす
toxic 有害な／有毒な
the chickens come home to roost 因果応報／自業自得
