レアジョブ英会話 Daily News Article Podcast

An American father and son convicted in Japan on charges of helping Nissan former Chairman Carlos Ghosn escape to Lebanon, hiding in a box, have been returned to the U.S., their lawyer said. Michael Taylor, a former Green Beret, was sentenced in July last year in Tokyo District Court to two years in prison, while his son Peter Taylor was sentenced to one year and eight months. They were convicted of helping a criminal for their involvement in the December 2019 escape of Ghosn, who had been awaiting trial on various financial misconduct charges, including under-reporting his compensation. The Taylors...

The Earthshot Prize, founded by Britain’s Prince William to honor groundbreaking solutions to environmental issues, broadcasted its second ceremony on PBS and the BBC. William, who launched the global prize with The Royal Foundation, joined the event filmed on Dec. 2 in Boston and aired Dec. 4 on Britain’s BBC. On Dec. 5, it streamed on PBS.org, the PBS app and PBS YouTube channel, and on The Earthshot Prize YouTube channel. PBS stations will also air the ceremony on Dec. 14. In a statement, BBC executive Jack Bootle said last year’s inaugural ceremony included “big-name stars and brilliant musical acts. This yea...

The European Commission has authorized the world's first one-dose drug against a respiratory virus that sickens millions of babies and children globally every year. In a statement, drugmakers Sanofi and AstraZeneca said the European Commission had given the green light to nirsevimab, a laboratory-developed antibody designed to protect infants during their first exposure to RSV, or respiratory syncytial virus, a highly contagious common infection that infects nearly all babies by age 2. At the moment, babies at high risk of the disease can be given monthly shots to protect them during RSV season. In September, the European Medicines Agency recommended that...

Sony said its quarterly profit through September rose 24% on healthy demand for its music and movies, prompting the Japanese entertainment and electronics giant to raise its annual sales and profit forecasts. Tokyo-based Sony’s July-September profit totaled 264 billion yen, or $1.8 billion, up from 213 billion yen in the previous year. Entertainment companies have tended to thrive during the pandemic, as people stuck at home turned to games and movies. Sony makes PlayStation video game consoles and also offers online gaming. Sony shipped 3.3 million PlayStation 5 game consoles during the second quarter of the April-March fiscal year. Although Sony's games business quarterly sales ro...

The International Committee of the Red Cross said it is seeking support to create a “digital red cross/red crescent emblem” that would make clear to military and other hackers that they have entered the computer systems of medical facilities or Red Cross offices. The Geneva-based humanitarian organization said it was calling on governments, Red Cross and Red Crescent societies, and IT experts to join forces in developing “concrete ways to protect medical and humanitarian services from digital harm during armed conflict.” For over 150 years, symbols such as the red cross have been used to make clear that “in times of armed c...

British Columbia's government will not support Vancouver's bid to hold the 2030 Olympics in the province, a move that places Salt Lake City closer to bringing the Games back to Utah. BC’s minister of tourism, arts, culture and sports said that the cost of staging an Olympics was the main reason the government could not support the effort. “The current bid has an estimated cost of $1.2 billion and $1 billion in additional risk, and when we measured that against our government’s priorities, we believe we need to focus on people,” Lisa Beare said. Canada's Olympic committee said it was “taking time to pr...

A Missouri jury has convicted a father and son for attacking a Pokemon Go rival in a dispute that ended with all three men in a lake. The St. Louis County jury found Robert Matteuzzi, 75, and Angelo Matteuzzi, 33, guilty of third-degree assault. Jurors recommended a sentence of three days in jail and a fine for the father, and only a fine for the son. Pokemon Go is an augmented reality video game in which players walk around outside hunting for animated monsters on their phones. In June 2018, the Matteuzzis were on one team and the victim was on another. Both...

The amount of income tax money owed but not paid to the IRS is projected to grow, the agency said. For tax years 2014 through 2016, the estimated gross “tax gap” rose to $496 billion a year, an increase of more than $58 billion from prior estimates. IRS data released in October projects that for 2017 to 2019, the estimated average gross tax gap will be $540 billion per year. Ensuring that people actually pay their taxes is one of the tax collection agency's biggest challenges. “The vast majority of taxpayers strive to pay what they owe on time,” IRS Commissioner Chuck Rettig said in a statement. “Those who...

A woman who was arrested for feeding homeless people in northwest Arizona is suing over a local ordinance that regulates food-sharing events in public parks. Norma Thornton, 78, became the first person arrested under Bullhead City’s ordinance in March for distributing prepared food from a van at Bullhead Community Park. Her lawyer said the lawsuit is part of a nationwide effort to let people feed those in need. Criminal charges against Thornton were eventually dropped, but she’s seeking an injunction to stop the city from enforcing the ordinance that took effect in May 2021. “Bullhead City has criminalized kindness,” Thornton’s attorney...

Hold off before throwing that porch pumpkin into the trash along with Halloween candy wrappers. Those jack-o’-lanterns don’t have to end up in the local landfill. Consider composting pumpkins in the garden, donating them to community gardens, farms or even a zoo, or simply leaving them as a snack for backyard wildlife. Gardeners can add pumpkins to the compost pile after removing any remaining seeds and being sure to cut off decorative material such as glitter, paint, stickers and candle wax. Slice the pumpkin into smaller pieces, scatter and bury them into the pile. And don’t worry if the...

General Motors said that it has secured all of the renewable energy it needs to power all of its U.S. facilities by 2025, 25 years ahead of earlier projections. The Detroit automaker, which initially targeted the year 2050 to achieve its all-renewables goal, said it secured sourcing agreements from 16 renewable energy plants across 10 states. In early 2021, GM moved up its all-renewables target date to 2030, then advanced that goal by five years in October. The five-year difference will help erase an estimated 1 million metric tons of carbon emissions, equal to the emissions produced by burning 1 billion pounds of coal, GM said. “We believe it...

A South Florida village commissioner and former beauty queen has been sentenced to a year of probation and 50 hours of community service for pretending to be a paralegal to get into a federal immigration detention center to see her romantic partner. Julianna Clare Strout, 36, was sentenced in Miami federal court after pleading guilty to misdemeanor charges of attempting to enter, and entering, a federal facility using fraud and false pretenses, according to court records. Strout was elected to the North Bay Village Commission in 2018. Her term ends in November, and she isn’t running for re-election. North Bay Village covers tw...

If you're thinking of wiping down your kitchen with that bottle of Pine-Sol all-purpose cleaner under your sink — stop. It may contain bacteria that could cause serious illness in people with compromised immune systems. The Clorox Company said it has recalled its scented multi-surface cleaners and all-purpose cleaners. The recall doesn’t include its iconic original pine-scented Pine-Sol, which is its only product registered as a disinfectant. The products recalled by the Oakland, California-based company also include scented CloroxPro Pine-Sol All Purpose Cleaners and Clorox Professional Pine-Sol Lemon Fresh Cleaners, the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission said in a stat...

A pair of giant pandas sent as a gift from China arrived in Qatar on Oct. 19 a month ahead of the World Cup. They are taking up residence in an indoor enclosure in the desert nation designed to duplicate conditions in the dense forests of China’s mountainous Sichuan province. Eight hundred kilograms (nearly 1,800 pounds) of fresh bamboo is being flown in each week to feed them. Jing Jing, a 4-year-old male weighing 120 kilograms (265 pounds), has been given the Arabic name Suhail, and 3-year-old female Si Hai, at 70 kilograms (154 pounds), has been given the Arabic name Thuraya. The pandas were qu...

The worst-of-the-worst nursing homes will face tougher penalties if conditions don’t improve at their facilities, the Biden administration announced. The intensified scrutiny on some nursing homes, where more than a million people are housed, comes nearly two years after COVID-19 exposed subpar care and extreme staffing shortages that had long festered in the facilities. Nursing home residents have been significantly more likely to die from COVID-19; as of February, more than 200,000 nursing home staffers or residents had died from the virus. President Joe Biden had promised during his State of the Union address in February to overhaul the nation’s nu...

Medical regulatory inspectors in Mexico have earned such a reputation for corruption that starting Oct. 23, they have been required to wear body cameras to guard against improper conduct. The federal health regulation agency rolled out the first body cameras in the Gulf coast state of Campeche.  The agency — known as the Federal Commission for the Prevention of Health Risks — has been so riddled with corruption in the past that employees would physically hide applications for the approval of new drugs unless pharmaceutical firms paid bribes to get their medicines approved. At one point earlier this year, corruption — allegedly including employees demandi...

A computer hacker who stole unreleased songs from British pop star Ed Sheeran and American rap artist Lil Uzi Vert has been sentenced to 18 months in prison, U.K. prosecutors said. Adrian Kwiatkowski, 23, of Ipswich in southern England, hacked the artists’ cloud-based accounts and sold their songs on the dark web in exchange for cryptocurrency. City of London Police, which investigated the case, said Kwiatkowski made 131,000 pounds ($147,000) on the transactions. “Kwiatkowski had complete disregard for the musicians’ creativity and hard work producing original songs and the subsequent loss of earnings,’’ said Joanne Jakymec of the Crown Prosecution Service. “He selfishly stole their...

French President Emmanuel Macron vowed to implement a pension reform that would eventually push up the retirement age by three years to 65, making younger generations work longer. In an interview on France 2 television, Macron said the changes would start being applied next year. “There’s only one way to do it if we are lucid. Since we are living longer, it’s to work longer," he said. The minimum retirement age to get a full pension would be gradually increased from 62 now to 65 by 2031, he said. Yet Macron said he is “open” to discussing the retirement age with unions and making pot...

The bleating and bells of some 1,200 sheep and 200 goats took over downtown Madrid on the morning of October 23 as part of a festival that recreates the pastoral practice of moving livestock to new grazing grounds. Shepherds herded the animals through the paved streets of the Spanish capital while reenacting what their ancestors did for centuries: move flocks from cool highlands in the summer to lowland winter pastures. Madrid, Spain's lively capital city, has always been part of the 125,000-kilometer (78,000-mile) grid of farming paths that cover the Iberian Peninsula. As part of the Transhumance Festival, organizers make a symbolic payment...

Three hecklers were hustled off “The View” set after disrupting a live television interview of U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz with what appeared to be a climate change protest. Two women began shouting “Cover climate now” while the Texas Republican was answering a question. He briefly paused, smiled and then continued talking as the women shouted, most of it indecipherable to a television audience. “Ladies, ladies, excuse us,” host Whoopi Goldberg said when Cruz stopped. “Let us do our job. We hear what you have to say but you've got to go.” The shouting ended after less than a minute after the women...

The company that assembles smartphones for Apple Inc. and other global brands unveiled an electric SUV on Oct. 18 that will be produced for a Taiwanese automaker under a similar contract model. Foxconn Technology Group said the SUV will be sold by Yulon Motor as the Luxgen n7 starting next year. It said the five-seat vehicle should be able to travel 700 kilometers (440 miles) on one charge. No price was announced. Foxconn, also known as Hon Hai Precision Industry Co., plans to produce electric cars and buses for brands in China, North America, Europe and other markets. It said clients can modify...

Take note: The Utah Jazz evidently need a new hashtag. The team's long-used hashtag — #TakeNote — was used by Apple CEO Tim Cook in a tweet, accompanied by an Apple logo emoji. It raises questions about how the phrase will be used in the team's marketing plans going forward. “That was weird. I saw that when you all did,” Jazz owner Ryan Smith said at a Salt Lake City news conference unrelated to hashtag matters. “Got to look into it." Cook and Smith are friends; Cook has even sat courtside with Smith for at least one Jazz game. Apple Inc. unveiled the latest...

The Biden administration said that the COVID-19 public health emergency will continue through Jan. 11 as officials brace for a spike in cases this winter. The decision comes as the pandemic has faded from the forefront of many people's minds. Daily deaths and infections are dropping and people — many of them maskless — are returning to schools, work and grocery stores as normal. The public health emergency, first declared in January 2020 and renewed every 90 days since, has dramatically changed how health services are delivered. The declaration enabled the emergency authorization of COVID vaccines, testing and treatments for free. It expanded Medicaid coverage to m...

Turkey’s main opposition party applied to the country’s supreme court seeking a suspension of the enforcement of a newly-approved media law that mandates prison terms for people deemed to be spreading “disinformation.” Parliament approved a 40-article legislation that amends press and social media laws with the stated aim of combating fake news. Critics fear that the measure will be used to further crack down on social media and independent reporting as the country heads toward elections. The legislation, which was approved with the votes of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s ruling party and its nationalist allies, came into effect wit...

Why is it so hard to build a metaverse avatar — a visual representation of ourselves in the digital world — that walks on two legs? “I think everyone has been waiting for this,” said a cartoonish digital version of Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, unveiling his new avatar legs and jumping up and down at a virtual-reality event. “But seriously, legs are hard. Which is why other virtual reality systems don’t have them either.” Early avatar models introduced by Meta, as well as Microsoft, have been ridiculed for appearing as legless, waist-up bodies floating around their virtual worlds. That's in part because tech c...

Germany wants to introduce a public transit pass that costs 49 euros ($47) a month and will be valid nationwide — if officials can agree on the funding. The proposal follows a wildly successful “9-euro ticket,” which was on offer in Germany for three months this summer as part of efforts to help people switch to environmentally friendly transport, reducing gasoline use and helping combat inflation. One of its biggest attractions for users is that it will be valid on all the country’s regional bus, train and tram networks, each of which has myriad fare options that many find baffling to navigate. “With the 9...

More than 1,000 Paddington Bears and other teddies left in tribute to the late Queen Elizabeth II in London and Windsor will be donated to a children's charity, Buckingham Palace said. Mourners left thousands of tributes, including flowers and teddy bears, outside Buckingham Palace and in royal parks in London and outside Windsor Castle in an outpouring of grief after the U.K.'s longest-reigning monarch died on Sept. 8 at age 96. The queen became linked to Paddington Bear, another British national treasure, after the two appeared together in a short comedy video during Platinum Jubilee celebrations earlier this year to mark...

Twins appear to be unusually abundant in Nigeria's southwestern city of Igbo-Ora. Nearly every family here has twins or other multiple births, says local chief Jimoh Titiloye. For the past 12 years, the community has organized an annual festival to celebrate twins. This year’s event, held in October, included more than 1,000 pairs of twins and drew participants from as far away as France, organizers said. There is no proven scientific explanation for the high rate of twins in Igbo-Ora, a city of at least 200,000 people 135 kilometers (83 miles) south of Nigeria’s largest city, Lagos. But many in Igbo-Ora believe it can...

Amazon said it will invest 1 billion euros ($972.1 million) to add thousands of more electric vans, long-haul trucks and cargo bikes to its delivery network in Europe. The investment would grow the number of electric delivery vans the company has in Europe from roughly 3,000 to 10,000 by 2025, the Seattle-based retail giant said in an announcement on its website. With the investment, Amazon is also hoping to purchase more than 1,500 electric trucks, up from five in the United Kingdom. To accommodate those vehicles, the company said it will build hundreds of fast chargers across its European facilities that can charge the vehicles in...

Is it a car? Or a plane? Or a drone? This vehicle-cum-aircraft looks like a larger version of a regular drone. Created by a Chinese company called XPENG AEROHT, this test of the electric flying taxi offers a glimpse into the future, where people may one day soar through over the city to their destination, leaving traffic jams far below. The XPeng X2, developed by the Guangzhou-based XPeng Inc.'s aviation affiliate, is one of dozens of flying car projects around the world. Only a handful have been successfully tested with passengers on board, and it will likely be many...

Lines of shops display neat stacks of willow wood along a nondescript motorway in Indian-controlled Kashmir’s Sangam village. Behind the shops are small manufacturing units, where that willow is hand-made into cricket bats that find their way to India and cricket-playing nations around the world. But in the future, those bats are probably hard to come by. Kashmir’s dwindling willow plantations are impacting the region’s famed cricket bat industry and risking the supply of cricket bats in India, where the sport is hugely followed. The industry employs more than 10,000 people and manufactures nearly a million bats a year...

The NFL Players Association urged the league to implement changes to its concussion protocol to protect players in time for the games on Oct. 23. The players' union wants to strengthen the protocol to avoid a repeat of what happened to Miami Dolphins quarterback Tua Tagovailoa in Week 3 against Buffalo. Tagovailoa was unstable when he walked off the field following a hit and was evaluated for a concussion, but he quickly returned to the game and the Dolphins said a back injury had caused his wobbly gait. Tagovailoa subsequently suffered a concussion four days later at Cincinnati and is out indefinitely. “Ou...

A three-day exhibition kicked off September 26 in the Egyptian coastal city of Alexandria to celebrate the bicentenary of the deciphering of the Egyptian hieroglyphs, which paved the way to unlock the meaning of the writings engraved on the walls of ancient temples and papyri. The exhibition features a replica of the Rosetta Stone, which proved instrumental in deciphering the hieroglyphs. The original Rosetta Stone, discovered by French soldiers in Egypt in 1799, is at the British Museum, where it is one of the highlights on display. The exhibition marking the 200th anniversary of the deciphering of the ancient writing system was...

Facebook parent Meta unveiled a high-end virtual reality headset with the hope that people will soon be using it to work and play in the still-elusive place called the “metaverse." The $1,500 Meta Quest Pro headset sports high-resolution sensors that let people see mixed virtual and augmented reality in full color, as well as eye tracking and so-called “natural facial expressions" that mimic the wearer's facial movements so their avatars appear natural when interacting with other avatars in virtual-reality environments. Formerly known as Facebook, Meta is in the midst of a corporate transformation that it says will take years to complete. It w...

A 31-year-old surfer in Northern California is recovering after a shark attack that left gruesome bites on his right thigh and leg. Jared Trainor was unclear whether a seal or shark had knocked him off his board during a Sunday outing to Centerville Beach, he told the Times-Standard newspaper in Humboldt County. The animal had his right leg and his board clamped in its jaws, he said. Underwater, the experienced surfer grabbed the attacker's body with one hand and kicked at its head with his free leg until it let him go and swam away, he said. Trainor returned to...

Binance, the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange, may have lost more than $100 million following a hack of its Binance Smart Chain blockchain network. A reddit post by Binance discussing the incident said that the company temporarily suspended transactions and the transfer of funds after detecting an exploit between two blockchains, a method of digital theft that has been used recently in at least one other major hack. “The issue is contained now. Your funds are safe. We apologize for the inconvenience and will provide further updates accordingly,” CEO Changpeng Zhao said in a tweet. Zhao said the issue took place on the...

Tyson Foods will relocate around 1,000 corporate positions from the Chicago area as well as South Dakota to its headquarters in Springdale, Arkansas. One of the world's largest meat producers said that corporate staff at its Chicago and Downers Grove, Illinois, locations and Dakota Dunes, South Dakota, office will begin relocating early next year. The consolidation of corporate offices is intended to allow for closer collaboration and no layoffs will accompany the shift, the company said. Tyson plans to expand and remodel its headquarters in Arkansas. The parent company of Jimmy Dean and Ball Park products employs about 137,000 workers worldwide. The...

Rebekah Vardy, the wife of English soccer player Jamie Vardy, has to pay about 1.5 million pounds ($1.7 million) in legal costs to fellow soccer spouse Coleen Rooney after losing the high-profile libel lawsuit she brought against Rooney. Vardy, 40, lost her libel claim against Rooney, 36, in July when a judge ruled that a widely circulated social media post Rooney wrote accusing Vardy of leaking her private information to the tabloid press was “substantially true.” In an order made public on Oct. 4, a judge ruled that Vardy should pay 90% of Rooney's legal costs. The case, which mixed social media, an acrimonious celebrity feud and...

The asteroid that got smacked by a NASA spacecraft is now being trailed by thousands of miles of debris from the impact. Astronomers captured the scene millions of miles away with a telescope in Chile. Their remarkable observation two days after last month's planetary defense test was recently released at the National Science Foundation lab in Arizona. The image shows an expanding, comet-like tail more than 6,000 miles (10,000 kilometers) long, consisting of dust and other material spewed from the impact crater. This plume is accelerating away from the harmless asteroid, in large part, because of pressure on it from solar radiation...

Kenya’s new president says the Cabinet has “effectively” lifted the country’s ban on openly cultivating genetically modified crops, reversing a decade-old decision as the East African country struggles with food security and a deadly drought. “Open cultivation and importation of White (GMO) Maize is now authorized,” the presidency statement said, after years of concerns in Kenya and much of the African continent over the safety of genetically modified foods. Earlier this year, the United States via its trade representative’s office criticized Kenya over its ban and the effects on U.S. agricultural exports to East Africa’s commercial hub...