レアジョブ英会話 Daily News Article Podcast

Two years ago, Josephine Timperman arrived at college with a plan. She declared a major in business analytics, figuring she'd learn niche skills that would stand out on a resume and help land a good job after college.

But the rise of artificial intelligence has scrambled those calculations. The basic skills she was learning in things like statistical analysis and coding can now easily be automated. Everyone has a fear that entry-level jobs will be taken by AI, said the 20-year-old at Miami University in Ohio.

Several weeks ago, Timperman switched her major to marketing. Her new strategy is to use her undergraduate studies to build critical thinking and interpersonal skills—areas where humans still have an edge.

You don't just want to be able to code. You want to be able to have a conversation, form relationships, and be able to think critically, because at the end of the day, that's the thing that AI can't replace, said Timperman, who is keeping analytics as a minor and plans to dive deeper into the subject for a one-year master's program.

Today's college students say that picking a major that's AI-proof feels like shooting at a moving target as they prepare for a job market that could be fundamentally different by the time they graduate.

As a result, many are reconsidering their career paths. About 70% of college students see AI as a threat to their job prospects, according to a 2025 poll by the Institute of Politics at the Harvard Kennedy School, while recent polling by Gallup, a US-based research company, finds that American workers are increasingly concerned about being replaced by new technologies.

The uncertainty appears most concentrated among those pursuing degrees in technology and vocational areas of study, where students feel a need to develop expertise in AI but also fear being replaced by it. Meanwhile, students studying healthcare and natural sciences may be less impacted by AI overhauls, Gallup found.

This article was provided by The Associated Press.

Australia has proposed taxing digital giants Meta, Google, and TikTok on a part of their revenue to pay for news reporters. In April, the government released the draft legislation it intends to introduce to Parliament by July 2 that would create a financial incentive for social media companies to strike deals with news organizations to pay for journalism.

The social media platforms’ criticisms included that the proposal was a “digital services tax” that misunderstood the evolving advertising industry and would fail to deliver a sustainable news sector.

Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said a monetary value needed to be attached to journalists’ work. “It shouldn't just be able to be taken by a large multinational corporation and used to generate profits for that organization with no compensation appropriate for the people who produce that creative content,” Albanese told reporters. “We think that investment in journalism is critical to a healthy democracy,” he added.

It's Australia’s second legislative attempt to make the platforms pay for the Australian news text and images that their users view. Digital platforms had been pressured to strike deals with Australian news publishers to pay for journalism by legislation passed in 2021 that created the country's News Media Bargaining Code.

The platforms chose to reach commercial deals with news creators rather than be forced into arbitration and have a judge set the price. But they have since avoided renewing those deals by removing news from their services.

The proposed News Bargaining Incentive would charge a 2.25% tax on the Australian revenue of major platforms that choose not to strike commercial deals with news publishers. The platforms would be given offsets, and their overall costs would be lowered if they agree to pay publishers for journalism, the government said.

The government expects the incentive would raise between 200 and 250 million Australian dollars ($144 and $179 million) a year. That was about as much as the platforms paid news outlets when the News Media Bargaining Code was working at its peak.

The government would distribute that income among news organizations based on how many journalists each organization employed, Communication Minister Anika Wells said.

This article was provided by The Associated Press.

Andrea Bunar had been waiting for months for the arrival of spring and the day she could finally deliver the mail by barge again through the narrow waterways of the Spreewald Forest delta southeast of Berlin. Several weeks ago, the 55-year-old German postal worker stood at the back of her boat again, using one long oar to row, steer, and navigate her boat through the shallow waters.

The start of the season is always special for me, said Bunar, as she embarked on the yellow barge in her postal worker uniform. After the long winter break, I enjoy being in the nature and back on the water.

Bunar has been delivering mail and packages to the villagers of Lehde, which is located about 100 kilometers (around 60 miles) southeast of Berlin, for 14 years.

During the winter, she brings the mail by car to farms and homes, but it's often cumbersome as roads are icy, and it takes much longer than in the summer. From April to October, she's back on her nine-meter-long (29-foot-long) barge and just drops off the mail Monday through Saturday in the mailboxes that the residents of Lehde have put up right on the banks of the river.

She also sells stamps to the residents living along the remote route, and they can send their own mail with her.

The Spreewald is famous for its network of 300 kilometers (about 185 miles) of waterways, many of them leading through lush forests and wetlands. As an inland delta, the Spree River, which also runs through Berlin, branches into hundreds of small canals in the forest. It was also designated a UNESCO biosphere to protect its ecosystem, including the region's diverse flora and fauna.

Lehde is the only place in Germany where the mail is delivered by boat. In fact, the village has been getting its mail for 129 years by boat.

This article was provided by The Associated Press.

Uber is expanding into a different side of the travel business: hotels.

The ride-hailing and delivery company said that users of its app can now book hotel rooms. Uber is using hotel listings provided by Expedia Group, a booking service that works with 700,000 hotels and other properties globally. More than 1 million vacation rentals from Vrbo–which is owned by Seattle-based Expedia–will be added to the app later this year, the company said.

Sachin Kansal, Uber's chief product officer, said hotel booking is a big step toward San Francisco-based Uber's goal of becoming an everything app that serves many customer needs. Uber, which was founded in 2009, launched Uber Eats for restaurant deliveries in 2015 and expanded with grocery deliveries in 2020.

“Consumers are spending too much time coordinating their life, using multiple apps. AI is in the air, and they're all trying to figure out, ‘How does AI help me or does it not help me?’” Kansal told The Associated Press. “Our goal with these announcements is to bring everything into one app, to help them save time, and to also help them save money.”

Any Uber app user will be able to make hotel reservations. But Uber One members, who pay $9.99 per month for zero delivery fees and other perks, will get a 20% discount off a rolling list of 10,000 hotels plus 10% back in Uber credits they can use to book rides, Kansal said.

Kansal said Uber evaluated multiple partners before partnering with Expedia. Uber then spent months integrating Expedia's technology into its own app. Kansal wouldn't share the financial terms behind the partnership.

They're very excited because Uber brings a certain user base that is very travel-friendly, Kansal said. So I would say it's going to be mutually beneficial for both the parties.

Travel is a big part of Uber users' lives, he said. More than 100 million people use Uber to get to or from an airport each year. And last year, more than 1.5 billion Uber trips took place outside of a rider's home city.

This article was provided by The Associated Press.

It’s not every day—or even every decade—that voters are presented a decision like this: Should the state's individual income tax be eliminated?

When that question appears on a Missouri ballot later this year, it will mark the first time since the modern income tax began over a century ago that a U.S. state legislature has asked voters whether to eliminate the tax. If they say yes, they will also be authorizing a sales tax expansion.

Missouri's unique proposal caps a five-year tax-cutting binge in states that flourished while governments were flush with cash during the recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic and only recently abated as some Democratic-led states embraced higher tax rates on millionaires. During that time, almost every state made either permanent or temporary reductions to some type of tax, whether on income, sales, property, or gas. And more than half the states that levy income taxes reduced their top tax rate.

Those tax cuts were seldom offset by increasing other types of taxes. But Missouri's new measure implicitly acknowledges that it's hard to eliminate an income tax without raising other revenues to keep government running.

Congress gained the power to tax income with the ratification of the 16th Amendment in 1913. Many states adopted their own income taxes over the ensuing years, including Missouri in 1917.

But some states—Florida, Nevada, South Dakota, Texas, and Wyoming—never adopted an individual income tax, instead relying on sales taxes, oil taxes, or other sources. New Hampshire and Tennessee, which taxed income from interest and dividends but not wages, each ended those taxes within the past five years.

Missouri's proposed constitutional amendment directs the General Assembly to eliminate the individual income tax through gradual reductions based on revenue growth. To spur that along, it gives lawmakers the authority to raise revenues by imposing the sales tax on any goods and services—sidestepping a constitutional ban on expanding the sales tax base that voters approved in 2016.

The legislature would have five years to decide which additional sales to tax without needing another vote of the people.

This article was provided by The Associated Press.

Inside workshops, watchmakers assemble movements by hand, working with components often smaller than a millimeter, where tolerances are measured in microns.

It's this level of skilled, painstaking craftsmanship that has defined Switzerland as a global hub for luxury watchmaking.

Much of the value in high-end mechanical watches comes from what are known as complications, additional functions built into the movement beyond telling the time. These include chronographs, which measure elapsed time, perpetual calendars that automatically adjust for different month lengths and leap years, and tourbillons, which are a rotating mechanism designed to improve accuracy by counteracting the effects of gravity.

The most complex watches can combine several of these functions into a single mechanism, sometimes made up of hundreds or even thousands of individual parts.

The foundations of this industry date back several centuries, developing into a decentralized system across Switzerland.

Watch journalist and collector Robert Jan Broer explains how that system evolved.

“Switzerland is the heart of watchmaking basically, and what happened is that there were a lot of farmers in Switzerland, and during summer they were farmers, but in the winter they had to find different things, so they started making little parts of watches and clocks and become suppliers to watch brands that basically collected all these parts from different farmers or watchmakers or watch part makers in Switzerland and put them together and then sell them worldwide.”

What Broer is describing began in Geneva in the mid-1500s, when strict religious rules limited the wearing of jewelry, pushing skilled metalworkers to focus on watches instead.

Over time, watchmaking spread beyond the city into rural areas, where people began producing small parts at home during the winter months, when farming work slowed down.

Those individual parts were then brought together by watchmakers, who assembled complete watches and sold them.

By the 1700s, this system had grown into a structured industry, with different areas specializing in different parts of the process, some focused on making springs, others on cases, and others on assembling and finishing the final watch.

This article was provided by The Associated Press.

Record growth in solar, especially in China and India, was a driving factor for clean energy sources surpassing the world’s strong demand for electricity in 2025, according to a new global power analysis.

Clean power generation grew 887 terawatt hours last year, exceeding overall global electricity demand growth of 849 terawatt hours, according to a report by energy think tank Ember.

Ember analyzes electricity data from 215 countries, and studied 2025 data for 91 countries, which the firm says represents 93% of global demand.

Overall, the share of renewables—including solar, wind, hydropower, and other clean energies—hit more than one-third of the world's electricity mix for the first time in modern history last year, growing 33.8% to 10,730 terawatt hours.

It’s promising news for a world embattled by climate change that’s driven by the burning of fossil fuels such as coal, oil, and gas to meet growing needs from economic growth, rising populations, and electrification. The analysis is also especially timely amid a global energy crisis exacerbated by the U.S. war in Iran.

In another historical first, coal power saw its share fall below one-third of global generation, dropping 0.6% to 63 terawatt hours.

“We’re coming from a period over the last few decades where new electricity demand growth meant growth in fossil generation,” said Nicolas Fulghum, Ember senior data analyst and lead author of the report. “We’re now moving into a world where that’s no longer the case.”

Solar, which grew 30% in 2025, alone met three-quarters of last year's net rise in electricity demand—and combined with wind power generation, met 99% of it.

Though solar overtook wind power globally for the first time last year, and gained on nuclear power, Ember expects the two to overtake nuclear this year.

Meanwhile, fossil fuel generation essentially halted, and fell about 0.2% in 2025, or 38 terawatt hours—making last year one of only a handful of years without a rise this century.

This article was provided by The Associated Press.

It's always been challenging for Abbas Awad to find medicines in his village outside Sudan's capital. But since the war in Iran, it's become harder. Prices have spiked, and many pharmacies in the area are out of stock.

The latest war in the Middle East has far-reaching effects, including on countries ravaged by conflicts of their own. After three years of war in Sudan, a public health clinic in Qoz Nafisa village in Khartoum state is struggling to support thousands of people like the 61-year-old Awad.

He said he has been spacing out his medicine for glaucoma, worried he won't be able to find more or afford it when he does. Money was already an issue because of the war at home, he said.

Now we have the problem of the war in the Middle East. It's just made things worse, he said.

Aid groups say the Iran war has cut off vital shipping routes, upending their ability to get food and medicine to millions of people around the world in need. The standoff between the United States and Iran has essentially shut down the Strait of Hormuz, and other routes from strategic hubs such as Dubai have also been impacted.

Transport costs have spiked with higher fuel and insurance rates, further straining the ability to deliver supplies. The United Nations says there's been up to a 20% cost increase on shipments, along with delays, as goods are rerouted.

The International Rescue Committee (IRC), which supports the clinic where Awad gets some of his medicines, said about $130,000 worth of pharmaceuticals intended for Sudan were stranded in Dubai for weeks and are only now making their way there.

The IRC says medicines and supplies such as antibiotics, painkillers, and stethoscopes that were supposed to be flown from the United Arab Emirates to Port Sudan were instead transported by road to neighboring Oman and then flown out.

There's still a real lag in the system. Shipments remain blocked or delayed, and that's deeply worrying, said Madiha Raza, associate director for global public affairs and communications for IRC.

This article was provided by The Associated Press.

There’s a surprising amount of science in a bag of potato chips. Whether you call them chips, as in the U.S., or crisps, as in the UK, this fast food is a staple of grocery stores.

Michigan is a leading producer. Around 70% of the state’s potato crop is destined for chip processing, according to the Michigan Ag Council, a trade group. It estimates that one of every four bags of potato chips produced in the U.S. contains Michigan potatoes.

Researchers in the state have spent decades developing ideal potatoes for chip makers that can resist diseases, tolerate different climates, and sit in storage for months. They've also kept an eye on consumer trends; a shift to snack-size portions has raised demand for smaller chipping potatoes, for example.

Phil Gusmano, Vice President at Better Made Snack Foods, says their collaboration with scientists from Michigan State University has proved profitable. “If you look at Michigan State University, they are willing to take the information that we give them on what makes a great variety and use it to help breed new varieties that meet those needs.”

“We’ve been able to develop varieties that really are now stored longer, have a higher starch content, have the disease resistance that the farmers need,” says David Douches, Michigan State University's potato expert and leader of the school’s Potato Breeding and Genetics Program.

There are around 50 unique potato varieties grown for chips in the U.S. right now. That’s according to the National Chip Program, a cooperative that brings together Michigan State and 11 other university breeding programs with government, growers, and chip producers.

The close partnership between researchers, farmers, and chip makers is unusual in the food industry, says Gusmano.

Douches has released five new potato varieties over the last 15 years. His latest breakthrough—which is not yet on the market—is a bioengineered potato that can maintain a proper sugar balance even if it's stored in colder temperatures. Douches is currently growing seeds for commercial testing of the potato, which is scheduled to begin next year.

This article was provided by The Associated Press.

Englishman Ollie Jenks remembers when his friend first pitched the idea to him. The proposal by his Canadian buddy Seth Scott, a fellow lover of cars and crazy adventures, was for them to drive a decades-old British-made Reliant Robin car from London to the southern tip of Africa—a 14,000-mile (22,500-kilometer) journey through 22 countries—to set a record for the longest trip in a three-wheeled vehicle.

Reliant Robins have cultlike status in the U.K. as humble three-wheelers that, in Jenks' words, were designed to go to the shops and back in 1970s Britain. They went out of production in the early 2000s but remain loved in British culture, especially after a Reliant appeared as the Trotter brothers' trusty but battered yellow van in the hugely popular sitcom Only Fools and Horses.

Yet you couldn't find a less suitable vehicle to take thousands of miles through tropical jungles, mountain ranges, and deserts down the west side of Africa. And that's precisely why Jenks went for the absurd plan.

Sheila, the silver three-wheeler—one of the last Reliant Robins to be built—was acquired specifically for the adventure. Jenks and Scott set off in October with a can of fuel and a few essential supplies strapped to Sheila's small roof, and a large amount of blind hope that they would somehow make it to Cape Town, South Africa, near the bottom of the world.

No power steering, no air con, and it doesn't do well up hills or down them. It is the most unsuitable car for probably any journey, Jenks said in an unkind assessment of Sheila's abilities. We made friends with the designer of this car, and he's scared to take it any more than 20 miles.

Jenks and Scott ignored all the advice and took Sheila on the epic journey over four and a half months that cost in the region of $40,000 to $50,000, Jenks said. They had help from sponsors and crowdfunding, and documented the journey on an Instagram page that pulled in nearly 100,000 followers under the title: 14,000 miles, 3 wheels, 0 common sense.

This article was provided by The Associated Press.