レアジョブ英会話 Daily News Article Podcast

At a gathering in Amsterdam, support for people with neurodegenerative diseases comes in the form of song. The “singing circle” is run by opera singer Maartje de Lint at the landmark concert venue, Concertgebouw. It's aimed at people with what de Lint calls “vulnerable brains,” many of whom have a form of dementia or Parkinson's disease.

“The singing circle is a place for people with a vulnerable brain and their partners or family members. And where we show them in a kind and safe space that there is actually a perspective if you are ill in your brain, if you have challenges in the brain. And the part of music in the brain where we experience music hardly ever gets sick. So, this is our working material,” says de Lint.

Megan Worthy still recalls singing in a choir in Canberra, Australia, as she was growing up. Now, as a rare form of early-onset dementia called posterior cortical atrophy chips away at her vision and other brain functions, the 58-year-old is transported back to her musical youth as she and her daughter, Bronte, sing with the group.

“It’s pretty brutal,” Worthy says of her rare neurological condition. “I’m starting to lose everything, you know, and this is really rewarding, and seeing all these people, yeah, it did make me have a lot of memories.”

Megan's daughter, Bronte Henfling, says that even getting her mother to a new environment that is not a medical appointment feels good. “Just hearing everyone come together and sing ... It reminds us that we’re all human and there’s a humanity out there, which is really pleasing and nice to be a part of.”

The singers, who each pay 20 euros ($23.50) to attend, are arranged in a circle of chairs under a ceiling hung with 14 crystal chandeliers in the venue's ornate Mirror Hall.

The hour-long session clearly has an emotional effect on the singers and their carers.

Helpers regularly hand out paper tissues for people to dab away tears as they sing traditional folk songs.

Neurobiologist Brankele Frank, who is not connected to de Lint's project, agrees that singing could be beneficial to people with dementia and/or other kinds of neurodegenerative diseases.

This article was provided by The Associated Press.

For two hours, Claire Jefferies wanted to get away from the war in Iran and the rising gas prices and just commune with nature. And so, the Raleigh, North Carolina, woman treated herself to a little forest bathing.

The session at the J.C. Raulston Arboretum was led by certified forest therapy guide Shawn Ramsey.

Based on the Japanese wellness practice of Shinrin-yoku, the activity has been known to reduce stress, improve mood, lower blood pressure, and boost the immune system.

Although the arboretum is in a busy section of a growing city, Ramsey said the benefits of tuning out and getting in touch with nature are the same. She led the group of about a dozen through the various gardens, having them do breathing exercises, crush conifer twigs between their fingers, and just touch trees.

Transportation safety researcher Alan Mintz came with a friend. He had to be reminded to leave the talk of news at the entrance.

I think it's important for people to take the opportunity to exist in natural spaces, both to unwind and relax, so that it can be easier to interact with other people, he said as he stood in the dappled light filtering through the trees.

And to take a moment to appreciate beautiful things. That way, hopefully, they can carry that forward and have more of an appreciation for other people and other cultures that they might be less experienced with.

Claire Jefferies, a Human Resources director, sits in the crotch of an oak tree and just reads.

She said nature is like a shield amid today's chaotic news cycle.

That focus back into spending time in nature and the healing power of that, and just remembering that we're part of something bigger, that we're all connected, said the mother of a 9-year-old son.

And that what we do in our actions that we take really matter to the rest of the world. And so there's no better place to see that than here, where you can see all of the interconnectedness and the ways that this plant life naturally supports one another. Doesn't take more than they need.

This article was provided by The Associated Press.

On shelves crammed with cuddly toy native animals in an Australian airport gift shop, one fluffy possum stood out: its big brown eyes were moving. A browsing passenger first spotted a living Australian brushtail possum peering out from among the kangaroos on the display shelf at the departure terminal shop at Hobart Airport in Tasmania state, an airport retail manager, Liam Bloomfield, said.

Above the possum were bilbies, marsupials with rabbit-like long ears, and dingoes, Australia’s native dog. Beside the possum in the kangaroo section were Tasmanian devils, a growling carnivore that inspired the feisty Warner Bros. cartoon character Taz.

“A passenger reported it to …. one of the staff members on shift who couldn’t quite believe what she was hearing,” Bloomfield said. “She then called the (airport) management and said we’ve got a possum in the store.”

A staff member took a video of the possum with her phone before the animal grew wary of the growing attention and left the shop. Airport staff were able to remove the possum from the airport unharmed.

Bloomfield didn’t know what attracted the possum to the toy shelf. “I’m imagining it saw some of the plush animals that were for sale on the shelf, and it decided to make its home with those. It wanted to blend in,” Bloomfield joked.

How the possum got into the store and how long it spent there are also unknown. It was unlikely to have been placed there as a prank. Someone would have had to put the possum through X-ray screening to get it into the secure departure terminal area.

This article was provided by The Associated Press.

When a male bullfinch smashed into Marcin Jarzębski’s apartment window, he took it in but realized it needed expert treatment. So, the next morning, he brought it to Warsaw’s new emergency room for wild birds.

He prepared a shoebox for the tiny, plump bird with a black head, gray back, and reddish chest feathers. Then he took it as one of the first patients to the new drop-off center for sick and injured birds at the entrance of the Warsaw Zoo.

“The bird stayed with us overnight, but unfortunately, it probably has a broken wing, so we brought it to the bird hospital,” Jarzębski said.

The 24/7 emergency room in the Polish capital is actually a system of automated metal containers—something like a parcel room—where the containers can keep the birds warm in winter. The boxes send an immediate signal to the bird hospital just a few meters away, where veterinarians bring the birds for diagnosis and treatment.

Jarzębski filled out a questionnaire and carefully placed the shoebox and the paper form into one of the containers, assured that the bullfinch would now have its best chance of surviving.

The box system, designed based on ideas of the workers at the bird hospital, locks the birds in to keep them safe until a doctor can collect them. The drop-off center, which opened in February, is boosting the efficiency of a bird hospital that has operated at the Warsaw Zoo since 1998 and now treats about 9,000 patients annually.

It’s the brainchild of the zoo director, ornithologist Andrzej Kruszewicz, who said that people have a responsibility to care for creatures whose habitat they have altered, such as that of the bullfinch.

“This bird is a child of the forest who, during migration, didn’t understand the window,” Kruszewicz said.

“Humans often cause problems: car accidents, crashes into windows, electrocutions, tangled strings on storks’ legs,” he said. “All this is humans’ fault, and they should feel responsible to give these birds a second chance.”

Typical patients at the Warsaw Zoo include common songbirds like tits, sparrows, thrushes, and starlings, as well as pigeons.

This article was provided by The Associated Press.

Women baseball players from around the world tossed balls back and forth, sharing laughs and taking pointers from major league coaches. In less than five months, they will play in the first women's professional baseball league in the United States in more than 70 years.

“I never thought this would ever happen for me in my prime career,” said Kelsie Whitmore, a standout pitcher and outfielder who has won multiple medals playing for the U.S. women’s national baseball team. “I never thought it was ever going to happen, truly.”

Reality set in for Whitmore and players from the Women's Pro Baseball League. The upstart league took part in a two-day event in Fort Myers, Florida, at the spring training home of the Boston Red Sox in preparation for the launch of its eight-week season on August 1.

The Red Sox have hosted women's baseball camps for a decade and welcomed several of the WPBL's stars for drills. Among them were veteran Japanese pitcher Ayami Sato and former Little League star Mo'ne Davis.

Davis, who at 13 became the first girl to earn a win and pitch a shutout in the Little League World Series, stayed close to coaches throughout the two-hour session to ask questions and refine her game. She left with plenty of helpful tips, including how to stay low in her hitting stance to generate power through her hips.

“This is another moment that I take when I go back home—what do I need to work on?” Davis said. “For me, specifically, is hitting approach. That’s the one I’m really focusing on because I want to be a better hitter. I want to be a more consistent hitter. ... I appreciate all the coaches that helped today. Whatever question you had, they were open to answering it.”

This article was provided by The Associated Press.

Amazon said that it has started offering faster U.S. deliveries of selected products for a fee, including pantry staples, clothing, over-the-counter medications, cleaning supplies, and electronics.

The announcement comes as Amazon is seeing increased competition from Walmart and is also looking to satisfy shoppers' increasing demands for faster delivery.

The e-commerce colossus said customers in more than 2,000 cities, towns, and suburban areas can now choose to have orders from its speedy-shipment inventory of 90,000 items delivered in three hours. The charge is $4.99 for Amazon Prime members and $14.99 for nonmembers.

One-hour delivery slots are available in hundreds of places, including major metropolitan areas like Los Angeles, Chicago, and Washington, and smaller cities such as Des Moines, Iowa, and Boise, Idaho, the company said. Prime members will get charged $9.99 for the service, which costs non-members $19.99, Amazon said.

The Seattle-based company said it started testing the express delivery service late last year and expanded it in March.

“We saw an opportunity to use our unique operational expertise and delivery network to help make customers’ lives a little easier while unlocking even more value for Prime members,” Udit Madan, senior vice president of worldwide operations at Amazon, said in a statement.

Amazon launched its Prime program in 2005, offering members free two-day delivery on a selection of 1 million items, primarily DVDs, CDs, and books. Prime members now have access to over 300 million items across 35 categories, and tens of millions of products are available for free same-day or next-day deliveries.

The company has used robotics and artificial intelligence technology to speed up order fulfillment. Regionalizing its U.S. delivery network into eight areas also has helped reduce delivery times, Amazon said.

Amazon is testing an ultrafast service for deliveries in 30 minutes or less. Amazon Now is available in various cities in India, Mexico, and the United Arab Emirates and is being tested in several communities in the U.S. and the United Kingdom, according to the company.

This article was provided by The Associated Press.

When COVID-19 wrought havoc on society in early 2020, today's youngest schoolchildren were infants or yet to be born. Now in their early school years, researchers are beginning to see how the pandemic years have shaped their education, even though many had yet to set foot in a classroom when it began.

First- and second-graders continue to perform worse than their pre-pandemic counterparts on math and reading tests, according to a report published by the education assessment and research group NWEA. But while math scores have inched up every year, reading scores remain stagnant, the report shows. The data suggest the slump in academic performance is not rooted only in instructional disruption. Broader societal shifts might be at play.

In the youngest students' failure to recover, “there’s something kind of systemic here happening … within schools and outside of schools,” said Megan Kuhfeld, a researcher at NWEA. “We can’t pinpoint one specific cause.”

The pandemic's effects on older children's academic achievement are well-documented. COVID-19 forced kids out of classrooms and into online learning. Students lost out on face time with instructors, their mental health suffered in the isolation, and their well-being deteriorated as some families endured hardship. Some schoolchildren stopped showing up to school altogether.

The federal government gave billions of dollars to school districts to help students catch up—with mixed results. In 2024, reading scores for fourth- and eighth-graders continued a downward slide, according to the National Assessment of Educational Progress. Math scores, however, trended upward.

Testing for younger kids is less common, so the NWEA report offers insights into the depth of the academic disruption. It's based on assessments given to students in the 2024–25 school year.

Kindergarten scores for math and science remained roughly the same throughout the pandemic. First- and second-graders are trending in the same way as their older peers. Math and reading scores are still falling short of pre-pandemic levels, although math scores are slowly rising. Reading scores have remained roughly the same since the spring of 2021, when the first full school year in the pandemic was wrapping up.

This article was provided by The Associated Press.

At the Milan Cortina Paralympics, some athletes competed in shorts, T-shirts, and tank tops. One skier lamented “tropical” conditions, and a snowboarder complained that soft, slow snow put him at a disadvantage. And some worried about their safety.

The warm weather at the Paralympics, which ran from March 6 to 15, had some athletes asking: Should these Games be held earlier in the year when cold weather is more reliable?

“The Paralympics, it's the most physically demanding event for Para athletes. It's the thing we all train for,” said American Para snowboarder Zach Miller. “It's where we're all putting it out on the line. And when we're dealing with these spring snow conditions and this slush, it makes it even more difficult, even more demanding.

And the problem isn’t just that it’s uncomfortable—warm snow actually changes how courses behave. Soft or slushy snow can create friction that hinders speed and control. Experts say control is essential for Para athletes.

“One of our Olympic athletes skiing on variable conditions, it’s gonna be riskier, certainly,” said Dr. Sarah Eby, head team physician for the U.S. Para Alpine Ski Team. “But they’ve got two knees. They’ve got all of their muscles working right when they need them to work. Thinking about our Para athletes, maybe they only have one leg. They’re relying more on equipment that they can’t adjust.”

Miller, the snowboarder, said warming conditions lead athletes to try to “minimize mistakes and ride conservative, because everything you're going to do is going to be punished out there on the snow.” He added, “You're worried about your own safety on course. You don't feel like you can be the athlete that you know you are.

The early March warmth in northern Italy, where the Games were held, would be “almost impossible” without the influence of climate change, said Shel Winkley, a Climate Central meteorologist. Researchers say the places that can reliably host a Winter Games will shrink because of climate change.

This article was provided by The Associated Press.

The biggest new restaurant trend is small.

Special menus with littler, less expensive portions are popping up all over, from large chains like Olive Garden and The Cheesecake Factory to trendy urban eateries to rural diners.

Restaurants hope the menus will meet many different diners’ needs. Some want to spend less when they go out. Others are looking for healthier options or trying to lose weight. Many diners–both young and old–say they simply don’t want to eat so much during a meal.

“These are really driven by, I think, changes in the way people are thinking about their relationship with food, the way they spend money on food, what is a good value and what's not,” said Maeve Webster, the president of Menu Matters, a culinary consulting firm.

Last September, restaurateur Barry Gutin ran into two different friends who told him they were taking GLP-1s and were struggling to find restaurant meals that met their nutritional needs and smaller appetites. Gutin is the co-owner of Cuba Libre Restaurant and Rum Bar, which has locations in Philadelphia, Washington, Atlantic City, New Jersey, and Orlando, Florida.

Gutin reached out to a doctor who specializes in weight loss and to Cuba Libre’s culinary director, Angel Roque. Over the next month, they developed the chain’s GLP-Wonderful menu, which is available upon request during dinner.

The menu has five classic Cuban options, including grilled chicken and stewed beef brisket, that are designed to look beautiful and stimulate appetites, Gutin said. The portions are smaller and less expensive than items on the regular dinner menu, and they list nutritional information, including the amount of protein and fiber per serving.

During a recent visit to Shelburne, Vermont, from his home in North Carolina, Jack Pless was delighted to see the Teeny Tuesday menu at Barkeaters Restaurant. Pless, who’s in his 60s and used to own a restaurant, said he can’t eat as much as he used to at one sitting.

“So many times you go out to restaurants, especially me or my wife, and we'll take home a box and it'll sit in the refrigerator for two, three days and start to grow a beard,” he said.

This article was provided by The Associated Press.

Until recently, a call coming into the Danbury Fire Department meant alarms and tones immediately blasting at high volume—startling the firefighters before they headed out to scenes that could get their hearts pumping even faster.

Capt. Kevin Lunnie said the effect could be “overwhelming.” He noticed a big jump in his heart rate when the alerts went off, which isn’t a good thing in a profession where heart problems are the leading cause of on-duty deaths.

But the city is now taking a gentler approach. A new system that went online in September includes alarms that start softer before gradually increasing in volume, while a computerized voice calmly announces the information the firefighters need to know about the incoming emergency.

“It’s much easier on your nervous system,” Lunnie said.

Danbury, a city of around 87,000 people in southwestern Connecticut, is using the new alerts in its five fire stations, joining thousands of other departments around the U.S. and world, aiming to both reduce stress and improve response times.

One weekday, a call came into Danbury’s main fire station, and the alert began with a single, soft tone. “Truck 1,” said the automated female voice. “Respond to sick person,” it said, giving the patient's address.

Around the firehouse, warm, red lighting flashed while monitors displayed the nature and location of the emergency. A timer display began to count down from two minutes, with the goal of firefighters leaving the station before the time ran out.

It’s both calmer and clearer than the old system, which began with full-volume single tones followed by a cacophony of longer ones that fluctuated between high and low pitches. Dispatchers would previously announce the calls over the station speaker system, which firefighters said could be static-y and hard to understand.

“Most people found it very jarring,” Lunnie said of the system, which would jolt firefighters awake day or night.

The new setup is integrated into the computer-aided dispatching system. So, when a dispatcher takes an emergency call and logs the initial information, it can alert the stations and units faster than department staff, while also sending the call information to firefighters’ phones and watches.

The result, according to Danbury Assistant Fire Chief William Lounsbury, is quicker response times.

This article was provided by The Associated Press.