レアジョブ英会話 Daily News Article Podcast

How much is a wave worth? It’s a question gaining global attention as surfing evolves into a booming commercial industry.

Locals on the southern coast of Western Australia believe they may have found a solution: an artificial reef they hope will revolutionize the town’s surfing landscape. Wave riders are taking full advantage of the ideal conditions at Middleton Beach in Albany. But things weren’t always like this.

Longtime surfer Peter Bolt, who was raised in Albany, has strolled this stretch more times than he can count to check the waves. For much of that time, he saw little more than unrideable close-outs at Middleton Beach. So, over the last three decades, he’s been at the forefront of efforts to change that.

“I think I came back to Albany in 1990. We just felt that’s where we needed the juniors to have something decent to surf at, you know, in town where they can get access to it,” says Bolt.

With financial backing from the City of Albany, along with support from both state and federal governments, expert marine engineers have successfully crafted an ideal surfing wave. The 13 million Australian dollar ($9 million) initiative saw 70,000 tons of rock strategically placed on the ocean floor. Yet, there were moments when Peter Bolt doubted it would ever become a reality.

Despite strong support from its advocates, the Albany surf reef has faced criticism from some who argue it’s a poor use of funds and worry it could harm the beach environment.

For now, though, surfers remain unfazed, saying the beach is in good shape and the investment has been worthwhile. “Well, I’m a surfer. I like a good wave. Don’t really care how much money was spent,” says a surfer who just came out of the water.

And Bolt agrees. “When I see the kids come down here before school, in the dark, to get a wave before they go to school, and then they zip down here again after school, I go, yeah, that’s it. That’s what this was all about.”

This article was provided by The Associated Press.

Prize money at the U.S. Open rose to nearly $85 million across all competitions this year, including a record $5 million each to the women's and men's singles champions, and total player compensation jumped 20% to $90 million, the most in tennis history.

The U.S. Tennis Association (USTA) announced the payouts for the year's last Grand Slam tournament, which began with the new mixed doubles event and its $1 million top check on August 19-20. Singles competition started on a Sunday for the first time—August 24—as those brackets expand from 14 days to 15.

The increases at Flushing Meadows—where last year's total compensation was $75 million—come as the sport's leading players have been in discussions with each of the four major tournaments in a bid to receive a higher percentage of revenues at the U.S. Open, Wimbledon, French Open and Australian Open.

Novak Djokovic, Coco Gauff and 2024 U.S. Open champions Aryna Sabalenka and Jannik Sinner were among 20 players who signed a letter sent to the heads of the four Grand Slam events in March seeking more prize money and a greater say in what they called “decisions that directly impact us.” Since then, some players have held talks with the majors.

The previous high amount for a U.S. Open singles championship was $3.85 million in 2019, before decreasing during the COVID-19 pandemic.

This year's $5 million check represented a 39% hike from last year's $3.6 million. The same percentage increase was applied to the singles runners-up, who get $2.5 million each. Semifinalists earned about $1.26 million, a 26% rise.

The news came after the USTA said in May that its main arena, Arthur Ashe Stadium, would be overhauled as part of an $800 million project touted as the “largest single investment” in U.S. Open history.

This article was provided by The Associated Press.

President Donald Trump reestablished the Presidential Fitness Test for American children, a fixture of public schools for decades that gauged young people’s health and athleticism with 1-mile runs, sit-ups and stretching exercises.

“This is a wonderful tradition, and we’re bringing it back,” Trump said of the fitness test that began in 1966 but was phased out during the Obama administration.

An executive order he signed in August also reinvigorates a national sports council that the president stocked with former and current athletes and other figures from the sports world. Several prominent athletes joined Trump and top administration officials.

In the test, children had to run and perform sit-ups, pull-ups or push-ups, and a sit-and-reach test, but the program changed in 2012. It evolved into the Youth Fitness Program, which the government said “moved away from recognizing athletic performance to providing a barometer on students’ health.” The then-first lady Michelle Obama also promoted her “Let's Move” initiative, focused on reducing childhood obesity through diet and exercise.

The Youth Fitness Test, according to a Health and Human Services Department website last updated in 2023, “minimizes comparisons between children and instead supports students as they pursue personal fitness goals for lifelong health.”

The return of the exam brought mixed reactions from some who study exercise.

Trump is putting a welcome focus on physical activity, but a test alone won’t make America’s children healthier, said Laura Richardson, a kinesiology professor at the University of Michigan. The exam is only a starting point that should be paired with lessons to help all students improve, she said.

“It’s not just, you get a score and you’re doomed,” said Richardson, whose teaching focuses on obesity. “But you get a score, and we can figure out a program that really helps the improvement.”

This article was provided by The Associated Press.

The Milwaukee Brewers are bringing manager Pat Murphy's strange eating habits to fans.

Murphy went viral in a recent interview for pulling a pancake out of his uniform pocket and taking a bite—sharing the flapjack with the reporter—as he detailed different ways he shoved food into his pockets to snack on in the dugout.

The moment has spawned quite the movement in Milwaukee. The ballclub announced that Murph's Pocket Pancakes would be sold at American Family Field during Sunday games for the rest of the season, starting with the August 10 series against the New York Mets.

Murphy was asked before a game what he thought of the promotion.

A little late, we've been doing this since 2017, said Murphy, noting he occasionally has been keeping food in his pocket for about that long. I guess I never did it during an interview (before). It used to be mostly bagels. I had bagels in the morning. ... I'd always have one (at) day games usually—a bagel, a waffle, a pancake rolled up, something. Day games, the day gets away from you and need a little something.

The Brewers haven't lost since Murphy whipped the pancake out of his pocket a few weeks ago, building the best record in the Major Leagues. He went on to continue eating his pancake in the postgame press conference while detailing other food items he had brought into the dugout. Waffles, pancakes, pizza, Murphy said then.

Murphy was then asked how he could put a slice of pizza in his pocket without staining the uniform. If it's cold pizza, you fold it up like a sandwich, you know what I mean, Murphy said. You can eat it during the game. And then when I wear a hoodie, I have the pocket right here, and that's full of crumbs.

This article was provided by The Associated Press.

It’s still not hard to entice the under-5 set to make mud pies, smell flowers and eat string beans off the vine, but as children get older and turn to screens, nature exploration often falls to the bottom of their boredom-buster lists.

With a little creativity, however, parents can nurture an interest in the great outdoors and inspire a lifelong love for gardening. The key is starting kids young—and giving them ownership.

Take children to the nursery and let each decide what they would like to grow. Vegetables should be ones they like to eat; they’ll take pride in a meal that includes ingredients they grew themselves. Growing edibles can also play a role in influencing a lifetime of healthy food choices.

Teach kids that gardens need to eat and drink like they do—and that gardens, too, get cranky when they’re hungry or parched. Show them the symptoms, then let them figure out when their plants need water or fertilizer.

Be available to offer advice, but don’t insist on perfection: Teach children not to step on plants, but let them get dirty.

Mistakes are often the best teachers, so if they insist, allow them to pick an unripe tomato. They will quickly learn that an unripe tomato doesn’t taste as good as a ripe one, and that an early harvest is wasteful. The same goes for immature potatoes, garlic, carrots and radishes. These are the lessons that stick.

Hang a calendar somewhere visible—in their bedroom or on the refrigerator—to schedule watering and weeding. Let them take responsibility for checking it and alerting you when those tasks need to be done. Crossing off completed items will also impart a feeling of accomplishment.

Gardening offers food and flowers, yes, but it also teaches patience, responsibility and the satisfaction that comes from nurturing something over an extended period. It’s also relaxing and creates precious one-on-one time that they’ll remember long after the flowers have faded. And that’s the best harvest of all.

This article was provided by The Associated Press.

What was intended as a fundraising mission for cancer research has become a nightmare for American teen influencer Ethan Guo, who has been stuck since June in a remote location in Chilean territory in Antarctica.

Authorities say Guo landed his small plane illegally after providing false flight plan information to officials who opened an investigation.

Guo made headlines last year when the then-19-year-old began a trip in an attempt to become the youngest person to fly solo to all seven continents and, at the same time, collect donations for research into childhood cancer.

As part of his trip, the teen, who identifies as Asian American, planned to go to Antarctica, but according to the authorities, he lied to officials by providing authorities with false flight plan data. Prosecutors said he had been authorized to only fly over Punta Arenas, but that he kept going south, heading for Antarctica in his Cessna 182Q—a single-engine light aircraft known for its versatility.

Guo was charged on June 29 with handing false information to ground control and landing without authorization, but a judge dropped the charges as part of an agreement with his lawyers and Chile's prosecutors. It requires the teen to give a $30,000 donation to a children's cancer foundation within 30 days to avoid a trial. He must also leave the country as soon as conditions allow and is prohibited from reentering Chilean territory for three years.

After the judge's ruling, Guo told The Associated Press in a text message that he was relieved by the outcome.

For the past six weeks, since being charged, he has stayed at a military base. He was not forced to stay there, only to remain in Chilean territory, but because of the severe winter in that part of the Southern Hemisphere, there haven't been any available flights he could take. And he has been unable to fly his Cessna.

This article was provided by The Associated Press.

U.S. scientists believe they've at last solved the mystery of what killed more than 5 billion sea stars. A strain of the bacterium Vibrio pectenicida has been attacking the sea stars—often known as starfish—in a decade-long epidemic on the West Coast of North America.

Marine researchers have been searching for the cause of what has become known as sea star wasting disease since large numbers of them perished in 2013 from Mexico to Alaska. The epidemic has devastated more than 20 species and continues today. Worst hit was a species called the sunflower sea star, which lost around 90% of its population in the outbreak’s first five years.

The bacterium has also infected shellfish, according to a study published in the journal Nature Ecology and Evolution.

Alyssa Gehman, senior author and marine disease ecologist at the Hakai Institute, says the die-out was a gruesome affair.

So sea stars, when they're looking healthy, have sort of puffy arms, they're straight out, they might curl like turn a bit. But when they're sick, they start to sort of like curl back on themselves, so they look very twisty. They get lesions, so you can see what the lesion looks like on their surface. Then their arms actually fall off and walk away. So it's pretty noticeable when it happens. And that first disease outbreak in particular, it hit sunflower stars which they are, they seem to be our most susceptible ones, and we sort of had the huge losses. So they're now listed as critically endangered. We've lost over 90% of their population from Mexico to Alaska, which is over 5 billion sea stars, might be over 6 billion, it's so many, says Gehman.

It took more than a decade for researchers to identify the cause of the disease, with many false leads and twists and turns along the way.

Having identified the cause of the epidemic, scientists now have a better shot at intervening to help sea stars, a scientist said. That’s not only important for sea stars themselves, but for entire Pacific ecosystems, because healthy sea stars gobble up excess sea urchins.

This article was provided by The Associated Press.

A new report from The Lancet reveals that three out of five liver cancer cases worldwide are linked to preventable risk factors, with obesity-related cases on the rise.

The analysis, published on 29th July, estimates that over 60% of liver cancers could be avoided by addressing viral hepatitis, excessive alcohol consumption, and metabolic dysfunction-associated steatotic liver disease (MASLD), a condition driven by excess fat in the liver.

The situation is particularly urgent in Africa, where liver cancer cases are projected to surge significantly by 2050.

In Nairobi, Ahmed Kalebi is the Principal Pathologist at Dr Ahmed Kalebi Labs.

“Am I worried about metabolic liver disease being a silent epidemic? I am not just worried, I know, because we see it on a daily basis. The number of cases that we pick silently when we come for health check-ups is shocking, and we actually need to do a lot more to increase awareness for people to come for screening and a change of lifestyle. If we don’t, we will be paying a huge price in the next decade to two decades, and that is why 2050 is seen as the culmination of when there will be an explosion of this liver disease associated with cancer,” he says.

Professor Hashem El-Serag believes cases of Hepatitis B and C are causing the increased liver cancer rates in Africa, and that screening and vaccination in the region are lagging behind the rest of the world.

However, he stresses obesity—as the continent becomes increasingly ‘westernized’—is also a major factor.

“Africa is also not immune to the obesity epidemic. With the progressive westernization of their lifestyle and their diets. So, they might be hit with multiple risk factors. A leftover from the old risk factors that really are not moving fast enough. And the emergence of the new risk factors that are happening as a result of globalization,” he says.

Additional measures include public awareness campaigns, improved early detection, and better integration of palliative care for patients.

This article was provided by The Associated Press.

Germans are in kebab angst. They worry that their most beloved street food option, the spicy, juicy kebab in a pita that can be found on every street corner across Germany, may get more expensive—or even worse, that the country may be sliding into a national kebab shortage.

Even if these fears may sound exaggerated at first, they aren't unfounded. Workers at one of Germany's biggest kebab factories are locked in a bitter and ongoing fight with their employer over wages and working conditions.

For weeks, workers at the Birtat Meat World SE factory in southwestern Germany have repeatedly stopped the production line by walking off their jobs in warning strikes, demanding wage increases of 375 euros ($434) per month.

Birtat, which is located in Murr, 30 kilometers (nearly 20 miles) north of Stuttgart, has been making kebab skewers for more than 30 years. The company says on its website that it makes skewers of ground beef, veal, chicken or turkey kebab that can weigh up to 120 kilograms (260 pounds).

The workers chop up the meat, marinate it and push chunks of the raw meat onto long metal skewers. The meat is then shock-frozen and delivered to restaurants all over the country.

Birtat says it supplies thousands of kebab stands and fast-food places and reaches more than 13 million consumers every month. Some restaurant owners worry that should the workers decide to go on a long-term strike, the Germans' favorite fast-food snack may indeed become more expensive or even scarce.

Germans already complain that the meaty snack, which used to be a cheap staple that sold for 2.50 euros about two decades ago, has become too expensive, with most places charging at least 7 euros ($8) or more.

Halil Duman was pondering the state of the kebab business as he was busy slicing off thin pieces of ground beef at Pergamon Döner, a small eatery at Berlin's Friedrichstrasse train station, where people were lining up for lunch.

It's all getting more and more difficult, the 68-year-old Turkish immigrant said. The produce is becoming more expensive, and we barely make profit anymore.

This article was provided by The Associated Press.

Surveillance systems in American schools increasingly monitor everything students write on school accounts and devices. Thousands of school districts across the country use software like Gaggle and Lightspeed Alert to track kids’ online activities, looking for signs they might hurt themselves or others. With the help of artificial intelligence, technology can dip into online conversations and immediately notify both school officials and law enforcement.

Educators say the technology has saved lives. But critics warn it can criminalize children for careless words.

A 13-year-old girl arrested in August 2023 had been texting with friends on a chat function tied to her school email at Fairview Middle School, which uses Gaggle to monitor students’ accounts.

Taken to jail, the teen was interrogated and strip-searched, and her parents weren’t allowed to talk to her until the next day, according to a lawsuit they filed against the school system.

Gaggle’s CEO, Jeff Patterson, said in an interview that the school system did not use Gaggle the way it is intended. The purpose is to find early warning signs and intervene before problems escalate to law enforcement, he said. “I wish that was treated as a teachable moment, not a law enforcement moment,” said Patterson.

Students who think they are chatting privately among friends often do not realize they are under constant surveillance, said Shahar Pasch, an education lawyer in Florida.

One teenage girl she represented made a joke about school shootings on a private Snapchat story. Snapchat’s automated detection software picked up the comment, the company alerted the FBI, and the girl was arrested on school grounds within hours.

Teenagers face steeper consequences than adults for what they write online, Alexa Manganiotis, a 16-year-old student, said. “If an adult makes a super racist joke that’s threatening on their computer, … they wouldn’t be arrested,” she said.

School officials have said they take concerns about Gaggle seriously, but also say the technology has detected dozens of imminent threats of suicide or violence. “Sometimes you have to look at the trade for the greater good,” said Board of Education member Anne Costello.

This article was provided by The Associated Press.