レアジョブ英会話 Daily News Article Podcast

Tourists are heading to Finnish Lapland in the hopes of seeing the famous Northern Lights. Driving through the darkness, photographer Joona Forsgren is on a hunt for the aurora borealis. Veering onto a darkened Finnish Lapland road, Forsgren guides a group of tourists to a frozen lakeside spot. Forsgren started taking tourists “Northern Lights hunting” about five years ago. Back then, he was just...

Approximately one million taxpayers are automatically receiving special payments of up to $1,400 from the Internal Revenue Service (IRS). The money is being directly deposited into eligible people's bank accounts or sent in the mail as a paper check. The IRS said it's distributing about $2.4 billion to taxpayers who failed to claim a Recovery Rebate Credit on their 2021 tax returns. People who mis...

At least two internal Amazon studies found a link between how quickly the online retailer’s warehouse workers perform tasks and workplace injuries, but the company rejected many safety recommendations out of concern the proposed changes might reduce productivity, according to a U.S. Senate committee report. The 160-page review issued in December was compiled by the Democratic majority staff of the...

NBC Sports made its first foray into doing a National Football League (NFL) alternate broadcast on December 21 when it put the matchup between the Houston Texans and Kansas City Chiefs into the realm of the Madden video game universe. It is the first time NBC has done an alternate broadcast of an NFL game. CBS has done at least one game on Nickelodeon since the 2020 season, while ESPN/ABC have the...

Children of the wealthy and connected get special admissions consideration at some elite U.S. universities, according to new filings in a class-action lawsuit originally brought against 17 schools. Although it has always been assumed that such favoritism exists, the filings offer a rare peek at the often-secret deliberations of university heads and admissions officials. They show how schools admit...

Pastry chef Arnaud Delmontel rolls out dough for croissants and pain au chocolat that later emerge golden and fragrant from the oven in his Paris patisserie. In recent months, he has had to pay increasingly more for the butter so essential to their flavor—a price he says has shot up 25% since September alone. But he is refusing to follow some of his competitors who have started making their croiss...

A spectacular light show inspired by the creation of the world has opened in Amsterdam. The display takes place inside the 17th-century church Oosterkerk. All are projected in vibrant colors across the interior of this historic building. Visitors just need to lie back and enjoy the show taking place above their heads. “The goal of this experience is really to allow people to take kind of a spiritu...

Kaja Veilleux has been hunting New England attic treasures for more than 50 years. He once found a copy of the Declaration of Independence sitting on a pile of trash, and he made headlines last year when he stumbled upon a million-dollar portrait gathering dust in an old farmhouse in Maine that may have been painted by the Dutch master Rembrandt. Then there was the time, Veilleux said, he was show...

Japan’s biggest bank apologized for the alleged theft by an employee of more than 1 billion yen ($6.6 million) from customers' safe deposit boxes. The bank, formally known as Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group, Inc., said it was investigating. Verified thefts from about 20 of the 60 clients thought to have been affected amounted to 300 million yen (nearly $2 million). Compensation was being worked out...

The largest seafood distributor on the Mississippi Gulf Coast and two of its managers have been sentenced on federal charges of mislabeling inexpensive imported seafood as local premium fish weeks after a restaurant and its co-owner were also sentenced. “This large-scale scheme to misbrand imported seafood as local Gulf Coast seafood hurt local fishermen and consumers,” said Todd Gee, the U.S. att...

Googly eyes have been appearing on sculptures around the central Oregon city of Bend, delighting many residents and sparking a viral sensation covered widely by news outlets and featured on a popular late-night talk show. On social media, the city shared photos of googly eyes on installations in the middle of roundabouts that make up its so-called “Roundabout Art Route.” One photo shows googly eye...

For Nigeria’s poorest communities, finding the money for school fees can sometimes seem like an impossible task. But some parents are collecting plastic waste to pay for their children’s education. Fatimoh Adeosun scours the streets of her Lagos neighborhood for plastic waste. It has a value which means it can be cashed in to pay school fees. “One day, I saw people picking plastic, I approached (t...

From answering questions from cabinet ministers, academics and students on climate change, substance abuse and the law to children's inquiries about her "birth" and links to God, Sophia, the world-famous robot, won hearts at an innovation fair in Zimbabwe. Boasting the ability to mimic facial expressions, hold human-like conversations with people, and recognize their gestures, Sophia is "a global...

As outside temperatures grow chilly, weighted blankets can be a popular choice to warm up. Some people say the added pressure helps them soothe the worries of the day and get to sleep faster. But research on the effectiveness of weighted blankets is limited. Here’s what to know. Weighted blankets come with extra heft in the form of glass beads, pellets, cotton or another filling. Scientists haven’...

As it gets harder to locate specialist clinics with available slots, Australian doctors are turning to social media to help book appointments for their patients. Thousands of doctors have joined Facebook referral groups created to link healthcare providers and secure appointment times. In 2020, while she was on maternity leave, Adelaide General Practitioner Caitlin Sum launched a social media page...

A lawsuit filed by a pair of Massachusetts families is adding to the backlash against an approach to reading instruction that some schools still use despite evidence that it’s not the most effective. States around the country have been overhauling reading curricula in favor of research-based strategies known as the “science of reading,” including an emphasis on sounding out words. The lawsuit take...

The sale of The Observer, the world’s oldest Sunday newspaper and a bastion of liberal values in Britain’s media landscape, was approved despite two days of strike action from journalists. The Scott Trust, the owner of the Guardian Media Group, which includes The Observer and its sister paper The Guardian, said the sale to Tortoise Media was expected to be signed in December. The Scott Trust said...

Much of Earth's land is drying out and damaging the ability of plant and animal life to survive, according to a United Nations report released at talks where countries are working to address the problem. The report was released at the U.N. summit in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia on combating desertification—once-fertile lands turning into deserts because of hotter temperatures from human-caused climate cha...

California, home to some of the largest technology companies in the world, would be the first U.S. state to require mental health warning labels on social media sites if lawmakers pass a bill introduced in December. The legislation sponsored by state Attorney General Rob Bonta is necessary to bolster safety for children online, supporters say, but industry officials vow to fight the measure and ot...

Thousands of giant panda sculptures greeted residents and tourists in December 2024 in Hong Kong, where enthusiasm for the bears has grown since two cubs were born in a local theme park. The 2,500 exhibits were showcased in a launch ceremony of PANDA GO! FEST HK, the city's largest panda-themed exhibition, at Hong Kong's airport in December. They were publicly displayed at the Avenue of Stars in T...

Rocky Balboa fans went the distance—by bus, on ice skates, by 72 steps—to honor Philly’s favorite fictional fighter almost 50 years after the first movie launched the enduring series of an underdog boxer persevering despite the odds. The city Rocky called home at last has a week dedicated to the box office heavyweight champion of the world, more than a year after the inaugural Rocky Day was held a...

Sumo wrestling will return to London for the first time in 34 years in 2025 as the historic Royal Albert Hall hosts a Grand Sumo Tournament next October—just the second official event to be hosted outside of Japan in the sport’s 1500-year history. The Victorian concert venue was built in 1871 and has witnessed performances from the likes of Muhammad Ali, The Beatles, and Adele in its storied histo...

An elaborate parody appears to be behind an effort to resurrect Enron, the Houston-based energy company that exemplified the worst in American corporate fraud and greed after it went bankrupt in 2001. If its return is comedic, some former employees who lost everything in Enron’s collapse aren’t laughing. Once the nation’s seventh-largest company, Enron filed for bankruptcy protection on Dec. 2, 20...

It’s the end of an era for the largest model railway in southeastern Europe. The Backo Mini Express—a 1.5-kilometer model railway with 150 mini locomotives—has its own museum in Zagreb, Croatia. But despite surviving the COVID-19 pandemic lockdowns, and two earthquakes that shook the city in 2020, the railway’s aging creator is shutting down the museum for good. Lovingly built by the museum’s owne...

Nearly three out of 10 U.S. drugstores that were open during the previous decade had closed by 2021, new research shows. Some neighborhoods were most vulnerable to the retail pharmacy closures, which can chip away at already-limited care options in those communities, researchers said in a study published in Health Affairs. The trend has potentially gained momentum since the study's timeframe becau...