--:-- Gideon Resnick: Good morning. It's Thursday, February 15th. I'm Gideon Resnick, in for Shamita Basu. This is Apple News Today.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: Coming up on today's show, a really busy week for former President Trump's legal cases, a humanitarian crisis in Sudan after 10 months of civil war, and Beyonce goes country. But first, let's take a quick look at some major stories that are in the news.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: A day of celebration in Kansas City yesterday turned into a nightmare for the community after one person was killed and nearly two dozen injured in a shooting shortly after the parade for the new Super Bowl champs. Many of the victims were children and teenagers.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: An eyewitness told CBS when the shooting started, the packed streets full of thousands of fans quickly turned chaotic. Once the celebration was over, I mean, there was still a good amount of fans still around, and they were still trying to file out of the area. It's a very heavily crowded area. And then all of a sudden, chaos started to break out.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: We see people running away from certain areas of where fans were. And you could see people were very shaken up. We've seen multiple people leave on stretchers in this situation.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: Kansas City Police Chief Stacey Graves said at least three people had been arrested in connection with the shooting, and they are still investigating the motive.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: I'm angry at what happened today. The people who came to this celebration should expect a safe environment. We had over 800 law enforcement officers, Kansas City and other agencies, at the location to keep everyone safe.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: In Gaza, Israeli forces entered Nasser Hospital today, the largest medical facility still operating. The Israeli military ordered displaced people sheltering there to leave yesterday, but thousands are still said to be inside the hospital, including patients and medical staff.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: Israel's military claims Hamas is operating from the hospital, which the group has denied. Separately, the Wall Street Journal reports that the State Department is investigating a number of Israeli airstrikes in Gaza and the possible use of white phosphorus in Lebanon.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: It's part of a probe to see if any weapons produced by the U.S. had been misused to kill civilians. If investigators determined that Israel misused American weapons, they could recommend possible changes to how the U.S. supplies military aid.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: Since the start of its war with Hamas, Israel has fired tens of thousands of weapons into Gaza, including many missiles made by the United States.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: And in Florida, a new lunar mission launched early this morning. The Odysseus lunar lander, nicknamed ODI, hopes to be the first U.S.-made spacecraft to touch down on the moon in five decades.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: It was developed by a company in Houston, and it's planning to land in a crater near the moon's south pole sometime next week.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: The trip is designed to be kind of a scouting mission before NASA plans to send a crewed mission to the moon in late 2026.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: This is a huge week in legal news for former President Donald Trump, with hearings that might determine the course of the next year.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: He faces 91 total counts in four different criminal cases. And this morning, a judge in New York set the date for what will be his first criminal trial, and the first time that a former U.S. president stands trial.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: It's been scheduled for March 25th. This is the case pertaining to allegations about hush money payments Trump allegedly made to adult film star Stormy Daniels.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: Perry Stein at The Washington Post has been covering all of Trump's cases, and there is a lot to keep track of here.
--:-- Perry Stein: I started by asking her if we could see a decision in this New York case before the elections in November.
--:-- Perry Stein: It's absolutely possible. There's no reason why it shouldn't be resolved by the summer, let's say.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: I want to also talk about the criminal case in Georgia, where Trump has been accused of conspiring to overturn the 2020 election in that state.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: There's a hearing today for the district attorney prosecuting the case, Fannie Willis. It has to do with this romantic relationship she had with a lawyer who she hired to work on the case.
--:-- Perry Stein: Yeah, this whole thing is messy, is how I would put it. What the allegations are that she has had an improper relationship with this prosecutor who she hired to work on the case and that she financially benefited from it because he allegedly paid for her travels.
--:-- Perry Stein: Now, one of the defendants in the case and a lot more, including Trump, have signed on as this has gained steam, have said the entire case should be dismissed because of this improper relationship.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: So what we're seeing today is Judge McAfee is going to hold an evidentiary hearing looking at, OK, did it taint the case?
--:-- Gideon Resnick: Obviously, Fannie Willis has admitted that she did have a personal relationship with this prosecutor, Nathan Wade. But she said these allegations that it tainted the case are absolutely bogus and she has not financially benefited from it.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: And I also want to talk about yet another case here. This is the civil one that's in New York. We're expecting a ruling there that could come as soon as Friday.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: What is the potential impact here for Trump and his businesses? The impact on this one is financial, right?
--:-- Gideon Resnick: The allegations from the New York attorney general is that Trump and his business associates inflated their real estate values to get some financial benefits out of that.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: We know that Letitia James wants hundreds of hundreds of millions of dollars in penalties, and it's up to this judge to decide, you know, how much will Trump need to pay?
--:-- Gideon Resnick: Right. So those are some of the state cases. But let's talk about one of the federal ones here. This one is about the classified documents Trump allegedly kept at Mar
--:-- Perry Stein: So what we seeing in Florida this is the classified document case where Trump is alleged to have retained documents related to national defense information and then thwarted and obstructed government officials attempts to retrieve them
--:-- Perry Stein: So those are the allegations. Those are serious charges that he faces there.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: What we saw this week is Trump has said he wants more classified information as part of the discovery.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: So the judge is hearing from both sides. And now it's up to the judge to see if Trump meets the burden of it's necessary and relevant for him to get this information.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: And if so, also what safeguards they put them on, like, will there be redactions? Will there not be?
--:-- Gideon Resnick: And Trump actually showed up to this closed door hearing this week.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: Back in New York, Trump's legal team is protesting the judge's decision to proceed with that state criminal trial starting next month.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: And Trump once again denied wrongdoing.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: In Sudan, 10 months of civil war has led to one of the largest displacements of people on the planet.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: The Sudanese military and paramilitary forces are fighting each other for power. and the war has been brutal for civilians.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: At least 7.5 million people have been forced from their homes, about half of them children, according to the UN.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: In one medical camp in North Darfur, one child dies every two hours, according to Doctors Without Borders.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: James Elder, a spokesman for UNICEF, recently returned from a visit to the border of Sudan and Chad, where many refugees have gone.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: He described to NPR the absolute devastation of whole communities and the sense of eeriness walking through abandoned areas.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: Could be a rural area or a neighborhood, like a middle-class neighborhood, and it's empty. It's just absolutely silent.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: You can only hear underfoot, you hear crunching of glass under your feet and you look and it's buildings are pockmarked and it's clothes and things, everything's been burnt and looted and there is no one.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: Elder says it's impossible to understate the misery the war has caused.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: People have endured sexual violence from fighters on both sides, according to the U.S. State Department.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: Some have been physically tortured or beaten to death. Those that survive scramble for safety.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: Elder says people are now starving and in need of the most basic human services, shelter, clean water, food, and health care.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: Neighboring countries like Chad and South Sudan are taking in refugees.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: And increased migration could lead to more instability across the region and ripple across the globe.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: Already you're seeing a lot of migration there in that part of Africa, going across to West Africa, going across into Europe.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: And when you meet these people, you are reminded so much that they want to live in their community
--:-- Gideon Resnick: I think I spoke to a single young person this is university age who didn't want to keep doing their studies and do something in Sudan
--:-- Gideon Resnick: But those opportunities are fading and dying and they and many other people without those education qualifications will go wherever they possibly can
--:-- Gideon Resnick: UN officials have appealed to member nations for at least $4 billion in funding for Sudan and neighboring countries that are taking in refugees.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: They say the money is needed urgently. About three and a half million children in Sudan face malnutrition this year, and hundreds of thousands could die.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: A recent dust-up with a country radio station in Oklahoma is reigniting conversation around Black artists' reception in the genre.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: If you missed all of this, we can explain. A fan requested that a local station play the new Beyonce song, Texas Hold'em.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: At first, the station responded saying, they're a country network and they don't play Beyonce.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: But they simply didn't know about the new songs that were released just this past Sunday.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: The misunderstanding, though, brought back memories for fans about a previous time when Beyoncé released a country song.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: In 2016, on her hit album Lemonade, there was a track called Daddy Lessons, which she performed at the Country Music Awards with the band The Chicks.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: The performance got a famously chilly reception from country music fans on social media.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: The song was also rejected for consideration in the country category for the Grammys, and Billboard put it on the R&B and hip-hop charts.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: Rapper Lil Nas X ran into a similar issue a few years later, when Billboard initially removed his hit Old Town Road from the country charts, sparking a debate and pushback about who can make country music and who it's really for.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: Billboard reports that more country stations are likely to start playing Beyonce's new songs as they get them from the record label.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: And as for that Oklahoma station that went viral, they now have Texas Hold'em in their rotation.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: The general manager of the station told CBS News, we actually wish that artists wouldn't get boxed into certain genres or formats.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: If it's good music, it's good music.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: You can find all these stories and more in the Apple News app.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: And if you're already listening in the News app right now, we have a narrated article coming up next.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: New York Magazine looks at Democratic billionaire Bill Ackman's war against President Biden, Harvard, and other elite institutions.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: If you're listening in the podcast app, follow Apple News Plus Narrated to find that story.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: And I'll be back with the news tomorrow.
