--:-- Shamita Basu: Good morning. It's Tuesday, July 12th. I'm Shamita Basu. This is Apple News Today. Each morning, hear about some of the most fascinating stories in the news and how the world's best journalists are covering them.
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--:-- Shamita Basu: A new age for astronomy. That's how National Geographic put it, as NASA releases its first suite of full-color images from its James Webb Space Telescope. President Biden unveiled the first image. It's a new window into the history of our universe.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And today we're going to get a glimpse of the first light to shine through that window. Light from other worlds, orbiting stars far beyond our own. This image shows hundreds, maybe thousands of distant galaxies. Some existed more than 13 billion years ago.
--:-- Shamita Basu: It's like uncovering lost baby pictures of our universe in sharp, full color. I just want to stop and think about the scale here. Here's how NASA describes it. Imagine that you're lying on the ground outside, looking up at the stars. You have a single grain of sand between your fingers. You hold it up at arm's length. That grain of sand is about the size of the piece of sky that you can see in that first image.
--:-- Shamita Basu: It's just one tiny sliver of what's out there. These images look so good because the Webb Telescope is the most powerful telescope ever to take flight. It's 100 times more powerful than the Hubble Space Telescope, and it's got a prime spot orbiting the sun about 1 million miles from Earth.
--:-- Shamita Basu: It's fueled up to operate for about 20 years, which guarantees more fascinating discoveries in the years ahead. Now that I've painted a picture in your mind, you should go and check it out for yourself. It's actually hard to describe in words just how incredible these images are.
--:-- Shamita Basu: You can check out the image that Biden revealed, along with more pictures released today on the Apple News app.
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--:-- Johanna Bouya: A massive investigation led by The Guardian sheds light on questionable tactics that Uber used to enter new cities. Journalists at multiple news outlets around the world poured over 124 confidential documents leaked by Uber's former chief lobbyist in Europe, the Middle East, and Africa.
--:-- Johanna Bouya: The files show a company that skirted laws, exploited violence against its drivers, and aggressively lobbied governments to help it expand. Uber's strategy was based on taking down the taxi industry.
--:-- Johanna Bouya: You might remember, in several countries, there were big protests against Uber by taxi drivers who were worried about their livelihoods being threatened. And so when there was potential violence or when there was fear that anti-Uber protests would erupt in violence that could put drivers at risk, the documents show that Uber executives considered the risk and said that it might be worth it.
--:-- Johanna Bouya: Then-CEO and co-founder Travis Kalanick dismissed safety concerns about sending Uber drivers to a protest in France. He said, "Violence guarantees success."
--:-- Johanna Bouya: His spokesperson told The Guardian that Kalanick never suggested that Uber should take advantage of violence at the expense of driver safety. Kalanick was also at the center of a massive lobbying campaign to try to get regulations passed that would help Uber break into new markets.
--:-- Johanna Bouya: The goal of it was to go over the heads of regulators who are trying to enforce existing taxi laws by going to politicians, big-name politicians like Emmanuel Macron. This document leak includes texts between Kalanick and Macron, now president of France.
--:-- Johanna Bouya: There are indications that he was helping Uber back when he was economy minister. Kalanick also met with then-Vice President Biden at Davos, as well as the prime ministers of Israel and Ireland.
--:-- Johanna Bouya: These documents are from 2013 to 2017. Kalanick was replaced as CEO in 2017. Uber says it doesn't make excuses for past behavior that's clearly not in line with its present values, and it should be judged by what it's done under new leadership and in the future.
--:-- Johanna Bouya: There's much more to this investigation with more stories from other news outlets. The reporters are calling it the Uberfiles. You can read more in the Apple News app.
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--:-- Elizabeth Lopato: The richest man in the world is stirring up what could be the most unusual legal battle in corporate takeover history. Like a lot of Elon Musk-related news, this not only started on Twitter, but also has taken a turn for the deeply weird.
--:-- Elizabeth Lopato: That's me, Elizabeth Lopato, senior reporter with The Verge. Musk is saying that he wants out of the $44 billion deal to buy Twitter. He says one issue is that Twitter hasn't shared enough data about fake accounts on the platform, and this justifies him pulling out of the agreement.
--:-- Elizabeth Lopato: Twitter says it's doing what the agreement with Musk requires. But as I explain, this whole issue of fake accounts could just be a lever that Musk is using to change the terms or totally pull out.
--:-- Elizabeth Lopato: Either Elon Musk is looking to renegotiate the deal lower, and this is one of the few things that he has available to him to do that, or he's just willing to walk away and may have to pay more than that initial breakup fee that was included in the contract.
--:-- Elizabeth Lopato: The legal details around this are complicated, but basically Twitter is signaling that it'll fight him in court in order to force him to buy the company.
--:-- Elizabeth Lopato: Courts have forced buyers who got cold feet to go through with deals they agree to, but never a sale as big as this. Twitter's stock market value is currently way below what Musk agreed to pay for it, so the company's got a good reason to fight.
--:-- Elizabeth Lopato: The $1 billion termination fee in the contract is peanuts compared to the $44 billion sale price. Now, Musk has a history of hyping up major deals only to back out.
--:-- Elizabeth Lopato: Remember his 2018 tweet that he would take Tesla private? When that didn't happen, the SEC fined him $20 million, and he was forced to step down as chairman of Tesla. But that was his company.
--:-- Elizabeth Lopato: It'll be much harder and more expensive to undo his agreement to buy Twitter. He's the dog that caught the car. And now he's just trying to find a way to either get out of it or continue forward with a reduced price.
--:-- Elizabeth Lopato: To know how this is really going to end, you have to be inside the head of Elon Musk. Good luck with that.
--:-- Elizabeth Lopato: It's possible that he still wants to own Twitter and this is a hardball negotiation tactic. It also possible this was all just a very expensive way for him to have a laugh.
--:-- Elizabeth Lopato: I say he definitely seems to enjoy the spotlight. It has made him the center of attention on Twitter, a platform we all know he loves for many months now. It's made him the center of attention for the news media, which he also loves.
--:-- Elizabeth Lopato: Whatever his motivation, the Musk Twitter battle is on, with armies of lawyers already fighting it out. You can expect it to be complicated, expensive, and bizarre.
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--:-- Shamita Basu: Gambling scams sometimes happen in sports. But SB Nation reports on an alleged con in India that takes things to a whole new level.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Authorities say a group of people faked an entire professional cricket league as a way of tricking naive Russian gamblers. Investigators say a group of farmhands and unemployed kids in a small town in Gujarat hired fake players, dressed them up in pro uniforms, turned a farm into a cricket stadium, and invited Russians to place bets.
--:-- Shamita Basu: They even live-streamed HD broadcasts of the matches and offered seminars for Russians to educate them about cricket and get them excited about gambling. They left out the detail that the Indian Premier League season ended weeks before the fake league started.
--:-- Shamita Basu: So Russians would bet, people would take down those wagers and talk to umpires over walkie-talkies. Then the umpires told the players exactly how to throw the match to make sure that the bettors lost.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The league went on for several weeks, even getting to the quarterfinals before cops busted it. Now, this story took off when Indian media reported it, with some people calling for it to be made into a movie.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Others applauded the jugar on display, a word that's honestly hard to translate, but sort of means a gutsy, improvised way of solving a problem.
--:-- Shamita Basu: You can find all these stories and more in the Apple News app, including coverage of the latest January 6th committee hearing starting at 1 p.m. Eastern.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And when you're in the app, keep listening to hear narrated articles from our News Plus partners. I'll talk with you again tomorrow.
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