--:-- [Upbeat music fades out. Host Shamita Basu speaks.]
--:-- Shamita Basu: Good morning. It's Monday, September 25th. I'm Shamita Basu. This is Apple News Today.
--:-- Shamita Basu: On today's show, the Democratic senator under pressure to resign, why NASA brought bits of an asteroid back to Earth, and Megan Rapinoe takes a final bow. But first, there is a tentative deal in place to end the Hollywood writer's strike. The LA Times has details.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Negotiators for the Writers Guild of America and the major studios have agreed on a three-year contract. It would increase pay rates and residual payment for streaming shows. It also includes new rules about the use of artificial intelligence.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The union calls the deal exceptional, saying it offers meaningful gains and safeguards for writers. The tentative deal now needs to be voted on by union leaders and then ratified by union members.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Writers will not be going back to work yet until the union authorizes them to, but picketing is on hold. If the proposed contract goes through, it would end a strike that has been one of Hollywood's longest. It started in May.
--:-- Shamita Basu: But a deal with writers won't be enough to start productions back up. The actors union is still on strike. Now studios can fully focus on making a deal with them. There are similar issues in dispute, pay, and use of AI.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And there are similar economic pressures hurting both sides of the bargaining table. Artists say they're not getting a fair slice of the pie, as companies spend billions of dollars to launch streaming services.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Studios say the pie isn't what it used to be, with cable subscribers leaving and TV ratings dropping. The Actors' Union, SAG-AFTRA, congratulated the Writers Guild on striking a deal.
--:-- Shamita Basu: It says it's ready to resume talks with studios as soon as they're prepared to engage. But until then, the Actors' Union says it'll continue to stand strong and unified.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Democratic Senator Bob Menendez faces growing calls to resign following his indictment with some of the loudest coming from his own party and inside his home state of New Jersey.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Congressman Andy Kim says he'll challenge Menendez in the Democratic primary. Menendez denies wrongdoing and is refusing to step down from his Senate seat, though he is following Senate Democrats' rules by stepping down from his position as chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee.
--:-- Shamita Basu: He is accused of taking bribes to help people with ties to the Egyptian government. His leadership role in the Senate committee meant he was in a position to do serious favors.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Federal prosecutor Damian Williams explained the case. The senator and his wife accepted hundreds of thousands of dollars of bribes.
--:-- Shamita Basu: In exchange for Senator Menendez using his power and influence to protect and to enrich those businessmen. Politico points out the most eye-popping details in Friday's indictment.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Menendez's wife, Nadine Menendez, whom he married in 2020, is described as having close connections with Egyptian officials.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Prosecutors say soon after they started dating, she introduced him to Egyptian military and intelligence officers and established relationships that led to a, quote, corrupt agreement.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The indictment says Menendez took bribes in exchange for helping the Egyptian government, which was eager to get military aid and access to American weapons.
--:-- Shamita Basu: He's also accused of sharing non-public information about weapons deals with a person who passed it on to an Egyptian official.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Prosecutors accused the couple of accepting hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash, some of which was found stuffed in jackets embroidered with Menendez's name and the U.S. Senate seal.
--:-- Shamita Basu: They found more than $100,000 in gold bars in his home. Prosecutors say he also accepted mortgage payments and a Mercedes-Benz.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Menendez has been investigated for corruption before. In 2006 federal authorities looked into whether he done favors for a nonprofit that paid him hundreds of thousands of dollars in rent.
--:-- Shamita Basu: But that investigation was eventually dropped. A separate 2015 bribery case went to trial but it ended in a hung jury.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Menendez and his wife are expected to appear in federal court on Wednesday.
--:-- Shamita Basu: NASA is getting ready to analyze its first samples of an asteroid taken from deep space. This stuff could provide clues as to how Earth became a planet that could support life.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The historic 4 billion mile journey to collect the specimens ended successfully over the weekend when a capsule carrying the asteroid samples landed in Utah.
--:-- Shamita Basu: NASA Administrator Bill Nelson congratulated the team on pulling off the mission called OSIRIS-REx.
--:-- Shamita Basu: You did it. You designed it. You built it. And you carried out the first mission to collect a sample from an asteroid.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The Verge explains what's so exciting about this mission, which was years in the making, with years of analysis ahead as researchers dig into the asteroid material.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Scientists aren't quite sure why Earth is the planet where life thrives. One widely accepted theory is that organic material, the building blocks of life, arrived on our planet billions of years ago, hitching a ride on asteroids.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The problem is that it's really hard to study. When pieces of an asteroid crash to Earth, it's not clear where they came from.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And they can be contaminated by the entry into Earth. So to really figure out what's on these asteroids, scientists need to go to the source.
--:-- Shamita Basu: They need to sample an asteroid in deep space, then carry the material back so researchers can take a look.
--:-- Shamita Basu: This mission builds on previous Japanese efforts that gathered a smaller amount of material from asteroids.
--:-- Shamita Basu: OSIRIS-REx went up to collect much more. Now researchers around the world are getting ready to take a look at what it found and see if it helped solve one of the greatest mysteries in science.
--:-- Shamita Basu: How did we get here
--:-- Shamita Basu: Finally, let's take a quick look at major stories from a big weekend in sports. Soccer legend Megan Rapinoe played her last match for the U.S. Women's National Team yesterday.
--:-- Shamita Basu: She credited her teammates with great work that led to multiple championships. But Rapinoe said she was proudest of the work they did to advocate for fair pay and civil rights.
--:-- Shamita Basu: I think it says a lot about us that everything on field, I feel like, kind of pales in comparison to what we've achieved off the field and where we've chosen to sort of throw our weight in the way that we have used what is, you know, our greatest gift in all of our talent and something that's really special that we were all born with to try to make the world a better place and to try to leave the game in a much better place than where we found it.
--:-- Shamita Basu: In other sports news, there's a new world record for the women's marathon. Ethiopian runner Tigist Acefa smashed the previous record by more than two minutes.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Her time was two hours, 11 minutes, 53 seconds in the Berlin Marathon Sunday.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Running records have been steadily falling in recent years as elite athletes have started to wear a new generation of high-tech, super light shoes.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And we don't know which teams will play in this year's Super Bowl, but we do know who's playing the halftime show. Usher will be the headline act, which he calls the honor of a lifetime.
--:-- Shamita Basu: In 2011, he appeared in the halftime show as a guest, backing up the Black Eyed Peas. But on February 11th in Las Vegas, Usher will be the main act.
--:-- Shamita Basu: You can find all these stories and more in the Apple News app. And if you're already listening in the news app, don't go anywhere.
--:-- Shamita Basu: We've got a story from Bloomberg Businessweek coming up that looks at Dollar General stores and how problems have piled up, creating potentially dangerous conditions for workers and shoppers.
--:-- Shamita Basu: That's queued up to play for you next, and we'll be back with the news tomorrow.
