--:-- Shamita Basu: Good morning. It's Tuesday, September 20th. 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.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Hurricane Fiona is picking up in intensity. It started as a Category 1 storm when it first hit Puerto Rico, but this morning, forecasters upped it to a Category 3, with winds whipping at over 100 miles per hour.
--:-- Shamita Basu: We've been turning to the Miami Herald for updates on what's happening in Puerto Rico, where millions of people still don't have power or running water. At least three deaths have been reported in Puerto Rico and one in the Dominican Republic.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Lots of comparisons are being made to Hurricane Maria, which hit Puerto Rico in 2017. Even though Fiona is less powerful than Maria, the storm is moving slowly and flooding appears to be more severe this time.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Even yesterday, the storm continued to pummel the island with heavy rains. CNN spoke to one resident in Salinas, on the southern side of Puerto Rico.
--:-- Resident: A lot of people, more than Maria, lost their houses now, lost everything on their houses because the floating that the maria was tough winds but this one with all the rain he just destroyed everything on the houses it's unbelievable
--:-- Shamita Basu: The Miami Herald spoke to a FEMA official who said both the agency and the island are in a better position now than they were five years ago to recover after a major storm.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Meanwhile, we're watching as Fiona gets stronger and heads toward the Turks and Caicos and the southern Bahamas today. You can check in on the latest throughout the day on the Apple News app.
--:-- Shamita Basu: An update on a story we talked about last week. Adnan Syed is free after a judge in Baltimore vacated his murder conviction. He was released on Monday and ordered to serve home detention while the state has 30 days to decide whether they seek a new trial or drop the case.
--:-- Shamita Basu: In 2000, Syed was sentenced to life in prison for the murder of his ex-girlfriend, 17-year-old Hae Min Lee. But he always maintained his innocence.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Syed's childhood friend, lawyer Rabia Chaudhry, spent years investigating this case and advocating for his release. She eventually teamed up with the journalists behind the hit podcast Serial, which popularized the case for a global audience.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Ahead of the decision on Monday, Chowdhury spoke with MSNBC's Mehdi Hassan about the legal argument for Syed's release.
--:-- Rabia Chaudhry: But I think the real big linchpin in which made them say this conviction cannot stand is the fact that they found evidence that was hidden by the former prosecutor in 1999 that should have been disclosed to the defense, and that's called a Brady violation.
--:-- Rabia Chaudhry: And when a Brady violation is discovered, a defendant deserves a new trial.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Heimin Lee's brother, Young Lee, addressed the courtroom on Monday. He told them, tearfully, that he felt betrayed by the decision.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Their family thought the case was settled. He said, this is not a podcast for me. This is real life. The family says they continue to have questions in its pursuit of justice.
--:-- Shamita Basu: St. Louis has a policing problem. The police department says it doesn't have enough patrols to put in parts of the city that have high rates of violent crime.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And at the same time, many of its officers are moonlighting as private police for wealthy, predominantly white neighborhoods.
--:-- Shamita Basu: These officers are used in these neighborhoods basically to supplement the police. And so what you have is an unequal system of policing in St. Louis where the wealthy neighborhoods have a lot more protection than the neighborhoods that actually have most of the crime.
--:-- Shamita Basu: That's ProPublica's Jeremy Kohler. He told us affluent neighborhoods have raised millions of dollars to pay for these private cops.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And even though these are technically off-duty officers, they have the same authority that they have on duty. They can make arrests, investigate crimes, even stop pedestrians or cars.
--:-- Shamita Basu: They also wear their city uniforms, which creates confusion about who they're working for.
--:-- Shamita Basu: You know, neighborhoods that can afford this really want this because they're getting real police officers patrolling their streets.
--:-- Shamita Basu: One of these private security companies raised pay to exceed overtime rates paid by the city.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Kohler explained that they're outbidding the police department for its own employees. The same company sometimes offers cash rewards as an incentive for private officers to track down a car or a person of interest.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Kohler says for public servants, these kinds of monetary rewards are generally off-limits.
--:-- Shamita Basu: You can't walk up to a member of the forestry division, for example, and say, like, please cut down this tree. I'll give you $500. It's obstructing my view.
--:-- Shamita Basu: You can't do the same thing to a police officer. You can't order a police officer to arrest someone.
--:-- Shamita Basu: But when police officers are working for a private employer, they do get these types of directives.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Other cities have seen similar neighborhood groups hiring off-duty officers for extra protection.
--:-- Shamita Basu: But experts in policing told ProPublica they'd never seen a system like the one in St. Louis.
--:-- Shamita Basu: That it's an extreme example of a pattern we're seeing all across the country.
--:-- Shamita Basu: One criminal law professor said, public policing has its problems, but it's supposed to protect people equally, not based on wealth or power.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Privatization of policing is a retreat from that promise.
--:-- Shamita Basu: There's a shift happening all over the world, and I'm sure you've noticed it in your own circles. More kids are wearing glasses.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Nearsightedness is becoming more common. And scientists can't quite agree on the reason why.
--:-- Shamita Basu: But a new article in The Atlantic gets into some fascinating solutions, ones that go beyond glasses.
--:-- Shamita Basu: But first, let's talk about what's happening with people's eyes.
--:-- Shamita Basu: There is something about modern life that's making more people nearsighted.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And if current trends continue, one study estimates half of the world population will be myopic by 2050.
--:-- Shamita Basu: It's been difficult to prove that staring at screens or staring at anything close up for too long is for sure the problem.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Although scientists agree, less time on screens and more time outside is probably for the best.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Now, when you think back to biology class, remember that the eye is a complicated and impressive organ.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Babies are born farsighted, and then their eyes start to grow.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Now, a healthy eye stops growing when it's round in shape.
--:-- Shamita Basu: A nearsighted eye is one that keeps growing until it's more like an olive, a little oblong.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Vision-wise, you can correct for this with glasses.
--:-- Shamita Basu: But Sarah Zhang at The Atlantic visits a clinic at UC Berkeley that does what they call myopia control treatments.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Basically, they have ways to slow the growth of the eye before it gets too oblong, using eye drops or contact lenses.
--:-- Shamita Basu: But it has to happen while you're still young, in your teens into your early 20s.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Similar treatments are on the market in places like China and Canada, and many more are in trials here in the U.S.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And in case you're wondering, yeah, it's pricey.
--:-- Shamita Basu: It can cost thousands of dollars to start treatment and another thousand a year.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Zhang brings up a good analogy.
--:-- Shamita Basu: She says it's kind of like braces, both cost-wise and problem-wise.
--:-- Shamita Basu: See, cavemen had incredibly straight teeth.
--:-- Shamita Basu: But now that our jaws have become weaker and smaller, our teeth are crowded and crooked.
--:-- Shamita Basu: So we came up with braces as a way to fix it.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Today's research into myopia treatments is something like that, a modern solution to a mysterious modern problem.
--:-- Shamita Basu: You can find all these stories and more in the Apple News app.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And when you're in the app, keep listening to hear narrated articles from our News Plus partners.
--:-- Shamita Basu: I'll talk with you again tomorrow. Thank you.
