--:-- Shamita Basu: Good morning. It's Monday, December 2nd. Welcome back to Apple News Today. I'm Shamita Basu. Hope you had a nice Thanksgiving.
--:-- Shamita Basu: On today's show, how an urgently needed global agreement on plastic fell apart, why health experts want more men to get tested for the BRCA cancer gene, and some things to keep in mind as we head into Cyber Monday. But first, to two big developments involving presidents and the perception that justice can be manipulated in their favor.
--:-- Shamita Basu: First, last night, President Biden issued a full and unconditional pardon for his son, Hunter Biden, despite repeatedly saying he would not use his executive power to pardon his son or commute his sentence.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Earlier this year, Hunter Biden was convicted of three felonies in a federal gun trial, which carried a potential prison sentence, and of three felony counts for tax evasion.
--:-- Shamita Basu: In a statement, President Biden called the cases against his son politically motivated, saying other people are almost never brought to trial for the same actions, but his son was treated differently.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The pardon comes as Biden has just about 50 days left in office.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Presidents have pardoned family before. Bill Clinton pardoned his half-brother. Trump pardoned Jared Kushner's father.
--:-- Shamita Basu: But Biden's decision to pardon Hunter is likely to cause an uproar among some Republicans and even among some Democrats who worry it could be seen as hypocritical, since one of their central criticisms of Trump is that he'll weaponize the Justice Department for his own benefit.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Which takes us to the second big development, this one involving the FBI, the principal investigative arm of the DOJ.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Over the weekend, Trump said he will nominate a loyalist named Kash Patel as the new FBI director, replacing Christopher Wray, who still has three years left on his 10-year term.
--:-- Shamita Basu: This is a big deal because Patel, like Trump, has vowed to use the FBI to go after political enemies.
--:-- Shamita Basu: So let's take a moment to look at Patel's record.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Patel served as a public defender in Florida before entering politics.
--:-- Shamita Basu: For a while, he was a pretty obscure staffer in Washington, but rose to prominence when he became known as the man behind the Devin Nunes memo, a document that alleged misconduct by the FBI and other Justice Department officials in the investigation of Donald Trump and interference in the 2016 election.
--:-- Shamita Basu: He is also the author of a book that includes a list of so-called deep state officials to target, which Trump has referred to as a blueprint.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Patel ended up serving in multiple senior roles in the first Trump administration, including as chief of staff to the defense secretary.
--:-- Shamita Basu: At one point, Trump considered tapping Patel to become the deputy director at the FBI.
--:-- Shamita Basu: According to The Washington Post, Trump's attorney general at the time, Bill Barr, reportedly told White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows that Patel would be deputy director over his dead body and blocked the move.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Barr described the incident in his memoir, saying Patel had, quote, virtually no experience that would qualify him to serve at the highest level of the world's preeminent law enforcement agency.
--:-- Shamita Basu: In September, CNN spoke with Patel about what he would do if Trump were to win and he were tapped to run the FBI.
--:-- Shamita Basu: I'd shut down the FBI Hoover building on day one and reopening the next day as a museum of the deep state.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And I take the 7 employees that work in that building and send them across America to chase down criminals Go be cops
--:-- Shamita Basu: In a 2023 podcast interview he said he would go after the people Trump perceives to be his enemies
--:-- Shamita Basu: We going to come after the people in the media who lied about American citizens who helped Joe Biden rig presidential elections.
--:-- Shamita Basu: We're going to come after you, whether it's criminally or civilly, we'll figure that out.
--:-- Shamita Basu: But yeah, we're putting you all on notice.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Trump and his allies have argued for years that the FBI and DOJ have been taken over by partisans who are out to get him.
--:-- Shamita Basu: They cite the multiple investigations into Trump as evidence.
--:-- Shamita Basu: In fact, Pam Bondi, Trump's pick for attorney general, has vowed to go after the prosecutors and investigators who went after Trump.
--:-- Shamita Basu: But it's important to remember that Trump appointed the current FBI director, Christopher Wray, and the bureau is supposed to be completely independent and impartial.
--:-- Shamita Basu: That's why FBI directors aren't like other agency positions.
--:-- Shamita Basu: They hold their jobs for 10-year terms.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Here's Jake Sullivan, National Security Advisor under President Joe Biden, reacting to the announcement about Patel on NBC's Meet the Press.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The current FBI director, Chris Wray, was actually appointed by Donald Trump.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Joe Biden didn't fire him.
--:-- Shamita Basu: He relied upon him to execute his responsibilities as the director of the FBI and allowed him to serve out the fullness of his term over the course of the Biden administration.
--:-- Shamita Basu: So that's how we approach things.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And we would like to ensure that the FBI remains an independent institution insulated from politics.
--:-- Shamita Basu: News of the Patel pick concerned many in the Washington establishment.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe called Patel profoundly unqualified for the job.
--:-- Shamita Basu: But several Republicans have already endorsed Patel's nomination, including Senator Ted Cruz, who called Patel a very strong nominee on CBS's Face the Nation.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And I got to say, all of the weeping and gnashing of teeth, all of the people pulling their hair out are exactly the people who are dismayed about having a real reformer come into the FBI and clean out the corrupted partisans who sadly have burrowed into senior career positions at the FBI.
--:-- Shamita Basu: For Patel's nomination to be considered, Christopher Wray would either have to resign or be fired by Trump.
--:-- Shamita Basu: While it's not unprecedented for FBI directors to get fired, it is rare.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And if Trump were to fire him, CNN notes that Trump would be the first president to fire two FBI directors.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The first being James Comey, who was fired months after Trump started his first term.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The world is facing a massive plastics problem.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And this weekend, global leaders gathered by the U.N. failed to reach an agreement to curb it.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Delegates from 170 nations met in Busan, South Korea, with the goal of creating a binding agreement that would force countries to drastically cut plastic pollution.
--:-- Shamita Basu: But there was a big split on proposed solutions, with more than 100 nations wanting to cap plastic production, while a handful of oil-rich countries like Saudi Arabia and Russia argued the world should target plastic pollution instead.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Their dissent ultimately tanked the agreement.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Here's Juan Carlos Monterey Gomez, a representative of Panama, speaking during the negotiations.
--:-- Juan Carlos Monterey Gomez: Plastics are not convenience. Plastics are poison.
--:-- Juan Carlos Monterey Gomez: Every piece that we allow to produce without limits is a direct assault on our health, on our nature and our children.
--:-- Juan Carlos Monterey Gomez: For those blocking progress you are allowing this crisis to fester and it will kill us
--:-- Shamita Basu: He went on to describe the talks as a moral failure
--:-- Shamita Basu: As The Washington Post explains the world is currently producing more than 450 million metric tons of plastic every year
--:-- Shamita Basu: Most of that is from fossil fuels.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Less than 10 percent of it will ever be recycled.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And a lot of it ends up in our oceans and rivers.
--:-- Shamita Basu: In fact, by some estimates, we're dumping one garbage truck's worth of plastic in the ocean every minute.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Christina Dixon is with the Environmental Investigation Agency, which advocates for better enforcement of environmental law.
--:-- Christina Dixon: The problem is that we're producing and using too much plastic, and that is completely overwhelming all of our efforts around waste management and cleanups globally.
--:-- Christina Dixon: And if we don't have a kind of common understanding that that is the problem we're trying to solve, it's very difficult to find common solutions.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The disconnect over defining the plastics problem comes at a time when plastics are becoming increasingly important to oil-producing nations.
--:-- Shamita Basu: As more countries around the world are transitioning from cars that run on gas to ones that run on electric, oil-rich countries are worried about their economies, which is why they don't want to stop the production of plastic.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Instead, they're advocating for developing the technologies we need to deal with plastic waste.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The United States positioned itself somewhere in the middle at these talks, saying the Biden administration supports the goal of reducing plastic pollution, but doesn't support mandatory production limits.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And that's important because we are the world's top plastic waste contributor.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The Post notes we produce almost twice as much plastic waste as China and more than the entire European Union combined.
--:-- Shamita Basu: While no treaty was agreed upon, leaders at the summit on both sides of the debate agreed to continue talks in the future.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Let's turn now to another big story involving our health.
--:-- Shamita Basu: A lot of you are probably familiar with the BRCA gene, commonly known as the BRCA gene, and its connection to breast cancer.
--:-- Shamita Basu: It was something that first really came into the public consciousness just over a decade ago because of something a celebrity did.
--:-- Shamita Basu: You can really trace the awareness of the BRCA gene and its link to breast cancer to Angelina Jolie.
--:-- Shamita Basu: That's The Atlantic's Kristen V. Brown.
--:-- Kristen V. Brown: She told us that actor Angelina Jolie's op-ed in The New York Times in 2013, describing her BRCA mutation and her decision to have a preventative double mastectomy really changed the public's understanding.
--:-- Kristen V. Brown: It helped a lot of people who really did need testing, who had a family history of breast cancer, get tested and do things like get screenings to help reduce their risk of death from breast and ovarian cancer.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Up until now, it's mostly been women who've been concerned with this gene.
--:-- Shamita Basu: But Brown told us there's mounting evidence that men should be concerned about it as well.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And that's because it's believed to be linked not just to breast cancer and ovarian cancer, but also to cancers that can develop in the pancreas, prostate, esophagus, stomach and skin.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Because the gene has gained fame as the breast cancer gene, a lot of men just don't realize that it's something that they should worry about, even if they have BRCA in their family, even if they know that there is a history of breast cancer.
--:-- Shamita Basu: They just don't think it applies to them
--:-- Shamita Basu: And Brown told us we're learning a lot about the genes that can lead to cancer that we just didn't know 20, 30 years ago
--:-- Shamita Basu: The BRCA gene was named the breast cancer gene at a time where we just generally thought that a gene would be linked to a single condition.
--:-- Shamita Basu: You know, this was in the 1990s before we even, you know, sequenced the human genome.
--:-- Shamita Basu: We really thought that there was going to be like one diabetes gene, one heart disease gene,
--:-- Shamita Basu: And it just wound up being so much more complicated than that.
--:-- Shamita Basu: So this idea that you would have any gene linked to a single disease is just really outmoded.
--:-- Shamita Basu: One researcher called it a branding problem and said they're working to deepen our understanding of BRCA genes so that more men and their doctors consider testing for it.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Before we let you go, a few other stories being featured in the Apple News app.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Over the weekend, roughly two feet of lake-effect snow fell in the Great Lakes region and some of the northeast.
--:-- Shamita Basu: About four feet fell in parts of western New York.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Forecasters say several more feet of snow could come later this week.
--:-- Shamita Basu: One event affected by the weather was Sunday night's NFL football game in Buffalo between the Bills and the San Francisco 49ers.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Two feet of snow piled up in Highmark Stadium, home of the Bills, ahead of the game.
--:-- Shamita Basu: But as is now a bit of a tradition, the team put out a public call for fans to help dig out the field.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Volunteers were paid $20 an hour and given food and hot beverages, and the game went on as scheduled.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Moving on, we are a few days out from Thanksgiving, and if you're looking at your leftovers and thinking they're looking kind of pitiful by now, here's a little motivation to figure out how to use them.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The LA Times estimates that Americans will have thrown out something like 316 million pounds of food after Thanksgiving.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And get this, our food waste is considered one of the biggest contributors to climate change.
--:-- Shamita Basu: In fact, the food we throw out is believed to emit five times more greenhouse gases than the aviation industry.
--:-- Shamita Basu: So even if you begrudgingly packed up leftover turkey for the freezer, take some comfort in knowing that you have done your part.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And finally, today is Cyber Monday.
--:-- Shamita Basu: About 72 million people say they plan on shopping online today.
--:-- Shamita Basu: That comes after shoppers already spent $10.8 billion online on Black Friday, a record.
--:-- Shamita Basu: As you do your shopping, Amanda Mull, formerly of The Atlantic, now at Bloomberg Business Week, says there are some things you should keep in mind about the way retailers design their services to keep us buying more and more stuff.
--:-- Amanda Mull: A lot of it we probably don't really want or need, like making shipping and returns free.
--:-- Amanda Mull: It costs a lot of money to accept this volume of returns and then process them.
--:-- Amanda Mull: And consumers are paying for that.
--:-- Amanda Mull: So if everything seems really expensive to you, especially things that you're buying online, it is because in part that all of these logistical services are baked into the price of everything you buy, no matter how scrupulous you personally are.
--:-- Shamita Basu: I spoke with Mull for an episode of Apple News In Conversation that raises the curtain on what's really going on with online shopping and offers some tips to help you think about your shopping behavior a little bit differently.
--:-- Shamita Basu: If you're already listening in the news app right now, we've got that episode queued up to play for you next.
--:-- Shamita Basu: If you're listening in the podcast app, follow Apple News in Conversation to find that episode.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And I'll be back with the news tomorrow.
