--:-- Shamita Basu: Good morning. It's Friday, December 15th. I'm Shamita Basu. This is Apple News Today.
--:-- Shamita Basu: On today's show, what the U.S. is saying and what it's actually doing about Israel's war in Gaza, how failures in police training impacted the Uvalde school shooting, and the questions we should be asking our family members.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Let's start with the war in Gaza and a look at some key differences in the Biden administration's rhetoric and action when it comes to how Israel is waging war.
--:-- Shamita Basu: In public and in private, the administration is encouraging Israel to dial back its attacks to spare more civilian lives.
--:-- Shamita Basu: National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan met with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu yesterday.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Sullivan talked to Israel's Channel 12 about what they discussed.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The issue really is, when does Israel shift from the high-intensity military operations that are underway today to a different phase of this conflict, one that's more precise, more targeted?
--:-- Shamita Basu: Sullivan's visit also follows some of the harshest rhetoric from President Biden on the war.
--:-- Shamita Basu: As we mentioned earlier this week, Biden said Israel is risking losing global support because of what he called indiscriminate bombing in Gaza.
--:-- Shamita Basu: But at the same time, the U.S. continues to take concrete steps to support Israel, militarily and politically.
--:-- Shamita Basu: After the meeting with Sullivan, Netanyahu thanked the U.S. for voting against U.N. calls for a ceasefire and for continued weapons supplies.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Weapons deals often come with heavy restrictions.
--:-- Shamita Basu: For example, Ukraine got some weapons under the condition that they were not to be fired into Russian territory.
--:-- Shamita Basu: But NBC News explains that the Biden administration hasn't put strict conditions on military aid the U.S. is sending to Israel, even though many Democrats want this.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The administration says there's a general expectation that all countries receiving American weapons, including Israel, must comply with the laws of war.
--:-- Shamita Basu: But human rights groups say that Israel's heavy bombing of Gaza may be a breach of international laws to minimize human suffering and protect civilians.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Calls to stop the fighting from Democratic lawmakers and even from within the White House are also getting louder.
--:-- Shamita Basu: A group of political and career appointees in the Biden administration held a vigil Wednesday night in front of the White House to demand a ceasefire.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Senator Bernie Sanders sent a letter to the White House urging the president to withdraw support for a billion proposed Israel aid package.
--:-- Shamita Basu: He referred to Israel's military actions in Gaza as a mass atrocity.
--:-- Shamita Basu: When a gunman entered Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas in 2022, students and teachers did what they'd been trained to do in active shooter drills.
--:-- Shamita Basu: They moved away from windows and doors, turned the lights off, and were silent.
--:-- Shamita Basu: In room 112, 10-year-old Chloe Torres helped to keep her classmates calm.
--:-- Shamita Basu: I remember telling everybody that we're going to get through this and just don't make a sound, just be as quiet as a mouse.
--:-- Shamita Basu: They were so quiet that some responding officers later said they didn't think children were still in the classrooms.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Just one of many law enforcement failures that day.
--:-- Shamita Basu: So many officers, because they didn't realize that maybe this was their training or didn't think about it in those moments, thought that because it was so quiet that meant no one was in and it took longer for them to rescue them.
--:-- Shamita Basu: That's Loemi Creel, an investigative reporter with ProPublica and the Texas Tribune.
--:-- Shamita Basu: She's on the team of reporters who've by now gone through hours of body camera footage and gained access to materials from the state-led investigation into what happened that day in Uvalde.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And they found a massive disparity playing out across the country.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Dozens of states require more training to prepare students and teachers for a mass shooting than they do for the police who are expected to respond to them.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Only two states have laws mandating additional training after the police academy on how to respond to shootings.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The law in Texas is the strongest, and it came as a direct result of the failed response in Uvalde.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And even though many officers in Uvalde had active shooter training, there were lots of problems on the day of the shooting.
--:-- Shamita Basu: They failed to set up a clear command structure, wrong information about the shooter spread, And no one initially engaged the gunman, even though police are supposed to do so as soon as they believe someone could be hurt.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Safety experts told Creel that's why consistent practice is critical for law enforcement.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Active shooter best practices change often and training gives officers a chance to learn from mistakes
--:-- Shamita Basu: These situations are so stressful that even if you think as police officer you can handle it because you made dangerous traffic stops or whatever before because of just everything that is happening in such a short space of time, you really need to practice this regularly to be able to overcome kind of freezing in that moment.
--:-- Shamita Basu: In Uvalde, Officers told investigators when they realized the gunman had an assault-style rifle, they decided to wait for reinforcements.
--:-- Shamita Basu: That's partly what allowed over an hour to pass before law enforcement took on the shooter.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Creel told us asking police officers to confront active shooter situations involving AR-15-style weapons places a huge expectation on them.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And so I think the question we're posing is, are we adequately preparing officers enough for this experience that is in some cases more like a war, you know, kind of combat type situation.
--:-- Shamita Basu: You can read the full investigation from ProPublica, the Texas Tribune and Frontline in the Apple News app.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Now let's take a quick look at some other stories in the news.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Hungary is blocking a $54 billion European Union aid package for Ukraine, a potential setback to the country's efforts to keep up the fight against Russia.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban is seen as Putin's closest ally in the EU.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The move to block the aid package came hours after talks opened that could lead to Ukraine joining the EU.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Leaders in Europe will reconsider aid to Ukraine next month.
--:-- Shamita Basu: In the U.S., the House has passed the $886 billion defense bill.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Earlier, it was approved in the Senate by a strong margin.
--:-- Shamita Basu: There were concerns that GOP hardliners would tie up the spending bill with language about abortion, diversity, and LGBTQ plus rights.
--:-- Shamita Basu: But the final bill passed Congress without these provisions.
--:-- Shamita Basu: On to medical news, where a new study points to potential treatment for morning sickness.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Nausea and vomiting happens in the majority of pregnancies.
--:-- Shamita Basu: In some cases, morning sickness can be so severe that it leads to hospitalizations.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Scientists found a link to the hormone GDF15, which surges during pregnancy.
--:-- Shamita Basu: This research could help lead to the development of drugs that block the hormone in the brain, which could reduce or eliminate morning sickness symptoms.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And in New Jersey yesterday the commute got pretty weird a giant bull was spotted on the tracks at Newark Penn Station causing delays and a lot of excitement
--:-- Shamita Basu: The loose longhorn ran along the tracks for a couple of miles before being captured.
--:-- Shamita Basu: He was tranquilized and is now in the care of an animal sanctuary, which named him Ricardo.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The sanctuary says Ricardo probably made an escape on the way to a slaughterhouse, but now he's set to live a long life at a pasture.
--:-- Shamita Basu: How much do you know about the lives of the elders in your family, the people like your parents, your grandparents?
--:-- Shamita Basu: Do you know about their childhood, their home life growing up?
--:-- Shamita Basu: We don't realize how much we don't know about our parents and grandparents and how much we've put them into the role of mother or father or grandparent and not really examine them outside of that role.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Elizabeth Keating is an anthropology professor at the University of Texas at Austin.
--:-- Shamita Basu: She had this realization herself when her own mother died, and she wanted to make sure that other people didn't have the same regrets.
--:-- Shamita Basu: So she wrote a book all about the value of recording your elders while they're still alive and asking them questions about stuff that seems so mundane, so ordinary, we may have never thought to ask before.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Stuff like, what was the house you grew up in like?
--:-- Shamita Basu: How did your family greet each other in the morning?
--:-- Shamita Basu: What's the first sound you remember hearing when you would wake up?
--:-- Shamita Basu: Keating gave one example from an interview she did with one woman.
--:-- Shamita Basu: She said that she and her brother slept in the bedroom with our parents.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And then she added, yes, and my mother had the knitting machine in there.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And most of the time we would go to sleep to the sound of the knitting machine.
--:-- Shamita Basu: She made the sound.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And it was a wonderfully evocative memory.
--:-- Shamita Basu: You'll hear more on this week's episode of Apple News In Conversation.
--:-- Shamita Basu: It's an episode that'll get you ready for your end-of-the-year family gatherings and maybe even inspire you to interview someone in your family.
--:-- Shamita Basu: There's plenty of example questions to get you started.
--:-- Shamita Basu: If you're listening in the News app, it's queued up to play for you next.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And if you're listening in the podcast app, just search for Apple News in Conversation to find it.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Have a great weekend, and I'll be back with the news on Monday.
