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--:-- Shamita Basu: Good morning. It's Monday, August 11th. I'm Shamita Basu. This is Apple News Today.
--:-- Shamita Basu: On today's show, how ICE is spending its check from Congress, burnt-out nurses are facing more violence in the workplace, and scientists make a surprising discovery after studying a meteorite that peers through the roof of a home in Georgia. But first, to the upcoming meeting between President Trump and his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, scheduled to happen this week on Friday in Alaska.
--:-- Shamita Basu: It'll be the first time Putin has met with a U.S. president since the war began, and the first time Putin has stepped foot on American soil for a decade. Here's what we know and don't know about this week's meetup and what it might mean for the war in Ukraine.
--:-- Shamita Basu: First, it's still unclear who exactly will be there. Right now, this is scheduled as a one-on-one, reportedly as per Putin's request. There is no planned Ukrainian presence at the moment. But the U.S. is leaving the door open to President Volodymyr Zelensky attending.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Vice President J.D. Vance addressed this on Sunday, speaking to Fox News. Vladimir Putin said that he would never sit down with Zelensky, the head of Ukraine, and the president has now got that to change.
--:-- Shamita Basu: We're at a point now where we're now trying to figure out, frankly, scheduling and things like that around when these three leaders could sit down and discuss and into this conflict.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Now, what do I think is ultimately going to come out of this? Look, it's actually very simple. If you take where the current line of contact between Russia and Ukraine is, we're going to try to find some negotiated settlement that the Ukrainians and the Russians can live with.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Over the weekend, the leaders of major European nations signed a joint letter urging the U.S. to bring Zelensky into the fold, saying that the path to peace in Ukraine cannot be decided without Ukraine.
--:-- Shamita Basu: When the meeting was announced, Trump hinted that Ukraine would need to accept losing part of their country. It's very complicated, but we're going to get some back. We're going to get some switched. There'll be some swapping of territories to the betterment of both.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Bloomberg reports that Russia's ceasefire proposal, which it presented to U.S. negotiators last week, amounts to gaining the eastern part of the country, the Donbass region, and Crimea in exchange for a promise of peace, but not much else.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Giving up territory has long been a red line for Zelensky, who says Russia cannot be rewarded for its invasion. And Ukraine stands to lose a lot here. Russia currently controls about a fifth of the country.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Agreeing to Putin's reported proposals would worsen Ukraine's population crisis, which has become an existential challenge since the war began. But it's not just its eastern citizens that would be handed over to Russia.
--:-- Shamita Basu: This region is crucial to Ukraine's future economy, its energy needs, and its security. The Institute for the Study of War think tank notes that the occupied Luhansk region is home to major manufacturers and producers of key metals.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And the occupied Zaporizhia region is home to Europe's largest nuclear power station, which supplied 20% of Ukraine's electricity until the war started.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Ukraine, on the other hand, hasn't got much territorial leverage to swap. They've lost all but four of the 500 square miles they seized in their surprise assaults earlier in the war.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Given Russia's demands, some are arguing the talks shouldn't be happening at all. The United States is one of the few countries Putin can actually enter without fear of arrest.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The International Criminal Court has a warrant out for him, but the U.S. doesn't recognize its jurisdiction. Democratic Senator Mark Kelly was critical of the meeting while speaking to CBS's Face the Nation on Sunday.
--:-- Shamita Basu: I hope we got something out of this. Putin is a war criminal. This is not a show of strength to allow him to fly into the United States, to land here, to negotiate with our president.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Vance acknowledged that both sides would probably be unhappy with any outcome, but said that the administration was, quote, done with the funding of the Ukraine war business.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Let's turn now to immigration. ICE is looking to hire. It recently announced its waiving age requirements. People as young as 18 or older than 40 can now join, and new recruits get a signing bonus of up to $50,000.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Their goal is to hire about 10,000 recruits, which would boost ICE's staffing well above where it's been for the last 15 years. This is possible in part because of the sprawling tax and spending package passed last month.
--:-- Shamita Basu: It allocated more than $175 billion over the next 10 years toward immigration enforcement. We spoke to The Atlantic's Caitlin Dickerson about it.
--:-- Caitlin Dickerson: For comparison's sake, $175 billion is larger than the annual military budgets of every country in the world, except for the United States and China. It's going to make ICE the highest funded federal law enforcement agency in the country.
--:-- Caitlin Dickerson: It's also striking that the language of the newly passed law doesn't get into much detail about the necessity of this money or what exactly it will go toward.
--:-- Caitlin Dickerson: There are some important details, though. For example, the administration is reportedly looking to spend $45 billion to expand detention of immigrants in the United States.
--:-- Caitlin Dickerson: And I think we can say pretty clearly that by and large, this money is going to go toward expanding infrastructure for detention, vastly expanding technology.
--:-- Caitlin Dickerson: So the use of things like facial recognition, data brokering to create really vast dossiers on immigrants to track their locations and track them down, which is really hard historically for these agencies to do.
--:-- Caitlin Dickerson: Already, ICE detention has been exceeding capacity, which means that increasingly private prisons and local jails have been used to house immigrants who've been detained.
--:-- Caitlin Dickerson: In fact, nearly 90 percent of people in ICE custody are being held in facilities run by for-profit companies.
--:-- Caitlin Dickerson: I found that executives at two of the largest private prison companies that contract with the federal government were excited when Trump was inaugurated.
--:-- Caitlin Dickerson: And company stock prices rose as they heralded the opportunity to work with the new White House.
--:-- Caitlin Dickerson: She found many of the highest officials at these companies previously worked for ICE.
--:-- Caitlin Dickerson: And what that does is put private prison executives at the negotiating table asking to build or expand detention centers.
--:-- Caitlin Dickerson: And they're across from and negotiating with their former underlings who may also eventually retire into the private sector.
--:-- Caitlin Dickerson: These are big companies and plum, high-paying jobs.
--:-- Caitlin Dickerson: Dickerson said that the companies have pledged to follow rules about how former employees may interact with their previous agencies, but that it still opens the door for relationships without much oversight.
--:-- Caitlin Dickerson: As the administration also pursues building additional detention centers around the country, akin to the model of the Florida Center referred to as Alligator Alcatraz.
--:-- Caitlin Dickerson: Dickerson said that it makes it challenging for future administrations to potentially change course.
--:-- Caitlin Dickerson: When you open a new detention facility within an American community, it creates jobs.
--:-- Caitlin Dickerson: And a lot of these facilities open in rural areas that don't have a lot of other economic opportunity.
--:-- Caitlin Dickerson: And so because of that, it becomes a political problem to ever close that facility down.
--:-- Caitlin Dickerson: And that's why you've almost never in history seen funding for immigration detention decreased.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Now to health care and why more Americans appear to be turning away from careers in nursing.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The U.S. is in the midst of a shortage. Federal authorities predict we're going to need more than 63,000 additional nurses by 2030, and turnover in this field is high.
--:-- Shamita Basu: More than half of nurses leave within their first two years on the job, according to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.
--:-- Shamita Basu: One reason for that is the tough and often violent conditions nurses contend with.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Kira Breslin, writing for Women's Health magazine, told us about nurses who've been threatened, punched, kicked, or worse.
--:-- Kira Breslin: It would run the gamut from verbal assaults to physical assaults. There were a lot of weapons being brought in, especially in emergency rooms.
--:-- Kira Breslin: A 2023 survey from the country's largest nurses labor union found that about eight in 10 nurses experienced at least one type of workplace violence within the past year.
--:-- Kira Breslin: Close to half reported facing an increase in violence compared to the year before.
--:-- Kira Breslin: A lot of the nurses that I spoke to and the union reps that I spoke to were talking about this increased violence that they've seen that was kind of twofold.
--:-- Kira Breslin: Part of it had to do with this mental health epidemic that we've seen following the pandemic.
--:-- Kira Breslin: And a lot of it also had to do with this lack of staff. So patients were getting agitated and they were taking it out on the nurse because they weren't being seen in a timely manner.
--:-- Kira Breslin: There aren't strict federal guidelines for health care employers when it comes to reporting workplace violence, which means that these issues can compound, particularly in emergency rooms.
--:-- Kira Breslin: Hospitals are only required to report fatalities and severe injuries to the Occupational Safety and Health Administration.
--:-- Kira Breslin: One nurse in Kansas told Women's Health that until last year, there was no way to report violent incidents to management where she worked.
--:-- Kira Breslin: And the workload for nurses means new recruits can be badly exposed.
--:-- Kira Breslin: Breslin told us about Kelsey, a relatively new nurse who was thrown into the deep end on one of her early days.
--:-- Kira Breslin: She was told to sedate the patient after the patient had been threatening her, told her that she was going to come to her house with a razor blade and skin her alive.
--:-- Kira Breslin: She describes going to the patient with a syringe, and the patient had somehow managed to finagle her arm out of the restraints and tried to turn the syringe back on Kelsey and inject Kelsey.
--:-- Kira Breslin: Kelsey spent months replaying the situation in her head to figure out who was to blame.
--:-- Kira Breslin: Her co-workers told her filing a complaint wouldn't change much, and she worried about villainizing a sick patient.
--:-- Kira Breslin: She was upset she didn't have the training to de-escalate the violence.
--:-- Kira Breslin: Kelsey's experience resulted in her starting therapy and taking antidepressants.
--:-- Shamita Basu: A shortage of nurses can have serious ripple effects.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Studies show that hospitals with higher patient-to-nursing ratios experience worse mortality rates, and a lack of nurses is a major factor in why more hospitals have closed in recent years.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Unions and organizations like the American Nurses Association and the National Council of State Boards of Nursing have pushed for stronger safety rules, increased security, safer ratios of staff to patients, and the use of aids who can de-escalate situations with agitated patients.
--:-- Shamita Basu: One of the nurses Breslin spoke to told her she was hopeful.
--:-- Shamita Basu: She sees more nurses advocating for their safety needs, and even an increase in public awareness of what they're up against, thanks to shows like The Pit that depict the intensity and violence of working in a health care setting.
--:-- Shamita Basu: She said all of this is steering the conversation in the right direction.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Before we let you go, a few other stories we're following.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Public health workers are calling Friday's shooting at the Atlanta headquarters of the CDC, which killed a police officer, a result of rampant misinformation surrounding vaccines.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The 30-year-old suspect, who also died during the incident, fired dozens of rounds into the complex on Friday and then a nearby pharmacy.
--:-- Shamita Basu: He reportedly believed the COVID vaccine had made him depressed and suicidal.
--:-- Shamita Basu: A union for CDC workers said that the shooting compounds months of mistreatment, neglect, and vilification that CDC staff have endured, and called on federal authorities to condemn misinformation.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who has himself in the past made false statements about vaccines, voiced support for CDC workers, and said that no one should face violence.
--:-- Shamita Basu: In Gaza, Israel has killed four Al Jazeera journalists and an assistant in a deliberate strike, claiming that one of them was the head of a Hamas cell.
--:-- Shamita Basu: In its statement, the IDF cited intelligence and documents found in Gaza that it said connected one of the journalists to terrorist activity.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The UN special rapporteur, Irene Khan, claimed last month the accusation was unsubstantiated.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And Al Jazeera, which is funded by the Qatari government, denounced it as a fabrication.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Meanwhile, members of the U.N. Security Council criticized Israel's planned offensive following an emergency meeting.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And to Georgia, where one homeowner came into contact with something older than the Earth itself.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Earlier this summer, a meteorite tore across the sky in broad daylight and disintegrated over Georgia, making booming sounds loud enough for people in the area to hear.
--:-- Shamita Basu: One piece hit a local's roof and punched through, leaving a dent in the floor the size of a cherry tomato.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The University of Georgia geologist examined fragments of it and determined that it had come from an asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter and was about 4.56 billion years old, making it roughly 20 million years older than Earth.
--:-- Shamita Basu: As for the homeowner, he's apparently still finding space dust around his living room.
--:-- Shamita Basu: You can find all these stories and more in the Apple News app.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And if you're already listening in the news app right now, we've got a narrated article coming up next.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Drugs like Ozempic, Wegovy, or Mounjaro, originally developed to treat diabetes, have been repurposed as a weight loss treatment and continue to gain popularity among Americans.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Vox asks what's the catch with the long-term safety impact for this relatively new drug.
--:-- Shamita Basu: If you're listening in the podcast app, follow Apple News Plus Narrated to find that story.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And I'll be back with the news tomorrow.
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