--:-- Mark Garrison: Good morning. It's Tuesday, April 2nd. I'm Mark Garrison in for Shamita Basu. This is Apple News Today.
--:-- Mark Garrison: Coming up, the scramble to prevent water pollution after the bridge collapse in Baltimore. Doctors sound the alarm on misinformation about birth control on social media. And how living in space messes with how humans dream. But first, let's take a brief look at some big stories in the news.
--:-- Mark Garrison: In Gaza, seven aid workers are dead after an Israeli airstrike. They were working for the food charity World Central Kitchen, founded by well-known chef Jose Andres. A dual U.S.-Canadian citizen is among the victims. Andres called on Israel to stop the, quote, indiscriminate killing and to end restrictions on humanitarian aid delivery. Israel's military says it's reviewing what it calls a tragic incident.
--:-- Mark Garrison: In Florida, a state Supreme Court ruling clears the way for a ban on abortions after six weeks to take effect next month. It's one of the strictest abortion bans in the country. But voters will have a chance to change things. The court also ruled that voters will be able to decide on a Florida constitutional amendment to protect abortion rights in November.
--:-- Mark Garrison: Since Roe v. Wade was overturned, American voters have supported abortion rights in elections, including in red states. But Florida's vote will have a high bar, needing a 60% supermajority to put abortion rights into the state constitution.
--:-- Mark Garrison: In other legal news, former President Trump has posted a $175 million bond while he appeals the New York civil fraud verdict. The judgment was close to half a billion dollars in the case ruling he deceived banks and insurance companies about his net worth. An appeals court allowed him to host a smaller bond after Trump said he wasn't able to secure a bond for the full amount.
--:-- Mark Garrison: In a separate criminal trial involving hush money, a judge has expanded a gag order on Trump. It now bars attacks on the judge's family. This after Trump repeatedly targeted the judge's daughter on social media. Trump has pleaded not guilty in that case.
--:-- Mark Garrison: And in sports, the women's Final Four is now set. Iowa and UConn both advanced last night. Iowa Kaitlin Clark led her team past LSU sending last year champions home. Clark talked to ESPN about what next following her 41-point performance.
--:-- Kaitlin Clark: At this point every single team is good. Everybody can be beat on every single night. We know that better than anybody else. And, you know, like you said, the job's not done. We got two more to win. But at the same time, we're going to enjoy this one for sure.
--:-- Mark Garrison: As we mentioned yesterday, the other women's teams in the Final Four are South Carolina and NC State. You can get a preview of Friday's matchups on the Apple News app.
--:-- Mark Garrison: In Baltimore, cleanup is underway in the Patapsco River. That's the waterway the Francis Scott Key Bridge once spanned before a large cargo ship destroyed it, killing six people. Crews have started the complicated process of removing bridge debris.
--:-- Mark Garrison: Maryland Governor Wes Moore talked about the scene on CNN.
--:-- Wes Moore: We have a ship that is nearly the size of the Eiffel Tower. That is now stuck within the channel that has the key bridge sitting on top of it.
--:-- Mark Garrison: Alongside the operation to clear the wreckage and recover victims' remains, crews are trying to contain pollutants. And this is in an area that already had problems with hazardous waste.
--:-- Mark Garrison: Jennifer Homendy, chair of the National Transportation Safety Board, says the ship, called the Dali, was carrying 56 containers of hazardous materials. That's 764 tons of hazardous materials. Mostly corrosives, flammables, and some miscellaneous hazardous materials, class 9 hazardous materials, which would include lithium-ion batteries.
--:-- Mark Garrison: Most of those containers are intact, but more than a dozen were damaged. The cargo inside was primarily soaps, essential oils, and perfumes, all materials that can do damage in large quantities.
--:-- Mark Garrison: In order to contain pollutants, workers placed floating barriers in the river, some of them with absorbent material, similar to diapers. Officials said there was no known threat to drinking water and that the ship's hull appeared intact. A breach that sent fuel into the water would have been catastrophic.
--:-- Mark Garrison: But there are still concerns. Emily Ranson with the group Clean Water Action talked to a local ABC affiliate about key questions.
--:-- Emily Ranson: What type of machinery are they going to have to bring in? What type of disruption is that going to have to the channel? Any dredging that has to happen is always a concern.
--:-- Mark Garrison: For environmental watchdogs, it's another setback in a year's struggle to preserve the environment in the area. And now the people of Baltimore have to deal with a massive hit to their infrastructure, alongside safety concerns about their water.
--:-- Mark Garrison: There's a lot happening these days around birth control. The first over-the-counter birth control pill is now available in the U.S. And as options change, people are looking for answers online.
--:-- Mark Garrison: Doctors say they're seeing a flood of dangerous misinformation about birth control on social media platforms like TikTok and Instagram. Lauren Weber is a health reporter for The Washington Post. She focuses on medical disinformation.
--:-- Lauren Weber: So this kind of misinformation about birth control really has serious consequences. Decades of research shows that methods like the pill and IUDs are safe and effective for most patients. Serious side effects are rare.
--:-- Mark Garrison: But when people seek answers online, they often land on unqualified sources, people with agendas against hormonal birth control. One OBGYN analyzed the 100 most popular TikTok videos about IUDs and found that almost 40% of them were negative.
--:-- Lauren Weber: Many videos about birth control include misleading claims about side effects and endorsements of much less effective methods. And with these clips, engaging with them means platform algorithms will serve up more misinformation.
--:-- Mark Garrison: So it can really leave young women with a skewed perception of what the actual statistics of some of these rare or serious side effects or even less rare side effects are because they're seeing the same content over and over and over again on social media.
--:-- Lauren Weber: One college junior told The Post she saw so many of these types of videos on TikTok that she was afraid to get on the pill. It took a biology class taught by a physician to change her mind.
--:-- Mark Garrison: The best thing is to talk through options with a doctor. But Weber explains that many patients aren't getting as much one-on-one advice.
--:-- Lauren Weber: I had one physician tell me she used to get 45 minutes to talk to college students about what kind of birth control they should take. And now in private practice, she only gets 15.
--:-- Mark Garrison: And she really feels like that has hampered her ability to adequately walk through what patients want to hear which is to talk about the side effects to talk about effectiveness to talk about all these different things.
--:-- Lauren Weber: And so there's this backdrop of mistrust for the medical system. There's also this backdrop of just overall confusion because young women see these videos on their phone over and over again and they trust some of these people.
--:-- Mark Garrison: In a post-Roe America, laws like the Florida one we mentioned are restricting access to abortion across the country. That means the stakes are even higher for choosing effective birth control.
--:-- Mark Garrison: Finally, living in space does all kinds of strange things to the human body. Astronauts have been learning more and more about that over the years. NPR's podcast Shortwave recently spoke to astronaut Laurel O'Hara, who was on board the International Space Station.
--:-- Mark Garrison: She's been up there for about six months, and there's not a lot of room to roam. O'Hara told NPR about how the very tight space she lives in is influencing what she dreams about.
--:-- Laurel O'Hara: Most of my space dreams up here have taken place in, like, small compartments on Space Station, where I'm, like, digging through bags in the rack, trying to find something. And then I think I get stuck. And so I kind of wake up like feeling my way out of the bags in my dream, which is really just my sleeping bag in my crew quarters.
--:-- Mark Garrison: O'Hara and her colleagues are trying to understand how time in space affects the mind and body. And what they find out could help people who never blast off.
--:-- Laurel O'Hara: Astronauts lose up to 2% of their bone density per month of spaceflight. So what they learn up there could help doctors get a better handle on how normal aging works down here on Earth.
--:-- Mark Garrison: You can find all these stories and more in the Apple News app. And if you're already listening in the news app right now, we've got a narrated article coming up next from New York Magazine. One of their most talked-about cover stories, a Pulitzer Prize-winning writer argues that transgender kids should be free to make their own choices about their bodies. It's a deeply researched essay about a very complicated issue.
--:-- Mark Garrison: If you're listening in the podcasts app, follow Apple News Plus narrated to find that story. And I'll be back with the news tomorrow.
