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--:-- Duarte Giraldino: Good morning. It's Thursday, March 18th. I'm Duarte Giraldino. And 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: The U.S. is mourning the deaths of eight people who were fatally shot at three spas in Georgia. Six of the victims were women of Asian descent. President Biden and Vice President Harris addressed the murders yesterday.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: Whatever the motivation here, I know that Asian Americans are and very, very concerned because, as you know, I've been speaking about the brutality against Asian Americans for the last couple months, and I think it is very, very troubling.
--:-- Shamita Basu: I do want to say to our Asian American community that we stand with you and understand how this has frightened and shocked and outraged all people, but knowing the increasing level of hate crime against our Asian American brothers and sisters. We also want to speak out in solidarity with them and acknowledge that none of us should ever be silent in the face of any form of hate.
--:-- Georgia State Senator Michelle Au: [interviewed by the Washington Post] The violence has shaken the Asian American community. She said context is really important here. These murders come after months of escalating verbal abuse, harassment, and physical violence against Asian Americans across the country.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And now, after these shootings in Georgia, members of the Asian American community are saying their anxieties, their fears are dialed all the way up. Others are pointing to the disproportionate impact of anti-Asian violence on women.
--:-- Sung Yong Choi Maro: [executive director of the National Asian Pacific American Women Forum] When you consider the history of exotifying Asian women in the U.S., it would surprise her if there was some racialized motivation here.
--:-- Shamita Basu: According to data compiled by Stop AAPI Hate since March of last year, women were the target in more than two-thirds of the nearly 3,000 anti-Asian incidents. So far, four of the victims have been identified. Delaina Ashley-Yon Gonzalez, Tao Youfeng, Xiaojie Tan, and Paul Andre Michaels.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: Ohio's attorney general is suing the Biden administration over the COVID relief bill, and 21 other Republican attorneys general are threatening to take action of their own. They argue that the rules embedded in the $1.9 trillion plan, which passed with no Republican support, violate their state's rights to tax and spend.
--:-- Bloomberg News: The package contains hundreds of billions of dollars meant to help struggling cities, counties, and states. But that money comes with a caveat. It cannot be used to offset local tax cuts. And here's the thing: tax cuts often translate into fewer services, municipal layoffs, and other austerity measures.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: Some Republicans want to use this extra federal cash as a way to fill the holes that could be caused by local tax cuts. Right. And that is the focus of the Ohio lawsuit, which argues that the federal government is imposing unconstitutional limits on their rights to manage their own finances.
--:-- Treasury Department: There's no blanket ban on tax cuts. States just cannot use federal pandemic relief money to pay for them.
--:-- Shamita Basu: So Ohio is going ahead and suing. Other attorneys general are just asking the Treasury for guidance, but it's possible they could also decide to sue if they're not happy with the answers they get.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: It's that time of year when high school students wait by the mailbox, or I guess it's their inbox these days, to hear back from colleges to find out whether they've actually been accepted.
--:-- Wall Street Journal: The biggest change involves standardized testing. SAT and ACT testing was hard to pull off while social distancing. And a lot of students just couldn't take these exams as planned.
--:-- Shamita Basu: So more than 1,600 colleges just waived requirements to submit these scores. Some schools have already said they're planning to do that for at least another year. And this shift has created a tidal wave of applications at selective schools.
--:-- Wall Street Journal: Harvard received 42 percent more applications than last year. Dartmouth saw a 33 percent increase. Yale, Columbia, and Stanford all had to delay their admissions decisions because they were just so flooded with applications.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: According to the journal, colleges are saying without these scores, they're putting more weight on things like teacher recommendations and other indications of intellectual curiosity.
--:-- Wall Street Journal: Now, this could be a good thing. Many studies have correlated test scores with wealth. And even before the pandemic, some schools had moved away from standardized tests because of concerns about bias.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Focusing less on these scores could mean more students from low-income backgrounds and under-resourced high schools could get into top universities. Right. So theoretically good, but that's not necessarily what we're seeing play out.
--:-- Wall Street Journal: There are still students who did take standardized tests in the past year, and it's not clear whether they get a better shot at acceptance than students who didn't submit scores.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: The idea here is, without the pressure of standardized test taking, students are willing to roll the dice, hoping maybe, maybe I'll get into the school of my dreams.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Next in line for COVID vaccines, the apes at your local zoo. NPR is reporting on research into how to protect animals from COVID-19, including an experimental vaccine the San Diego Zoo is giving to its gorillas, orangutans, and bonobos.
--:-- NPR: And don't worry, animals do not get the same vaccines as humans. It's not like someone's grandma in California is not going to get vaccinated because a bonobo will.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: Bonobo. My toddlers just love trying to say that word, bonobo. That's a great word.
--:-- Shamita Basu: By the way, here's the backstory. In January, eight gorillas at the San Diego Zoo tested positive for coronavirus. They quarantined and recovered. And then the zookeepers started giving other animals the vaccine to keep them safe.
--:-- NPR: Now, it hasn't gotten as much attention, but alongside the race to develop vaccines for humans, scientists have also been working on vaccines for animals. And the pharmaceutical company behind the ape vaccine is also working on shots for dogs and cats, although these are not approved in America yet.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: But this research into vaccinating animals could actually help you. A lot of infectious diseases cross over from animals to humans. COVID-19 is thought to have originated in bats.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And as one epidemiologist puts it, knowledge from the animal world might help us make sure that there's not a COVID-23 or COVID-25 down the road.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: You can find all these stories and more in the Apple News app. And while you're there, check out some of our audio stories. We'll talk with you again tomorrow.
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