--:-- Shamita Basu: Good morning. It's Tuesday, February 21st. I'm Shamita Basu. This is Apple News Today.
--:-- Shamita Basu: On today's show, another powerful earthquake hits near the Turkey-Syria border, Supreme Court cases this week that could transform the internet, and the fight over rewriting Roald Dahl's children's books. But first, President Biden and President Putin are giving dueling speeches today in the run-up to the one-year mark of Russia's invasion of Ukraine.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Putin spoke earlier today, doubling down on support for the war. He also said Russia will suspend observing a key nuclear treaty with the U.S.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Biden's speech in Poland is expected to repeat his firm stance against Putin's war. Yesterday, Biden made a surprise visit to Kiev where he underscored U.S. support for Ukraine.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The U.S. has sent tens of billions of dollars in military and financial aid to Ukraine in less than a year, with more on the way.
--:-- Shamita Basu: USA Today looks into how difficult it is to track that aid. Ukraine's leaders and international observers acknowledge the country has dealt with corruption, so there are growing questions as to where the money and weapons could end up.
--:-- Tom Vandenbroek: There have already been some signs of corruption. There's been folks in the defense ministry fired for inflating the price of food that they bought to skim profits from that.
--:-- Tom Vandenbroek: So that's the concern that all of this money is coming in so fast that there are going to be profiteers.
--:-- Tom Vandenbroek: The Pentagon's inspector general says that monitoring in Ukraine isn't being done to Defense Department standards.
--:-- Tom Vandenbroek: Weapons can at least be theoretically tracked using serial numbers. Money, I explain, is harder to get a handle on.
--:-- Tom Vandenbroek: John Sopko, who's the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction, who's a critic of how the money's being spent, has said that that's the sort of money that can be easily lost or misused or misspent because you're paying people at border crossings to get stuff in and that money can be easily skimmed.
--:-- Tom Vandenbroek: So that kind of money, that kind of aid is much more difficult to track.
--:-- Shamita Basu: A federal report last month said some U agencies had trouble accounting for billions of dollars in Ukraine aid spending. This was also a challenge in Afghanistan.
--:-- Shamita Basu: But when the U had troops on the ground, they could help monitor aid distribution. That's not possible in Ukraine, because Biden has promised to keep U.S. combat forces out of the country.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Corruption prevents aid from reaching the Ukrainians who need it, and it could undermine U.S. support for helping the country.
--:-- Shamita Basu: We've already seen some softening and support for aid to Ukraine, wondering why this $113 billion in the last year is being spent there when there are problems here.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And when you see corruption and the money misused, those concerns only get amplified and support softens for it.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The special inspector who oversaw aid to Afghanistan says there should be a similar person overseeing aid to Ukraine.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Turkey and Syria are recovering from a powerful new series of earthquakes. One yesterday was magnitude 6.4, killing at least eight people and injuring hundreds more.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The Guardian shared a video of people taking cover at a Turkish airport as the ground shook.
--:-- Shamita Basu: This comes two weeks after more powerful earthquakes and aftershocks killed more than 47,000 people.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The latest quake is making a strained recovery even harder.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Patients had to be evacuated from some health facilities when new cracks were seen in the buildings.
--:-- Ceau Deng: People are understandably worried here. Some people had to evacuate their homes two weeks ago.
--:-- Ceau Deng: I talked to some ladies who said that they would rather sleep outside instead of going back home.
--:-- Ceau Deng: And also other people who sleep basically in warm clothing in case they have to rush outside again.
--:-- Ceau Deng: And those are people whose homes were not ruined in the quakes.
--:-- Ceau Deng: Turkey's Disaster Management Agency estimates that close to 400,000 apartments have been destroyed or seriously damaged.
--:-- Ceau Deng: And many people are still missing.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Today and tomorrow, the Supreme Court hears two cases that might reshape the internet as we know it.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Both focus on a part of the nearly 30 Communications Decency Act called Section 230.
--:-- Shamita Basu: It gives tech platforms broad discretion over content moderation, legal immunity for almost all third-party content hosted on their sites, and protection from lawsuits over taking down objectionable content.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Now, this policy has critics on the left and the right who say it gives tech platforms too much power and not enough accountability.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The tech platforms say that this law is vital to their businesses.
--:-- Shamita Basu: A group funded by tech companies, including Google and Apple, has called on the Biden administration to protect Section 230.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And some civil liberties advocates say the law is important for protecting online speech.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Today's case is brought by a family whose daughter was killed in the terror attacks in Paris in 2015.
--:-- Shamita Basu: They argue that Google's platform, YouTube, is liable for damages because it failed to take down ISIS videos and recommended some to users.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The family says Section 230 does not protect the tech company here.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Google says that interpretation of the law would increase the legal risk for it and other tech companies that curate, rank, and sort online content.
--:-- Shamita Basu: It says companies like it could be driven to two extremes.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Either being very strict and removing a lot of content, which could limit online speech, or giving up on moderation completely, which could mean more problematic content online.
--:-- Shamita Basu: In tomorrow's case, another family of a terror attack victim says Twitter and other social media companies helped ISIS by hosting user content that expressed support for the group.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Twitter argues that just because ISIS uses its platform, that's not the same as Twitter providing knowing assistance to it.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And it argues that Section 230 gives it immunity.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The court's rulings won't be known for another few months, and it's possible it could resolve these cases without sweeping changes to Section 230.
--:-- Shamita Basu: But there are signs that some Supreme Court justices are eager to take a close look at the law.
--:-- Shamita Basu: We'll get an early sense of how this court feels about it today, when justices put questions to lawyers on both sides.
--:-- Shamita Basu: I read a lot of Roald Dahl books as a kid. I'm pretty sure I broke the spine on my copy of Matilda. I read it so many times. It's one of the reasons that this conversation in the publishing world caught my attention.
--:-- Shamita Basu: See, changes are coming to some of Dahl's classics, decades after they first hit the shelves.
--:-- Shamita Basu: His publisher and the Roald Dahl Story Company, which manages the rights, are working with a group called Inclusive Minds to change hundreds of words in Dahl's books.
--:-- Shamita Basu: They say this will make the books more accessible.
--:-- Shamita Basu: These changes to Dahl's work have sparked a heated debate that The Washington Post has been following about whether it's okay to change a book, ever, but especially after an author's death.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Some words have been removed altogether, like the word fat. Augustus Gloop from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory is now described as enormous.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Gender-neutral language is being used for some characters, like the Oompa Loompas.
--:-- Shamita Basu: In some cases, new sentences have been added.
--:-- Shamita Basu: In the book The Witches, the characters are bald and wear wigs.
--:-- Shamita Basu: A new line explains that women wear wigs for other reasons, too, and there's nothing wrong with that.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Dahl's books are globally famous, but he left behind a complicated legacy.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Critics have said that his books are at times bigoted, racist, and sexist.
--:-- Shamita Basu: He called himself anti-Semitic.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The Roald Dahl Story Company says these changes were small and carefully considered, a way to make sure the stories can be enjoyed by all children today.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Penn America, a nonprofit that advocates for literary freedom, says the changes are the wrong approach.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Instead, publishers should consider an introductory note that prepares the reader and gives context.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Salman Rushdie weighed in on Twitter, and he was blunt, writing, Roald Dahl was no angel, but this is absurd censorship.
--:-- 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, keep listening.
--:-- Shamita Basu: We've got a narrated article coming up next from Scientific American about long COVID.
--:-- Shamita Basu: It looks at cutting-edge brain research that's providing new insight into this painful, lasting condition.
--:-- Shamita Basu: That's up next, and I'll be back with the news tomorrow.
