--:-- Duarte Giraldo: Good morning. It's Tuesday, March 23rd. I'm Duarte Giraldo. 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: Ten people are dead, including a police officer, after a shooting at King's Soopers grocery store in Boulder, Colorado yesterday. Police have a suspect in custody. The local DA said it's too early in the investigation to make conclusions about motive.
--:-- Duarte Giraldo: Shoppers ran out of the store as a large police presence moved in. This was familiar territory for Colorado law enforcement. Some of the nation's highest profile mass shootings have happened in that state, from Columbine High School in 1999 to the killings at a movie theater in Aurora in 2012.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Let's take a moment to put this in a larger context. Earlier this year, USA Today looked into stats from the Gun Violence Archive, and they show a spike in 2020 in shootings where four or more people were injured or killed. That jump was nearly 50 percent from the year before.
--:-- Duarte Giraldo: USA Today spoke to gun violence experts who say even though the pandemic shut down lots of public places, gun violence involving family members or gangs was common in 2020. As vaccinations help get COVID under control and as communities reopen, criminologists are watching this year's numbers for signs of where gun violence trends may go next.
--:-- Shamita Basu: In the U.S., for decades, we've debated whether reparations should be paid to Black Americans. And for the first time, at least one city has decided, yes, they should. Last night, the city council of Evanston, Illinois, which is a suburb of Chicago, voted to compensate black people for decades of racist and discriminatory practices.
--:-- Duarte Giraldo: Reparations for black Americans is rooted in the idea of making amends for slavery. The first phase of the city's program focuses on housing discrimination. As ABC News explains, black people in Evanston were subject to redlining throughout the 20th century.
--:-- Shamita Basu: This discriminatory housing practice effectively segregated black families into a neighborhood known as the Fifth Ward. The Fifth Ward is far from downtown, any public transportation, and right next to what used to be a sewage canal.
--:-- Duarte Giraldo: And for decades, real estate agents would show Black families homes that were only in that area. And the effort to make sure that Black people stayed in the Fifth Ward was so intense that in the 1940s, the city actually demolished some Black families' homes that were outside the Fifth Ward, or physically moved the houses within the Red boundaries.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Plus, banks in Evanston wouldn't loan to Black families who wanted to buy outside the neighborhood. The ripple effects of this run deep. Even decades after this practice officially ended, Black people in Evanston are disproportionately concentrated in the Fifth Ward. This neighborhood struggles with weak investment, poor infrastructure.
--:-- Duarte Giraldo: ABC News reports that today, white people's homes in Evanston have double the value of Black residents' homes. So now the city is saying that they're trying to make right on these decades of wrongs. The city council voted last night to set aside $400,000, primarily for Black residents who can show that they or their relatives suffered from housing discrimination in the city.
--:-- Shamita Basu: They can use the money to buy a new home or to improve the one they already have. But this reparations program, it doesn't end here. Elder woman Robin Ruth Simmons acknowledged as much during last night's city council meeting.
--:-- Robin Ruth Simmons: It is a first step. It's a first tangible step. It is alone, not enough. It is not full repair alone in this one initiative. But we all know that the road to repair and justice in the Black community is going to be a generation of work.
--:-- Duarte Giraldo: The housing money approved last night is part of a $10 million package for reparations over the next decade. Big question here. Can your job require you to get a COVID-19 vaccine?
--:-- Shamita Basu: As millions of us in the U.S. get our shots, a lot of people are asking this question. Yeah, we actually asked it here on this show a couple weeks ago. We were talking about some of the incentives that companies are offering to encourage their employees to get vaccinated.
--:-- Duarte Giraldo: But that's not the same thing as requiring the shot in order to come back to work. The Wall Street Journal looks at this legal question and how companies are probably going to approach it as more people become eligible for vaccines.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Lawyers for these companies will focus mostly on disability laws. Generally speaking, your company can require you to get the vaccine, but it wants to be very careful to allow for reasonable exemptions for legitimate medical reasons.
--:-- Duarte Giraldo: Religious objections may also be considered. The journal speaks to employment lawyers who explain that it's probably okay for your company to require proof that you took the shot. But legal experts say companies could get into trouble if they ask too many follow-up questions.
--:-- Shamita Basu: For example, why you did or didn't get the vaccine. They have to be careful not to do anything that would suggest that they're asking for personal medical information. That could cross a line.
--:-- Duarte Giraldo: Now, in the past, for flu vaccines, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission told companies, it's probably a better idea to strongly suggest workers get it then to mandate it outright. And employers can also think about other steps they may take to make it easier for you to get inoculated, like giving you some time off to get the shot.
--:-- Shamita Basu: There's been this stereotype, this idea floating around in pop culture for years now about women, moms in particular, reaching for wine to cope with the stresses of parenting or work. You know, wine mom memes.
--:-- Duarte Giraldo: SNL had a sketch about it just a few weeks ago. Oh, wow. Wine gets better with age. I get better with wine. Okay, guilty. You girls know that's true.
--:-- Shamita Basu: But even that sketch hinted at the idea that maybe we shouldn't be joking about this. Okay, but these are all about drinking. I mean, are you guys trying to tell me something? We all drank during lockdown. We're all just moms having fun, aren't we?
--:-- Duarte Giraldo: Some women are really struggling. NPR is reporting on how alcoholic liver disease has been rising. Cases among younger women are driving this trend.
--:-- Shamita Basu: NPR spoke with Dr. Jessica Mellinger, a liver specialist at the University of Michigan, who says at the university's health system, she's seen cases of alcoholic liver disease go up by 30 percent over the past year.
--:-- Duarte Giraldo: In my conversations with my colleagues at other institutions, everybody is saying the same thing. They're like, yep, it's astronomical. It's just gone off the charts.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Dr. Mellinger also says this trend started before the pandemic, but the past year just supercharged it. She and her colleagues are seeing more patients lately who are drinking a bottle of wine or more a day.
--:-- Duarte Giraldo: NPR spoke to one woman in her 30s, Jessica Duenas, who says she felt like she was living a double life for years. She was named Kentucky's Teacher of the Year. She loved her job. And yet at night, she was binging on alcohol.
--:-- Shamita Basu: She checked herself into rehab at the beginning of 2020, but the pandemic interrupted her healing and she relapsed. Her last drink was on Thanksgiving. She wrote an op-ed in the Louisville Courier-Journal about her journey.
--:-- Duarte Giraldo: She got messages back from hundreds of women who said they were struggling with addiction too. Lots of moms, teachers, nurses, attorneys. Women who were caretakers, who bear other people's stress.
--:-- Shamita Basu: You know how people often say don't mix business and family? Well, the company that America relies on for our COVID test swabs might be a good example of why that saying is so true.
--:-- Duarte Giraldo: Bloomberg Businessweek profiles two cousins who co-own Puritan Medical Products. Well, before the pandemic, these two cousins were close to calling it quits on their relationship. One of them even filed a lawsuit to dissolve their partnership.
--:-- Shamita Basu: But then COVID hit and the government called asking them to ramp up production. And they agreed. And their company now produces up to 90 percent of the swabs that we put up our noses to test for COVID.
--:-- Duarte Giraldo: But still, these two cousins despise each other. And that's why we all care. Because of COVID, we're all sort of connected to their family drama.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Despite running this company together for two decades, they can barely be in the same room together. They don't agree on anything from employees' salaries, investments, or upgrading technology.
--:-- Duarte Giraldo: Bloomberg spoke with relatives who say these two are just opposites. Their styles just don't mix. And even though business is booming right now, their relationship is still strained.
--:-- Shamita Basu: As Bloomberg puts it, they're just kind of tolerating each other, and the legal battle is on hold for now, at least until we don't have to stick as many of those swabs up our noses.
--:-- Duarte Giraldo: 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, including that Bloomberg Businessweek story about the dueling cousins and their COVID swab company.
--:-- Shamita Basu: We'll talk with you again tomorrow.
