--:-- Shamita Basu: Good morning. It's Thursday, December 21st. I'm Shamita Basu. This is Apple News Today.
--:-- Shamita Basu: On today's show, the link between gun access and high suicide rates, the problem of new fathers turning down parental leave, and the strange tale of what happens to all the holiday gifts we return.
--:-- Shamita Basu: But first, the impact of the war in Gaza on Bethlehem. Normally, the birthplace of Jesus in the West Bank would be filled with tourists and pilgrims at this time of year.
--:-- Shamita Basu: But this year, the scene is somber and quiet. Nearly all Christmas celebrations are canceled because of the conflict in nearby Gaza.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The L.A. Times went to Bethlehem, and what stands out is what's missing. There are no Christmas lights in the streets, no decorated tree in Manger Square, no festive parade.
--:-- Shamita Basu: People in church are praying for the victims in Gaza.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Lutheran pastor Munder Ishak changed his church's nativity scene this year. Now it features baby Jesus wrapped in the black and white Palestinian keffiyeh, the scarf, and surrounded by rubble, evoking the destroyed buildings in Gaza.
--:-- Shamita Basu: He spoke to Al Jazeera about it.
--:-- Lutheran Pastor Munder Ishak: This is what Christmas looks like in Bethlehem, the birthplace of Jesus. Children being pulled from under the rubble, families being displaced with their homes destroyed.
--:-- Lutheran Pastor Munder Ishak: Palestinian Christians are a minority in this area, and many in Bethlehem have friends and relatives who are suffering in Gaza.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Last week, a church official in Gaza said two Christian women sheltering at a church compound were killed by Israeli sniper fire.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Israel's military has said it doesn't target civilians and that its review found no reports of a strike on the church.
--:-- Shamita Basu: British Member of Parliament Leila Moran told the BBC she has several relatives taking shelter in the same church complex.
--:-- Leila Moran: This should be a moment where, as awful as all of this is, and I have to tell you, the Christmas carols stick in my throat at the moment, you know, peace to all men, etc.
--:-- Leila Moran: But this is an incredibly important time for Christians, and yet they're doing this to Christians in a church, it makes a mockery of when Israel says it's not targeting civilians.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Many celebrations may be on hold, but church services and prayers continue.
--:-- Shamita Basu: A Greek Orthodox priest at the Church of the Nativity told the LA Times that right now the message of Bethlehem and the message of Christmas which is the message of peace is more important than ever.
--:-- Greek Orthodox Priest: A warning that this next segment is about suicide.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Since 2017, around 25,000 people have died by suicide using guns every year in the United States.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Almost 80% were white males, age 15 and older. And last year marked the highest number of gun suicides ever recorded.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The Trace, a news organization that focuses on gun violence in America, dove into this systemic problem, along with The Atlantic.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Social scientists have looked into potential drivers of America's high suicide rate.
--:-- Shamita Basu: They include addiction, breakdowns in social connections, job loss, and many other factors.
--:-- Shamita Basu: But one consistent through line is access to a gun.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Owning a gun doesn't make someone suicidal, obviously.
--:-- Shamita Basu: It just means that if you're suicidal, your chances of dying are significantly greater, according to the statistics.
--:-- Shamita Basu: If you use a gun in a suicide attempt, there's a 90% chance that you won't survive.
--:-- Mike Spies: That's what the statistics show.
--:-- Mike Spies: I think both everyone who knew him personally as a friend and everyone who knew him as like a public personality who regularly appeared on NRA TV and news programs and was just someone who was really out front on the issue, it was really, it was just utterly shocking, both how he did it and the fact that he did it at all.
--:-- Mike Spies: Spies points out that organizations like the National Rifle Association have pushed back on research that shows a link between gun availability and suicide, and that Owens himself did too.
--:-- Mike Spies: Spies also writes about other incidents of NRA supporters using guns to die by suicide.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The numbers are so stark that the National Shooting Sports Foundation, the NSSF, which is the trade group for the firearms industry, launched a campaign in 2016 with a suicide prevention organization.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Is that enough?
--:-- Mike Spies: And the answer at least at the moment seems to be no because this program that NSSF and the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention jointly launched seven years ago seems to be having any effect at all.
--:-- Mike Spies: And in fact, things have just gotten worse, right?
--:-- Shamita Basu: Like I said, the last two years have been record-breaking years for gun suicide.
--:-- Shamita Basu: You can read the whole investigation on the Apple News app.
--:-- Shamita Basu: As you might have heard me mention a few times before on the show, I am having a baby.
--:-- Shamita Basu: This is my last week of shows on Apple News Today for a little while before I take some time off for a maternity leave.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Which might be why this Wall Street Journal story about parental leave policies caught my attention.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Workplaces have expanded parental leave in recent years for women and for men.
--:-- Shamita Basu: But many new fathers aren't taking all the time off that's being offered to them, which means they're potentially making things more challenging for their families and basically leaving money on the table.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Data shows that only about 60% of men take their full paid leave, compared to 93% of women.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The Journal spoke with a man named Tim Allen.
--:-- Tim Allen: He was the CEO of a media company when his twins were born in 2015.
--:-- Tim Allen: At the time, he was offered four weeks of paid leave, but he decided to pass and instead take a few days off here and there.
--:-- Tim Allen: Now he says he regrets his choice.
--:-- Tim Allen: Too much of the heavy lifting fell on his partner, who took nine weeks of unpaid leave from his job.
--:-- Tim Allen: During the few days he did take off, Allen still answered emails and took calls so that he appeared present.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Some fathers believe that time away from work could hurt their career.
--:-- Shamita Basu: They worry their commitment to their job will be questioned or that they might face ridicule.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The journal points out that foregoing this time at home is the same as giving up part of your compensation package.
--:-- Shamita Basu: It's like letting vacation days go unused.
--:-- Shamita Basu: It impacts the division of labor at home, and there's a ton of studies that demonstrate the serious benefits of paternity leave.
--:-- Shamita Basu: It's good for children, it's good for parents' relationships, and for mothers' earnings.
--:-- Shamita Basu: New research also shows that taking parental leave helps rewire dad's brains to the mental and emotional requirements of parenting.
--:-- Tim Allen: Allen says for him it didn't fully sink in until years later how much he wishes he took full advantage of his parental leave.
--:-- Tim Allen: He now encourages new fathers to act differently and use their leave and not miss out on moments with their families.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Americans are on track to buy a lot of stuff this holiday season.
--:-- Shamita Basu: According to Gallup, the average person expects to spend nearly $1,000 on gifts.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And if historical trends hold up, we'll end up returning about 30% of them.
--:-- Shamita Basu: So what happens to all the stuff we send back?
--:-- Shamita Basu: There's this whole industry out there that is like largely unseen by the general public that's called reverse logistics.
--:-- Amanda Mull: That's Amanda Mull, a writer for The Atlantic, who I spoke to recently on In Conversation.
--:-- Amanda Mull: And that is like the process of taking all of the stuff that consumers didn't want or that stores weren't able to sell and moving it sort of like back up through the supply chain from whence it came.
--:-- Amanda Mull: Mull visited a returns processing center in Pennsylvania, or as she calls it, the belly of the holiday returns beast.
--:-- Amanda Mull: The workers at this center sort through all of the stuff that we return, and they determine if an item should be resold by the original retailer, sent to discounters like TJ Maxx or Marshalls, trashed or donated.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And that process, like there's a ton of machinery involved in it.
--:-- Shamita Basu: There's a ton of data analysis involved in it.
--:-- Shamita Basu: But also there are just people who have to open these packages and figure out if you wore that sweater or not.
--:-- Amanda Mull: If you wore that pair of pants, you know, you said you didn't on your return slip. Were you lying?
--:-- Shamita Basu: Returns alone is a $1 trillion industry, and one that Mall says a lot of retailers don't really want us to know about.
--:-- Amanda Mull: In fact, workers at these return centers sign confidentiality agreements that prevent them from publicly naming the companies they serve.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Many online retailers offer free returns, but the process always has a cost behind the scenes.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And a lot of us don't realize how much of what we return ends up in a landfill.
--:-- Shamita Basu: If you're listening in the Apple News app, we've queued up Amanda Mull's full article from The Atlantic to play for you next.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And if you want to hear even more about holiday shopping trends and pitfalls to avoid, check out my Apple News In Conversation interview with Mull from a few weeks back, where we talk about shopping sustainably.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Enjoy listening, and I'll be back with the news tomorrow.
