--:-- Mark Garrison: Good morning. It's Thursday, June 16th. I'm Mark Garrison in for Shemitah 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.
--:-- Matthew Herper: We could have COVID vaccines for our youngest kids as soon as Tuesday. Yesterday, a panel of FDA advisors voted to recommend Pfizer and Moderna vaccines for children as young as six months old.
--:-- Mark Garrison: Typically, the FDA follows the recommendation and the CDC accepts it. It's a big jump forward to making these vaccines available for younger kids.
--:-- Matthew Herper: The panel's vote was unanimous, but there was still lots of debate among the experts. There were a few members who said, look, we're looking at a relatively small number of deaths. With a very large number of kids. And it looks like it's possible that most children have had COVID at this point.
--:-- Matthew Herper: But many on the panel said the danger to young children is bigger than many people realize. One in a thousand kids have been hospitalized. There have been more than 400 deaths, making COVID a leading cause of death in young kids.
--:-- Matthew Herper: Supporters had other reasons, too. They point out that there are people for whom fear of COVID, either because they have someone at home or just because there are people who are particularly concerned about it, has meant that kids are socially isolated.
--:-- Matthew Herper: So fixing that is a very big deal. And for a lot of people, having access to this vaccine will mean that they can return to more normal life.
--:-- Matthew Herper: Herbert explains a key change that doctors and parents will have to understand. The two vaccines are different because of some dosing decisions they both made. They're more different than we're used to the Moderna vaccine and the Pfizer vaccine being.
--:-- Matthew Herper: The Moderna shot appears to provide some protection after two doses. The Pfizer version seems to need three. Some parents have wondered why it's taken so long for the approval.
--:-- Matthew Herper: But all that aside, it seems to be just days away. And parents should know this may be a more complicated decision than adults face as far as which vaccine is right for kids.
--:-- Matthew Herper: So it's a moment where families should talk with their doctors and consider their options.
--:-- Max Colchester: The UK government is under fire for a new immigration policy. It would deport some asylum seekers who enter the country illegally all the way to Rwanda.
--:-- Mark Garrison: Critics say it's wrong to send people so far to a country accused of human rights abuses.
--:-- Max Colchester: Prime Minister Boris Johnson says the policy will discourage people from paying human smugglers to take them through potentially deadly waters.
--:-- Max Colchester: And he's fired back at opponents. They are, I'm afraid, undermining everything that we're trying to do to support safe and legal routes for people to come to the UK and to oppose the illegal and dangerous routes.
--:-- Max Colchester: The policy is meant to sound harsh. Sending abroad hundreds, potentially thousands of people to a different country and not allowing them to then return ever is a pretty draconian move.
--:-- Max Colchester: And I think the UK government is touting this as a world first. So it is definitely out there in terms of immigration policies.
--:-- Max Colchester: And I think that's what it's intended to do. It's there to make a statement to say to people smugglers, you're not welcome and it won't work.
--:-- Max Colchester: We also asked him about the political context. These moves come at a difficult time for Johnson. He's recently just survived a rebellion in his own conservative party where a large chunk of his own lawmakers voted to get rid of him.
--:-- Max Colchester: He's now desperately trying to shore up the more conservative side of his party and doing this kind of thing as a way of playing to that base and proving that he is tough on issues like immigration.
--:-- Max Colchester: And this is something they want to see. A court blocked a plane this week that was going to deport the first group of migrants.
--:-- Max Colchester: But the UK government isn't backing down, saying another flight's in the works. Rwanda has gotten a first payment equivalent to around $150 million for its role.
--:-- Max Colchester: In the UK, a diverse coalition is opposing the deportations. There are many people, including church leaders, such as the Archbishop of Canterbury here, who've decried this policy as inhumane and that it goes against the essential values of tolerance and acceptance that the UK has long espoused.
--:-- Max Colchester: So it's really become a flashpoint here. The legal fight is happening on multiple fronts. Next month a UK court is scheduled to rule on whether the policy is legal.
--:-- Jackie Germain: College in this country is expensive, but we're told it's worth it. Millions of people have believed that social contract and taken on thousands of dollars of debt, believing that the college experience would allow them to not only account for the debt, but also build a life for themselves, become homeowners, start a family, all those sorts of things that are supposedly part of this American ideal.
--:-- Jackie Germain: Her piece focuses on people who take on debt to attend college but don't graduate. You're having people come out of college with so much debt that they're not able to start their lives.
--:-- Jackie Germain: And you're having people come out of the experience of having debt and sometimes having no degree to show for it. Of the 43 million people in the U.S. with student loan debt, Nearly 40% of them don't have college degrees.
--:-- Jackie Germain: That's more than 16 million people. Juan Romero is one of them. He had a scholarship but still needed loans to cover the bills.
--:-- Jackie Germain: In Romero's last year of school, Trump changed deportation guidelines. His mother was undocumented. He had to help her get back to Mexico. So Romero became the family's main breadwinner and had to leave school.
--:-- Jackie Germain: Now he's around $29,000 in debt but with no degree. One of the things that I thought was really interesting that I appreciated him sharing was the amount of shame that he carried for being the first in his family to attempt to go to college.
--:-- Jackie Germain: And, you know, having all of these things that he felt like he did right ahead of time, all of these things that he had been able to figure out to set up this experience for himself and still not being able to have a degree at the end of it.
--:-- Jackie Germain: Millions of people like Ramiro now face the reality of paying off debt without a degree that could help them get better paying jobs.
--:-- Jackie Germain: None of the students who spoke to Jermaine said they regretted attending college. Some think about going back to finish. But some aren't convinced that racking up even more debt is worth it.
--:-- Rodney Carmichael: It's been three years since rapper Nipsey Hussle was shot and killed in L.A. This week the trial began for his accused killer who pleaded not guilty.
--:-- Mark Garrison: We're not going to talk about the murder case this morning. We focused on something that may not come up much in court. Hussle's life as an entrepreneur and advocate and his impact.
--:-- Rodney Carmichael: After he was killed he received a BET humanitarian award and the Grammy for best rap performance.
--:-- Rodney Carmichael: In the aftermath of his death, he achieved what few rappers do. He became larger than life.
--:-- Rodney Carmichael: Hussle grew up without much money. He joined a gang at 14. He says everybody he ran with then ended up in prison.
--:-- Rodney Carmichael: Something changed for him a few years later. He told The Breakfast Club about visiting his immigrant father's homeland of Eritrea.
--:-- Rodney Carmichael: I ended up spending 90 days out there, you know, and it changed my life. It changed my perspective on a lot of things.
--:-- Rodney Carmichael: Hussle says he saw people who looked like him, living together and thriving proudly. It inspired him to go home and help his community.
--:-- Rodney Carmichael: He advocated for black people to own businesses. He built spaces for kids. And he tried to improve relations between the community and police.
--:-- Rodney Carmichael: But law enforcement was hesitant to partner with someone who had a gang background. Still, he kept at it.
--:-- Rodney Carmichael: Just before Hussle was set to meet with the chief of police, he was killed outside the Marathon clothing store, which he founded.
--:-- Rodney Carmichael: He was 33 years old. There's a lot of injustice around Nipsey's murder. I mean, he was taken out on the same block that he was trying to build up just one day before he was scheduled to meet with the LAPD about working together to stop violence in his hood.
--:-- Rodney Carmichael: Some 20,000 people attended his memorial in L.A. President Obama called Nipsey Hussle's life a legacy worth celebrating.
--:-- Rodney Carmichael: The album he put out before his death was called Victory Lap. All my life, been grinding all my life. Sacrifice, Hussle paid the price. Won a slice, got the roll of dice. Sacrificed hustle paid the price.
--:-- Rodney Carmichael: Nipsey Hussle packed a lot into his lyrics, and his life from beginning to end is in that line.
--:-- Mark Garrison: You can get NPR's full telling of Hussle's story in the Apple News app, along with all the stories we mentioned today.
--:-- Mark Garrison: You'll also find coverage of the next public hearing of the January 6th committee, starting today at 1 p.m. Eastern. It's expected to focus on Trump's effort to pressure former Vice President Pence to overturn the election.
--:-- Mark Garrison: We'll talk with you again tomorrow.
