--:-- [Theme music fades out]
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: Good morning. It's Friday, August 20th. 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: At the Kabul airport, there's growing chaos. Thousands of people are pushing to get out of the country. The Washington Post is reporting, Taliban fighters have blocked and beaten some people who were trying to get out. The reality is, many may not be able to leave Afghanistan. To see what life looks like for everyone left behind, we reached out to Ali Latifi. He's an online correspondent for Al Jazeera English based in Kabul.
--:-- Ali Latifi: It's walking on eggshells. Every day it's like, is this going to be the day that I break the final taboo? My cell phone ringtone is a Post Malone song, and sometimes I'm like, if they hear that, will they get upset? Like, for instance, I used to walk on the street with AirPods on. I'm afraid to do that now. I used to mostly wear jeans and T-shirts and hoodies and things like that. I haven't done that in the past four or five days that they've been in power.
--:-- Shamita Basu: There are some men that fear that they're going to have to grow a beard again. The Taliban recently said it will respect women's rights within its own interpretation of Islamic law. But it has a long history of oppression. And in Afghan provinces where the Taliban has been in control for much of the past year, women have largely retreated from public life. Latifi says women in Kabul are now going outside much less.
--:-- Ali Latifi: For older women, it's hang-ups and fears from when they were alive during the Taliban's initial period where a woman couldn't go out alone. She had to wear a chadari or what the West calls a burqa. She could be subject to beatings on the street, to being detained on false charges of going out inappropriately or not going out with a proper guardian or companion.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Latifi told us Afghans knew this withdrawal would come, but they take issue with the way the U.S. did it. The truth is most people in Afghanistan were already over the US presence a long time ago. And we were ready for it to end for a long time. But what angered people is that Joe Biden left without setting any conditions. And I get it, he doesn't like this war. A lot of people don't like this war. But just because you don't like a war doesn't mean you should take that out on a country of 32 million people that are suffering and have suffered for decades.
--:-- [Music transitions to a new segment]
--:-- Shamita Basu: International scammers are stealing tens of billions of dollars worth of pandemic unemployment benefits. NBC News has the story of how criminals have been exploiting systems put in place to help struggling Americans get aid faster. States are in charge of distributing unemployment benefits. And for years, analysts have been warning that the existing unemployment verification systems are vulnerable.
--:-- Ken Delanian: We looked at one slice of COVID relief fraud, which is a fraud against the unemployment relief funds. The federal government allocated almost a trillion dollars, over $900 billion in various supplemental unemployment relief programs to reflect the massive amount of joblessness that happened during the pandemic. And the amount of money that was stolen from that sum is staggering. The estimates range from a low of $87 billion, that's the Department of Labor's inspector general, to a high of $400 billion.
--:-- Shamita Basu: That's the estimate of a company called ID.me, which has contracts in 27 states, and they're actually looking at the data. So tell us about the people who are running these scams. Where are they located? Criminals in nearly every country in the world, we are told. But principally Nigerian criminal gangs, Russian organized crime, and Chinese hackers. These are transnational criminal organizations that engage in other kinds of crime, human trafficking, drugs, other kinds of cyber fraud.
--:-- Ken Delanian: And we've now, the United States taxpayer has now enriched them to an incredible degree. What is it about our existing systems for claiming benefits that make them so vulnerable to cybercrime? It starts with states having antiquated computer systems. They're running, in many cases, 1980s technology. Just so people understand, this is federal money, but state agencies administer unemployment programs and cut the checks to unemployed people in each state. So you're relying on the state systems and they are terrible. And they essentially had no way to verify identities.
--:-- Shamita Basu: If a criminal was able to come up with a legitimate American social security number, driver's license number, birth dates, other kinds of information, which is for sale in bulk, again, on the dark web. I mean, it's easy for people to get because of all these hacks and breaches that you've read about. The states were basically unable to distinguish between what was real and what was fake, and they were just cutting the checks.
--:-- Ken Delanian: And it got so bad, some states had to suspend their unemployment programs for weeks. And so now that's changed a little bit because they've brought in firms like ID.me, which have instituted additional checks like selfie verification, where they require you to actually get on the phone or on FaceTime and prove that your face matches the driver's license that's been submitted. But criminals have tried to beat that too. They've tried to wear masks, for example.
--:-- Shamita Basu: You told the story of one person who lost her job during the pandemic and tried to file for these supplemental unemployment benefits only to find that her benefits had already been claimed. So what happens for people like her? People like Yvonne Matlock, who we interviewed, who lost her job and applied for benefits and was told, no, you've already gotten benefits. What that results in is a month-long odyssey to try to prove to the state that, in fact, you were defrauded and now the real you is trying to get the real benefits that you're owed.
--:-- Ken Delanian: So those people are often subject to delays when they badly need the benefits.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Ken Delaney, national security correspondent for NBC News. Thank you so much. Great to be with you. Thanks.
--:-- [Music transitions to a new segment]
--:-- Shamita Basu: Black women in the U.S. are nearly four times more likely than white women to die during childbirth. Some birth workers attribute that statistic to racial inequities in health care. And they're encouraging black mothers to, quote, have black hands catch your baby. The L.A. Times takes us into one of the few black-owned birthing centers in the U.S. One of the center's founders explains how when she had her first child, and this was in the 90s, it was hard to find a black midwife.
--:-- Kimberly Durden: That's part of what drove me to decide to become a midwife myself, to help other women bring their children into the world. Becoming a licensed midwife is a long process. California requires years of classes, training, and an exam. It took me around a decade to get through it all. And now I run the birthing center with a partner.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Right now, the number of babies being born outside of a hospital is still relatively small compared with hospital births, but they've been rising. One maternal specialist tells the LA Times research shows women with low-risk pregnancies fare better working with midwives rather than obstetricians. They're less likely to be induced or delivered by C-section.
--:-- [Music transitions to a new segment]
--:-- Shamita Basu: If I bring up daddy long legs, do you feel a little phantom tickle on your ankle? Maybe you're a little freaked out by them, but don't let that stop you from taking in this cool science story. NPR tells us about a group of researchers that used cutting-edge techniques to create what they're calling a daddy short legs.
--:-- Vanessa Gonzalez: One unique thing about daddy long legs is what they can do with their legs. You know how your fingers have a couple of joints that enable you to make a fist? Well, this creature's legs have dozens of small joints that make it possible for them to curl and grab things. To figure out where this special ability came from, researchers sequenced its genome. And when they did that, they were able to manipulate the genes in a way that let them create a daddy short legs. Daddy long legs with shorter legs than usual.
--:-- Shamita Basu: This breakthrough is a key step in understanding how these special creatures evolved. And while we're on the topic, daddy long legs, they won't hurt you. Vanessa Gonzalez is one of the study's authors, and she explains how it's just a myth. They're not venomous. They don't even bite. She says, if you see one in your house, try to be nice. And if you really don't want to see it, gently put it outside.
--:-- [Music transitions to the final segment]
--:-- Shamita Basu: You can find all these stories and more in the Apple News app. And check out our weekend interview show, In Conversation. This week, I sit down with Craig Whitlock. He's a reporter at The Washington Post and the author of the upcoming book, The Afghanistan Papers, A Secret History of the War.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: You can't help but come to the conclusion that this was intentional deception designed to just make the American people think that the war was progressing and things were going well, when in fact, many U.S. officials had already come to the conclusion that it was an unwinnable war.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And if you like our show, please review it in the podcasts app. We'll be back with the news on Monday.
