--:-- Duarte Giraldino: Good morning. It's Thursday, September 23rd. I'm Duarte Giraldino. And I'm Shamita Basu.
--:-- 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.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: Don't expect a national bill on police accountability anytime soon. After months of social unrest over the killing and harassment of Black Americans by police, a group of federal lawmakers started working behind closed doors to draft police reform legislation.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The goal was to increase transparency and collect better data on use of force. According to the USA Today, those talks just collapsed. They couldn't reach an agreement. The fate of this type of police reform now rests in the hands of state lawmakers, not D.C.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: So this morning, we're zeroing in on Colorado. The Atlantic reports on what we can learn from that state's police reform efforts.
--:-- Shamita Basu: This reporting looks at a police confrontation with an Army veteran named Kyle Vinson. Maybe you saw the video back in July. Vinson was pistol whipped, choked, and bloodied.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: The body cam footage was familiar, but the aftermath was different. The police chief apologized and quickly made the tape public. The officer was charged with assault and resigned from the force.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The Atlantic explains how police reform advocates say the main reason Vinson's case played out this way. is because Colorado's new law is working.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: Colorado enacted that law last year, and it requires officers to wear body cameras at all times and calls for prompt release of footage. It stiffened penalties for misconduct and exposed officers to personal liability if they violate someone's constitutional rights.
--:-- Shamita Basu: It also allows victims of police violence to sue officers for damages. One of the state representatives who helped write the law in Colorado says more officers have been charged with misconduct and more officers are intervening or reporting bad conduct when they see it happen.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: This is all new and there are still problems in the state. But since federal lawmakers can't agree, Colorado could be a blueprint for other states and cities.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Being a late night show host means competing hard for the best guests and the biggest ratings. But last night, they all teamed up on something. The top shows all dedicated time to talk about climate change.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: It was a mix of jokes and calls to action. Trevor Noah took the news that warming is reducing the population of male turtles. And he just ran with it.
--:-- Trevor Noah: They're going to be cleaning up on turtle tender. And yeah, it may seem like a good deal until they realize that they're going to be expected to perform all the time. Morning, turtle sex. Afternoon, turtle sex. Nighttime, turtle sex. They'll never have any time left to do whatever else turtles do.
--:-- Jimmy Kimmel: [laughs] I asked people to think about what they may lose as the planet heats up. You like coffee? Half the world's coffee beans could be wiped out. So enjoy your morning cup of steam.
--:-- Stephen Colbert: You like chocolate? Same thing. Imagine a world where you get a carrot cake for your birthday. It's a nightmare. Climate change could even lead to massive shortages of rosé.
--:-- Samantha Bee: In fact, if American pets made up their own country, they'd eat the fifth most meat globally. Wow. Also, an all-pet country? I would like to live there, please.
--:-- Shamita Basu: A former comedy showrunner convinced all these shows to coordinate. And this lines up with a bunch of climate events scheduled this week that are hoping to get the attention of world leaders who are gathering at the United Nations.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: Bethy Squires writes for Vulture. She stayed up late to see how it all turned out. And we asked her what she thought about it.
--:-- Bethy Squires: She told us, as you might expect, some monologues worked better than others. And she liked it when the hosts mentioned solutions. Any information that feels like a potential light at the end of the tunnel is more useful than doom and gloom naysaying.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Like we know everything on fire We are aware We are on fire ourselves So I appreciated all of the people who had here what you can do Here things that we done Here what could be done to help
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: In 1978, Ted Kaczynski mailed his first bomb to a professor at Northwestern University. It set off a nearly two-decade-long FBI manhunt for the domestic terrorist that we would all come to know as the Unabomber.
--:-- Shamita Basu: A few weeks ago, this story took on a whole new meaning for San Francisco Chronicle writer Jack Epstein. Something to remember, the Chronicle has been around for a long time, and it was reporting on the Bay Area through a spree of serial killings in the 70s.
--:-- Jack Epstein: And especially in that region, the fascination with these killers continues. I mean, to this day, the San Francisco Chronicle receives tips about the Zodiac Killer on a weekly basis.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: So when Epstein, the Chronicle reporter, came across some old letters in his attic, he was unsettled when he realized who they were from. They were dated 1979 from Ted Kaczynski during the early days of his bombing spree.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Back in the 70s, Epstein wrote a book about traveling through Latin America on a budget. It turns out Kaczynski was a fan. Kaczynski asked me for advice on finding a refuge in South America.
--:-- Jack Epstein: He wanted a place where they were so remote that, as he said in the letter, the nearest neighbor would be five miles away or farther.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: Epstein doesn't remember exactly how he responded. His guess is that he probably told him to go to Cholila Valley in Argentina.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The area was sparsely populated, had a pretty moderate climate and beautiful forests. Kaczynski famously spent 25 years living in a cabin off the grid.
--:-- Jack Epstein: He believed that people should go back to what he called wild nature, which is exactly what he did by living practically almost 25 years in a 10 by 12 cabin in a remote area of Montana.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: The Unabomber was eventually caught by the FBI in 1996. For Epstein though finding the letters all these years later reminded him of what life was like for people in the Bay Area during the 1970s which he refers to as the heyday for serial killers
--:-- Shamita Basu: What the letters also brought back to me was the paranoia that a lot of people felt because there were a bunch of serial killers in the 1970s than running around Northern California with impunity.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: You can read this story and other great local reporting in the Read Local collection every Thursday on the Apple News app.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Betty Soskin has lived an extraordinary life. And on Wednesday, America's oldest park ranger celebrated her 100th birthday.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: During the civil rights movement, she was an author, songwriter and activist. And now she's continuing her activism at the Rosie the Riveter World War II Homefront National Historical Park in California.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The park honors the lives of Americans who were not in combat, who supported the war effort from the U.S.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: Soskin has worked to broaden who is celebrated in that history. In 2014, Soskin told NPR images of Rosie the Riveter and white women building battleships were all missing something important.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Well, that really is a white woman's story. Black women were not emancipated by the Second World War. We were working since slavery outside our homes.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: And so I never did see, for instance, a ship under construction during that period.
--:-- Shamita Basu: During the war years, Saskin dealt with racism and segregation. That may be one of the reasons that she's worked with the National Park Service to reveal untold stories of the Black American experienced during World War II.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: The park created a limited edition stamp for her birthday. It's the latest way of celebrating Soskin.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Another is a fitting one for a person who's spent so much time educating other people about forgotten history. A Bay Area middle school has been renamed in her honor.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: You can find all these stories and more in the Apple News app. And while you're in the app, keep listening to hear narrated articles from our News Plus partners.
--:-- Shamita Basu: We'll talk with you again tomorrow.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: Oh, my god.
