--:-- Duarte Giraldino: Good morning. It's Wednesday, March 23rd. 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: Russia's ground offensive may be stalling, but its fierce bombardment and siege tactics are targeting Ukrainian cities. Mariupol is among the worst hit. It's under constant shelling and facing shortages of food, water, and heat.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: Around Kyiv, Ukrainian forces say they've retaken control of a strategically important town just outside the capital. And this comes as President Biden heads to Europe for an emergency summit. This is his first trip abroad since the invasion began.
--:-- Shamita Basu: We're feeling the impact of the war here at home in many ways. Spikes in oil prices helped send gas prices to record levels. And there's also concern about food prices, which were already rising because of pandemic supply chain issues.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: Russia and Ukraine are major producers of some food staples. Together, they provide more than half of the world's sunflower oil and a third of cereals. The Wall Street Journal had a team of global journalists report on places where Russia's war with Ukraine is making the price of food skyrocket.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And what these people are experiencing is nothing like the price increases you may be seeing at grocery stores. In Lebanon, for example, flour prices are up 1,000%. In Kenya, some bread prices jumped 40%. And these increases sting because these are places where people were already struggling to afford to get enough to eat.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: As the journal explains, countries in the Middle East and North Africa are especially dependent on wheat from Ukraine and Russia. For some, it makes up 70, even 80 percent of their supply. We talked recently on the show about the various global food crises that existed before the war. Higher costs are making them worse.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The World Food Program said it had to cut rations in some regions, partly because of higher prices. The journalist piece has some striking personal stories of how this is hurting ordinary people. A baker in Lebanon, a grocer in Uganda, a woman in Cairo. You can read their stories in the Apple News app.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: Today is day three in confirmation hearings for Judge Ketanji Brown President Biden Supreme Court nominee. So far, senators have asked her about legal issues, her faith, policing in America, about so-called critical race theory in schools.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And she kept responding by pointing out what does and doesn't fall under her purview as a judge. Here's an exchange with Arkansas Senator Tom Cotton.
--:-- [Senator Tom Cotton speaking]
--:-- Senator Tom Cotton: Does the United States need more or fewer police?
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: [Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson speaking]
--:-- Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson: The determination about whether there should be more or fewer police is a policy decision by another branch of government. It is not something that judges have control over, and I will stay in my lane in terms of the kinds of things that are properly in the judicial branch.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Senators will have more questions for her today. They're going to be poring over her background as a judge and public defender. There's this piece in The Atlantic that sticks out to us because it looks at her time as a Supreme Court clerk during the 1999-2000 term.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: This part of her career is getting less attention. She clerked for Justice Stephen Breyer, who she's now nominated to replace. This article is by Linda Greenhouse, who has spent decades covering the Supreme Court.
--:-- Shamita Basu: So she's able to connect the dots in Judge Jackson's experiences. And she says even though her time as a clerk was more than 20 years ago, there are a lot of similarities between the court then and the court she would be joining if she's confirmed.
--:-- [Guest speaking, likely Linda Greenhouse]
--:-- Guest: Just like today, back then, things were particularly contentious. The courts have gone hot-button issues, prayer in schools, abortion, whether the Boy Scouts had to accept gay men as scout leaders. And a lot of these issues, they are still with us, still being debated, still being challenged in courts.
--:-- Shamita Basu: As Greenhouse writes, that's maybe an early lesson in Judge Jackson's career that, yes, the court resolves disputes in the short term. But the issues that divide America transcend any one Supreme Court term. Greenhouse describes it as inevitable, like water flowing downstream.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: The same issues reemerge over and over again. There's also a lesson from that term about how Supreme Court decisions can be changed over time. Greenhouse cites a key majority opinion that Justice Breyer wrote about an abortion case.
--:-- Shamita Basu: This was a five-to-four decision. Seven years later, after Justice Samuel Alito replaced Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, that decision was effectively wiped away. The court was also heavily divided during the term that Judge Jackson clerked. More than a quarter of the decisions came down to five votes. Justice Breyer was often in the minority.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: So his most important writing came in dissenting opinions. As Greenhouse points out, given the more conservative makeup of the court today, Judge Ketanji Brown-Jackson could find herself in a similar position.
--:-- Shamita Basu: This next story is one that got a lot of us talking after we read it. It explains what became of Afghanistan's finance minister after the Taliban took over. He and his family were able to escape to America, but the life he leads now, it's very different.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: These days, he drives for Uber in the D.C. area. Washington Post reporter Greg Jaffe recently wrote a round with Khaled Payenda. Khaled's story is in some ways the story of our relationship with Afghanistan of late.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And he went from being at the center of U.S. foreign policy, the center of a big story for the world, to being somebody kind of on the outside.
--:-- [Guest speaking, likely Greg Jaffe]
--:-- Guest: Khaled once worked for the U.S. Agency for International Development and the World Bank. When he was offered the role of finance minister, people warned him not to accept it. They pointed to corruption, Taliban gains, and the upcoming U.S. withdrawal.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: But Khaled took the job. He saw it as a way to help his country. These days, he drives past the same places where he used to conduct business. One really interesting thing for Khaled, being a driver in Washington, D.C., is it is sort of a form of time travel.
--:-- Shamita Basu: He goes past the World Bank headquarters, the International Monetary Fund headquarters, you know, where he attended training sessions or meetings about sort of the Afghan economy and the future of the Afghan economy.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: You know, he passes the White House and the State Department and the Pentagon. These places where all these decisions about Afghanistan and his life, in many cases, were made.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Khaled says he's learned a lot about people by driving an Uber. He likes to listen to Delilah. She's that soft rock radio host who gives people relationship advice. He says she's very wise.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: His current job has a lot of surprises. You know, Uber provides this weird sort of intimate window into other people's lives in this sort of very foreign country for him.
--:-- Shamita Basu: You become invisible as an Uber driver in some instances, and you hear these strange conversations happening in your backseat that maybe help make sense of this new place.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: Jaffe told us the question of what allowed Afghanistan to fall to the Taliban, Hans Khaled. He partly blames America for empowering corrupt warlords and abandoning the principles that American leaders claimed sent them into the country in the first place.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And he partly blames his fellow Afghans including himself for not being able to reform the government.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: Jaffe says leaving the country is a choice Khaled thinks about almost every day.
--:-- Shamita Basu: I think his decision to leave was a very spur-of-the-moment one and a very painful one. He didn't know that the Taliban were going to seize the country that quickly. Leaving for him was an admission, not only that the government had failed, but that he failed.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: Okay, so this year's March Madness is a totally new ballgame. And I'm not talking about the action on the court. I'm talking about the money players are making on the side.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Money that has the potential to change what it means to be a collegiate athlete. It used to be the case that college athletes were not allowed to cut sponsorship deals.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: Recently, those rules changed. So this is the first March Madness where players can sign endorsement deals. And so far, the players are cashing in.
--:-- Shamita Basu: In less than a year, really reshaped the landscape of college sports. Ira Budwe is covering this for Bloomberg Businessweek.
--:-- [Guest speaking, likely Ira Budwe]
--:-- Guest: Within hours of the NCAA's rule change, players were promoting car dealerships, luxury hair picks, and sweet teas. This market is now on track to reach hundreds of millions of dollars in the first year.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: It's unlocked a source of revenue for thousands and thousands of athletes who probably will never play professional sports. And in many cases, it's not huge sums. It might be $100 for going online and giving someone a shout-out, which is a big deal when you're in college on a Friday night.
--:-- Shamita Basu: If you have $300 in your back pocket, you feel pretty good. In some cases, though, star athletes are making six figures. The consulting firm Open Doors connects brands with players, and it says the college athletes making the most so far are football players.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: Right behind that is women's hoops. Zia Cook is a women's basketball player in South Carolina, and she's been doing deals with Bojangles, Dick's Sporting Goods, Fenty.
--:-- Shamita Basu: So it's a job, but it's a pretty efficient way for them to make, in some cases, if you're a big enough star, you know, hundreds of thousands of dollars.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: You can find all these stories and more in the Apple News app, including the latest on that tornado that hit New Orleans.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And when you're in the app, keep listening to hear narrated articles from our news plus partners. We'll talk with you again tomorrow.
