--:-- Shamita Basu: Good morning. It's Friday, August 13th. I'm Shamita Basu. And I'm Duarte Giraldino. 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: The U.S. is temporarily sending thousands more troops to Afghanistan, an unexpected development in a month that was supposed to mark the end of the military mission there. The troops will help evacuate American personnel from the embassy in Kabul. Only core staff will stay behind. This development is a sign that the speed of the Taliban's advance is catching some people by surprise, as it takes over more and more cities. The Taliban now controls Kandahar, the second biggest city.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Retired Army Colonel Mike Jason commanded troops in Afghanistan. He says the collapse of the Afghan government security forces is keeping him up at night. He wrote about the 20 years the U.S. military spent in the country. The headline of his analysis is, What We Got Wrong in Afghanistan. He trained Afghan police units on the ground about 10 years ago. At first, he went home thinking he and his teams had done some good. He says the Taliban takeover we're seeing now is proving him wrong.
--:-- Mike Jason: One problem he cites is that Afghanistan needed a competent national police force, but the U.S. military was not well equipped to establish one. First, America doesn't have a national police force itself, and very few people in the U.S. military have law enforcement experience. Jason admits he didn't, and yet it was people like him who helped Afghanistan build a national police force. The point he's making is that the U.S. military may have had good intentions, but it didn't have the right experience.
--:-- Mike Jason: Jason also says a larger strategy was missing. The U.S. first went in because of the 9-11 attacks. But as years went by, it didn't articulate what it was doing in Afghanistan long term. He thinks there could have been better results if the mission were broadened beyond the Defense Department. And many of America's allies have their own national police forces. Jason says engaging them more might have led to better results.
--:-- Mike Jason: Jason says he and his colleagues in uniform, they didn't fight a 20-year war in Afghanistan. No, they fought 20 incoherent wars and had little sense of direction. He blaming the U military including himself for the collapse of the Afghan security forces. And he hopes America asks tougher questions before it sends young men and women overseas for another war.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The United States has the largest prison population in the world. A large number of people who get released end up back behind bars. This is one reason California's governor is trying to take a cue from Norway, a country that focuses its prison system on rehabilitation.
--:-- Wes Ventyser: As the Sacramento Bee reports, California is launching a major overhaul of its prisons. They're starting with this one outside of Fresno. Reporter Wes Ventyser told us this may be just the first step in the state's effort to rethink incarceration.
--:-- Wes Ventyser: California has been on this path for a long time of trying to emphasize rehabilitation a little bit more. And they've decided to model their latest effort on what's going on in Norway, where prisons are kind of more dormitory style institutions that focus on trying to make life as normal as possible and preparing inmates for life afterward.
--:-- Wes Ventyser: So that's kind of the focus they're taking with one particular prison called Valley State Prison. When you say more dormitory, like, are we talking like computer rooms and barbecue pits? What exactly are we talking about?
--:-- Wes Ventyser: In Norway, it's quite elaborate. I mean, these institutions there have forests inside the prison walls. They have koi ponds. They have fields for sports where correctional officers and inmates play volleyball together or other games.
--:-- Wes Ventyser: In California, it's starting out a little bit more modestly. Valley State Prison, the proposal is to add some barbecue patios for families to come visit the inmates in a nicer setting than what happens now. At some of these other institutions in the U.S. that have tried this, places like North Dakota and Oregon, those kind of spaces have started to accommodate events where correctional officers and inmates will be there together for a barbecue, that type of thing.
--:-- Wes Ventyser: At Valley State Prison, they're also providing every inmate with a laptop. The idea is to help them just learn more skills to navigate the world afterward. There's also expanded job training. They are adding more spaces for like cosmetology and optics, those kinds of training programs there.
--:-- Wes Ventyser: Talk to me about the people who are imprisoned at Valley State Prison. What kind of folks are they? It's a medium security institution. There are about 2,000 inmates there. It's some low offenders people who have been selected by the system as being maybe ready for rehabilitation.
--:-- Wes Ventyser: These are people typically who are not as prone to gang lifestyle. Gangs have a strong hold on especially the highest security institutions in California. And a lot of the people who have been selected and moved to Valley State Prison have not been as heavily involved in that lifestyle.
--:-- Wes Ventyser: When we talk about violence between inmates and staff, it's a big problem. In terms of the corrections officers, do they benefit when we make prisons less miserable and more rehabilitative? Yes. I mean, that's a big driving factor for these kinds of changes here.
--:-- Wes Ventyser: A nonprofit group called Amend is the one that took a bunch of California officials to Norway a couple of years ago. And their main focus is correctional officer health. Correctional officers, they have shorter life spans than the rest of us. It's somewhere around the early 60s is what studies show.
--:-- Wes Ventyser: They have higher rates of PTSD, depression. They're more likely to be suicidal. In 2029, state correctional officers in California took their own lives. And it's just really stressful, a bad place to work. In Norway, it's not. They have high rates of job satisfaction. They're coveted jobs. And that's what they're kind of trying to hope to get to here.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Thank you so much, Wes, for being on Apple News today.
--:-- Wes Ventyser: Thank you.
--:-- Shamita Basu: New census data shows in the last decade, the United States has become more diverse than ever. The Washington Post breaks down the data. The number of people who identify as only white dropped for the first time in census history. People who identify as multiracial increased from 9 million to nearly 34 million in 10 years. The Hispanic population had the largest and most steady gains in population share.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: States are going to be using this latest census data to redraw congressional districts. Now, this is always a high stakes and controversial process. Politico explains how it's going to be even trickier this year. A 2019 Supreme Court ruling means state courts rather than federal courts are going to take the lead in deciding whether any one political party is drawing these maps to its own advantage. This makes the political leaning of these courts in individual states crucial.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: Politico also explains many states are working on a compressed timeline because the pandemic delayed the census. Some will need to finalize their maps as soon as next month. This shortened time frame could mean that legal disputes crash into the midterm elections next year.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: A process that could determine control of Congress for a decade has a lot of wild cards in it this time around. It's the closest thing we have to a real-life dragon. That's how dinosaur researchers are describing a rare specimen found in Australia. A massive jaw fossil was the key that helped them discover this new kind of pterosaur, which were flying reptiles that soared around 105 million years ago.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Smithsonian Magazine looks at this new research. And this is a big deal because pterosaur bones are notoriously hard to get a hold of. They're really fragile and delicate, so they're not very hardy. And these reptiles flew over water hunting for fish. So when they died, they usually fell into the sea where they were eaten by things that were bigger and scarier than them, which means their bones never really got a chance to become fossils and for us to find them.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Scientists have been fascinated by pterosaurs for a long time now. They're believed to be the first vertebrates to master flying. And when you look at the pictures, you can see this thing that looks like a dragon. It had a 23-foot wingspan and dozens of sharp teeth. You can just imagine it swooping down to the water and biting through a whole shark.
--:-- Shamita Basu: You can see a rendering of what this new pterosaur might have looked like for yourself in the Apple News app. But maybe think twice before you show it to a little kid. It's kind of nightmare fuel.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Also check out our weekend interview show, In Conversation. This week, I sit down with E. Alex Jung. He's a features writer at New York Magazine and Vulture. Jung recently profiled writer Anthony Vyasna So. He was an emerging star when he died of a drug overdose last year. You could sort of see that the world was ready to kind of like lift him up, too.
--:-- Shamita Basu: I think they were excited that he was a fresh voice to them. And he was ready for that. You know, I think he was really ready to be that person and to succeed.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Enjoy that weekend listen. We'll be back with the news on Monday.
