--:-- Shamita Basu: Good morning. It's Friday, September 16th. 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.
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--:-- Shamita Basu: We're in a new phase of the political battle over immigration between Republican and Democratic leaders. For several months now, governors of Texas and Arizona have been busing thousands of migrants to Democratic strongholds. New York, Chicago, Washington, D.C. This week, things have gotten more intense. Buses dropped migrants off near the home of Vice President Kamala Harris. And Florida Governor Ron DeSantis took credit for flying migrants all the way to Martha's Vineyard, a resort island off the coast of Massachusetts.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Now, there's a lot of focus on the politics driving these stunts and plenty of noise from commentators, but we wanted to single out reporting from NPR, which brings us the voices of the migrants themselves. It's a reminder that these families are caught in the middle of this conflict, and they're scared, confused, and worried about food and shelter.
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--:-- Shamita Basu: NPR interviewed migrants in Martha's Vineyard. They say they were staying at a shelter in San Antonio when a woman approached them and offered them seats on a flight to Boston with the promise of expedited work papers. Instead, they ended up at Martha's Vineyard, a place that was not prepared for them.
--:-- Andres Duarte: She offered us help, help that never arrived. And now we're here. We got on the plane with a vision of the future, making it.
--:-- Shamita Basu: NPR spoke to another migrant, Jessica.
--:-- Jessica: Oh goodness, I don't know what is going to happen to us. The truth is, I worried. It will be whatever God wishes. No, we're here now, and there's nothing we can do.
--:-- Shamita Basu: A local elected official in Martha Vineyard said the community wasn't alerted that migrants were coming, but charities and volunteers have stepped up to help.
--:-- Lisa Belcastro: We'll do everything we can, and you can believe this island community will do everything they can, but they need more. These people are pawns. And we have to stop the chess game right now because they're human beings and they don't deserve to be treated as they're being treated.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Larger cities have also struggled to accommodate the waves of migrants. Washington, D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser declared a public health emergency last week. Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker also announced an emergency disaster proclamation. And New York City Mayor Eric Adams said this week that the city's shelter system is close to its breaking point.
--:-- Shamita Basu: When the pandemic first hit, schools in the United States quickly closed their doors and switched to virtual learning. At the time, school systems argued it was the best and safest policy for students and teachers. But now we're starting to understand the huge toll that it's taken.
--:-- Anya Kamenetz: We allowed kids to become victims of the pandemic and our social responses to the pandemic. We allowed them to go hungry in April and May. We allowed them to lose this learning that they may or may not be able to get back.
--:-- Shamita Basu: That's Anya Kamenetz. She's an education reporter and the author of the book, The Stolen Year, how COVID changed children's lives and where we go now. She says here in the U.S., when it came to schools, we didn't heed the warnings, we didn't follow the data, and we just did not prioritize kids.
--:-- Anya Kamenetz: And as a result of that, they missed a lot of learning time. We're beginning to see the effects. Recent standardized test results showed that math scores dropped and reading performance for nine fell by the largest margin in three decades.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Falling behind academically can have lifelong consequences. A child who hasn't learned to read by the age of 10 has a much higher chance of not graduating from high school. And that sets them off on all kinds of hard things in their life course. It means that they might not get as good of a job, make as good of a wage, be as healthy in their life.
--:-- Anya Kamenetz: And now, even as schools reopen, tens of thousands of kids have never gone back. They're virtually unaccounted for.
--:-- Shamita Basu: My conversation with Kamenetz covers so much more. How America's pandemic school policies compare to other countries and what needs to happen now to recover. You can hear the whole thing on this weekend's episode of In Conversation. Just search for In Conversation in the Apple News app or in the Podcasts app.
--:-- Shamita Basu: If you've got an old Toyota Prius, watch out. It's one of the hottest targets for thieves right now. I'm not talking about the car itself. They're after the catalytic converter, which turns fumes into less harmful gases. Thefts of this part jumped more than 1,000% in two years.
--:-- Shamita Basu: For criminals, the Prius is a gold mine. Or to be specific, it's more of a platinum, palladium, and rhodium mine. These rare earth metals are worth a lot. And the catalytic converter in the hybrid Prius has a higher concentration of precious metals than other cars.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Thieves can get more than $1,000 for this shoebox-sized part. And it's a quick score. A person can just slip under a car and saw this piece off in 30 seconds.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The LA Times looks at how this is making life hard for owners of Prius models sold from 2004 to 2009. They're getting these parts ripped off on a regular basis, which is expensive and stressful and noisy.
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--:-- Shamita Basu: To try and ward off thieves, car owners are painting converters bright colors. They're etching in ID numbers and even bolting on protective cages.
--:-- Shamita Basu: One Prius owner said her catalytic converter was stolen over and over. By the fourth time, she was resigned to it. She said, well, this is just how life is now.
--:-- Shamita Basu: We want to end with some news from outer space. Not big, childhood-shattering, Pluto's-no-longer-a-planet news, but a pretty cool theory about why Saturn has the most impressive-looking rings of all the planets.
--:-- Shamita Basu: There's actually a lot that we don't know about Saturn's rings. CNET looks at new research that suggests the rings are debris from a lost moon that got too close to Saturn's intense gravitational field, which ripped it to bits.
--:-- Shamita Basu: It must have been large, too, because that's a lot of stuff floating around in those rings. The researchers say the lost moon theory could also explain why Saturn's axis has that unusual tilt.
--:-- Shamita Basu: That's another thing about Saturn that science has never fully explained. So whenever you look at Saturn's rings, think of it this way. You might be looking at scattered ashes, a striking memorial of a moon that died long ago.
--:-- Shamita Basu: You can find all these stories and more in the Apple News app. And when you're in the app, keep listening to hear narrated articles from our News Plus partners.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Enjoy the weekend, and I'll be back with the news on Monday.
