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--:-- Shamita Basu: Good morning. It's Wednesday, September 8th. I'm Shamita Basu. And I'm Duarte Giraldino. This is Apple News Today.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: 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: Saturday marks 20 years since the September 11th terror attacks. You might think that at some point over the past two decades, we would have prosecuted the people accused of planning the attack. But 20 years later, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and his co-conspirators still haven't even had a trial.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: As pre-trial hearings resume this week, NBC investigates why it's taking so long.
--:-- Defense Lawyer: Secrecy is the biggest factor here. We've waited years for summaries of classified evidence against our clients. Some of us are still waiting for evidence today.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: They say they believe the U.S. government is trying to hide information about how detainees were tortured in secret CIA prisons before they were moved to Guantanamo.
--:-- Prosecutor: The government is committed to a fair process. Prosecutors blame the defense for slowing things down with multiple legal challenges.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: And there are other reasons for delays. High turnover of judges and lawyers. The challenges of traveling to Guantanamo, and of course, the pandemic.
--:-- Journalist: If Mohammed had been tried in a normal court, this could have been over a decade ago. At this rate, legal experts see this dragging out several more years. One law professor says it's possible there may never be a trial.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Thank you.
--:-- Wei Huan Li: Last year social justice protests reacting to the murder of George Floyd once again put a national spotlight on policing in the U.S. With more evidence showing a disproportionate use of force used by police against Black people, public confidence in the police fell to a record low.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: Leaders in law enforcement and in city halls across the country said police were demoralized and quitting in waves.
--:-- Wei Huan Li: But what we found from the Federal Bureau of Labor Statistics is locally police departments nationwide actually lost less than 1% of employment last year, which is a much smaller drop than almost every other industry in the country.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: Lee talked to law enforcement experts to get a sense of what's happening behind those numbers.
--:-- Law Enforcement Expert: Being a police officer really is a stable job and is a good paying job with a pretty good pension. And that's because in many major cities, police unions have a lot of power.
--:-- Wei Huan Li: So when they're negotiating contracts for their employees, they're able to create obstacles for cities to fire police officers and why it's difficult in a lot of places to fire or suspend police officers, even if they have done something egregiously wrong.
--:-- Law Enforcement Expert: One researcher told Lee, after George Floyd's murder, there was an opportunity for cities to reimagine policing and try new violence prevention programs. But many local governments stuck to their usual moves like hiring more cops.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: And at the federal level, the Biden administration recently announced cities can use COVID relief funds to hire more officers.
--:-- Shamita Basu: A story now about a gender gap, one that's not discussed all that often. College enrollment numbers show men falling further and further behind women.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: The Wall Street Journal reports on how this gap is now at record levels. If the trend continues, women earning degrees will soon outnumber men two to one.
--:-- Shamita Basu: This gender disparity cuts across race, geography, and economic background. And the gap has been growing for decades.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: As the Journal explains, colleges don't talk about this much in public. The current focus at most schools is on creating more opportunities for historically underrepresented students.
--:-- University Official: It wasn't that long ago that women were systematically excluded from higher ed. Plus, it's not as if men in our society need much of a boost getting ahead.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The data shows they make more money than women on average and outnumber them in top management jobs. So it's not exactly popular for colleges to say they want to spend money addressing this gender gap.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: The journal speaks to schools to find out what may be widening this gender gap.
--:-- University Official: There's not one single reason. One university official said high school girls tend to be better at managing applications, such as making sure transcripts get in on time.
--:-- Another University Official: Young men may feel pressure to quit school and work to support their parents and siblings. Many of the young men who opted out tell the Journal they don't see enough payoff in going to college. They prefer to start making money right out of high school.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The journal explains even though it's controversial to talk about some college administrators worry about men falling behind so they quietly working on restoring the gender balance. Some now extend offers to a higher percentage of male applicants.
--:-- Former Admissions Manager: One former admissions manager calls it a thumb on the scale for boys, the dirty little secret of higher ed.
--:-- Shamita Basu: If you were really bummed out a few years ago when Pluto got demoted from being a full planet, you might like this story we found in National Geographic.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: It looks at new research that may help scientists find a whole new planet right here in our solar system.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Whether a so-called planet 9 exists is a hot debate topic for astronomers, Proving it, however, is not as straightforward as you might think.
--:-- Astronomer: You're going to want to think about Planet Nine as having a kind of invisibility cloak. If it's there, it's hard to see because of the bright strip of stars that make up the Milky Way.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: One possible way to prove that Planet Nine is really there is by looking at the objects around it and how they move.
--:-- Astronomer: Believers say they're moving under the influence of a planet. Skeptics think that's a misinterpretation of what's happening in space.
--:-- Shamita Basu: This new research offers what astronomers call a treasure map, a path to figuring out whether Planet 9 is really there. And it says the answer may be closer and easier to find than originally thought.
--:-- Astronomer: As one researcher puts it, now we really know where to look and where not to look.
--:-- Shamita Basu: 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.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: We'll talk with you again tomorrow.
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