--:-- Shamita Basu: Good morning. It's Monday, November 13th. I'm Shamita Basu. This is Apple News Today.
--:-- Shamita Basu: On today's show, the dire situation for hospitals in Gaza, the potential safety impact as major airlines hire thousands of new pilots, and researchers find a weird animal that hasn't been seen in decades.
--:-- Shamita Basu: We'll start with the latest on the conflict in Gaza, where hospitals are rapidly collapsing as Israeli ground troops press further into cities.
--:-- [Audio of gunfire and explosions in the background]
--:-- Shamita Basu: Dr. Ahmed El-Mukhalilati runs the burn unit at Gaza's biggest hospital, Al-Shifa. He said newborns had to be taken off incubators because they don't have enough power to run them. Three babies died, and he fears for the lives of others.
--:-- [Audio of gunfire and explosions continue]
--:-- Shamita Basu: He told NBC there is constant fighting and attacks. If you can hear in the background, it's like bombardment and bombing of the hospital from all sides.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Israel says Hamas has command centers underneath hospitals, though Hamas and hospital staff deny this.
--:-- Jake Sullivan: [Audio of Jake Sullivan speaking] Hamas is violating laws of war by keeping military equipment and troops in or near hospitals and other civilian facilities.
--:-- Shamita Basu: But, he said, Israel still needs to be careful. The United States does not want to see firefights in hospitals where innocent people, patients receiving medical care, are caught in the crossfire.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And we've had active consultations with the Israeli defense forces on this.
--:-- Benjamin Netanyahu: [Audio of Benjamin Netanyahu speaking] We've asked other countries to, the UN, UNRWA and so on, build field hospitals. Let's move the patients out of these Hamas command posts in the hospitals to these safe places.
--:-- Shamita Basu: So far, they've moved a few patients, not enough. I hope more will move.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Doctors say it's too dangerous to move many critically ill and injured patients.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Israel says it offered fuel to hospitals and Hamas blocked delivery. Hamas denies this and says Israel isn't offering nearly enough fuel for hospitals to function.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The World Health Organization is calling for an immediate ceasefire, along with other nations and protesters marching in major cities.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The WHO said at this rate of fighting a child is killed every 10 minutes in Gaza.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Now let's take a quick look at some other stories in the news, starting with another development in the war on hostage negotiations.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Yesterday, President Biden spoke with Qatar's leader on efforts to free the hostages held in Gaza.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Qatar is mediating between Hamas and Israel, with negotiations reportedly focusing on children and elderly people being held captive.
--:-- Shamita Basu: In other news, the Pentagon says it hit a training camp and safe house in Syria, facilities used by troops backed by Iran.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The U.S. has launched a series of attacks on Iranian proxies lately in retaliation for attacks on American forces in the region.
--:-- Shamita Basu: In politics, Senator Tim Scott is ending his run for the White House.
--:-- Shamita Basu: After the South Carolina Republican pulled out, two of his biggest donors said they will now back Nikki Haley.
--:-- Shamita Basu: We are just a few days away from a potential government shutdown.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The federal government will run out of money by the end of the day on Friday if no deal is reached.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Still new House Speaker Mike Johnson now has to deal with the problem that was a headache for his predecessor, finding a deal that his whole party can support, since it only takes a handful of Republican votes to torpedo a plan.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Johnson's initial proposal for stopgap funding of the government in two parts is already turning off some GOP hardliners.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The Democratic-controlled Senate and the White House don't like it either.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And in entertainment news, there was a major box office disappointment over the weekend.
--:-- Shamita Basu: I'm asking. For one last fight. The Marvels only did $47 million in domestic ticket sales.
--:-- Shamita Basu: That's the worst debut performance out of dozens of movies in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The flop comes as investors are questioning Disney's management of Marvel and other franchises.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And as all the studios are trying to get past the disruptions from its labor disputes with writers and actors.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The next time you get on a plane, there's a chance your pilot will be less experienced flying it than in the past.
--:-- Shamita Basu: During the pandemic, many airlines encouraged pilots to retire while air travel was mostly shut down.
--:-- Shamita Basu: As we all know demand came back and airlines have been struggling to hire enough pilots ever since.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Many are promoting more junior pilots faster and recruiting hires from regional airlines, where pilots typically have less experience flying bigger planes.
--:-- Andrew Tangle: So suddenly you've got a lot of pilots who are now in control of a larger airplane, And so it's new controls, new quirks, new responsibilities.
--:-- Shamita Basu: It's like driving a new car that you are suddenly having to learn.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The airline industry refers to this trend as juniority.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Regulators and safety experts have decided it's a good time to scrutinize the experience of people in the cockpit.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Earlier this year, the industry and U.S. regulators became alarmed at a spate of close calls at U.S. airports.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Commercial jets were getting way too close to a potential collision.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And in trying to assess what happened and how to prevent serious close calls, A lot of people in the industry started to openly worry about all of the so-called juniority in the pilot ranks, in the air traffic control ranks.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The FAA says it's not seeing a rise in safety problems compared to before the pandemic.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And the last major fatal U.S. passenger airline crash happened in 2009.
--:-- Shamita Basu: But the federal agency is watching all the new hires closely.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Major airlines brought in more than 13,000 pilots last year.
--:-- Shamita Basu: That was more than double the year before.
--:-- Andrew Tangle: Tangle told us about an incident involving a Delta Airlines pilot fresh out of training.
--:-- Shamita Basu: They were attempting to land a jet in Atlanta that didn't have a working anti-skid system.
--:-- Shamita Basu: It's pretty routine for airlines to keep planes in service in a situation like this.
--:-- Shamita Basu: When the plane landed, one of its tires blew and the landing gear caught fire.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Fire trucks from the airport all had to respond, put out the fire.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The passengers on the airplane had to get off the plane via those inflatable emergency slides.
--:-- Shamita Basu: So it was a pretty harrowing landing.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The FAA said it was too soon to conclude what factors played a role in that incident.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Airlines aimed to help new pilots gain skills by pairing them with veteran flyers.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The journal talked to the former chair of the National Transportation Safety Board an experienced pilot himself he took a flight recently where a relatively new United pilot had been paired with a more senior captain and he was impressed by her smooth landing
--:-- Shamita Basu: He said it was refreshing evidence that the system is working
--:-- Shamita Basu: Finally, something you don't see every day, a critically endangered animal that went undocumented for over 60 years.
--:-- Shamita Basu: NBC looks at how researchers on a recent expedition to Indonesia saw Attenborough's long-beaked echidna.
--:-- Shamita Basu: It's named for the famous biologist Sir David Attenborough, and it's truly one of the weirder animals out there.
--:-- Shamita Basu: It's a little smaller than the average house cat, and it's covered in quills, which makes it look kind of like a porcupine.
--:-- Shamita Basu: It's got a long beak and strong little digging feet.
--:-- Shamita Basu: But what's most unusual is it's one of only five mammal species that lays eggs.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Which makes it something of an evolutionary outlier.
--:-- Shamita Basu: That's one reason why biologists are eager to preserve them, and we're so excited that they caught one on tape.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Now, doing that was quite an ordeal.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Took a crew of 25 people working over nine weeks, at risk of malaria, earthquakes, and hungry parasites.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The team thought they were onto something when they noticed holes in the ground.
--:-- Shamita Basu: That's a classic echidna sign.
--:-- Shamita Basu: They like to dig for worms.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Now, the crew almost came away with nothing.
--:-- Shamita Basu: But on the very last day of taping, in the very last set of images on their footage, they saw it.
--:-- Shamita Basu: A little echidna poking around.
--:-- Shamita Basu: That was the first evidence in generations that it survived all these years of illegal hunting and other threats.
--:-- Shamita Basu: As for the moment that they finally saw it, Team Leader called it extreme euphoria.
--:-- Shamita Basu: You can find all these stories and more in the Apple News app.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And check out our weekly interview show, In Conversation.
--:-- Shamita Basu: I talked to The New Yorker editor David Remnick about his recent reporting trip to Israel.
--:-- Shamita Basu: He wrote about the October 7th massacre, Israel's assaults on Gaza, and what comes next.
--:-- Shamita Basu: This situation is intolerable.
--:-- Shamita Basu: It's intolerable for Israelis to live in fear, and it's intolerable for Palestinians to live lives of occupation or blockade and misrule and immiseration.
--:-- Shamita Basu: It's intolerable.
--:-- Shamita Basu: If you're listening in the Apple News app right now, that episode is queued up to play for you next.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And I'll be back with the news tomorrow.
