--:-- Shamita Basu: Good morning. It's Friday, October 3rd. I'm Shamita Basu. This is Apple News Today.
--:-- Shamita Basu: On today's show, the latest on the Manchester synagogue attack, how AI is already starting to transform schools, and Taylor Swift sets another trend as musicians fight for artistic control. But first, to some new in-depth reporting about the impact of the Trump administration's decision to abruptly freeze foreign aid earlier this year and overhaul USAID, the U.S. Agency for International Development.
--:-- Shamita Basu: A few weeks ago, Secretary of State Marco Rubio defended the administration's decisions in an interview on ABC, saying that no one has died because the United States has cut aid. People have died because the distributors of aid have not done well. People have died because other countries haven't stepped up. But the United States has saved more lives and continues to save more lives than any other country in the world. And we're going to continue to do it, but we're going to do it the right way and in a responsible way.
--:-- Shamita Basu: In the initial overhaul of aid funding, limited waivers were issued for certain life-saving humanitarian assistance, including PEPFAR, the global HIV-AIDS program that has had broad bipartisan support for years. And just this week, an investigation from The Washington Post found that the stop-and-start flow of aid through these types of programs led to life-saving drug shipments being delayed.
--:-- Meg Kelly: The supply chains are incredibly sensitive. There are so many moving components. You have contracts with manufacturers. You have shipments that are waiting to be picked up, that are in transit, that are in customs.
--:-- Meg Kelly: Each country has different customs waivers, different shipping regulations. Then there's transit from those customs facilities to warehouses and from warehouses to clinics. So it's a massive pipeline. And when it was turned off, each of those components fractured in different ways.
--:-- Meg Kelly: The Washington Post interviewed more than 20 current and former government employees and contractors, traveled to the Democratic Republic of Congo, where they interviewed officials and impacted patients and looked at medical records, and examined internal data on shipments of critical supplies.
--:-- Meg Kelly: Records from the first half of 2025 showed that nearly $76 million worth of shipments were not delivered by the end of June. The majority of it was to combat malaria. An additional $63 million in supplies was delivered to warehouses late. Clinics and hospitals that rely on these goods had to contend with empty shelves.
--:-- Meg Kelly: The delays meant medications, rapid screening tests, and other critical supplies were interrupted in more than 40 countries. One of them was Congo, where five-year-old Souza Kenyaba got sick in February.
--:-- Meg Kelly: She was like so many excited girls. She was just finishing up her first term at school. She'd been doing really well. She loved sort of Philly dresses and was often chatting on the phone to her family. She contracted malaria in mid-February, and it progressed pretty quickly.
--:-- Meg Kelly: The Post found that less than 10 miles away, there were plentiful supplies of anti-malarial medicine. The issue was that quarterly shipments intended to go to local distribution points had not gone out since the USAID funding freeze in January.
--:-- Meg Kelly: What's really heartbreaking to me about this story is that even though the medication was there, there was no logistical mechanism to get it from that sort of central storage facility to the places where the doctor could have accessed the medication from because the programs and the organizations didn't have permission from the U.S. government to do that.
--:-- Meg Kelly: Souza died less than a week after the onset of her symptoms. The deliveries to local clinics eventually resumed, according to the Post, but in that region of Congo, there were more malaria deaths in the first six months of this year than all of last year.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The State Department did not directly answer detailed questions for the Post's story. The agency said in a statement that the most critical elements of our global health response continue to operate and contribute to saving lives.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Now to the UK and the city of Manchester, where yesterday's attack at a synagogue left at least two people dead and several others wounded. A man drove his car into a crowd of worshippers gathered outside for Yom Kippur, the holiest day in the Jewish calendar.
--:-- Shamita Basu: He then emerged wielding a knife and began stabbing people. According to accounts given to Channel 4 News, the attacker attempted to gain access to the synagogue, but people barricaded him from entry, many under the impression that he was carrying explosives.
--:-- Stephen Watson: Within seven minutes of getting the call, armed police were on the scene and fatally shot the man. Authorities confirmed that it was being treated as a terrorist incident.
--:-- Stephen Watson: He was wearing about his body a vest which had the appearance of an explosive device. But thanks to the immediate bravery of security staff and the worshippers inside, as well as the fast response of the police, the attacker was prevented from gaining access.
--:-- Stephen Watson: Later, authorities said whatever was strapped to his body was deemed non-viable, meaning it didn't have explosive capacity. And today, Watson confirmed that one of the victims died from an accidental gunshot from a responding police officer.
--:-- Shamita Basu: A bystander at the scene told the BBC what he saw.
--:-- Bystander: As we looked over, the guy had a knife and he was just stabbing the window, trying to get in the school. And then within seconds, the police arrived. They gave him a couple of warnings. He didn't listen till they opened fire.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The assailant has since been named as Jihad al-Shami, a 35-year-old British citizen of Syrian descent. Police have since arrested three others for commission, preparation, and instigation of acts of terrorism.
--:-- Louise Ellman: There's been a growing fear in the community over many months now about the possibility of an attack like this. The hatred shown towards Jewish people has almost been normalized. So there's been a buildup of fear and of concern.
--:-- Louise Ellman: New data released from the Institute for Jewish Policy Research suggests more people felt unsafe in the UK since the October 7th attacks and the subsequent war in Gaza. And a Jewish charity that's been tracking anti-Semitism since 1994 recorded more than 1,500 incidents in the UK as of June this year.
--:-- Louise Ellman: That's the second highest they've ever recorded for this time period, behind only 2024 in the immediate aftermath of Hamas' attacks. Manchester holds the second largest Jewish community in the UK after London.
--:-- Shamita Basu: UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer said he would be increasing security at areas with a significant Jewish community and condemned anti-Semitism.
--:-- Keir Starmer: This is not a new hate this is something Jews have always lived with. We must be clear. It is a hatred that is rising once again. And Britain must defeat it once again.
--:-- Shamita Basu: On behalf of the nation, I want to offer my condolences to the families and victims affected.
--:-- Shamita Basu: This fall marks the third anniversary of the launch of ChatGPT, and a lot has changed in such a short time. Shortly after the launch in November of 2022, the New York City Department of Education banned the use of the AI chatbot on all school computers and devices, and many other districts in the U.S. followed suit.
--:-- Shamita Basu: But now, AI is being used in the seven biggest school districts in the country. School districts over the past couple of years have faced unprecedented political challenges, financial challenges, in getting their teachers and students the resources that are actually proven to work.
--:-- Wahine Vara: That's me, Vauhini Vara, a contributing writer for Bloomberg Businessweek. I'm Shamita Basu's guest this week on Apple News in Conversation.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Into this landscape comes tech companies, which have a lot of resources, unlike the public school system, and are invested in promulgating their AI products.
--:-- Wahine Vara: In her latest story, How Chatbots and AI Are Already Transforming Kids' Classrooms, I detail the ways tech companies have persuaded school districts to adopt their products, both at the administrative level and in classrooms.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And while there are real problems to be solved, Vara says that it's worth keeping in mind the very different goals of educators and companies pushing AI.
--:-- Wahine Vara: If you're imagining a world 20 or 30 years from now in which everybody's using AI chatbots, what better way to bring about that world than to make sure kids are getting exposed to AI chatbots and learning to use them, becoming familiar with them, maybe even becoming dependent on them when they're in their public schools from the age of 5 to 18.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Vara visited a school in Colorado where a grant-funded program brought an AI platform called Magic School into classrooms.
--:-- Wahine Vara: She sat in on several classes taught by a teacher named Nate Fairchild, and she said that Mr. Fairchild approached his lessons thoughtfully, and the students told her they enjoyed using the tool.
--:-- Wahine Vara: But I quite rarely saw students actually double-checking something that the chatbot spit out. I also saw the AI product make factual errors, put biases into its answers that the students didn't seem to notice. And that seemed problematic to me.
--:-- Wahine Vara: And Mr. Fairchild said that that was problematic for him also. Vara says Mr. Fairchild was encouraged by the performance of his students at the end of the year, but she says part of that success could be attributed to the lengths he took as a teacher to help his students navigate the shortcomings and risks of using AI.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Since these products are so new to schools, there's very little data on how much they actually improve student learning.
--:-- Wahine Vara: The challenge here is just that we don't know. Like, it's very possible that once the research comes in, we'll find out that these kinds of products are hugely beneficial for learning and teaching but that research just isn't in yet.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And there certainly is a growing body of research that suggests otherwise.
--:-- Shamita Basu: To hear the rest of our conversation, including Vara's account of visiting a completely AI school, follow the link to this week's episode on our show notes page.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And if you're listening in the news app, we'll queue it up to play for you next. Before we let you go, a few other stories we're following.
--:-- Shamita Basu: President Trump says the U.S. is in an armed conflict with drug cartels. Reuters reports in a document sent to Congress, the president used that determination to justify recent strikes on boats in the Caribbean alleged to have been carrying narcotics to the U.S.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Those strikes killed 17 people. The document did not provide any new rationale for the strikes, and legal experts say it does not satisfy requirements under laws governing war.
--:-- Shamita Basu: In a war, international law states a country can legally kill enemies even if they pose no threat. The administration has called the strikes self-defense and recently deployed additional naval firepower to the Caribbean.
--:-- Shamita Basu: In the aftermath of last Sunday's shooting at a Michigan-based Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, members of the community started raising money for victims.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And a separate fundraiser was set up for the wife and son of the man accused of attacking the church, killing four people and wounding eight others.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The fundraiser for the family of the suspect has brought in more than $300,000 from thousands of contributors, many of whom are Latter-day Saints.
--:-- Dave Butler: I started that fundraiser. I have no affiliation to the venue or people attacked.
--:-- Dave Butler: I told the Washington Post my faith dictates that widows and orphans should be cared for. And that, quote, thousands of people, it turns out, agree with me.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And finally, last night, Taylor Swift released her new album, The Life of a Showgirl.
--:-- Shamita Basu: As she's been promoting it, she's also discussed her years-long efforts to buy back her master recordings and own her own music.
--:-- Shamita Basu: She described why it was so important to her on the New Heights podcast with her fiancé Travis Kelsey back in August.
--:-- Shamita Basu: These are the songs I wrote about every phase of my life. This is my photography, my music videos, most of which I funded. My artwork, everything that I've ever done is in this catalog.
--:-- Shamita Basu: NPR reports that these once behind-the-scenes type conversations are now out in the open and inspiring artists to make owning their masters a priority earlier in their career.
--:-- Shamita Basu: That includes Maggie Rogers, iSpice, and Olivia Rodrigo, who specifically cited Swift as inspiration.
--:-- Shamita Basu: But along with increased control for artists, there's also been the rise of a certain type of clause in contracts, re-record restrictions, where labels want to make sure other artists don't pull a Swift and start recording their own versions to own their masters.
--:-- Shamita Basu: You can find all these stories and more in the Apple News app.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And if you're already listening in the news app, stick around. As I mentioned, we have my full conversation about AI in schools with Vauhini Vara from Bloomberg Businessweek on the latest episode of Apple News in Conversation, queued up to play next.
--:-- Shamita Basu: If you're listening in the podcast app, you can follow Apple News in Conversation to find that episode or come back to the Apple News Today feed tomorrow.
--:-- Shamita Basu: All new episodes of In Conversation will be available there on Saturdays now, too.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Enjoy your weekend, and I'll be back with the news on Monday.
