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--:-- Duarte Giraldino: Good morning. It's Thursday, June 3rd. I'm Duarte Giraldino. And I'm Shamita Basu. This is Apple News Today.
--:-- Shamita Basu: 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: Israel could soon get a new prime minister. Benjamin Netanyahu's political opponents say they have the votes to form a coalition that may bring down the man who's dominated Israeli politics for more than a decade.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Reuters looks at how right-wing, centrist, and smaller parties manage to cobble together enough support to choose the next prime minister.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: Together, they've made a deal that would see Naftali Bennett, head of an ultra-nationalist party, become prime minister initially. He would then hand it over to Yair Lapid, leader of a centrist party.
--:-- Shamita Basu: But this isn't a done deal yet. Israel's parliament must vote. If Netanyahu and his allies can persuade someone to change their mind, this fragile coalition could break apart.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: JBS is the world's largest meat processor, and it's now back up and running after hackers locked the company's files and demanded ransom.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The attack was so bad, JBS had to shut down beef operations. And this comes after Colonial Pipeline was attacked, that company paid a $4.4 million ransom to get its systems unlocked so that it could get gas flowing again.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: And if cyberattacks like these become more common, a lot of companies, they're turning to professional negotiators, people with deep experience getting hackers to unlock the files that they're essentially holding hostage.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The New Yorker spoke with one of these negotiators. His name is Curtis Minder. His job is to talk to hackers and try to cut down their ransom to a reasonable amount so that companies can minimize the damage and get back into their systems.
--:-- Curtis Minder: His job is to talk to hackers and try to cut down their ransom to a reasonable amount so that companies can minimize the damage and get back into their systems.
--:-- Shamita Basu: He says the work is part nature, part nurture. It requires a certain amount of emotional finesse that comes naturally to him. But he also had to study up on negotiation tactics and even watched masterclass tutorials.
--:-- Curtis Minder: The key is to be a little warm, a little complimentary even. Like, you're clearly a very talented hacker, but we just can't pay you what you're asking.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: The FBI advises victims, don't negotiate with hackers. The Bureau's position is, paying ransoms encourages more cyber extortion.
--:-- Shamita Basu: But the New Yorker spoke with one security expert who points out companies are in a difficult position. If the target organization is a hospital, for example, doctors might need the systems they locked out of in order to keep patients alive.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: Also, some entities that don't pay ransoms end up spending months recovering. And the cost of rebuilding computer systems can sometimes be far more expensive than the ransoms themselves.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The New Yorker speaks to a professor who specializes in the economics of crime. And she says ransom negotiators play an important role.
--:-- Professor: The field has its roots in the 1970s, when it wasn't computer systems being taken for ransom, but literally the executives of companies were being kidnapped and held.
--:-- Shamita Basu: When negotiators are involved, kidnappings get resolved 97% of the time, a higher success rate than without them.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: Cyber extortion is a newer and growing problem, but a blanket ban on negotiating with hackers could just drive down success rates and drive this work further underground.
--:-- Shamita Basu: There is a war and humanitarian crisis unfolding in Ethiopia's Tigray region. About two million people have been displaced.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: But because the Ethiopian government has shut down communications and access to the area, it's hard to know the true scale of the atrocities that are happening there.
--:-- Shamita Basu: National Geographic managed to get a Pulitzer Prize-winning photojournalist on the ground. Lindsay Adario documents the violence and the trauma being experienced by people in the region.
--:-- Lindsay Adario: The Tigray People's Liberation Front, or the TPLF, is the ruling party here, and it's locked in a battle with Ethiopia's central government troops. Eritrean forces and regional militias have helped the government fight the TPLF.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: The roots of this conflict go back decades. When the TPLF was in power nationally, it was repressive. When the current prime minister took over, he pushed Tigrayans out of Ethiopia's federal government.
--:-- Shamita Basu: In October, the federal government cut funding to the Tigray region. The TPLF retaliated by attacking a military base. And the Ethiopian government responded by launching an extensive military offensive.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: Since then, there have been countless attacks and counterattacks. For ordinary people caught in the middle of this conflict, life has been brutal.
--:-- Shamita Basu: One photo shows a man farming land where soldiers have been known to attack. According to Adario, the soldiers want him to stop. But he has no other choice but to work these dangerous fields because he has seven children to feed.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: There have been widespread reports of civilians being targeted, mass rapes, lootings of hospitals. Adario's images take us to the camps where people have fled to. And she hears from those who have seen their families killed, their homes destroyed.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Their stories are striking, and the images are powerful. We link to the full article in our show notes page.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: At the end of last year, Michael Jewsbury received his standard order of food for his pet cat, Maurice. But something was off. The cans had about an ounce less food than usual, but the price was the same.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Michael estimated if he wanted to keep feeding Maurice his normal meals, it would cost him an extra $240 a year.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: What Michael and Maurice experienced has a name. It's called shrinkflation.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The Washington Post explains what's going on here. So during the pandemic, raw material and distribution costs shot up. In order to offset those costs, some companies are now giving us less stuff without adjusting prices.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: The strategy is a way to get you to pay more for household items, often without you noticing. And you can expect to see a lot more of this.
--:-- Shamita Basu: John Gorville is a marketing professor at Harvard Business School, and he tells the Post that shoppers are usually aware of how much things cost, but they often pay a lot less attention to the amount of product in each package.
--:-- John Gorville: I mean, think about it. You might know roughly how much a box of cereal costs, but would you really be able to pick up a box of cornflakes and say, I don't know, this one feels a little light to me?
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: If you haven't noticed shrinkflation, that's also partly by design. Experts say to hide shrinkage, what companies are doing is maintaining the general shape of packaging or keeping it the same size.
--:-- Shamita Basu: For example, Grovel, that Harvard professor, says the bar of soap that he's been buying for decades has slowly become more concave.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: And shrinkflation is not just tied to the pandemic economy. Since the 1970s, coffee packages, cans of tuna, and bottles of orange juice have delivered less and less stuff over the years.
--:-- Shamita Basu: But the strange circumstances of the pandemic means that companies are especially likely to be shrinking product size right now.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: So the next time you're grocery shopping and you notice paper towel rolls seem a bit thinner than usual or that there aren't as many potato chips in that bag that you remember, know that you're not losing your mind.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The shrinkage is real. The price tag may be the same, and yet you're paying more. To find out for yourself, look at the price per ounce, and you'll notice what you're really paying.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: When it comes to hairstyles, there's probably nothing more controversial than the mullet.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Yeah, we've all heard the tagline, business in the front, party in the back. Country singers, hockey players, they're known to sport this style.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: But every now and then, it has a moment where the fashion world embraces it again. And the mullet shows up on celebrities and on models.
--:-- Shamita Basu: According to Vogue, we're living in one of those moments right now. We are back in the golden age.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: One reason for this could be the pandemic. You know, the mullet is so low maintenance, it's easy enough for you to do it yourself at home.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Maybe even without a mirror. And now the mullet has celebrity endorsement. Vogue has a photo shoot showcasing Ella Emhoff in a thick, sprawling mullet.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: She is Vice President Kamala Harris's stepdaughter, and she first caught the attention of the fashion world with her outfit at the inauguration.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Vogue also speaks with several stylists who say that more and more these days, clients are walking into salons and asking for mullets.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: Vogue spoke to a hair historian. Yes, they are hair historians. And this historian explains the long history of the mullet.
--:-- Hair Historian: Viking and Roman warriors, it turns out, rocked it for practical reasons. It kept their necks warm in the battles. And the absence of long hair in the front meant that the enemy couldn't yank it.
--:-- Shamita Basu: So my brother has been rocking a mullet for the past year or so. He's one of those pandemic people.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: It is very Paul McCartney circa Wings, to give you an idea. I think he thinks he's doing an anti-fashion statement. But who knows, now that the mullet is officially back on runways, maybe he'll finally cut it.
--:-- Shamita Basu: You can find all these stories and more in the Apple News app. And while you're there, check out some of our audio stories. We'll talk with you again tomorrow.
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