--:-- Shumita Basu: Good morning. It's Tuesday, October 21st. I'm Shumita Basu. This is Apple News Today.
--:-- [Discussion continues with Shumita Basu setting the stage for the show]
--:-- Shumita Basu: On today's show, the Supreme Court weighs a pot smoker's right to bear arms. Gone in seven minutes, how the flash heist at the Louvre went down, and an incredible breakthrough for blind patients. But first, to what exactly just happened with everyone's internet.
--:-- Ben Goggin: Yesterday, there was major disruption and mass outages as Amazon's cloud computing service, AWS, faced technical problems they struggled throughout the day to resolve. Because so many of the world's biggest companies rely on AWS, you probably felt some disruption, either with managing your finances, your social feed, or just ordering a coffee.
--:-- Shumita Basu: The first companies that gained attention for this outage were Starbucks right in the morning. So immediately when I logged on this morning and looked at different news coming in, searches were spiking for why is the Starbucks app down? And the answer was the AWS outage.
--:-- Ben Goggin: Amazon throughout the day kept saying that the issues were improving and it was implementing fixes. But every time that they would say that, more issues would present themselves.
--:-- Shumita Basu: The outage tracker service DownDetector thinks more than 2,000 companies were affected, with more than 1.9 million reports of problems coming from the U.S. alone. And that's a lot of breakdowns for businesses dependent on the Internet to function.
--:-- Ben Goggin: It was another reminder of how difficult it is to complete tasks that used to be done offline without web access. Some people couldn't check in at airlines. Others couldn't pay their bills. Some people found themselves stranded as car services like Lyft went down. Crypto traders found they couldn't access their accounts. And many social media platforms and video games like Roblox were also out for a period.
--:-- Shumita Basu: And as you explained, there were some potentially more serious impacts.
--:-- Ben Goggin: I think that the most shocking and potentially disturbing interruptions that we saw were in the healthcare industry. And I think that in the healthcare environment specifically, obviously time is of incredible importance. And when someone is looking for a doctor and not able to find them because of an AWS service disruption, that's pretty disturbing.
--:-- Shumita Basu: Goggin said the outage, even if only brief, highlighted the vulnerability of some of the services that tie our society together.
--:-- Ben Goggin: We talked to one expert for our article that really highlighted that this type of interruption, because it was so pivotal to so many different businesses, is really sort of an interruption or a threat to our democratic system. We saw government websites go down. We saw communications platforms go down. And we saw media websites of the top publications go down.
--:-- Shumita Basu: The problems originated from a data center in northern Virginia. And according to Reuters, it's at least the third time in the past five years this location has contributed to a major internet meltdown.
--:-- Ben Goggin: After around 15 hours the issues were largely resolved though some users continued reporting problems into the evening.
--:-- Shumita Basu: Goggin said that AWS has over the years become one of the foundational backbones to the entire internet, and that even other service providers are themselves linked to AWS through integrations, meaning much of the infrastructure is dependent on this source.
--:-- David Kennedy: Diversity around applications, being able to move from, you know, if AWS has an issue, can you, you know, fail over to Microsoft or can you fail over to Google so you're not seeing these massive outages? These are things that companies need to weigh out to ensure that they don't have a massive impact on their business and organization.
--:-- Shumita Basu: Yesterday, the Supreme Court agreed to hear a case that poses some unusual questions that aren't typically considered by the high court. Like, are marijuana smokers only considered drug users when they are actually high? And should they and other drug users be allowed to own guns?
--:-- Maureen Grappi: This is about a federal law that prohibits the possession of firearms by anyone who is a, quote, unlawful user of or addicted to any controlled substance.
--:-- Shumita Basu: That's Maureen Grappi, who covers the Supreme Court for USA Today. She pointed out this is a rare instance in which the Trump administration is defending a law that limits gun ownership and use.
--:-- Maureen Grappi: The Trump administration has been taking a very strong defense of the Second Amendment. But in this case, when it involves drug users who have guns with the question of whether they have gun rights or not, this time the term administration is saying they are on the side of enforcing the regulation rather than questioning whether the regulation is constitutional or not.
--:-- Shumita Basu: The DOJ has asked the Supreme Court to undo a previous ruling that said the law only applies when someone is actively using drugs.
--:-- Maureen Grappi: The law being contested here is the one that Hunter Biden was convicted on back in 2024, after a jury found that he had lied about his drug use when he purchased a gun. President Biden pardoned his son in his last weeks in office before he could be sentenced.
--:-- Shumita Basu: The last time the court ruled in a major gun case was 2022, when its conservative majority voted to expand gun rights and establish that any firearm restrictions must have a strong grounding in the nation's history.
--:-- Maureen Grappi: As Politico points out in its coverage, lower courts have struggled with that directive, with judges disagreeing about whether centuries-old practices are a sufficient fit for modern times.
--:-- Shumita Basu: Grappi explained how the administration is partly relying on that 2022 ruling to make its case.
--:-- Maureen Grappi: The Justice Department is arguing that there were laws that existed at the time the country was founded that restricted the rights of habitual drinkers to not have weapons even when they were sober. So that's why the Justice Department is arguing that this particular law is consistent with the nation's history of gun regulations.
--:-- Shumita Basu: The Supreme Court is expected to issue a ruling in this case by the end of next June.
--:-- Arthur Brand: On Sunday, thieves made away with priceless jewels from the Louvre Museum. In total, nine items were nabbed, including earrings and necklaces from France's past monarchies, pieces with large sapphires, emeralds and diamonds, all set in precious metals.
--:-- Shumita Basu: One of the pieces, a crown that once belonged to the wife of Napoleon III, contained more than 1,300 diamonds and was found broken outside the museum as though it had been dropped during the escape.
--:-- Arthur Brand: What's perhaps most surprising, though, is just how quickly the thieves pulled it all off. They were in, and they were out in seven minutes, so it was the perfect heist.
--:-- Shumita Basu: That's Arthur Brand, an art crime investigator known as the Indiana Jones of the art world, offering his outside analysis to the BBC on Sunday.
--:-- Hugh Schofield: They were up in the balcony dressed in their yellow vests, And then with a disc cutter, a sort of battery-operated disc cutter, they got through the window. You can see the boarded-up panes there into the gallery.
--:-- Shumita Basu: The incident has now sparked conversations over security failures at the world's most famous and most visited museum.
--:-- Arthur Brand: The thieves took less than seven minutes to get in and out meant they were likely well prepared. They have studied it. They have been there two or three weeks before, just watching the cameras, watching the doors, watching the vitrines.
--:-- Shumita Basu: Chris Marinello, CEO and founder of Art Recovery International, a company that specializes in the return of high-profile works of art, speaking to the Australian news show A Current Affair.
--:-- Chris Marinello: I'm fearful to say that these pieces might be already gone or being broken up as we speak. The criminals are trying right now desperately to hide evidence of their crime. And how do they do that? Not by burying them or putting them under a bed but by breaking them up and dispersing them and cashing out on what they stolen.
--:-- Shumita Basu: Before we let you go, a few other stories we're following.
--:-- [Discussion continues with Shumita Basu setting up the next segment]
--:-- Shumita Basu: A federal appeals court ruled President Trump can send the National Guard into Portland, Oregon.
--:-- Maureen Groppe: A two-to-one split decision by a panel of judges from the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that sending guard troops was an appropriate response to protests in the area.
--:-- Shumita Basu: A concurring opinion from one of the judges also said the court does not have the ability to review the president's decision.
--:-- Maureen Groppe: Local leaders in Oregon sued, claiming the president's order violated several laws and the state's rights.
--:-- Shumita Basu: The ruling lifts a previous temporary order blocking troops from entering the city.
--:-- Maureen Groppe: Many recent Portland protests were described as low energy in local police reports reviewed by The Wall Street Journal.
--:-- Shumita Basu: Lawyers for the state and city of Portland asked the court for an immediate rehearing of the case.
--:-- Maureen Groppe: Both sides have until midnight tomorrow to file arguments.
--:-- Shumita Basu: President Trump signed a critical minerals deal with Australia on Monday in a move that could impact the U.S.'s continuing trade war with China.
--:-- Maureen Groppe: Under the agreement, the U.S. and Australian governments will invest more than $3 billion in mineral projects, with an estimated $50 billion worth of resources extracted.
--:-- Shumita Basu: The deal comes after Chinese President Xi Jinping announced tighter controls on rare earth exports from China to the rest of the world.
--:-- Maureen Groppe: In response, Trump threatened an additional 100 percent tariff on China and said he would cancel an upcoming meeting with Xi.
--:-- Shumita Basu: Those tensions eventually subsided, and for now the meeting is back on.
--:-- Maureen Groppe: Trump said Monday he was confident a, quote, very fair deal regarding trade would come out of his meeting with Xi.
--:-- Shumita Basu: The minerals in question are crucial raw materials in the making of things like computer chips, medical equipment, and defense technology.
--:-- Maureen Groppe: And finally, The Verge reports several dozen patients have regained their eyesight with an eye-implant-smart glasses combination, allowing them to see well enough to do things like crossword puzzles and reading books.
--:-- Shumita Basu: The patients who all suffered from what's known as age-related macular degeneration had a tiny device implanted under their retinas. Then, camera-equipped smart glasses beamed zoomed-in images to the implants, which transmit electrical signals to the optic nerve, mimicking what the retina naturally does.
--:-- Maureen Groppe: The study had an 80% success rate. Researchers say it's not perfect, and patients can only see a black and white blurry view of the world, but it is the first time scientists have been able to restore some amount of vision to people with age-related macular degeneration with a prosthetic.
--:-- Shumita Basu: Despite its limitations, researchers called it the dawn of a new technology that will significantly advance.
--:-- Maureen Groppe: You can find all these stories and more in the Apple News app.
--:-- Shumita Basu: And if you're already listening in the News app right now, we've got a narrated article coming up next. New York Magazine has the story of how searching for a job in the current economic climate has become both an exercise in frustration and a battle against the increased use of AI tools in applicant screening.
--:-- Maureen Groppe: If you're listening in the podcast app, follow Apple News Plus Narrated to find that story.
--:-- Shumita Basu: And I'll be back with the news tomorrow.
