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--:-- Mark Garrison: Good morning. It's Monday, February 26th. I'm Mark Garrison, in for Shamita Basu. This is Apple News Today.
--:-- Mark Garrison: On today's show, how the Alabama IVF rule enforced a family to leave the state to continue treatment. The people who came to the U.S. for a better life and got trapped at O'Hare Airport. And an unusual way managers are trying to get more workers back into offices.
--:-- Mark Garrison: But first, let's take a quick look at some major stories in the news.
--:-- Mark Garrison: The Biden administration says negotiators have an understanding on the broad points of a potential temporary ceasefire deal in Gaza that would include the release of hostages held by Hamas. But the specifics aren't public.
--:-- Mark Garrison: The death toll in Gaza is close to 30,000 people. Representatives from the U.S., Israel, Qatar, and Egypt are expected to continue talks to iron out technical details.
--:-- Mark Garrison: But Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says Israel is still preparing a large-scale assault on Rafah. 1.5 million Palestinian civilians are sheltering there.
--:-- Mark Garrison: Netanyahu told CBS that a ceasefire deal may only delay an operation. We're not going to give it up. If we have a deal, it'll be delayed somewhat, but it'll happen. If we don't have a deal, we'll do it anyway.
--:-- Mark Garrison: It has to be done because total victory is our goal, and total victory is within reach, not months away, weeks away once we begin the operation.
--:-- Mark Garrison: To U.S. politics where former President Donald Trump beat Nikki Haley in South Carolina's Republican primary by a wide margin over the weekend.
--:-- Mark Garrison: That is really something. This was a little sooner than we anticipated.
--:-- Mark Garrison: Haley says she'll stay in the race through Super Tuesday on March 5th. I said earlier this week that no matter what happens in South Carolina, I would continue to run for president.
--:-- Mark Garrison: Tomorrow, Democrats and Republicans head to the polls in Michigan's primary.
--:-- Mark Garrison: Also, Republican National Committee Chair Ronna McDaniel is stepping down. Trump had criticized her management of the party. He endorsed a group of new leaders, including his daughter-in-law, Laura Trump.
--:-- Mark Garrison: In Washington, lawmakers are on the verge of a partial government shutdown again. They have just a few days to strike a deal or else services including food stamps housing assistance and more could be affected.
--:-- Mark Garrison: President Biden is bringing congressional leaders from both parties to the White House tomorrow to talk about the looming shutdown and funding for Ukraine.
--:-- Mark Garrison: Fertility doctors across America are frustrated with the recent Alabama Supreme Court decision that frozen embryos have the legal rights of children.
--:-- Mark Garrison: They're worried about the impact on patients. Several fertility clinics in the state are pausing services while they look at the new legal risks for patients and clinics.
--:-- Mark Garrison: And Alabama Fertility, which performed around 700 rounds of IVF last year, they're pausing new treatments because of the ruling.
--:-- Mark Garrison: We're incredibly worried that IVF as it stands will not continue in Alabama.
--:-- Mark Garrison: That's Dr. Mamie McLean from the clinic on MSNBC.
--:-- Dr. Mamie McLean: We have patients who plan for months in the lead up to both IVF and a frozen embryo transfer. So these treatments are not, they've been ongoing for quite a while.
--:-- Dr. Mamie McLean: And so the decision to cancel a patient's treatment is devastating news for them.
--:-- Mark Garrison: Gabrielle Goidel talked to CNN about trying to get pregnant in the middle of all of this.
--:-- Gabrielle Goidel: I'm probably 15 shots in and my body is bruised and hurt. It's not been great physically.
--:-- Gabrielle Goidel: I don't feel the greatest. I've already been so poked and prodded with the IVF process.
--:-- Gabrielle Goidel: And now I feel like there's somebody else who's coming into my personal life and it's very invasive.
--:-- Gabrielle Goidel: Goydell and her husband frantically called other IVF providers. They found one that could take her, but it was in Texas.
--:-- Gabrielle Goidel: So she'll continue IVF there, but that adds additional travel costs to the already expensive process.
--:-- Gabrielle Goidel: She told CNN the ruling makes a difficult ordeal even worse.
--:-- Gabrielle Goidel: Goidel had three miscarriages and the family has already spent tens of thousands of dollars on IVF.
--:-- Gabrielle Goidel: All we want is to just have the American dream and have a family.
--:-- Gabrielle Goidel: And I never thought that this would be something that would be conceded as immoral.
--:-- Mark Garrison: Now to a story about families coming to the U for a better life who got stuck in limbo living at Chicago O Airport.
--:-- Mark Garrison: Texas Republican Governor Greg Abbott says that he sent more than 30 migrants to Chicago since 2022.
--:-- Mark Garrison: The state has been sending tens of thousands of people who cross the southern border to cities led by Democrats to protest U.S. immigration policies.
--:-- Mark Garrison: And that meant that migrants started arriving in the city without a place to live, and some of them got stuck at O'Hare Airport.
--:-- Mark Garrison: Ellie Fishman writes in Rolling Stone about these families. She spent the holiday season reporting from O'Hare at one of its busiest times.
--:-- Mark Garrison: It was meant to be only a temporary shelter for migrants, where people could wait for better housing.
--:-- Mark Garrison: But the large number of new arrivals meant many people spent a lot of time living at the airport.
--:-- Mark Garrison: Fishman profiled a woman named Angie. She had five young children between the ages of two and eight.
--:-- Mark Garrison: and they were living in a place, an airport, that is not set up to house families.
--:-- Mark Garrison: They were trying to escape poverty and instability in Venezuela.
--:-- Mark Garrison: It took her family months to make the dangerous journey north, through the jungle and desert.
--:-- Mark Garrison: After arriving, Angie accepted the offer of a flight to Illinois.
--:-- Mark Garrison: She'd never been on a plane before, and she'd heard Chicago was welcoming to immigrants.
--:-- Mark Garrison: But the reality was she had no place to stay, So she wound up in a vast field of makeshift beds at O'Hare with hundreds of other migrants.
--:-- Mark Garrison: One volunteer told Fishman the conditions are not humane.
--:-- Mark Garrison: It is a transient place by nature. No showers, no real private spaces to reflect or even just take a moment for yourself.
--:-- Mark Garrison: and I just was so struck by what it would mean to try and move through your day with five kids in a place like that.
--:-- Mark Garrison: You know, the sink that you use for five seconds to wash your hands on the way to your gate, for Angie, is not only a sink, it's a laundry basin, it's a shower.
--:-- Mark Garrison: Angie's asylum case is one of two million pending in the U.S.
--:-- Mark Garrison: Angie and her family eventually found a motel to move into.
--:-- Mark Garrison: Many other people camped out at O'Hare have also been able to move to other accommodations, but resources in Chicago are still stretched.
--:-- Mark Garrison: It's a massive crisis, and trying to figure out how to support these families and these individual people has been a contentious and heated topic in the city
--:-- Mark Garrison: It's Monday, and that might mean you're heading back to the office or not if you work from home.
--:-- Mark Garrison: Or maybe you work from home, but you get the sense that your boss would really rather have you in the office more often.
--:-- Mark Garrison: That kind of push and pull has been going on between companies and employees ever since the pandemic lockdowns ended.
--:-- Mark Garrison: Some companies take a hard line, basically come to the office or you're fired.
--:-- Mark Garrison: Others have a softer approach, which includes making the workplace more appealing, offering free food, nice coffee, better gyms, laundry services.
--:-- Mark Garrison: The Wall Street Journal looks at how a few companies are trying something different, changing the smell.
--:-- Mark Garrison: Some managers are adding perfume to the air, scent diffusers, or even pumping it directly into the ventilation system.
--:-- Mark Garrison: It's taking a page out of spas and luxury hotels, which have been using custom scents to set the mood for a while.
--:-- Mark Garrison: One commercial real estate company told the journal how it tested multiple blends to pick a custom scent.
--:-- Mark Garrison: What the bosses settled on was a little different than what hotels go for, since they're aiming for a purely relaxing vibe.
--:-- Mark Garrison: The office mix was designed to be more uplifting, which management decided smells like a mix of jasmine, sandalwood, and pine.
--:-- Mark Garrison: This is very different than the usual conversations about office smells, which are often negative.
--:-- Mark Garrison: There's the colleague who wears way too much cologne or the one who reheats fish in the communal kitchen.
--:-- Mark Garrison: It's not clear that offices adding a signature scent will get more employees coming in, but it does sound like an improvement.
--:-- Mark Garrison: You can find all these stories and more in the Apple News app.
--:-- Mark Garrison: And if you're already listening in the news app right now, we've got a narrated article coming up next.
--:-- Mark Garrison: And it's the Apple News pick for Story of the Month.
--:-- Mark Garrison: Every month, our editors are selecting a News Plus article that they don't want you to miss.
--:-- Mark Garrison: This one from The Atlantic is about Scott Peterson. He was the armed sheriff's deputy at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida in 2018.
--:-- Mark Garrison: 17 people were killed in a mass shooting. Peterson was heavily criticized for not confronting the gunman.
--:-- Mark Garrison: The Atlantic goes beyond his story to look at the major gaps in law enforcement training in America when it comes to mass shootings.
--:-- Mark Garrison: If you're listening in the podcast's app, you can follow Apple News Plus Narrated to find that story.
--:-- Mark Garrison: And I'll be back with the news tomorrow.
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