--:-- Shamita Basu: Good morning. It's Thursday, September 11th. I'm Shamita Basu. This is Apple News Today.
--:-- Shamita Basu: On today's show, the world's eyes on Europe after Poland shot down Russian drones, why RFK Jr.'s roadmap for childhood health is disappointing even some of his supporters, and signs of possible life on Mars. But first, to what we know about the death of Charlie Kirk, one of the most influential voices in conservative politics.
--:-- Shamita Basu: He was killed yesterday on stage at an event hosted by Utah Valley University. The school was the first stop on a debate tour for his conservative youth organization, Turning Point USA.
--:-- Jason Chaffetz: As soon as that shot went out, everybody hit the deck. A lot of people started screaming. And then everybody started running, as you might expect.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Local investigators had a person in custody, but that person was later released. As of early this morning, their search for the shooter is ongoing.
--:-- Bo Mason: This incident occurred with a large crowd around. There was one shot fired and one victim. While the suspect is at large, we believe this was a targeted attack towards one individual.
--:-- Shamita Basu: President Trump addressed the news in a video message. Charlie inspired millions, and tonight all who knew him and loved him are united in shock and horror.
--:-- Donald Trump: Charlie was a patriot who devoted his life to the cause of open debate and a country that he loves so much, the United States of America.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Trump went on to say violence was the tragic consequence of demonizing those with whom you disagree, and he blamed rhetoric from the radical left, although authorities have not yet confirmed a motive.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Politicians from both parties, including all living former presidents, have condemned the shooting.
--:-- Barack Obama: This kind of despicable violence has no place in our democracy.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Former Vice President Kamala Harris wrote that she was deeply disturbed by the attack.
--:-- Kamala Harris: I'm deeply disturbed by the attack on Charlie Kirk.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Soon after news of the shooting, but before Kirk was confirmed dead, House Speaker Mike Johnson called for a moment of silence on the chamber floor to pray for him. But it soon turned into a shouting match, with some House Democrats criticizing the fact that school shootings, including one in Colorado yesterday that critically injured at least two high school students, have not gotten the same attention from members of Congress.
--:-- Mike Johnson: We will join prayer right after this, OK? The chair lays before the House a communication. The House will be in order.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Kirk and his organization played a critical role in mobilizing younger voters to right-wing causes. He created Turning Point when he was 18 years old, and today it has chapters at more than 850 colleges.
--:-- Shamita Basu: During the 2016 campaign, Kirk worked with the Trump family on social media outreach and became a strong supporter of Trump, eventually backing his false claims that he lost the 2020 election due to voter fraud.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Kirk stood by Trump after the January 6th Capitol riot and was among the first to start building support for the president's political comeback.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Here he is speaking at the Republican National Convention in 2024.
--:-- Charlie Kirk: Under Biden, our young people own nothing and they are miserable. Donald Trump refuses to accept this fake, pathetic, mutilated version of the American dream.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Kirk's far-right politics were infused with his Christian beliefs. He argued against the separation of church and state and was staunchly against abortion.
--:-- Shamita Basu: He often spread falsehoods and conspiracies about vaccines, transgender people, and demographic change. He's made inflammatory comments about gay people, Jewish people, and Black people.
--:-- Shamita Basu: At one point, he called the Civil Rights Act a huge mistake and Martin Luther King Jr. a bad man.
--:-- Shamita Basu: He was known for a firebrand style of public speaking and engaging people in debate. In fact, the event he was killed was quite similar to the debate events that he held that launched his career.
--:-- Shamita Basu: He spoke about the early days of his political activism earlier this year on California Governor Gavin Newsom's podcast.
--:-- Charlie Kirk: I would literally show up to UW-Madison with a card table and a big cardboard sign saying, debate me. I wanted to try and challenge the predominant view.
--:-- Shamita Basu: I always loved debate and disagreement. I love the kind of spar.
--:-- Shamita Basu: President Trump ordered all U.S. flags on public grounds to be lowered to half-staff until Sunday night in Kirk's honor.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Now to Europe and the fallout after more than a dozen Russian drones entered Polish airspace late on Tuesday, with some flying deep enough to close four airports.
--:-- Shamita Basu: This is the first time Russian drones have been downed over NATO territory since the war in Ukraine began.
--:-- Mark Rutte: It is absolutely reckless. It is absolutely dangerous. But as I said, the full assessment is ongoing.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And to Putin, I mean, my message is clear. Stop the war in Ukraine. Stop the escalating war, which he is now basically mounting on innocent civilians and civilian infrastructure. Stop violating Allied airspace. And know that we stand ready.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Tusk has requested to invoke Article 4 of the NATO treaty, which calls for an emergency meeting with the 32 member states.
--:-- Radek Sikorsky: We've learned for 500 years that when Russia threatens us, we unfortunately have to take it deadly seriously because Russia has been conducting a cruel illegal aggression against Ukraine.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And we are a neighbor of Ukraine. And Russia has attacked us many times in the past.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Russia has denied responsibility for the drone attack and said its drones had carried out a major attack in western Ukraine and had not planned to hit any targets in Poland.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Poland's decision to take down the drones was swift, and there's been no further escalation since, for now at least.
--:-- Mark Brzezinski: Thank goodness no one was hurt or killed in Poland yesterday, because Poland is the NATO alliance member, and it would have triggered Article 5, in which technically an attack on one is an attack on all, and the response would have been technical as well.
--:-- Shamita Basu: We don't want this horrific conflict in Ukraine, which has claimed over one million casualties to spread, but that's precisely what these incursions can trigger.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Many experts dismiss the idea that this was a deliberate attack and say Russia has been testing Ukraine NATO allies.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Drones have approached Alliance airspace before affecting countries like Latvia, Romania, and Croatia.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And Tusk has now shut the Polish border in response to Russian military exercises taking place nearby.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Meanwhile, in the U.S., calls for President Trump to move forward with increased sanctions against Russia are growing.
--:-- Richard Blumenthal: The time has come for action. The president's been mocked and played by Putin. And I think the president ought to be furious that Putin has stalled and stonewalled in this way.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Since the start of this year, Russian drone attacks on Ukraine have doubled, according to the BBC.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And drones have in recent days struck government buildings in Kiev.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Let's turn now to public health, where Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the Health and Human Services Secretary, unveiled his plan to address chronic childhood disease this week.
--:-- Shamita Basu: It includes 128 ideas, but health experts told Stat reporter Sarah Todd the plan does very little to propose regulations or policies to improve children's health.
--:-- Sarah Todd: The reactions that I got from people who are experts on public policy and public health is basically that this is a call for more research on a lot of issues that we kind of already have the answers on.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Even Kennedy's supporters have been let down by the lack of detail.
--:-- Sarah Todd: There are a couple of areas that people who, in general, you know, back the Make America Healthy Again movement on specific issues were disappointed by.
--:-- Sarah Todd: One was the sense that it goes too easy on pesticides in particular.
--:-- Sarah Todd: And then the other is that while Kennedy has talked a lot about ultra-processed foods and the harm that they can cause in contributing to chronic disease, this report really takes a light touch when it comes to talking about ultra-processed foods.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Instead, Todd reports that the plan primarily asks companies to make voluntary commitments to do things like remove artificial food dye from their products.
--:-- Shamita Basu: It tasks government agencies with carrying out new studies on chronic disease, including studying previously approved medical interventions.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And there are several proposals related to vaccines, which Kennedy has a long history of advocating against.
--:-- Shamita Basu: He's asking HHS and the National Institutes of Health to investigate what the administration is calling vaccine injuries.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And he says he wants to reform a program run by the CDC and FDA that collects and analyzes unverified reports of adverse health conditions that occur after a person receives a vaccination in order to study the possibility that a given health outcome is connected to a vaccine.
--:-- Shamita Basu: He says that people are finding it very difficult to report vaccine injuries when they call in trying to do so and that they're going to fix that system.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Kennedy also wants to reform the childhood vaccine schedule, though Todd reports he's offered little information on what that would involve.
--:-- Shamita Basu: It's pretty unclear. It's pretty short on details.
--:-- Shamita Basu: So, you know, we'll see what happens next. But this report, I would say, does not suggest that there are going to be any major changes to policy that would impact childhood chronic disease.
--:-- Shamita Basu: In recent days, President Trump has tried to distance himself from some of Kennedy's anti-vaccine positions.
--:-- Shamita Basu: He's cautioned against getting rid of all vaccine requirements for children, which is what Florida is currently trying to do.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And he also said on social media that some vaccines quote pure and simple work.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And on the same day that Kennedy revealed this plan to address chronic childhood disease, Trump announced a health initiative of his own one that could change all of those pharmaceutical ads that you see on TV.
--:-- Shamita Basu: You know, the ones where possible side effects are quickly rattled off at the very end.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Well, the president is asking U.S. health officials to require pharmaceutical companies to disclose even more side effects in these ads and to more strictly enforce existing policies over misleading ads.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The concern is that these kinds of advertisements encourage patients to pursue prescriptions that they don't actually need and that this in turn can lead to more wasteful medical spending, unnecessary time for patients within the system and more disinformation among the general public about what conditions they may or may not have and what treatments might be effective.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The U.S. is one of two countries in the world where pharmaceutical companies can directly market products to consumers on TV.
--:-- Shamita Basu: According to Bloomberg, last year they spent $10.8 billion on ads.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Before we let you go, a few other stories we're following.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Three former senior FBI officials filed lawsuits against the organization's director, Kash Patel, and Attorney General Pam Bondi on Wednesday, claiming the officials fired them to appease President Trump.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The suit alleges that Patel told employees he had to fire them because his ability to keep his own job depended on the removal of agents who worked on cases against the president.
--:-- Shamita Basu: They say the firings violated their Fifth Amendment right to due process and the First Amendment's guaranteed to free association and free speech.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The FBI hasn't commented on the suit, but in his confirmation hearing, Patel pledged to maintain the independence of the bureau.
--:-- Shamita Basu: In the Battle of the Billionaires, Elon Musk, briefly lost, then regained his title as the world's richest person.
--:-- Shamita Basu: For a moment there, he swapped places with Larry Ellison, the CEO of the software company Oracle.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Ellison's wealth ballooned to nearly $400 billion following an earnings report on Tuesday and an announcement from the company that it was making major investments in AI.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Bloomberg reports that the rise in his wealth is the largest single-day increase ever recorded by its billionaires index.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Musk has largely held the title for much of the past year, due in part to investments in companies like Tesla and SpaceX.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And was there ever life on Mars? NASA thinks it's found the clearest sign yet that there might have been.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The Mars rover Perseverance found rocks that had markings, nicknamed leopard spots, that could hold potential for ancient microscopic life.
--:-- Shamita Basu: If further analysis can show, they were produced by chemical reactions connected to microbes.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Perseverance has been touring the sites of Mars since 2021, drilling rocks and grabbing samples.
--:-- Shamita Basu: But scientists admit that it's possible these markings were caused by geological reactions, and we won't know for sure until the rocks may get back to Earth to be studied.
--:-- Shamita Basu: In the meantime, Perseverance's lonely mission goes on.
--:-- 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 right now, we've got a narrated article coming up next.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The Sunday Times has a story about the late Queen Elizabeth and the personal opinions that she chose to keep close to her vest, including her previously unknown views on Brexit.
--:-- Shamita Basu: If you're listening in the podcast app, follow Apple News Plus Narrated to find that story.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And I'll be back with the news tomorrow.
