--:-- Shamita Basu: Good morning. It's Friday, October 29th. I'm Shamita Basu. Duarte Geraldino is off. This is Apple News Today. If you're listening for the first time, welcome.
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--:-- Shamita Basu: Every day on this show, we bring you some of the most fascinating stories in the news. The best way to keep up is to follow the Apple News Today channel in the Apple News app.
--:-- Shamita Basu: This Sunday, global leaders meet in Scotland for the COP26 climate summit. Countries are expected to reveal new targets for cutting carbon emissions. But National Geographic rounds up the numbers and finds many countries, including the U.S., are not on track to meet their previous goals.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Just a handful of countries are responsible for the majority of the world's emissions. More than a quarter of greenhouse gases come from China. It's the biggest emitter, more than all other industrial nations combined.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Now, China is in a tough spot because it's still very reliant on coal. It provides 60 percent of China's power. But the country has taken significant steps to address climate change. NBC looks at China's investment in renewables. That includes adding more wind energy last year than every other country combined.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Nearly half of all electric cars in the world are in China. Even with all of that, NBC says China is still not where it needs to be to do its part on making a dent in a global problem.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The world's second biggest source of greenhouse gases is the U.S. And remember to adjust for population size. The U.S. is way worse than China when it comes to pollution per person.
--:-- Shamita Basu: It's not clear yet how Washington will do its part on climate. The latest version of the White House spending plan includes half a billion dollars in tax credits and other policies aimed at cutting emissions. But that bill isn't a done deal. Plus, a major program to clean up electricity production got cut.
--:-- Shamita Basu: So when President Biden meets with world leaders in the next few days, he won't have as much to show them on climate as he might have hoped.
--:-- Shamita Basu: We expect adults to do what's in the best interest of kids, whether that's at home, in school or in the criminal justice system. But when that doesn't happen, when the adults in charge act wrongly or maybe even illegally, the consequences for a child can be life-changing.
--:-- Shamita Basu: That's the thought I kept coming back to as I learned about this story out of Rutherford County, Tennessee. In 2016, a video popped up on YouTube. It showed a scuffle between some kids. One was five years old, one was six. Other children are seen gathered around watching the fight.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Some of them are yelling, but no one seems to get hurt. As a result of that video, police arrested 11 children. The crime they were charged with? Criminal responsibility for conduct of another. Basically, that they didn't stop the fight.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Nashville Public Radio's Maribah Knight explains what happened.
--:-- Maribah Knight: While being arrested, one girl falls to her knees, another threw up. Police handcuffed the youngest girl, an eight-year-old, with pigtails. They were shocked. They didn't know what was happening.
--:-- Maribah Knight: One girl was on her bus and was literally taken off of her bus and brought to the assistant principal's office and told she was being arrested. She had no idea what was going on.
--:-- Maribah Knight: Once the children were brought into the detention facility, they faced invasive screening. EJ, she was 10 years old. So she's brought in. She is screened. All of her jewelry is taken off. All of her small rings are taken off of her fingers. She is searched, given a 16-point search, and she is put in a holding cell where she waits.
--:-- Maribah Knight: For other children, that kept going. JB, the sister, was taken in. 16-point search, jewelry taken, all of her braids were taken out. That's part of the policy.
--:-- Maribah Knight: Another child who was detained that day, a 12-year-old who was kept in detention for two nights, was put in solitary confinement by a guard.
--:-- Maribah Knight: And it turns out, the crime these children were charged with, criminal responsibility, doesn't even exist. These children were illegally locked up.
--:-- Shamita Basu: What happened to these kids was not an isolated case. In this Tennessee county, hundreds of kids were jailed every year at far higher rates than other counties.
--:-- Shamita Basu: A federal judge later ordered the county to change its policy. In an $11 million settlement earlier this year, the county denied any wrongdoing.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Since this story came out, 11 members of Congress called on the Justice Department to open a federal investigation into Rutherford County.
--:-- Shamita Basu: There's so much more to this story. You're going to want to listen to this week's episode of In Conversation. Every weekend, we go in-depth on one outstanding piece of journalism.
--:-- Shamita Basu: I spoke with Maribah Knight about what drew her into this reporting. You'll also hear the judge in this county, who established the norms that landed these children in jail. And you'll hear from some of the children themselves, now young adults, about what they experienced firsthand.
--:-- Shamita Basu: We are just about halfway through the criminal fraud trial of Elizabeth Holmes. She pleaded not guilty to a dozen federal conspiracy and wire fraud counts.
--:-- Shamita Basu: A quick refresher, if you haven't been following this trial, Holmes was the founder of Theranos, a company that claimed to make sophisticated blood testing possible through a finger prick. And it turned out their technology did not work as promised.
--:-- Shamita Basu: So the key that prosecutors have to prove is that she intended to defraud these investors and also intended to defraud patients and the public to get them to use the services, knowing that they didn't work.
--:-- Shamita Basu: That's Sarah Rendazzo, who's been covering this case for The Wall Street Journal.
--:-- Sarah Rendazzo: The line that needs to be drawn is whether there's clear fraud in this or whether it was just a company that didn't ultimately work.
--:-- Sarah Rendazzo: So far, the prosecution has been relying on a long list of witnesses to make their points. Some used to work for Holmes. There's been a whole group that were former Theranos employees, many of them people who worked in the lab and had issues at the time that they were trying to express, and many of them who ended up quitting over frustrations they had from issues they were seeing in the lab and technology that wasn't working.
--:-- Sarah Rendazzo: One witness was a patient. So far, we've had one patient who testified about getting Theranos results that made her think she was miscarrying when she actually did have a healthy pregnancy.
--:-- Sarah Rendazzo: Randazzo says the defense has tried to deflect blame to others in the company. During cross-examinations, former employees were questioned about whether Holmes was making all the decisions or if other executives might be at fault.
--:-- Sarah Rendazzo: And many of them said, "You know, the directives came from her." I put together the investor binders, but I only put materials in there that Elizabeth signed off on. Or, yes, I got the directive from someone else in the lab, but my understanding is, you know, that person got the directive from Elizabeth.
--:-- Sarah Rendazzo: Randazzo says the thing to watch next is how the defense makes its case. They can say, "You know, we're fine. The jury should deliberate. They have enough information. They can call their own witnesses. They can put Elizabeth herself on the stand."
--:-- Sarah Rendazzo: So they really have a lot of options, and they don't need to tip their hand ahead of time. So it'll be a bit of a surprise, I think, once the government says we're done, on what Elizabeth Holmes' side decides to do.
--:-- Shamita Basu: There is an unspoken competition happening on lawns across America. Who's got the best Halloween decorations on the block? And so much of this comes down to a single, highly coveted lawn decoration, the epic 12-foot skeleton.
--:-- Shamita Basu: It's sold by Home Depot, or I should say, it's sold out by Home Depot in many cases. The Washington Post has this story on how the 12-foot skeleton has this dedicated fan base.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Now, the real magic in this story is not only the pictures, which are obviously incredible, but also the writing. It is very funny. Maura Jutkus writes about the lengths that people have gone to to get this comically large skeleton for their yard.
--:-- Maura Jutkus: Some people pestered Home Depot employees about when they would get new skeletons in stock. And yes, I'm saying skeletons, plural. One family bought seven of these things. And the obsession means that they had to get bigger trucks, even moving vans to haul these bones around.
--:-- Maura Jutkus: One woman was making an interstate move and she left her dining room furniture behind just so she could fit her giant skeleton.
--:-- Maura Jutkus: Now, if you're wondering, gosh, where would I put a 12-foot skeleton when it's not Halloween? I don't have the storage space for that. Well, one guy came up with a, I don't know, elegant solution.
--:-- Maura Jutkus: His skeleton stays on the yard year-round, and it gets new accessories for each holiday. So you can expect to see his skeleton holding a giant turkey drumstick ahead of Thanksgiving.
--:-- Shamita Basu: You can find all these stories and more, including those crazy pictures of giant skeletons, in the Apple News app. And while you're in the app, keep listening to hear narrated articles from our News Plus partners.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Have a good Halloween weekend. We'll be back with the news on Monday.
