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--:-- Duarte Giraldino: Good morning. It's Tuesday, January 18th. I'm Duarte Giraldino. And I'm Shamita Basu.
--:-- Shamita Basu: This is Apple News Today. 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: In this year's midterms, you're going to hear candidates discuss the economy, the pandemic, and maybe even cryptocurrency. It's really evolving into a bona fide political issue here in the United States.
--:-- Shamita Basu: That's Ben Schreckinger. He's a reporter with Politico. He also invests in cryptocurrency himself. He's been tracking how more and more politicians in both parties are voicing their support for cryptocurrency.
--:-- Ben Schreckinger: The mayors of Miami and New York have embraced crypto and gotten some positive attention for it. In Ohio, a pro-Trump Senate candidate promised to make the state pro-Bitcoin. In Florida, a Democrat running for governor is accepting donations in cryptocurrency.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Schreckinger also looks at how digital currency investors are using their wealth to influence politics. Last year, the second largest individual donor to Biden's presidential campaign was a 29-year-old cryptocurrency entrepreneur.
--:-- Ben Schreckinger: What you're seeing in 2022 is that people involved in cryptocurrency, people who've made a lot of money off of it, are getting more organized and more intentional about their political giving. They are crowdsourcing ideas on Twitter of who are the pro-crypto candidates that we should be donating to and who are the anti-crypto candidates who we should be giving to their opponents.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Crypto also has its critics in both parties. Senator Elizabeth Warren has called for more regulation. And some Democrats focus on how Bitcoin mining can damage the environment with its intense energy use.
--:-- Ben Schreckinger: On the right, Donald Trump has called Bitcoin a scam, and he also wants strict regulation.
--:-- Shamita Basu: One Washington insider who advises crypto clients says, Bitcoin seems like a niche issue in the midterm elections but by 2024 especially for Republicans you be hearing even more candidates talking about cryptocurrency on the presidential campaign trail
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--:-- Shamita Basu: Most of us know the story of Anne Frank. Her diary is one of the best historical accounts of the Nazi persecution of Jewish people. Her family spent nearly two years hiding in a secret part of an Amsterdam warehouse.
--:-- Thijs Bijans: That is, until the Nazis discovered them and took them to concentration camps. Anne Frank was 15 when she died at the camp. Her diary is known around the world.
--:-- Shamita Basu: For more than 75 years, there's been an unanswered question, though. Who told authorities where Anne Frank and her family were hiding?
--:-- Thijs Bijans: For me, it was really important to investigate what makes us give up on each other. The area where M. Frank lived is very normal, and it's a very warm area with the butcher and the doctor and the policeman. They worked together. They loved each other. They lived together. And suddenly, people start to betray on each other. How could that happen?
--:-- Shamita Basu: That's Thijs Bijans, a Dutch filmmaker on 60 Minutes. He was part of a team that looked into this question. It's been investigated a few times before, but never definitively solved. This time, they would use modern technology, including AI, to see if they could solve this decades-long mystery.
--:-- Thijs Bijans: The team was led by retired FBI agent Vincent Pankoke. He visited the place where the Franks hid with 60 Minutes. It is extraordinary.
--:-- Shamita Basu: When we first started the case, one of the theories that was out there is that the raid may have been caused by somebody in the immediate area seeing something, hearing something, and reporting it. So therefore, we tracked and identified every resident that lived in this block and adjacent streets.
--:-- Thijs Bijans: After six years investigating, this team came to focus on one suspect, Arnold Vandenberg. He was a prominent member of Amsterdam's Jewish community, but the Nazis, they never deported him.
--:-- Shamita Basu: This team believes Vandenberg may have betrayed the Franks to save his own family.
--:-- Thijs Bijans: The investigators also learned that Anne Frank's father knew about Vandenberg. Otto Frank was the only member of the family to survive the war. He received a note saying Vandenberg betrayed his family. But Otto Frank never discussed it publicly.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The team thinks he might have worried that accusing a Jewish person of betrayal might have stoked anti-Semitism.
--:-- Thijs Bijans: The team emphasizes that even if Vandenberg gave up information about the Franks, it was ultimately the Nazis who were responsible for their deaths.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The investigators say they can't be sure he was the one since the evidence is circumstantial. Their complete findings are out in a new book called The Betrayal of Anne Frank.
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--:-- Shamita Basu: There's a lot of work being done to try to document how the pandemic is affecting different parts of our society. One study caught our eye. It looks at how the pandemic was enormously difficult for scientists and especially women.
--:-- Shamita Basu: This may affect future innovations, which could help us all live longer and better lives. A group of researchers surveyed hundreds of scientists, people who work in biology, engineering, biochemistry, and they shared these results in The Washington Post.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Now, for scientists, COVID has meant important research was brought to a halt, data was lost, travel restrictions got in the way of collaboration. And the survey also found the pandemic was especially hard on women scientists. They were far more likely than men to have work disruptions because of unexpected child care responsibilities.
--:-- Shamita Basu: That tracks with other studies which show that women scientists had less time to do research and submitted fewer scientific papers compared to before the pandemic.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Now, aside from gender, younger scientists were more likely to report pandemic problems than their older colleagues. And taken all together, this research raises concerns about the future of science. If promising women and young people are held back the pool of scientific talent won be as strong Important breakthroughs might never be discovered
--:-- Shamita Basu: The researchers behind this study they have ideas for improvement They want to see support for affordable child care funding for early career women researchers and changes to how universities deal with tenure.
--:-- Shamita Basu: As they point out, many of the problems, well, they predate the pandemic. So they're hopeful science will use the clarity that the pandemic is providing to make the system work better for everyone.
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--:-- Shamita Basu: It's simple. It's catchy. Once you hear it, you're going to be humming it all day. And kids never seem to get tired of it. You know what song I'm talking about.
--:-- Shamita Basu: We're going to spare you the rest of that catchy tune, you know. Okay, I'm going to stop. Now, there's a lot to love and dislike about Baby Shark, but no one can dispute its popularity.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The song recently became the first video ever to surpass 10 billion views on YouTube.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Apparently, Baby Shark started as a camp song, but it became a global hit when a South Korean company turned it into a music video back in 2016.
--:-- Shamita Basu: There's since been a Nickelodeon show and a movie, Shamita. Yeah, so Dorote, you have kids. I'm guessing you've heard the song a million times.
--:-- Shamita Basu: You want to take a guess at how many times the word do is sung? I just say it enough times to quiet my kids, so I don't know. How many? You didn't go counting?
--:-- Shamita Basu: Okay, it's sung 162 times. There's only 18 words in the whole song. And that's kind of the point.
--:-- Shamita Basu: You know, one professor of music education pointed out to the journal, children love the song for the same reason that parents hate it. the repetition.
--:-- Shamita Basu: You know, it's easy for kids to figure out the lyrics and the pattern in countries all over the world.
--:-- Shamita Basu: You can find all these stories and more in the Apple News app. And when you're in the app, keep listening to hear narrated articles from our News Plus partners.
--:-- Shamita Basu: We'll talk with you again tomorrow.
