--:-- Duarte Giraldino: Good morning. It's Friday, April 9th. I'm Duarte Giraldino. And I'm 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.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Prince Philip has died at the age of 99. His marriage to Queen Elizabeth II spanned more than seven decades. Their wedding lifted Britain's spirits as it emerged from the damage of World War II. Prince Philip was a decorated naval officer. And after the war, his friendship with the woman who would become queen flourished into a full romance.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: Prince Philip was often seen by the queen's side at public appearances. He once jokingly called himself the world's most experienced plaque unveiler. He remained involved in royal events and charitable efforts well into his 90s, retiring in 2017.
--:-- Shamita Basu: We have a collection of stories about his long and very interesting life from both American and British news outlets. You can find our special coverage in the Apple News app.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: The prosecution is starting to wrap up its case in the trial of Derek Chauvin. He's the former police officer charged with killing George Floyd. Lawyers for the state called medical experts to testify about the cause of Floyd's death.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Dr. Martin Tobin told the court Floyd died from a lack of oxygen. And this caused damage to his brain that we see, and it also caused a PEA arrhythmia that caused his heart to stop. The defense argues drugs in Floyd's system plus underlying health conditions led to his death.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: In two weeks of testimony, video of Floyd's death has been played over and over. And for his family members, watching that video has been a singularly painful experience. Here's his nephew, Brandon Williams, on NBC.
--:-- Brandon Williams: I tried to mentally prepare, but I think after the video started, I think as they showed Charlton kneeling on his neck and kind of repositioning and just hearing my uncle ask for help and say he couldn't breathe. I actually got up and walked out so You walked out of the courtroom Yeah I actually walked out of the family room I couldn't watch it
--:-- Shamita Basu: This trial is not just hard for Floyd family to watch It also triggering for many people in the U Vox points to a study that found police killings of black people harm the mental health of black Americans, even if they're not involved in an incident. Watching these videos can cause stress, lead to depression and other emotional challenges.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: And Floyd's nephew says as difficult as it was to see that video, the family wants justice. He told The Wall Street Journal, it doesn't matter what Chauvin has to say in the courtroom. The video says it all.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The United States, then Brazil, then India. These are the countries with the highest numbers of COVID-19 cases. Brazil and India are both making headlines this week as cases and deaths grow.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: Let's take a look at what's behind the surge in these two countries. The Washington Post calls Brazil a super spreader for the entire continent. Brazil is dealing with a powerful variant of the virus, and it's huge. It shares a border with almost every South American country.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The Post looks at one Brazilian city, Tabatanga. It's deep in the Amazon rainforest. And it's common for people there to cross borders pretty casually, to take a short visit to Peru or to walk into Colombia. After Tabatinga was hit hard by the variant earlier this year, officials suspect it was from there that the variant started to spread to other countries.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: The other factor in Brazil's surge is political leadership. While most South American countries took strict steps to contain viral spread last year, Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro has consistently underplayed the dangers of the pandemic. In spite of this week's numbers, he's still saying there will be no national lockdown.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Now let's turn to India, where it's not so clear what's driving this new wave of cases. Bloomberg reports that the country hasn't done a lot of genetic sequencing to study which variants are circulating there.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: Now, the rise might be fueled by gatherings like political rallies in states with upcoming elections, or a pilgrimage that's happening this month that typically draws hundreds of thousands of people to the Ganges River. But if the main tool India is using to outrun this situation is a vaccine and not a national lockdown, it's going to have a long way to go.
--:-- Shamita Basu: According to Bloomberg vaccine tracker, less than 1% of its population is fully inoculated. And at that pace, it could be another two years before vaccination is widespread.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: When it comes to the U.S. military, the Navy SEALs have a unique place in America's popular imagination. On the big screen, they are stars. Movies immortalize how they killed Osama bin Laden and their high seas rescue of Captain Phillips.
--:-- Shamita Basu: But you don't know the vast majority of what these elite troops do. It's never made public. In 2018, a group of SEALs accused their chief, Eddie Gallagher, of murder. The high-profile war crime trial that followed shined a spotlight on these secretive units and also U.S. reliance on them in the continuing war on terror.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: The story of Eddie Gallagher and the secrets of the SEALs is the focus of a new investigative podcast by Apple. It's called The Line, hosted by Dan Taberski. He spoke to more than 50 special operatives for the series, which pulls together lots of perspectives on the events that led to a teenage prisoner of war dying under Gallagher's watch in Iraq.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Many of his teammates called Gallagher a murderer. He was acquitted of all charges except for one, which involved posing for a photo with the teenager's lifeless body. But recorded testimony portrays Gallagher as someone who was at ease with the idea of killing, maybe even someone who actively sought it out.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: Aside from zeroing in strictly on Gallagher, this podcast gives you an understanding of the culture that exists within the Navy SEALs. It examines how that culture changed drastically after 9-11.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Taberski talks with a former SEAL named Dan. He said his job was pretty much boring at first, but after 9-11, special forces were working around the clock. Dan describes that shift as dramatic and intoxicating.
--:-- Dan: Have you ever jumped out of an airplane? No. Or if you're going race car driving and you are driving hard, you're driving at 170, 180, that feeling of oh, it's the only two feelings that I can ever give people of what it is to be in a SEAL convoy at night going to hit a target.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Dan says he couldn't get enough of that feeling. The violence, the deaths. For the SEALs, this was emotionally really heavy.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: In 2012, 23 Americans in special operations forces died by suicide. That's nearly double the rate of the military overall. After Gallagher's trial, the admiral in charge of the SEALs sent out a memo saying, for good reason, the overall culture within the unit was being questioned, that there were issues with order and discipline that needed to be addressed.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The first episodes of The Line are out right now. There's more to come. You can subscribe to hear the whole story on Apple Podcasts.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: For decades now, scientists have felt very confident in the standard model of physics, which explains how all particles in the universe behave. Well, a new study of subatomic particles is now challenging that model. National Geographic explains why the latest results are shaking up our previous understanding.
--:-- Shamita Basu: This week, researchers announced initial results in an experiment that points to the possibility that the universe contains unseen forces, ones beyond our current understanding. It involves a particle called a muon.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: Muons only exist for millions of a second, so they're really hard to get a handle on in a lab. But these researchers managed to do it, and their new findings are pretty complicated. You can get the full details in the article.
--:-- Shamita Basu: But in short, researchers found that these muons appear to play by different rules. They don't wobble the way that they should under the standard model of particle physics. Now that may sound like a small technical detail, but this is huge. If these new results hold up, Nat Geo says it's going to be a Nobel Prize-worthy discovery, one that upends the standard model.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: If this is true, it could lead to a completely new understanding of how the universe works. It would be revolutionary. You can find all these stories and more in the Apple News app. And while you're there, check out some of our audio stories. Enjoy the weekend, and we'll talk to you on Monday.
