--:-- Duarte Giraldino: Good morning. It's Friday, January 28th. 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: This week marks five years since former President Trump implemented a ban on travel from several majority Muslim countries. That ban had a profound effect on the lives of people in America and abroad.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Families were separated. Education and employment opportunities were denied. Birthdays, weddings and funerals were missed all because of that ban.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: When President Biden took office, he ended the policy. But by then, the damage was already done. The lives of thousands of people had already been upended.
--:-- Shamita Basu: HuffPost looked at the stories of nearly 900 people who fall into this category. Mohamed Saleh is one of them.
--:-- Rewaida Abdulaziz: Mohamed Saleh is an American Yemeni who petitioned for his children to join him in the U.S., particularly in New York where he lived. His son Ayman at the time had a heart condition and was dying in Yemen, a country that's being plagued by civil war, and the majority of its health facilities have been decimated over the years.
--:-- Rewaida Abdulaziz: Because of the travel ban, Mohamed's son's visa application was delayed indefinitely. Every day he said he was in despair, checking the website, counting down the days, calling anyone who could possibly help him. Lawyers, neighbors, family friends, anyone who could get him closer to a solution.
--:-- Rewaida Abdulaziz: It was agonizing for him. He felt that every day that passed, that he wasn't able to help his children receive that visa, was a day that they could possibly die.
--:-- Rewaida Abdulaziz: Mohamed's son ultimately died in Yemen, and Mohamed never got the chance to say goodbye.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Last March, the State Department announced people who were denied visas because of the ban could reapply or seek a revised decision. But in doing so, they'd be joining a backlog of close to a half million cases.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Some people, like Mohamed, were not able to be with their families. Others lost education and career opportunities. 31-year-old Leila Abbas Nejad was a PhD student in Iran when the travel ban went into place.
--:-- Rewaida Abdulaziz: She excelled academically throughout university and afterwards. She got two degrees in biomedical engineering and decided one day to kind of throw her name in the diversity visa program also known as the lottery. She got the visa. That was her ticket to America.
--:-- Rewaida Abdulaziz: So she quit her Ph.D. program, signed up for English classes and sold most of her things. She and her family spent thousands of dollars on flights, hotels and fees to get ready. One of the last steps was an interview at the American embassy in Turkey.
--:-- Rewaida Abdulaziz: But then suddenly she was told because of the travel ban that they were not able to issue her a visa and she had to go back to Iran.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The stress of all this affected her mental and physical health. Abdelaziz explains that Leila fell into a depression. Her hair started to fall out. She's still hoping Congress will honor her visa.
--:-- Shamita Basu: There are thousands and thousands of stories like this of people impacted by the ban. And so many that we simply don't know of because there is no single agency that tracked the consequences this one policy had on a marginalized group, predominantly Muslims.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And because of it, all of these milestones were missed, dreams were crushed, a backlog has piled up. And for many people, despite the fact that the ban has been revoked, five years later, they're still suffering one way or another because of the consequences.
--:-- Shamita Basu: This winter, you're likely already worried about higher energy costs, probably even more so if you're on the East Coast in the path of that storm, which is expected to bring heavy snow and brutal cold.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Americans, we understand rising bills during winter, but what may not be as clear to you is that the standoff between Russia and Ukraine may further increase her energy bills.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Russia is a massive player in the global energy market. Concern about instability in Europe is one reason oil prices are spiking right now.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Crude oil prices recently hit a high that we haven't seen in seven years. Forecasters are already betting on $4 a gallon for gasoline in the U.S. on average by Memorial Day.
--:-- Shamita Basu: But as USA Today explains, if Russia attacks Ukraine and the U.S. issues new sanctions, Putin could retaliate by pulling back on oil exports. And that could cause a rise in American fuel prices.
--:-- Shamita Basu: What you want to understand here is that Western Europe relies on gas from Russia. The Washington Post looks at how people in Europe are worried that Russia may choose to cut off that supply of gas.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Germany is a key American ally, it also imports more than half of its supply of gas from Russia. The story points out how in some ways Germany has been a bit more muted about supporting policies to squeeze Russia.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Allies worry Russia may try to leverage its energy supply to drive a wedge between Germany and the U.S.
--:-- Shamita Basu: In the meantime, America has been working to make sure Europe has other ways to get the energy it needs, just in case Russia tries to cut off energy supplies.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Time magazine takes another angle on this. It speaks to environmental advocates who think this might be a wake-up call for Europe.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Right now, Russia's got the upper hand because a lot of European countries depend on Russian gas. The EU imports more than a third of its natural gas from Russia.
--:-- Shamita Basu: If more countries in Europe generate more of their own energy through renewable sources, that would weaken Russia's leverage.
--:-- Shamita Basu: They can't do much about reliance on Russian energy in the short term. But the threat of conflict might help shift long-term energy policies.
--:-- Shamita Basu: We now know what happened to one of the largest icebergs in history. Picture a giant block of ice, bigger than the state of Delaware.
--:-- Shamita Basu: This thing broke off the Antarctic Peninsula in 2017 and drifted toward Argentina, melting as it moved for years.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And scientists now understand what happened on its destructive path. In just three months, the melted water was enough to fill more than 61 million Olympic-sized swimming pools.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Now, this is a big deal because this iceberg released fresh water into the saltwater ocean. And when that happens, when this much freshwater ice melts into saltwater, it can radically change the environment.
--:-- Shamita Basu: A trillion tons of extra water has a devastating ripple effect on the food chain. It hurts everything from tiny plankton to fish to animals on land.
--:-- Shamita Basu: When icebergs break off, there are some challenges for scientists when it comes to studying them. They melt in slow motion and they're hard to track.
--:-- Shamita Basu: But the technology around this is getting better and better. For this iceberg, a global team of researchers used satellite data and advanced computer modeling to closely track and study it.
--:-- Shamita Basu: At this point, it's too late to undo the damage this iceberg has done. But research like this, it gives us a better window into the serious damage that climate change is causing.
--:-- Jack Lepiars: By day, I'm a radio host, a familiar voice to listeners in the Boston area. This is WBUR's All Things Considered. I'm Jack Lepiars in for Lisa Mullins.
--:-- Jack Lepiars: But by night, I'm a circus performer.
--:-- Shamita Basu: He has found a massive audience on TikTok. Now, his act is kind of hard to explain. He does tricks while cracking a whip in front of a crowd.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Oh, and he's usually singing, too. He takes a song that everyone knows and replaces some of the lyrics to make it more whip-themed.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Now, Input Magazine brings us this story, and it's about how entertainers like Lepiars are getting on TikTok to show off their skills and build followings.
--:-- Shamita Basu: In the process, they're sort of redefining the idea of circus performance. Now, when you hear the word circus, you might think tigers jumping through flaming hoops or elephants made to balance on a tiny little ball.
--:-- Shamita Basu: But that type of circus has gotten a pretty bad rap from animal rights activists who believe it's just not a good look. Now, audiences shrunk. Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey closed.
--:-- Shamita Basu: But this new generation of performers is trying to put the focus back on talent and showmanship.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Lepiars has more than a million TikTok followers for his bullwhip skills. And he says he takes after his father who was in the circus.
--:-- Shamita Basu: He used to do tricks with whips, knives and swords. So growing up, Lepiars had to balance school with traveling with his father's circus.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Now, he doesn't do so much traveling. He's finding a new way to bring the big tent to everyone.
--:-- Shamita Basu: You can find all these stories and more in the Apple News app. And check out our weekend interview show, In Conversation.
--:-- Shamita Basu: This week, I speak with David Wallace-Wells from New York Magazine. He recently wrote about an idea that's gaining some traction in climate change conferences, that wealthy nations should front the cost of cleaning up the environment.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And we should think of this as a form of climate reparations. We are the beneficiaries of fossil fuel-powered economic growth. We owe that growth to some degree to the fact that we have simultaneously been poisoning the planet and our future at some great scale.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And I think a kind of a moral accounting would demand that we repay that to some degree.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Enjoy that weekend listen. We'll be back with the news on Monday.
