--:-- Shamita Basu: Good morning. It's Tuesday, March 8th. I'm Shamita Basu. And I'm Duarte Giraldino. 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 Ukraine, families are trying to flee cities under attack. Deadly Russian strikes on civilian areas have continued, despite promised ceasefires. The Ukrainian government says it's managed to start evacuating some people through a so-called humanitarian corridor that Russia agreed to, although it's expressed a lot of skepticism toward the Kremlin's claims.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Russia is now the world's most sanctioned country. New sanctions in recent weeks put it far beyond Iran, Syria, and North Korea. The impact is so severe that the ruble crashed, the Moscow stock exchange shut down after shares cratered, And now Morgan Stanley is predicting Russia is headed for a Venezuela-style debt default.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: Vladimir Putin, he called Western sanctions similar to a declaration of war. To understand why these sanctions are so devastating, you have to understand Russia's economic history after the Soviet collapse.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The Washington Post takes us back to the early 2000s, when Putin was pushing stronger business ties with the West. He attended black tie galas with CEOs and Queen Elizabeth II. He was trying to give Russia a fighting chance to compete with economic giants like the United States and the UK.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: And some things started to change. Russians could buy stuff from all over the world. They could take out affordable loans to buy homes and cars. Global companies opened offices and invested in Russia.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The war is bringing all of this to a halt. Governments are cracking down on Russia, and companies are pulling out. One Russian economist told The Washington Post, it took many years for the country to become part of the world economy. But in five days, most of the progress was destroyed, flushed down the toilet, and the damage won't be easily undone.
--:-- Kyle Chayka: If you're on TikTok, you've probably come across a lot of content about the war in Ukraine. The New Yorker's Kyle Chayka told us that war videos are overwhelming Americans on social media in a way that few foreign stories do.
--:-- Shamita Basu: There have been a lot of kind of breathtaking videos of missile attacks and tanks rolling in and soldiers either patrolling or performing practices in advance of the Russian troops. But there's also this aspect of kind of everyday life amidst a conflict where people are shooting videos of their bomb shelters or touring their neighborhood and showing which buildings have been destroyed.
--:-- Kyle Chayka: J.K. explains videos like these can help American audiences connect with people caught in a faraway war. Suddenly you see this image from the invasion of Ukraine from a normal person's perspective. It also makes the conflict feel more close, I think, or it has this sense of relatability for the TikTok user in a way that maybe watching war on cable TV or hearing about it on the radio doesn't have.
--:-- Shamita Basu: There are things to watch for when getting unverified information about the war from social media. There are the usual concerns about fake posts and manipulation online. A lot of posts showing old conflicts from other parts of the world have been shared with fresh captions suggesting that they're happening now in Ukraine.
--:-- Kyle Chayka: TikTok says it has independent fact checkers to help flag fake content. And there's a lot of very graphic content. Some videos show prisoners of war sometimes bound and blindfolded. Chekis says it's possible some of these actual images might be a violation of the Geneva Conventions, which establishes international legal standards for humanitarian treatment in war.
--:-- Shamita Basu: These standards require governments to protect prisoners of war from what they call insults and public curiosity. But overall, he says he still sees these videos as useful content. I see the purpose of sharing that footage, and it's a similar purpose to photojournalism or TV news coverage, where this is one of the only ways we can actually have a sense of what's happening in the conflict.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: We have spent a lot of time on the show looking at what's happening in the war in Ukraine for good reason. But there are other important stories in the news. Right now, we're going to take a moment to talk about a few important domestic developments out of Washington.
--:-- Shamita Basu: After more than 200 tries spanning over a century, Congress has finally agreed to make lynching a criminal civil rights violation. At times Southern Democrats blocked similar efforts. In recent years a handful of Republicans stood in the way arguing the bills were an overreach by the federal government.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: The bill that ultimately passed was named for Emmett Till. More than 4,000 Black Americans were lynched in the years after the Civil War. This new bill adds lynching to the federal hate crime statute. Those convicted can face up to 30 years in prison.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Also, the Supreme Court rejected GOP challenges to congressional maps in North Carolina and Pennsylvania. Republicans argued the maps put them at a disadvantage. Political explains that the court's moves are short-term losses for the GOP, but they do leave open the possibility that the court could do something down the road that would reshape federal elections.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: Now let's turn to a political development affecting U.S. veterans. And we'll go deeper on this story because it hasn't gotten much attention today. President Biden is in Texas to discuss the impact of toxic burn pit exposure.
--:-- Shamita Basu: As CBS News explains, burn pits are what they sound like. They're big fires to get rid of waste, which can include hazardous materials. And they were used by the U.S. military throughout the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: The concern is that veterans who were near those pits were exposed to toxins that could have devastating long-term health consequences. You know, this is an issue that's really close to the president's heart. His son, Beau, was a major in the Army National Guard. He deployed to Iraq in 2009. In 2015, he died of brain cancer.
--:-- Shamita Basu: This came up in the State of the Union address. I don't know for sure if the burn pit that he lived near, that his hooch was near, in Iraq and earlier than that, in Kosovo, is the cause of his brain cancer and the disease of so many other troops. But I am committed to find out everything we can.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: He talked about the kind of suffering veterans can face after exposure. And they come home. Many of the world's fittest and best-trained warriors in the world. Never the same. Headaches, numbness, dizziness. A cancer that would put them in a flag-draged coffin.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Hundreds of thousands of Afghanistan and Iraq War veterans have registered burn pit related health issues with the Department of Veterans Affairs. And many said they had difficulty getting the VA to deliver the care they need. And there's been political opposition to legislation that would help Most House Republicans voted against a billion bill They don like the price tag Instead they are backing a narrower Senate bill The two different bills have to be reconciled before the president can sign anything into law.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: An NFL player is paying a steep price for betting on games that he wasn't playing in. The league is suspending Atlanta Falcons receiver Calvin Ridley through at least the end of the 2022 season.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The suspension comes as the NFL has begun to partner with gambling companies, which is a major shift after decades where it fought hard to keep sports betting illegal in most of the U.S. The league's commissioner explained the punishment was a way to protect the integrity of pro football.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: One of the biggest concerns is that players may bet against their own teams and throw games. The Athletic reports on how that doesn't seem to be a concern here. Ridley was betting that his team would win, and he was doing it while he was not playing. He had stepped away from the team for mental health reasons.
--:-- Shamita Basu: After his suspension was announced, he said he bet $1,500 total and doesn't have a gambling problem. In pro football's 100-year history, only a handful of players have been suspended for gambling, And many of those happened decades ago.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: USA Today looks at the league's changing relationship with betting. As recently as 2012, the commissioner fought a law to expand sports betting, saying gambling is the number one threat to the sports integrity. But a few years later, a Supreme Court ruling cleared the way for betting to move from Vegas casinos to all over the country, including online.
--:-- Shamita Basu: You know, the NFL was once the sworn enemy of bookmakers. Now it has partnerships with gambling companies worth around a billion dollars. Some fans are criticizing the NFL for such a strong response to Ridley at the same time that it's embracing the gambling business.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: As The Athletic explains it, it seems designed to send a message to players. Even though the league has a new philosophy about betting, you still need to stay away from it.
--:-- Shamita Basu: You can find all these stories and more in the Apple News app. Also, in honor of International Women's Day, we've got a special collection of great stories for you to check out. And when you're in the app, keep listening to hear narrated articles from our News Plus partners. We'll talk with you again tomorrow.
