--:-- Shamita Basu: Good morning. It's Friday, November 3rd. I'm Shamita Basu. This is Apple News Today.
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--:-- Shamita Basu: On today's show, American diplomats try to walk a fine line in the Israel-Hamas conflict, how facial recognition technology could upend privacy as we know it, and some alternatives to tossing your old Halloween pumpkins in the trash. But first, the latest on the war.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The Israeli military says it has troops surrounding Gaza City. Civilian casualties are steadily growing, and the trickle of humanitarian aid that's gotten in is falling short. A group of independent United Nations experts wants an immediate ceasefire, saying Palestinians are at, quote, grave risk of genocide.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Israel's mission to the UN in Geneva calls those comments deplorable. And the UN Secretary General's office is making it clear that an official determination of genocide can only be made by an appropriate UN legal body.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Hundreds of people in Gaza with foreign passports have managed to get to Egypt. Dozens of Palestinian Americans are among those who have left through the Rafah crossing.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Secretary of State Antony Blinken is in Israel today. He's also visiting Jordan tomorrow. Before taking off, Blinken said he would focus on getting more American citizens out of Gaza, hostage release efforts, and achieving a lasting peace that includes an independent state for Palestinians.
--:-- Shamita Basu: He also says that Israel needs to be careful to limit civilian casualties. As democracies, the United States, Israel, other democracies have a responsibility to do everything possible to protect civilians who may be caught in harm's way.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Blinken is expected to push for humanitarian pauses in Israel's assault to help get more aid in and more foreign nationals out. The U.S. has not endorsed global calls for a full ceasefire.
--:-- Shamita Basu: That careful language, pause but not ceasefire, is just one example of how the U.S. is trying to strike a balance between historic support for Israel and widespread global criticism of the Gaza invasion.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The initial U.S. approach to all of this was to hug Israel tight, offer unreserved, unconditional support.
--:-- Nahal Tusi: As the days have gone on and the number of Palestinian civilians being killed has risen dramatically, the U has increasingly shifted toward calling for more restraint on the part of Israel.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And it's been trying to kind of walk a very fine line.
--:-- Nahal Tusi: Tusi says many allies think America should go further since the U.S. can have much more influence over Israel than most other countries.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Politico reports the Biden administration is increasingly preparing for the possibility that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's days leading Israel could be numbered.
--:-- Nahal Tusi: He was a divisive figure in the country before the war, and many blamed Netanyahu for intelligence failures that led to a lack of preparation for the attack by Hamas.
--:-- Shamita Basu: When it comes to U.S. relations, Netanyahu was a solid Trump supporter and has had a poor relationship with Biden in recent years.
--:-- Nahal Tusi: Publicly, the Biden administration and Israel say they're focused on the present.
--:-- Shamita Basu: But behind the scenes, Politico says Biden aides are preparing for a hypothetical future that might include working with other leaders who could take over from Netanyahu as prime minister.
--:-- Nahal Tusi: Someone who might be more open toward establishing a Palestinian state.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Tusi says it seems like U.S. officials would rather work with someone else.
--:-- Nahal Tusi: Somebody who understands that, like, you cannot pretend the Palestinians do not exist.
--:-- Shamita Basu: You cannot keep building settlements and pushing them out of their land and just expecting them to vanish, which is kind of the way Netanyahu has been operating.
--:-- Nahal Tusi: Still, despite the growing criticism of Netanyahu in Israel, Tusi says he may find a way to stay in office.
--:-- Shamita Basu: There have been many, many political obituaries written about Benjamin Netanyahu in the past, and he has managed to come back and survive like a phoenix.
--:-- Nahal Tusi: So I would never completely write the guy off.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Let's take a quick look at some other stories in the news, starting with the ongoing congressional response to the war.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The Republican-controlled House passed a bill to send around $14 billion to Israel, paid for with cuts to the IRS.
--:-- Shamita Basu: As we've mentioned before, this bill is considered dead on arrival because the White House and Senate Democrats want to deliver help for Ukraine and other funding at the same time.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Disgraced cryptocurrency entrepreneur Sam Bankman is guilty of all charges in a case involving billions of dollars stolen from customers of the FTX exchange.
--:-- Angela Sinodella: NBC legal analyst Angela Sinodella said the testimony of his top associates was critical.
--:-- Shamita Basu: It was lost the moment the prosecution turned the three lieutenants who were closest to him, especially Caroline Ellison, his former CEO.
--:-- Angela Sinodella: So it all started there. And that's the reason why I think Sam Bankman-Fried even stood up on the defense stand at all.
--:-- Shamita Basu: He had no choice.
--:-- Angela Sinodella: Everyone said it was him who masterminded the entire operation.
--:-- Shamita Basu: He gets up on the stand. He says, it wasn't really me. I'm pretending to be a naive person who didn't know what was happening, but all of the evidence proved otherwise.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And in Maine, President Biden and Jill Biden are visiting Lewiston today, the site of last week's mass shooting.
--:-- Shamita Basu: 18 people were killed there. The suspect later took his own life.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The Bidens will meet with victims' families and first responders.
--:-- Shamita Basu: There are websites and apps out there where you can upload your picture and it'll spit out every photo it can find of you on the Internet, stretching back decades, even if you're just in the background of someone else's photo.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And there's a lot you can learn from someone's photo history corralled into one place.
--:-- Shamita Basu: It's a way of figuring out somebody's social media profiles, their name, who they know, where they've been, maybe where they live.
--:-- Shamita Basu: That's Kashmir Hill, a New York Times tech and privacy reporter, and my guest this week on Apple News in Conversation.
--:-- Shamita Basu: We spoke about how accurate facial recognition software has gotten over the last few years and how it's being used.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Her new book, Your Face Belongs to Us, looks at the troubling privacy implications of this technology.
--:-- Shamita Basu: See, in the past, big tech companies like Google and Facebook chose not to broadly release facial recognition tools they developed.
--:-- Shamita Basu: They were concerned about who might use them and how.
--:-- Shamita Basu: But things changed in 2017 when a secretive startup called Clearview AI came on the scene.
--:-- Shamita Basu: It used images from the web to build a database and facial recognition system, which it sold to law enforcement.
--:-- Shamita Basu: What Clearview AI did was not a technological breakthrough. It was really ethical arbitrage.
--:-- Shamita Basu: They were willing to do what other companies won't.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And I think that we're going to see that more and more in technology because there is so much information to be scraped from the internet.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And now we have these powerful AI models where you can do a lot building on that information.
--:-- Shamita Basu: So far in the US, there's very little regulation around how facial recognition can be used.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Only a few states require companies to get consent before adding someone's likeness to their database.
--:-- Shamita Basu: I think we are at the point now where we need to acknowledge that this technology is very powerful, it is very accurate, and we need to grapple with that as a society.
--:-- Shamita Basu: How widely do we want this deployed? How ubiquitous should it be?
--:-- Shamita Basu: And who should have access to it?
--:-- Shamita Basu: And should we as individuals have the right to not be put in these databases or get out of them if we have already been put inside them, which most of us have been?
--:-- Shamita Basu: If you're listening in the Apple News app, the rest of my conversation with Kashmir Hill about what this technology is capable of and what the future of privacy might look like, we'll play after this show.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Finally, this weekend feels like the unofficial deadline to get rid of your Halloween decor.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Nothing is less festive than a droopy, decomposing pumpkin.
--:-- Shamita Basu: But before you throw it in a trash bag, think again.
--:-- Shamita Basu: There is a better way for the planet to get rid of your pumpkins.
--:-- Shamita Basu: USA Today points out that if you trash your pumpkin, it'll release methane, a powerful greenhouse gas, as it rots in a landfill.
--:-- Shamita Basu: So consider these alternatives.
--:-- Shamita Basu: A pumpkin is, of course, edible.
--:-- Shamita Basu: That is, as long as you haven't carved it up and allowed it to be exposed to the elements.
--:-- Shamita Basu: It can be good in anything from pie to pizza to pasta.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Roasted seeds are pretty tasty, too.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And if you're not a pumpkin fan, it is safe and even nutritious to feed cooked pumpkin to your dog or cat.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Although USA Today warns against giving them the skin, leaves, stem, or raw seeds.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Also, if you're feeling crafty, the National Wildlife Federation has a way to turn your used pumpkin into a bird feeder that you can fill with seeds.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And as for a pumpkin that has been carved up and sitting outside, you can compost it and save it from a landfill.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Check with your community for options on how to do this.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Some cities make a whole event out of it, holding pumpkin smash parties to make composting a little more fun, speedy and cathartic.
--:-- Shamita Basu: You can get more pumpkin tips in the full article on the Apple News app.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And if you're listening in the News app right now, stick around.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And as I mentioned, the episode of Apple News in Conversation with author Kashmir Hill is queued up to play for you next.
--:-- Shamita Basu: It's also available in the podcast app.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Don't forget, clocks change this weekend.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Enjoy your extra hour on Sunday, and I'll be back with the news on Monday.
