--:-- Shamita Basu: Good morning. It's Wednesday, February 1st. I'm Shamita Basu. This is Apple News Today.
--:-- Shamita Basu: On today's show, Pakistan deals with the aftermath of a deadly terrorist attack, the surprising end to the long-shot search for a dangerous radioactive capsule, and the pros and cons of in-flight Wi-Fi. But first, Tyree Nichols' funeral is this morning in Memphis. Reverend Al Sharpton will deliver his eulogy at the Mississippi Boulevard Christian Church, and Vice President Kamala Harris, who was invited by Nichols' family, will attend.
--:-- Shamita Basu: An article from The New Yorker and ProPublica caught our eye this week, in the middle of this renewed conversation about rethinking policing and justice. It's a debate that's intensified in recent years as violent crime spiked. It's not clear exactly why, but criminologists point to the pandemic and the breakdown in police-community relations after George Floyd's murder.
--:-- Shamita Basu: For years, cities have invested in community-based ways to stop violence before it happens and before police get involved. This article looks at how some of those programs are figuring out how to expand and measure their success. One model comes from, maybe surprisingly, an epidemiologist in Chicago. He fought AIDS and cholera abroad, and when he got home, he saw that violence was killing people in his community. So he took a page from his medical training and focused on treating violence like a disease, interrupting it, keeping it from spreading.
--:-- Alec McGillis: The police arrive after violence has been committed and hopefully are able to find whoever did it and get that person off the streets, but they're arriving after the fact. And so the idea with the interrupter model is that you're trying to intervene in conflicts before they become deadly. The program taps trusted people in the community to de-escalate conflicts. Often these are people with criminal records themselves. They can use their contacts and credibility to diffuse tensions in ways that police might not.
--:-- Alec McGillis: And the results in Chicago were promising. After the program was deployed in a particularly violent neighborhood shootings declined by two And the same model was rolled out to other cities including Atlanta Charlotte Philadelphia and St Louis Securing funding for programs like this has been a challenge for a long time. But with new federal pandemic money, I've been told, community organizers are thinking bigger. They're using the money for a whole source of different approaches, not only the violence interrupter model, but other models that are really more kind of long-term in their approach, models that spend a lot of money to work with specific young men through paid work programs, paid employment programs, and also giving them basic sort of tools in cognitive behavioral theory so that learning to kind of control their emotions so that they don't even end up in disputes in the first place.
--:-- Shamita Basu: A key question now is whether cities will be able to keep their community violence intervention programs going. Federal funding ends in 2026, so they have just a few years to do the work and collect the data to prove to taxpayers they deserve ongoing support.
--:-- Shamita Basu: In northwest Pakistan, families in Peshawar are searching for loved ones at city hospitals following one of the deadliest terrorist attacks in years. A suicide bombing hit a mosque during afternoon prayers on Monday. More than 100 people were killed, nearly all police personnel. This comes as violence is on the rise in the country, all while people suffer through an economic and energy crisis.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The focus after the bombing is on the Pakistani Taliban, also called the TTP, although there's dispute over who ordered the attack. A commander from one of its factions claims responsibility, but an official spokesperson for the Pakistani Taliban says it does not target mosques.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Violence in Pakistan, and in the Northwest in particular, has escalated in recent months. A local think tank said terrorist attacks rose 27 percent in 2022. The Pakistani Taliban is affiliated with the Afghan Taliban, but it's independent. It fights for strict enforcement of Islamic Sharia law. It also wants the Pakistani government to reduce its presence in the country's northwest.
--:-- Shamita Basu: This latest attack comes as Pakistan is dealing with multiple crises. The country is teetering on economic collapse Experts warn that it dangerously close to defaulting on its foreign debt Recent severe flooding intensified by climate change led to tens of billions of dollars in damage and losses. Millions of flood victims are still living near contaminated waters. Last month, the energy grid collapsed. Around 220 million people lost power. The country is also bracing for more severe fuel shortages, with prices already high.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Reuters spoke to a rickshaw driver in Karachi named Zaheer Ahmed. He has six kids, and he says he's close to quitting because he can't earn a living. He says there is despair and gloom all around. Gas has been made so costly that it's gone beyond our reach. What is the point of driving a rickshaw if I can't save anything? I will try to find some other work. If not, things have reached a stage where I will have to resort to begging.
--:-- Shamita Basu: It was a needle-in-a-haystack search with a scary twist. But against long odds, Australian searchers have found a dangerous radioactive capsule that accidentally went missing in transit. Maybe you heard about the unusual search that started last week. A tiny radioactive capsule used in mining fell off of a truck during a long journey through Western Australia.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Searchers faced a daunting task. Find something the size of a coin somewhere along a road that's roughly the distance between Washington, D.C. and Orlando. Oh, and it could severely burn and cause radiation sickness if they get too close. An Australian health official describing the potential exposure damage said it would be like getting 10 x-rays in an hour.
--:-- Shamita Basu: So teams fanned out using radiation detectors. Officials and scientists warned that it could take weeks to find. Some worried that the tiny threat may never be found. But today, they announced the search was over with no reported injuries. The local Fire and Emergency Services Commissioner, Darren Clem, said it's being treated with all the precautions you might expect for a capsule that is not to be messed with. A 20-meter hot zone has been set up around the capsule, and it will be placed into a lead container to shield from radiation.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Rio Tinto the mining company that responsible for the device has apologized and says it investigating how it got lost during the long journey
--:-- Shamita Basu: This next story will hit different depending on whether the idea of turning off your phone gives you relief or anxiety. Airplanes are one of the last spheres of transportation where you can truly be unplugged. Mostly because you have to be, or because plane Wi-Fi is expensive and unreliable. Now, airlines are starting to make moves to make internet access more available.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Starting today, Delta is offering what it calls free and fast Wi-Fi on most domestic flights. And other airlines have been improving their Wi-Fi too. The Washington Post has a good article that acknowledges the mixed feelings around having new and exciting ways to be constantly reachable. The phrase that the writer used that stuck in my mind is, this Wi-Fi news is like a horseman of the digital apocalypse, a sign that we're spiraling further toward being permanently online.
--:-- Shamita Basu: You know, there's that frenzy right before takeoff, where you're downloading podcasts or texting your mom or scrolling Instagram, desperate to wring out all the internet you can. But then comes takeoff and peace. You've done what you can. You sent what you sent. No regrets. Just you whizzing through the air in a metal bird. Don't overthink it.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Now, the more productive among us will celebrate having Wi-Fi at 35,000 feet. It changes the game in terms of what you can accomplish on a flight. But as the Post points out, it's bittersweet to say goodbye to this forced brain break we could all experience together on a plane.
--:-- Shamita Basu: That said, you know how the rollout for these things can be pretty bumpy. I'm sure we still have a few good years left where we can plausibly use the excuse, sorry I couldn't be reached. The plane Wi-Fi just wasn't working.
--:-- Shamita Basu: You can find all these stories and more in the Apple News app. And if you're already listening in the News app right now, stick around. We've got a narrated article from Wired about a different kind of flight. It's about Amazon's efforts to take control of the air cargo industry. Let's just say it's experiencing some turbulence. That's playing next.
--:-- Shamita Basu: So sit back, enjoy listening to that, and I'll be back with the news tomorrow. Thank you.
