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--:-- Shamita Basu: Good morning. It's Thursday, September 28th. I'm Shamita Basu. This is Apple News Today.
--:-- Shamita Basu: On today's show, how young people in Europe are using a human rights lawsuit to force climate action, why Airbnb seems worse now, and what we can learn from the man who got stuck in space. But first, let's take a look at some major stories in the news.
--:-- Shamita Basu: We're just days away from a potential government shutdown. It's looking less and less likely that Congress will pass the necessary spending legislation before Sunday.
--:-- Shamita Basu: There's a Senate bill to avoid a shutdown that's got bipartisan support, but several House Republicans on the right aren't getting behind that approach. They want big concessions on border security and cutting spending elsewhere.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And these holdouts are getting criticized from others inside their own party.
--:-- Chris Christie: Voters have laid everybody who's in Washington, D.C. They get sent down there to do the job, and they've been failing at doing the job for a very long time.
--:-- Chris Christie: And let's be honest about this with the voters. You know, during the Trump administration, they added $7 trillion, $7 trillion in national debt. And now the Biden administration has put another $5 trillion on and counting.
--:-- Chris Christie: They have failed and they're in the spot they're in now because none of them are willing to tell the truth. None of them are willing to take on the difficult issues. They just want to keep kicking the can down the road.
--:-- Ron DeSantis: The people in Washington are shutting down the American dream with their reckless behavior. They borrowed, they printed, they spent, and now you're paying more for everything.
--:-- Ron DeSantis: They are the reason for that. They have shut down our national sovereignty by allowing our border to be wide open.
--:-- Ron DeSantis: So please spare me the crocodile tears for these people. They need to change what's going on.
--:-- Ron DeSantis: And where's Joe Biden? He completely missing in action from leadership. And you know who else is missing in action? Donald Trump is missing in action. He should be on this stage tonight. He owes it to you to defend his record where they added trillion to the debt.
--:-- Ron DeSantis: That set the stage for the inflation that we have.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Candidates also talked about the United Auto Workers strike. More workers may go on strike tomorrow if the union isn't satisfied by talks with the big three U.S. automakers.
--:-- Shamita Basu: In other labor news, Hollywood Studios and the Actors Union will hold talks next week. It'll be the first such meeting in several months.
--:-- Shamita Basu: This follows a tentative deal struck between studios and writers, which includes pay increases and rules around the use of artificial intelligence.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The writers have been cleared to return to work while the new contract is ratified.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Some of the first TV shows to return to the air will be late-night talk shows, like Jimmy Fallon's and Stephen Colbert's.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Now to a story about climate change and fighting for accountability in an unusual court case unfolding this week.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Six young people are suing 32 European countries in the European Court of Human Rights.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The plaintiffs are between the ages of 11 and 24, and they say the governments have failed to adequately address climate change, and the failure is a violation of human rights.
--:-- Shamita Basu: They want the court to rule that countries have a global responsibility for actions that drive climate change, not just responsibility for protecting their own citizens.
--:-- Sofia Oliveira: We need you to do a better job. I noticed that climate change has a big impact on my life.
--:-- Sofia Oliveira: The plaintiffs are all from Portugal, and they point to the devastating wildfires there that killed more than 100 people in 2017.
--:-- Katerina Mota: The smoky conditions forced schools in my area to close. None of our family houses burned down or anything like that, but we obviously felt it, and we increasingly feel the impacts of climate change in our summers.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The group is also citing other climate disasters like Portugal recent heat waves which they say made it difficult to go outside sleep and breathe.
--:-- Shamita Basu: In response, the countries say that none of the plaintiffs has established that climate change has caused them serious harm.
--:-- Shamita Basu: As extreme weather becomes more common, climate litigation is becoming a tool to try and force governments to take action.
--:-- Shamita Basu: A few months ago, young people in Montana won a similar suit against the state.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Many similar cases are pending around the world.
--:-- Shamita Basu: If this case is successful, it would also send a message that governments have not just a moral obligation to protect people from the climate crisis, but a legal one, too.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Airbnb is in the news a lot lately. The biggest story is New York City's crackdown, making it much harder to list properties.
--:-- Shamita Basu: That's a big picture policy shift. But there are also changes people are noticing at the ground level.
--:-- Kate Lindsay: I kind of came to the realization when the friends who had picked a hotel for this wedding we went to were relaxing in the hotel hot tub and like having a leisurely morning.
--:-- Kate Lindsay: And that same morning, my boyfriend and I, who were at an Airbnb, we were cleaning the kitchen and doing all those other chores.
--:-- Kate Lindsay: And it took us a second and we just looked at each other and we were like, I actually don't know why we picked this.
--:-- Kate Lindsay: She did some digging and found that a lot of people are feeling this frustration.
--:-- Kate Lindsay: She found hard numbers showing that even as Airbnb rentals require guests to help with cleanup, cleaning fees shot up 36 percent in three years.
--:-- Kate Lindsay: As Lindsay puts it, Airbnb no longer feels like a scrappy community-based platform. Now it's become its own industry with mega hosts who manage multiple properties.
--:-- Kate Lindsay: Anytime there's a marketplace that's doing well, anyone with more resources can come in and kind of disrupt it or take advantage of it in a way that ends up kind of dampening or sometimes just ruining the initial philosophy.
--:-- Kate Lindsay: Lindsay reached out to Airbnb, which says it provides lodging at better prices than typical hotels, a claim that is supported by outside data.
--:-- Kate Lindsay: In the end, Lindsay says, Airbnb may ultimately be turning into just another version of the hotel business.
--:-- Kate Lindsay: She argues that it a pattern we see in a lot of startup businesses taking on a giant industry. Eventually in the process of getting big enough to compete they basically become the thing they sought to replace.
--:-- Shamita Basu: American astronaut Frank Rubio is back on Earth after 371 days in space. That's a record for the U.S. space program.
--:-- Shamita Basu: It was supposed to be only a six-month mission, but technical problems kept him in space for much longer, along with two Russian cosmonauts.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Now that he's back, researchers are eager to understand how the extended time in space affected him.
--:-- Frank Rubio: It teaches us that the human body can endure, it can adapt.
--:-- Frank Rubio: And as we prepare to push back to the moon and then onward onto hopefully Mars and further on in the solar system, I think it's really important that we learn just how the human body learns to adapt and how we can optimize that process.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Hanging out in microgravity for so long affects the body and mind in major ways.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Muscle mass decreases from lack of use. Astronauts experience bone loss, too.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And they can have trouble keeping their balance after they return home.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Imagine, it's like not using your legs for months and then trying to walk steadily again.
--:-- Shamita Basu: For a four- to six-month mission, it typically takes a couple of days for the body to acclimate.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Rubio can expect it to take even longer.
--:-- Shamita Basu: But scientists will be with him as he recovers, and the data they collect could help future astronauts as they prepare to take on even bigger missions.
--:-- Shamita Basu: You can find all these stories and more in the Apple News app.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And if you're already listening in the news app right now, we've got a narrated article coming up next.
--:-- Shamita Basu: GQ goes on a very unusual men's retreat, one that combines a cowboy experience with a kind of group therapy. It's a story that might really surprise you.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And our narrated articles are now also available in the podcast app. Just search for News Plus Narrated to start listening to articles from the world's best magazines and newspapers.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Enjoy listening to those, and I'll be back with the news tomorrow.
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