--:-- Duarte Giraldino: Good morning. It's Friday, January 14th. I'm Duarte Giraldino. And I'm 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.
--:-- Shamita Basu: One of the world's most serious humanitarian crises is happening right now in Afghanistan. Four months after U.S. troops left, tens of millions of Afghans are on the brink of famine. Jane Ferguson went there for The New Yorker.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: We're looking at a population of about 39 million people. Most of the country cannot feed itself. That's unprecedented for a country of that size.
--:-- Shamita Basu: She spoke to doctors and found a health care system on the brink of collapse. Many pregnant women are so malnourished that they're giving birth to premature babies.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: From a healthcare professional's perspective, like the doctors and the nurses that are in these wards, it's an absolute nightmare. They're really just doing their best.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And you can see that the sanitation is so, so poor. We saw dirty bed sheets on these tiny little ICU beds that are really meant for one baby at a time. They'll have two, three, sometimes four babies to a bed.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: And the doctors told us that, you know, that causes infections to just absolutely ravage through these babies. They'll get the infections after they've come in.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Here's the key to understanding the story. The Afghan government was dependent on international aid for 20 years. That money dried up in August when the Taliban took power.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: So Afghanistan had suddenly, within the government that no longer existed, had no funding to be able to pay its government workers.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And Afghanistan, like many countries around the world, the government is its single biggest employer. You work for the government if you are a road sweeper or you are a nurse in a hospital, a school teacher, an economist, anything that we would consider apolitical and having nothing to do with the war.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: All of those people overnight, their salaries are gone. The U.S. froze more than $9 billion in Afghan government assets when the Taliban took control.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Some international groups want the Biden administration to release that money and give it to humanitarian organizations. The U says Afghanistan could face what called universal poverty by the middle of this year with 97% of Afghans living below the global poverty line of about a dollar a day.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: The news was as shocking as it was horrible. Home fires killed at least 17 people in the Bronx and 12 in Philadelphia.
--:-- Shamita Basu: NBC News goes beyond these headlines. And it traces these deaths to systemic racial issues that make housing in the U.S. unsafe.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: Many of the people killed in these fires were Black. And there's a pattern here. Even though Black people make up only about 13% of the U.S. population, they represent a full 25% of people killed in residential fires.
--:-- Shamita Basu: NBC explains how housing in neighborhoods where black people live is often neglected. That building in the Bronx where all those people died, it didn't have fire escapes or sprinklers throughout the building.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: There are questions about whether properly maintained self-closing doors might have kept the fire and smoke from spreading so fast.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Records show residents filed several complaints about this building, including lack of heat.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: One urban planning expert told NBC, complaining to your landlord or about your landlord can be complicated. There's no guarantee your problem will get fixed.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And a lot of people fear some kind of blowback, like getting evicted. And he says, add on top of that, race, income, immigration status, and you have a power imbalance that can make it harder for tenants to advocate for safer housing.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: NBC also notes how, there is this long history in the U.S. of discriminatory zoning laws. They led black people to have to settle for substandard housing options.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And because rent is so high in many cities, many families can't afford homes that are big enough for them. And this sometimes leads to dangerously overcrowded apartments.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: Okay, so when was the last time you listened to a CD?
--:-- Shamita Basu: The 90s. I'm calling it, CDs are officially dead.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: And here's a stat that really seals it. Last year CDs were outsold by vinyl.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Sales of vinyl records rose 51% compared to the previous year. Quartz explains why vinyl sales have been rising over the past few years and how it bloomed into a full-on vinyl renaissance.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: While I was reading this Quartz article, I thought it would be fun to hear from Ebro Darden over at Apple Music.
--:-- Ebro Darden: In New York, we know me as Ebro in the Morning on Hot 97.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: And when I called him, he said he's not surprised vinyl sales are up because music isn't just about what you hear. It's kind of engaging with the touching of the music and feeling it and reading it and looking at the cover and the art and the whole experience.
--:-- Ebro Darden: I think people are into that. Shopping for vinyl is even very popular now. You know, it's almost like antique shopping in a way.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: You know, if you've noticed at people's houses, you'll go in, there'll be like a little record player in the corner and a couple of pieces of vinyl.
--:-- Ebro Darden: And it's just cool to pull the vinyl out and, you know, put it on and actually put the needle on.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: Right. I mean, we're seeing really big artists pressing vinyl now. Adele, she was a top-selling vinyl artist of last year. Taylor Swift is on the list three times in the top 10. Olivia Rodrigo was huge.
--:-- Ebro Darden: Is this a genre-specific phenomenon? Is it an audience-specific phenomenon? What do you think it is?
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: No, it's a cultural phenomenon. It's an everybody phenomenon.
--:-- Ebro Darden: Because in hip-hop, for many years, vinyl's been a big deal. You know, I have colleagues who, they still play 45s, if you even know what that is, right? The small records, right? That's a little one.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: Yeah, and they have parties where literally the DJs come in with boxes of their 45s.
--:-- Ebro Darden: You know, it's just cool. It's a cool collector piece. It's a cool piece of content.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: If someone is wanting to collect some vinyl and they don't know where to start, you want to recommend a couple of your favorite things to listen to specifically on vinyl?
--:-- Ebro Darden: So if you can get a hold of it, which I did, Metallica released their Black album on vinyl. And it's a vinyl collector's box, which sounds incredible.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: Other things you may enjoy listening to on vinyl. I mean, obviously the greats Stevie Wonder if you can track down some Miles Davis some John Coltrane on vinyl if you can find those things those are all great to listen to too.
--:-- Ebro Darden: Ebro, thank you so much for your thoughts. I appreciate it.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Shamita, thank you for having me on the program.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: It's creamy and delicious. And the foundation of fondue is the subject of a controversial new court ruling. I'm talking about Gruyere cheese.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Its meltiness makes it perfect for dipping in a pot of that classic dish, especially during this frosty time of year. It also makes a pretty nice grilled cheese sandwich if you're feeling fancy.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: As Food & Wine magazine explains, Gruyere wound up in an American court because Swiss and French cheesemakers say cheese can only be called Gruyere if it comes from their home turf.
--:-- Shamita Basu: It's kind of like the champagne argument, right? French producers say if it's not from the Champagne region, you have to call it sparkling wine.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: The Swiss and French take issue with cheeses from, say, Wisconsin or something being sold in America as gruyere.
--:-- Shamita Basu: They say, call it alpine cheese or mountain cheese, whatever, but not gruyere.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: And they threw lawyers at the problem. Yeah, they were literally sending cease and desist letters to American cheesemakers.
--:-- Shamita Basu: They were threatening them, stop using the G word.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: But now a U.S. federal court has ruled the name Gruyere can be applied to cheese made in America.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Now, the Europeans say the fight is not over. They're planning to appeal.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: You can find all these stories and more in the Apple News app.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And check out our weekend interview show In Conversation. This week, I speak with Bloomberg investigative reporter Esme Deprez.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: Her father had ALS. Last year, she wrote about helping him use Maine's medical aid in dying law to end his life.
--:-- Shamita Basu: He no longer recognized the life that he now had with ALS. And also, he didn't want to be remembered as this frail, dependent shut-in.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: And I mean, he really became that. So I think he saw medical aid in dying as a way to really wrest back control from this disease that had stolen so much of what he was about.
--:-- Shamita Basu: We'll be back with the news on Monday.
