--:-- Gideon Resnick: Good morning. It's Friday, May 3rd. I'm Gideon Resnick in for Shamit Abassu. This is Apple News Today.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: Coming up on today's show, the special role professors are playing in the campus anti-war protests, a rare look deep inside an assassination plot in America, and some exciting news about an ape and medicine. But first, let's take a brief look at some other stories that are in the news.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: A judge declared a mistrial in a case accusing a military contractor of involvement in abuse at Abu Graib. A jury was unable to reach a verdict in nearly eight days of deliberations. We talked about this trial on the show recently. It focused on CACI, a military contractor that provided interrogators at the Iraqi prison two decades ago. It was accused of encouraging abuse by asking soldiers to soften up prisoners before questioning. CACI denied responsibility for the torture. The plaintiffs, Iraqi civilians who were detained at Abu Ghraib, say that they'll seek a retrial.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: Now to the war in Gaza, where Hamas is sending a delegation to Egypt for advanced talks on a potential ceasefire. The group's political leader says discussions are moving ahead in what he calls a positive spirit. A deal could include a temporary stop to fighting, the release of hostages held by Hamas, as well as the release of Palestinian prisoners held by Israel.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: As for civilians caught in the middle, a new UN report lays out just how difficult it will be to rebuild in Gaza. It says reconstructing homes destroyed by Israeli attacks could take until at least the year 2040. And that's the best case scenario. The UN says it may take a full 80 years to replace all the housing. It also says that more than 85% of schools have been damaged in the war.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: In the U.S., arrests of people protesting that war are now above 2,100. At UCLA, police arrested more than 100 demonstrators and dismantled their encampment. The remains of the camp were hauled away with heavy equipment. One protester talked to the local NBC station about the police response there.
--:-- Protester: They traveled over our tents, and everything we had inside. And it seems like they had no remorse or sympathy for us.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: Law enforcement faces questions as to why they intervened earlier when a group of pro counter attacked the camp earlier this week. And other police forces are under scrutiny for their actions as well. In New York, the NYPD says an officer accidentally fired a gun when clearing a Columbia University building that was taken over by protesters. The police department says no one was hurt in the incident, which is now under review by the DA.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: President Biden hadn't said much in public about the anti-war demonstrations across the country until yesterday. We are not an authoritarian nation where we silence people or squash dissent. The American people are heard. In fact, peaceful protest is in the best tradition of how Americans respond to consequential issues. But, but, neither are we a lawless country.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: He said he did not support deploying National Guard troops. But Biden said dissent must never lead to disorder. There's the right to protest, but not the right to cause chaos. But many students and their professors say that that right to protest is under attack right now.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: This is an issue of higher education administrators clamping down on free expression. That's Noelle McAfee, a philosophy professor at Emory University, speaking to Atlanta's NBC station.
--:-- Noelle McAfee: I was here standing up for students and their freedom of expression, and I wanted an opportunity for a peaceful expression of their views, peaceful dissent.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: She is one of many professors across the country facing a challenging moment where their students feel under threat. The president of the American Association of University Professors told NPR that teachers on campus are in, quote, triage mode. They're trying to help students while also dealing with the administration, as well as their own opinions on the war.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: Some faculty members say university administrators aren't doing enough to defend their work and their right to express their views. CNN spoke to Isabella Ramirez, the Columbia University student newspaper editor-in-chief.
--:-- Isabella Ramirez: Congress went very, very hard on Colombia, naming multiple faculty members by name regarding statements that they had made scholarship and other things that they have taught in their classrooms labeling them antisemitic and unsafe. And so there has been this really big question as to whether the university has done enough to kind of protect academic freedom in the first place to allow that discourse to even happen.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: The questions won't end when students wrap up final exams. Graduations are coming up next. And what happens there and how the schools respond will be an ongoing issue for university leaders.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: Now to some new reporting from The Washington Post on assassination plots by a key U.S. ally, including one with a target on American soil. Reporters tracked how spies from India are targeting opposition groups in other countries. Last summer, India's intelligence service hired a hit team to kill one of Prime Minister Narendra Modi's most vocal critics, a U.S. citizen and Sikh activist named Gripatwant Singh Panun.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: Investigative correspondent Greg Miller told us more.
--:-- Greg Miller: He's very outspoken in his criticism of the Indian government and in his campaign to create a new independent state for followers of the Sikh faith. So this, of course, is very much opposed by Modi and his government. U.S. authorities thwarted the assassination, and India's government denied responsibility.
--:-- Greg Miller: But Miller told us this was not an isolated incident. Modi and his government see this as a menace and have done a lot to try to suppress this movement, including a successful assassination in Canada last year of a Sikh activist, and surveillance, harassment, threats, etc., of other activists and other followers in many, many other countries, Australia, Germany, the United Kingdom, and many other places.
--:-- Greg Miller: Miller says these actions and India's increasingly aggressive intelligence service have put U.S. officials in a difficult position. This is kind of conduct that we in the United States or in the West normally associate with the world's worst, most repressive regimes.
--:-- Greg Miller: When the assassination attempt was ordered, Modi was actually in the United States on a lavish official visit to the White House. The goal was to build diplomatic ties, particularly around countering the growing influence of China. After the attempt on Penun life Miller says many U officials were torn on how to respond.
--:-- Greg Miller: The Justice Department and the FBI really wanted to bring charges and basically were prevented from doing so because they were overruled by the top of those organizations that were more focused on the bigger strategic picture of how much damage it might do to the relationship. And that did not sit well with some people at the Justice Department.
--:-- Greg Miller: The only known U.S. charges to date are against an alleged middleman in the ordered hit on Pannoon. Officials in India deny the allegations raised by Miller and his colleagues in their reporting.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: You can find the full investigation in the Apple News app.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: Finally, would you trust an orangutan as your doctor? Before you answer that question, maybe take a listen to this. A new study reveals that these great apes seem to know a lot more about medicine than we previously thought. NBC reports on what researchers saw in the rainforest of Indonesia.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: An orangutan had an ugly wound under his eye, and he was chewing on this leaf, something these animals don't always eat. Soon the researchers realized they were witnessing something never documented before. The orangutan was treating itself. It would chew the leaves into a paste and rub it on the injury. And the treatment worked. The wound closed within a week.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: It's because the vine he was chewing on has medicinal properties. And somehow the orangutan figured that out and he became his own doctor. The primatologists aren't totally sure how he did it. They say it's possible it was completely by chance that he accidentally touched his wound while he was eating the plant and noticed that it helped with pain. Or he saw another orangutan do something similar.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: But researchers say these new findings could shed new light on how we humans first learned the art of medicine.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: You can find all these stories and more in the Apple News app. And if you're already listening to the news app right now, we have a narrated article coming up next from Men's Health. The magazine digs into a question that's been debated for decades. How do carbohydrates fit into a healthy diet? Historically, they've been made out to be a boogeyman of nutrition, blamed for all types of issues. But today's health experts have a much more evolved understanding of how carbs can help us, and they want to clear the record.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: If you're listening in the podcast app, you can follow Apple News Plus Narrative to find that story. And we'll be back with the news on Monday.
