--:-- Mark Garrison: Good morning. It's Wednesday, January 10th. I'm Mark Garrison, in for Shemitah Basu. This is Apple News Today.
--:-- Mark Garrison: On today's show, air travel deals with multiple high-profile emergencies. House Republicans go after Biden's Homeland Security Secretary over immigration. And a new study reveals what's hiding inside bottled water.
--:-- Mark Garrison: Let's start with aviation, where 2024 is getting off to a rough start. Last week, five people on a Coast Guard plane were killed when it collided with a Japan Airlines plane on the runway in Tokyo, starting a massive fire.
--:-- Ben Katz: I've had a few people tell me that they've kept their seatbelts on for their entire flights over the last couple of days when they have been flying, which maybe they wouldn't have normally done before.
--:-- Mark Garrison: Investigators are looking into these incidents, but Katz says it'll be a while, likely many months, before we have firmer answers about what happened.
--:-- Ben Katz: It's an incredibly meticulous process of investigating any kind of accident. But the early indications are showing that at some stage in this process that, led to both incidents, that some kind of human error was involved.
--:-- Ben Katz: The aviation industry is still in the process of getting back to normal after largely shutting down during the worst of the pandemic. What we saw during the pandemic was airlines, parking thousands of jets. We saw airports come to near standstalls. Millions of people had to be retrenched.
--:-- Ben Katz: And that was across the board from pilots to cabin crew, but also to maintenance staff and factory workers for, Boeing and Airbus. Coming out of the pandemic over the last two years or so, we seen that almost in the exact reverse Manufacturers like Boeing and Airbus have spent the last couple of years ramping up production after making major cuts.
--:-- Ben Katz: And I spoke to flight safety experts who say the industry has faced challenges in rebuilding its workforce.
--:-- Mark Garrison: Now, that might not leave passengers feeling super confident about boarding their next flight. But Katz says it's important to remember accident rates are below pre-pandemic levels.
--:-- Ben Katz: Aviation is held to an incredibly high standard when it comes to safety. And the industry is obsessed. And I think that's why when we see kind of incidents or accidents like these, that, the industry kind of wakes up and it jolts alive and flyers kind of take notice, because it is a scary thing.
--:-- Ben Katz: And in aviation, the damage from mistakes and in accidents are severe.
--:-- Mark Garrison: Now let's take a quick look at some other stories in the news. At least four people are dead as severe weather rips across the U.S.
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--:-- Mark Garrison: There were multiple tornadoes reported in the southeast, dangerous flooding is threatening east coast cities, and strong winds are tearing down power lines, leading to hundreds of thousands of outages in multiple states.
--:-- Mark Garrison: At the White House, there's a major review underway of how cabinet members delegate authority when sick or traveling.
--:-- Mark Garrison: This comes after President Biden and other top officials were kept in the dark for days about the hospitalization of Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin.
--:-- Mark Garrison: Yesterday, the Pentagon disclosed that he was undergoing treatment for prostate cancer.
--:-- Mark Garrison: In Ecuador, the country is under a state of emergency as violence is escalating. The government is in conflict with powerful criminal gangs.
--:-- Mark Garrison: Violence flared this week after one of the country's most notorious criminals disappeared from prison. There were also riots and mass escapes at other prisons.
--:-- Mark Garrison: And yesterday, the conflict played out on television as masked gunmen stormed a live broadcast.
--:-- Mark Garrison: The video shows them threatening the crew. Police later arrested the attackers. The station says two employees were injured, including a camera operator who was shot in the leg.
--:-- Mark Garrison: And in the Middle East today, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken met with the head of the Palestinian Authority, Mahmoud Abbas.
--:-- Mark Garrison: The U.S. has talked about the possibility of his group governing Gaza in the future.
--:-- Mark Garrison: Yesterday Blinken met with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
--:-- Mark Garrison: Afterwards Blinken said Israel should do more to protect civilians in Gaza as it fights Hamas and reconsider some of its policies.
--:-- Mark Garrison: Israel must stop taking steps that undercut Palestinians' ability to govern themselves effectively. Extremist settler violence carried out with impunity, settlement expansion, demolitions, evictions, all make it harder, not easier, for Israel to achieve lasting peace and security.
--:-- Mark Garrison: Netanyahu has shown no interest in reviving negotiations toward a Palestinian state.
--:-- Mark Garrison: Blinken also said that the U.S. is continuing to support Israel.
--:-- Mark Garrison: Today in Washington, House Republicans are holding a hearing about potentially impeaching Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas.
--:-- Mark Garrison: No cabinet secretary has been impeached in nearly 150 years.
--:-- Mark Garrison: Republicans argue that the administration's immigration policies have made the southern border vulnerable.
--:-- Nick Miroff: This case that they're building, while it does have some elements of alleged wrongdoing, has largely been political.
--:-- Nick Miroff: Several Republicans have doubts about the impeachment case, and the party holds a slim majority in the House.
--:-- Nick Miroff: And even if it did vote to impeach, there's little chance the Senate will vote to convict.
--:-- Nick Miroff: Targeting Mayorkas seems to be more about creating a rallying point for Republicans with hardline views on immigration policy.
--:-- Nick Miroff: I think it's a way for them to channel their anger about border and immigration issues. It's a way for them to unite around a specific campaign.
--:-- Nick Miroff: But if we look at the real prospects for them actually removing him from office, they seem pretty low.
--:-- Nick Miroff: Beyond the politics, there are challenges related to immigration.
--:-- Nick Miroff: I reported on new government data showing that the U.S. removed more than 4 million people crossing the border since 2021.
--:-- Nick Miroff: But it also released more than 2.3 million migrants into the U.S.
--:-- Nick Miroff: As I explained it, that shows the extent to which border security has been overwhelmed.
--:-- Nick Miroff: Mass releases are typically a last resort when agents don't have capacity to process migrants.
--:-- Mark Garrison: What's interesting right now is there are sort of these two parallel processes going on right now.
--:-- Mark Garrison: There's this bipartisan group of senators that are trying to negotiate immigration and border policy changes in conjunction with this, you know, supplemental funding for the war in Ukraine and for Israel.
--:-- Mark Garrison: And the Republican Senate has been pretty focused on that.
--:-- Mark Garrison: Mayorkas has defended his record and called on Congress to provide more funding for border security.
--:-- Mark Garrison: And the Homeland Security Department says House Republicans are wasting valuable time by pursuing impeachment.
--:-- Mark Garrison: Finally, new research shows that there are a lot more tiny bits of plastic floating in bottled drinking water than scientists thought.
--:-- Mark Garrison: The new study used lasers to scan for nanoplastics. They're hard to detect because they're smaller than 1/70th of a human hair.
--:-- Mark Garrison: The technology found hundreds of thousands of particles in the average liter of bottled water, using samples of several popular brands.
--:-- Mark Garrison: The data gives us new insight into a widespread problem.
--:-- Mark Garrison: Lately, scientists have found trace amounts of plastics practically everywhere.
--:-- Mark Garrison: In our food and water, in the ocean, in soil, even in the air we breathe.
--:-- Mark Garrison: The LA Times explains how it's not yet clear how dangerous these plastics may be for humans.
--:-- Mark Garrison: But research on animals shows that microplastics can interfere with development, reproductive health, hormones, and immunity.
--:-- Mark Garrison: We have more on the prevalence of plastics in our everyday lives and how easily these particles get into our bodies if you're listening in the Apple News app.
--:-- Mark Garrison: Coming up next is an episode of Apple News in Conversation from the archives.
--:-- Mark Garrison: Shamita spoke to author Matt Simon about our microplastics problem.
--:-- Mark Garrison: We know for certain that microplastics are being found in placentas and that mothers are passing these particles to their children in utero, children are tainted with microplastics before they're born.
--:-- Mark Garrison: And we are in desperate need of more studies as to what the consequences could be.
--:-- Mark Garrison: Simon also talks about ways to mitigate our exposure to plastic and protect our health.
--:-- Mark Garrison: That's playing for you next, and I'll be back with the news tomorrow.
