--:-- Shamita Basu: Good morning. It's Thursday, August 28th. I'm Shamita Basu. This is Apple News Today.
--:-- Shamita Basu: On today's show, a fatal mass shooting at a Minneapolis church, how the good fire in the Grand Canyon went very bad, and signs of a diverse tropical paradise in Illinois. But first, the agency tasked with protecting the country's public health was plunged into confusion and crisis last night.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The newly appointed director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has been fired after reportedly refusing demands from Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to quit or be fired.
--:-- Shamita Basu: At the same time, several other senior CDC leaders quit in frustration over the political climate. This comes after months of uncertainty at the agency, budget cuts, and the termination of hundreds of employees.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Dr. Susan Menares had only been in the role for a few weeks when the Department of Health and Human Services announced her departure on social media yesterday and thanked her for her service.
--:-- Shamita Basu: That same evening, her lawyers denied that she had been fired and said that she would not resign. They said she had been targeted because she, quote, refused to rubber stamp unscientific, reckless directives and fire dedicated health experts.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The statement also accused Kennedy of weaponizing public health for political gain.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The White House then formally fired her, saying in a statement, quote, Susan Menares is not aligned with the president's agenda of making America healthy again.
--:-- Shamita Basu: According to the Washington Post, Kennedy put Monares under pressure to support rescinding certain approvals for COVID vaccines and questioned whether she was aligned with the administration's plans to change vaccine policy.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The Post reports that she declined to commit without consulting advisors, prompting Kennedy's demand that she go.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Menares then recruited the support of Republican Senator Bill Cassidy, who was a crucial vote in Kennedy's confirmation on the condition of protecting access to vaccines.
--:-- Shamita Basu: That, reportedly, only further angered Kennedy.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Menares is a longtime civil servant and health scientist. In her confirmation hearing, she said that vaccines saved lives and advocated for public health interventions.
--:-- Shamita Basu: But she sidestepped questions about Kennedy's decision in June to dismiss the independent panel of vaccine experts.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Part of the secretary's vision in restoring public trust is making sure that the American people can be confident in the way that the evidence and science are driving decision making.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The secretary made a decision that resetting the ACIP from the 17 previous members to a new cohort of members was going to be on the path of restoring that public trust.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And she said she saw no link between vaccines and autism, a claim that Kennedy has made in the past despite years of studies that have not found evidence to support that.
--:-- Shamita Basu: In a cabinet meeting this week, Kennedy promised Trump imminent news that would reveal why autism rates have risen in the U.S.
--:-- Shamita Basu: We will have announcements as promised in September.
--:-- Shamita Basu: We're finding interventions, certain interventions now that are clearly, almost certainly causing autism.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And we're going to be able to address those in September.
--:-- Shamita Basu: In Monares first week on the job as the agency director a shooter fired into CDC headquarters leading the union representing CDC workers to condemn vaccine misinformation
--:-- Shamita Basu: Here Monares at the time addressing the work of public health officials to Atlanta News First
--:-- Shamita Basu: They selfless They don't expect to be on the news They don't expect to get the headlines.
--:-- Shamita Basu: They come in every single day to do their jobs and to make America healthier.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And my job is to be their best ambassador.
--:-- Shamita Basu: At least four other senior officials have now also quit.
--:-- Shamita Basu: That includes the chief medical officer, Deborah Howery, who said ongoing changes prevent her from continuing her job.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Dimitri Deskalakis, director of the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, similarly said the weaponizing of public health had caused him to quit.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Meanwhile, yesterday, the FDA announced the approval of updated COVID vaccines, but the agency has narrowed eligibility only to people 65 and older or people with risk factors for severe disease.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Now to Minneapolis and the church school shooting that left at least two children ages just 8 and 10 dead and 17 people injured.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Of those injured, 14 were children and three were adults in their 80s.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Dozens were seated in the Annunciation Catholic Church to attend mass across from the Annunciation school when a shooter fired rounds of ammunition from three weapons through a stained glass window.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Here's Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Fry speaking yesterday.
--:-- Jacob Fry: These were Minneapolis families. These were American families.
--:-- Jacob Fry: And the amount of pain that they are suffering right now is extraordinary.
--:-- Jacob Fry: And don't just say this is about thoughts and prayers right now.
--:-- Jacob Fry: These kids were literally praying.
--:-- Jacob Fry: It was the first week of school. They were in a church.
--:-- Shamita Basu: School principal Matt DeBoer spoke about the bravery of his colleagues.
--:-- Matt DeBoer: Within seconds of this situation beginning, our teachers were heroes.
--:-- Matt DeBoer: Children were ducked down. Adults were protecting children.
--:-- Matt DeBoer: Older children were protecting younger children.
--:-- Matt DeBoer: And it could have been significantly worse without their heroic action.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And stories emerged from the children themselves.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Here's 10-year-old Weston Housney speaking to CBS affiliate WCCO.
--:-- Weston Housney: I was like two seats away from the stained glass windows.
--:-- Weston Housney: So they were like, the shots were like right next to me.
--:-- Weston Housney: The first one, I was like, what is that?
--:-- Weston Housney: I thought it was just something.
--:-- Weston Housney: Then I heard it again.
--:-- Weston Housney: I just ran under the pew.
--:-- Weston Housney: And then I covered my head.
--:-- Weston Housney: My friend Victor like saved me though, because he laid on top of me.
--:-- Weston Housney: But he got hit.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Weston said he believed Victor was in the hospital and okay.
--:-- Shamita Basu: He also said they knew what to do because they'd often practiced responding to shootings.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The shooter has now been identified as 23-year-old Robin Westman, who died by suicide at the scene.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Westman had used a pistol, shotgun, and rifle, all purchased legally, and had no known criminal record.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Westman posted what police described as a manifesto to YouTube.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The video shows a collection of guns with hate-filled messages scrawled across them, as well as a handwritten note that sketched out the church building.
--:-- Shamita Basu: CNN reports that, according to a yearbook photo, Westman graduated from the school in 2017.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Police say they're still investigating the motive, and the FBI has described it as an act of domestic terrorism.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The state of Minnesota's fatal gun violence is below the national average, but the city of Minneapolis has had a particularly violent 24 hours.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The Minneapolis Star Tribune reports that there were three separate shootings in the city, unrelated to this, that killed three people.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And, of course, Minnesota is where state House Speaker Melissa Hortman and her husband Mark were fatally shot in their home in June.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Governor Tim Walz acknowledged the pain the state was going through
--:-- Tim Walz: We stand with this community
--:-- Tim Walz: We redouble ourselves to do the best we can to understand what we can do to prevent any parent from having to receive the calls they received today,
--:-- Tim Walz: from any school dedicated to children having to respond to a situation that, as we said, is unthinkable,
--:-- Tim Walz: but that's all too common, not just in Minnesota, but across this country.
--:-- Shamita Basu: According to CNN, yesterday marks the 286th mass shooting so far this year.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Now to a fire that's been burning in the Grand Canyon, and how it complicates the rationale behind letting so-called good fires burn.
--:-- Shamita Basu: On July 4th, a lightning bolt struck the north rim of the Grand Canyon and sparked a small fire.
--:-- Shamita Basu: At first, officials treated it like a good thing.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Modern fire science says controlled fires can nourish the soil and keep dry brush in check.
--:-- Shamita Basu: So they built containment lines to keep the fire away from people and historic buildings, and then basically just let it burn.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Then on July 11th, an unpredicted, serious windstorm comes up and just blows all the plans to hell.
--:-- Shamita Basu: That's Jack Dolan, an investigative reporter with the Los Angeles Times.
--:-- Jack Dolan: That fire, referred to as the Dragon Bravo Fire, went from a small controlled burn to a mega fire, becoming the largest in the United States this year.
--:-- Jack Dolan: It's burned more than 145,000 acres and is 64% contained, according to KVOA Tuscan News.
--:-- Jack Dolan: There was a mesa down in the canyon itself that was just like all the shrubbering stuff on top of the flat mesa was burning.
--:-- Jack Dolan: It looks like, I mean, it's crazy.
--:-- Jack Dolan: It looked like a single birthday candle.
--:-- Jack Dolan: You know, if you've ever been to the Grand Canyon, it's just all these mesas sticking up and one of them was on fire.
--:-- Jack Dolan: And it's really dramatic, especially at sunset.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Even as the fire gets brought under control, there are major questions about how and why this happened, whether it was a mistake, bad luck or some combination of the two.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Did they screw up the weather forecast?
--:-- Shamita Basu: Did the people who saw that the fire was really building up quickly, did they ask for help and did it not come in time?
--:-- Shamita Basu: It'll take time for investigations to try to answer those questions.
--:-- Shamita Basu: But in the meantime, experts and environmentalists fear that a massive fire like this, taking place in one of the world's biggest tourist attractions, will lead people to question the established science behind good fires.
--:-- Shamita Basu: They're really worried that we'll end up throwing the baby out with the bathwater, essentially.
--:-- Shamita Basu: It is not, you know, a welcome idea when it's happening in your backyard.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And these things create smoke.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The smoke can drift to like elementary schools, assisted living, and it tests the patients of local officials and people living near these things.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Dolan spoke to Len Nielsen, the staff chief in charge of prescribed burns and environmental protection for the California Forestry Department, who said he hopes investigators can pinpoint a specific failure, like a bad weather forecast, so that they can take concrete steps to prevent something like this from happening again.
--:-- Len Nielsen: He believes controlled burns can play an important role in California's environment and says they go right the vast majority of the time,
--:-- Len Nielsen: but also said, quote, it's always a roll of the dice, with wind being particularly hard to predict.
--:-- Shamita Basu: After this fire some may use it as justification to say no to controlled burns
--:-- Shamita Basu: The question really becomes what happens the next time say Cal Fire goes to some town in winemaking country and says, hey, we really think we should burn this hillside?
--:-- Shamita Basu: Are they going to have to then answer a thousand questions about the Dragon Bravo fire in the Grand Canyon?
--:-- Shamita Basu: Probably not a thousand, but probably a few, right?
--:-- Shamita Basu: And, you know, the question is, like, how much harder is it going to be to do these things?
--:-- Shamita Basu: As it is, Dolan told us, it's already been tough to get people on board.
--:-- Shamita Basu: It took three years to get the necessary permits for a modest 50-acre prescribed fire in Mendocino County earlier this year because nearby vineyard owners worried the smoke would affect their grapes.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Before we let you go, a few other stories we're following.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The Democratic National Committee's summer meeting in Minneapolis adjourned early yesterday as a result of the nearby church shooting.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Over the course of several days, party leaders had gathered to discuss lagging fundraising and widespread unpopularity with voters and to strategize about how to approach the midterms.
--:-- Shamita Basu: One of the biggest clashes within the party was over resolutions having to do with Israel and Gaza,
--:-- Shamita Basu: with the more liberal wing of the party wanting a forceful response to the suffering and the more moderate pro-Israel wing wary of alienating a longtime U.S. ally.
--:-- Shamita Basu: In the end, neither resolution passed.
--:-- Shamita Basu: David Weigel, political reporter at Semaphore, was at the meeting, and he told us it ended with a shared sense of optimism for the midterms, as well as worry around what's still not sitting well right now with many voters.
--:-- David Weigel: It's a sense that both the party needs to change and also that it can't give up any ground.
--:-- David Weigel: So nothing was settled.
--:-- David Weigel: Nobody came out saying we figured out X or Y or Z.
--:-- David Weigel: It was just a place where they had a lot of conflict and agreement to have conflict later down the line.
--:-- Shamita Basu: In international news, the top U.S. diplomat in Denmark has been summoned for talks by the country after its national broadcaster reported that people with connections to President Trump were engaging in covert influence operations in Greenland.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Trump has repeatedly expressed his desire to annex the Danish territory, which holds strategic and mineral value.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The news network DR claimed that one of the Americans was compiling lists of Greenland citizens for and against Trump's proposal,
--:-- Shamita Basu: while the others were attempting to cultivate business people and politicians.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The State Department said it did not control the actions of private citizens.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And finally, researchers have uncovered an ancient tropical paradise underneath Illinois.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The Weather Channel reports that after a re-examination of fossils from the Maison Creek,
--:-- Shamita Basu: a breakthrough was discovered showing that below what is modern-day Coal City was a rich and diverse ecosystem that contained a unique collection of river fish and insects,
--:-- Shamita Basu: as well as brackish waters with clams, and an offshore environment rich in jellyfish.
--:-- Shamita Basu: That might sound weird for Illinois, but researchers point out that the continent looked very different 300 million years ago.
--:-- 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: Glitter is usually only useful for things like arts and crafts.
--:-- Shamita Basu: But what about solving a murder?
--:-- Shamita Basu: Popular Mechanics has the story of how a forensic scientist in Ventura County, California, used just 10 pieces of red glitter to help solve a heinous murder.
--:-- Shamita Basu: If you're listening in the podcast app, follow Apple News Plus Narrated to find that story.
--:-- Shamita Basu: and I'll be back with the news tomorrow.
