--:-- Shamita Basu: Good morning. It's Friday, September 15th. I'm Shamita Basu. This is Apple News Today.
--:-- Shamita Basu: On today's show, the women's rights movement in Iran, one year after Massa Amini's death. Why so many schools are rethinking the way they teach kids to read. And the dude in charge of cleaning up after a particularly messy Burning Man.
--:-- Shamita Basu: But first, let's take a quick look at some major stories in the news. There's no deal between the big three U.S. automakers and the union, so a strike is now underway.
--:-- Sean Fain: For the first time in our history, we will strike all three of the big three at once. Not all of the union's workers are on strike. To start, it's just over 12,000 people at three sites in Michigan, Ohio, and Missouri.
--:-- Shamita Basu: But the union says it's ready to expand to more plants in the days ahead. Automakers say they've made strong proposals and are disappointed that the union is striking.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Turning to Libya and the deadly flooding there, there are growing questions about why there weren't better warnings given.
--:-- Petari Tellis: Normally operating meteorological service, they could have issued the warnings and also the emergency management authorities would have been able to carry out evacuation of the people and we could have avoided most of the human casualties.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Telles says efforts to upgrade technology have been blocked by years of conflict and government dysfunction in Libya.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Hunter Biden, son of President Joe Biden, now faces felony charges, indicted for allegedly making false statements and illegally possessing a gun.
--:-- Shamita Basu: This comes after a plea deal collapsed in July. Hunter Biden could also face tax charges. His lawyer tells the Washington Post that the new indictment is a case of the prosecutor quote bending to political pressure.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And in New England and Canada people are bracing for Hurricane Lee which could make landfall somewhere along the border between Maine and Canada over the weekend.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Iranians have not forgotten Masa Amini, the 22-year-old woman who died in police custody one year ago tomorrow. She was detained for allegedly breaking Iran's dress code, and her death sparked a new wave of mass protests in a longstanding fight for women's rights.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Woman, life, freedom was the rallying cry at demonstrations across the country. Many women stopped wearing the hijab in public. The Iranian regime cracked down hard.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Human rights groups estimate that hundreds of protesters were killed. We spoke with Washington Post reporter Miriam Berger about the situation there now.
--:-- Miriam Berger: Repression is back in full force. A lot of the unpopular policies that people took to the streets in the beginning to protest against, such as mandatory veiling, is back being enforced and even more so now.
--:-- Miriam Berger: There's a lot of cameras everywhere. There's a new bill that's being discussed in parliament that would have even more restrictions.
--:-- Miriam Berger: At the same time, the regime cannot control Iranians like they could before. And part of why they have to resort to all of this repression is because more and more people in everyday small ways are continuing to demonstrate.
--:-- Miriam Berger: Larger protests are expected tomorrow on the one-year mark of Amini's death. Security forces have been arresting activists and warning against protesting.
--:-- Miriam Berger: Berger says many Iranians told her they are worried about speaking out. There's about 20,000 Iranians who are out on furlough, and the judiciary has said that if any of them are caught protesting, that they'll get harsher punishments.
--:-- Miriam Berger: They basically have them where they can sort of catch and release them now all the time. But, she says, many activists are still making their voices heard, even knowing the risks.
--:-- Miriam Berger: We continue to see people talking about what kind of world they want to live in and demanding their rights and doing this as Iranians and about what they want for their country.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And that extremely powerful.
--:-- Shamita Basu: For decades now, educators in America have not managed to agree on a pretty fundamental thing, how to teach kids to read.
--:-- Shamita Basu: There are lots of different schools of thought, but there are two popular approaches being talked about today. One emphasizes phonics, that is, teaching kids to sound out letters and words.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The other is teach kids to look for context clues, get them excited about reading, and the more granular reading skills will come with time.
--:-- Shamita Basu: On this week's episode of Apple News in Conversation, we get into what some educators call the reading wars, the debate over how we teach kids to read in America, and why many states right now are making big shifts toward phonics-based learning.
--:-- Shamita Basu: I talked to Karen D'Souza, a reporter for EdSource, about what the latest research tells us about how learning happens.
--:-- Karen D'Souza: There actually is a different part of the brain that interprets the auditory and a different part of the brain that interprets the visual. And you need to make those connections.
--:-- Karen D'Souza: They're not hardwired naturally. You can't just expose children to it and assume that they will pick it up.
--:-- Shamita Basu: De Souza says the pandemic made America's existing childhood literacy problem even worse. So our classrooms need to catch up to the science and fast.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Not enough kids are learning how to be adept readers. And that's going to be a stumbling block for a functioning democracy.
--:-- Shamita Basu: I mean, how are you going to vote? How are you going to fill out a job application? Really, like what what futures are open to you if you can't read well?
--:-- Shamita Basu: States that have already made changes are seeing results. Mississippi has made tremendous strides in terms of, you know, the kind of teacher training that people get and the sort of curriculum in the classroom.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Mississippi went from having like the worst scores in the nation to making more progress than anyone. And now people call it the Mississippi miracle.
--:-- Shamita Basu: I think sometimes when you have like teachers or parents or educators who are married to the way things used to be, the most compelling argument is just the proof, right? Like, well, these kids who couldn't read, now they can read.
--:-- Shamita Basu: So a lot of people are persuaded that way
--:-- Shamita Basu: To hear my full conversation with Karen D about how educators parents and lawmakers are trying to fix this problem and make sure kids really do learn how to read listen to this week episode of In Conversation
--:-- Shamita Basu: If you're listening right now in the Apple News app, just stick around. We've queued it up to play for you after this show.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Remember how chaotic the Burning Man Festival was earlier this summer? Torrential rain turned the Black Rock Desert in Nevada into a soupy, muddy mess.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Tens of thousands of people and all other stuff were stuck. And when it was finally safe to leave, the exit was pretty messy.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And not everybody followed the usual rules to leave no trace. You know, take all of their trash with them.
--:-- Shamita Basu: GQ profiles the guy who is leading the massive post-Burning Man cleanup effort.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Every year, organizers get about a month from the end of the festival to make it look like humans were never there.
--:-- Shamita Basu: When they're done, they have to pass an inspection by the Bureau of Land Management.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Dominic Tinio, a.k.a. Dark Angel, is the environmental restoration manager for Burning Man.
--:-- Shamita Basu: He's been cleaning up after the festival for more than 20 years, and he sounds surprisingly chill about getting the job done, even though he and his team have 157 million square feet worth of desert to cover.
--:-- Dominic Tinio: The process is pretty low-tech. Basically, around 200 people sweep the desert, section by section, picking up trash and debris with brooms, rakes, shovels, and magnets.
--:-- Dominic Tinio: It can be a grubby job, but Tinio says the team takes a lot of pride in their work.
--:-- Dominic Tinio: He says his favorite moment is when the last pieces of garbage are packed up and it gets quiet enough to only hear the wind.
--:-- Dominic Tinio: And then, he says, it's time to leave and let the desert do its thing.
--:-- Shamita Basu: You can find all these stories and more in the Apple News app.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And as I mentioned, if you're already listening in the News app, stick around to hear this week's In Conversation episode about how we teach kids to read.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Have a great weekend, and I'll be back with the news on Monday.
