--:-- [Theme music fades out]
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: Good morning. It's Thursday, November 4th. I'm Duarte Giraldino. And I'm Shamita Basu.
--:-- 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.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: Some people have trouble thinking about climate change. It can feel distant, abstract. But for millions of people living on islands, the reality is right at their feet.
--:-- Shamita Basu: As a kid, I can remember being caught in a flood in the Caribbean and being on my dad's shoulders as the water rose. Once you live through it, it stays with you.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: People are seeing their coastlines shrinking and homes flooding. This week, some of their leaders are at the climate summit in Glasgow, calling on bigger countries to do something before it's too late.
--:-- [Audio clip of Prime Minister Mia Motley of Barbados]
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: Listen to Prime Minister Mia Motley of Barbados. We do not want that dreaded death sentence. And we've come here today to say, try harder, try harder.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Because our people, the climate army, the world, the planet, needs our actions now.
--:-- [Audio clip of President Ibrahim Mohamed Suley of the Maldives]
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: And here's President Ibrahim Mohamed Suley of the Maldives. Our existence is at stake. I have no choice but to keep on repeating it. What will it take for you to listen to us?
--:-- Shamita Basu: CNBC reports on their fight. These countries have small populations, so they contribute very little to global greenhouse gases. But they're islands, so they're the most vulnerable to rising sea levels.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: They feel the impact of pollution from bigger countries. USA Today reports on new research this week showing how quickly the problem is getting worse.
--:-- Shamita Basu: It looks at how fast Greenland's ice sheet is melting. At the rate things are going sea levels could rise by 9 inches this century. It may not sound like a lot if you're living on high ground, but for people on these vulnerable islands, those numbers aren't academic.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: They could mean whole countries submerged underwater.
--:-- Shamita Basu: An iconic part of New York City life is all those yellow taxis you see people hailing in movies and on TV. But life for those drivers has been so hard that many recently went on a hunger strike for two weeks.
--:-- [Audio clip of a report from Axios]
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: And these workers, they managed to score a victory. Axios has the story of a new relief deal involving the city and the largest taxi loan holder there.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The issue is the medallion. Maybe you've seen one bolted on the hood of a yellow cab. It's not a decoration. It's basically a license to operate. And it can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: Yellow cab drivers cannot legally work without a medallion. So many of them end up taking out massive loans. Debts piled up and many drivers struggled to pay. Many were close to financial ruin.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Several died by suicide in recent years. A 2019 New York Times investigation found some in the industry artificially inflated the price of medallions. And when the market crashed, many drivers had medallions worth far less than what they were paying for them.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: There was an earlier relief plan for drivers, but it wasn't enough for many of them. The union representing taxi drivers is made up of mostly people of color and immigrants. They launched the hunger strike to bring more attention to this problem.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The deal they struck will see many drivers get their debt capped at $170,000. That's down from an average of roughly $500,000 per driver. The head of the union called it a win that's going to give drivers their lives back.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: You can read the full article on the Apple News app, which also includes a link to suicide prevention resources.
--:-- Shamita Basu: In 2016, 15-year-old Breonna Stewart was hit by a car while riding her bike in Maryland. Police arrived on the scene and began to ask her questions.
--:-- [Audio clip of Abby Van Sickle, a reporter with The Marshall Project]
--:-- Abby Van Sickle: Her parents had warned her not to talk to police without them, so she tried to ride away, but things quickly got out of hand. She was struggling as police grabbed her off her bike, pushed her into a wall, and then it sort of just kept escalating.
--:-- Shamita Basu: They carried her to a patrol car, put her in the back, and when she wouldn't put her foot inside the car, they pepper sprayed her in the face.
--:-- Abby Van Sickle: Abby Van Sickle is a reporter with The Marshall Project. Her new story looks at police use of force incidents involving children. The numbers show black children are experiencing police violence at high levels.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Her reporting focuses on black girls. Just look at the numbers. Black girls were in about 20% of the police use of force incidents. White girls, only 3%.
--:-- Abby Van Sickle: The police department involved in Breonna Stewart's case defended its officers' actions. The city settled a lawsuit and paid her $40,000.
--:-- Shamita Basu: This piece of journalism shares some alarming stories of young black girls from around the country. A nine-year-old girl in New York was pepper sprayed while handcuffed in the back of a police car, crying for her dad.
--:-- Abby Van Sickle: A teenager at a Texas pool party was slammed to the ground by a cop. The police response often seems disproportionate.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The cases that we found were really a teen talking back to an officer or asking the officer, why are you stopping me? And those are the kinds of incidents that really seemed to then lead to some kind of force by the officer and then some really longer term trauma on the teen and their family.
--:-- Abby Van Sickle: Breonna Stewart talks about how the experience affected her. She felt uncomfortable at school. She quit the soccer team. Now when she sees a police officer, she shakes.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Stewart said she watched a video that recently went viral of that nine-year-old getting pepper sprayed, and she felt this terrible sense of kinship. She said, it broke my heart.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: Six marathons in six weeks. That's Jelaine Flanagan's goal. She's checking her last box this weekend. She is running the New York City Marathon.
--:-- Shamita Basu: She's competed in lots of races before. In fact, in 2017, she became the first American woman in decades to cross the finish line first in New York.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: But what makes this story really remarkable is this year she's doing it with two reconstructed knees.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The Wall Street Journal has the details. Flanagan was having bad knee pain and she was diagnosed with a severe overuse injury. 2019 was a year of surgeries, crutches and questions.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: She told the Journal she wondered whether she'd ever be able to run like she did before. But over the course of the pandemic, as she healed and slowly built up her jogging mileage, she started having a glimmer of hope.
--:-- Shamita Basu: She noticed organizers scheduled a bunch of marathons all in a row, and she made it her goal to make it through all of them.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: This Sunday, she will take her place at the starting line on Staten Island. She said her doctor would probably be shocked to know what she's accomplished with her reconstructed knees.
--:-- Shamita Basu: But these days, her knees feel fine. At finish lines, she says it's actually everything else that hurts.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: Oh, I'm wishing her luck.
--:-- Shamita Basu: You can find all these stories and more in the Apple News app. And while you're in the app, keep listening to hear narrated articles from our News Plus partners.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: We'll talk with you again tomorrow.
--:-- [Theme music fades in]
