--:-- Duarte Geraldino: Good morning. It's Monday, January 31st. I'm Duarte Geraldino. And I'm Shamita Basu. This is Apple News Today.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Each morning, hear about some of the most fascinating stories in the news and how the world's best journalists are covering them.
--:-- Duarte Geraldino: We're in the middle of a redistricting process that'll affect politics for years. But between all the headlines and state-by-state court battles, it can be hard to see the big picture.
--:-- Shamita Basu: So we called up FiveThirtyEight senior elections analyst Nathaniel Rakich, and we asked him to explain what the data tells us.
--:-- Nathaniel Rakich: If you measure by some metrics, Democrats are ahead slightly. If you measure by other metrics, Republicans are ahead slightly. In either case, it's not a huge change from the current maps. So maybe it's best to think of it as kind of a status quo redistricting cycle.
--:-- Duarte Geraldino: Rakich said Republicans made strong gains in the last major redistricting a decade ago. So there isn't as much ground for them to gain this time around.
--:-- Shamita Basu: In states like New York, where Democrats control the maps, or Florida, where Republicans control the maps, we could still see some pretty serious gerrymandering. It depends on how hard lawmakers push things for their party.
--:-- Nathaniel Rakich: So there are just a lot of districts that are kind of up for grabs there. So right now, if Democrats really want to go for the jugular in New York, they could gain four or five seats, perhaps. If Republicans want to go for the jugular in Florida, they could also gain, you know, maybe three seats.
--:-- Duarte Geraldino: Rakich reminded us that it's not always lawmakers who have the final say on these maps. In some states, the courts play a big role.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Let's look at Ohio. The state Supreme Court threw out a congressional map earlier this month. They said it violated the partisan fairness requirement in the state constitution. The proposed map would have given Republicans a heavy advantage.
--:-- Nathaniel Rakich: And these legal battles are happening in several other states, too. So a federal court recently overturned Alabama's congressional map, which had six white and Republican-leaning seats and only one Black and Democratic-leaning seat.
--:-- Duarte Geraldino: And they found that because Alabama is actually two-sevenths black, that two of the seats in Alabama out of its seven ought to have black majorities, which in practice means that they would be Democratic-leaning.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And some states haven't even finalized their maps. So expect more fighting in courts and state legislatures over the future of electoral power.
--:-- Duarte Geraldino: Thank you.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Federal prosecutors have reached plea deals on hate crime charges with two of the three men convicted of murdering Ahmaud Arbery. That's according to new court documents related to Gregory and Travis McMichael.
--:-- Shamita Basu: It's up to the court to decide whether to accept the deals. But CNN reports an attorney for Arbery's mother says the family is devastated and will oppose the plea deal.
--:-- Duarte Geraldino: The McMichaels and William Roddy Bryan, they were convicted of Arbery's murder in state court and they were sentenced to life in prison.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Bryan is not mentioned in the latest documents. The federal hate crimes case is scheduled for next Monday.
--:-- Duarte Geraldino: Now, if plea deals for the McMichaels are accepted by the court, Bryan is going to face the federal trial alone.
--:-- Shamita Basu: You've probably heard about what we're now calling the Great Resignation. That's the record numbers of people in the U.S. who are quitting their jobs during the pandemic.
--:-- Duarte Geraldino: An analysis by Recode caught our eye because it went a step further than most of the other pieces we've been reading about this.
--:-- Shamita Basu: It found many people leaving their jobs or starting their own businesses. And it's a much more diverse group of entrepreneurs than we've seen in the past.
--:-- Duarte Geraldino: Yeah, there was a much greater share of online small businesses started by women, Black Americans, and people without college degrees.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Overall, Recode found business ID applications at a record 5.4 million last year.
--:-- Duarte Geraldino: Stimulus checks and lower spending during lockdowns meant many Americans saved more money. Now, some are using that extra money to start businesses.
--:-- Shamita Basu: For some, working from home, well, it also made it easier to develop a side hustle.
--:-- Duarte Geraldino: Kimberly Blackman decided to take her side hustle, skincare, and turn it into a whole new venture. She is a black woman who used to work in HR for a furniture company.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And she told Recode that working for herself is more fulfilling.
--:-- Duarte Geraldino: Now, starting a business, it's not easy. Most new businesses fail.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Many new entrepreneurs, they struggle with marketing, accounting, HR, and web design.
--:-- Duarte Geraldino: But nowadays, there are tech companies that offer a lot of these services and packages designed for small companies.
--:-- Shamita Basu: This way you can spend more time perfecting your product and less on paperwork.
--:-- Duarte Geraldino: As one economist told Recode, the world is better set up to be able to go out on your own.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And the pandemic was the push that got a lot of people in the U deciding to be their own boss.
--:-- Duarte Geraldino: You ever heard of an axolotl?
--:-- Shamita Basu: Let me spell it for you. That's A-X-O-L-O-T-L.
--:-- Duarte Geraldino: Maybe you know them from TikTok or Minecraft or specialty pet stores.
--:-- Shamita Basu: There are aquatic salamanders that have these very distinctive external gills that look like kind of feather headdresses, if you will.
--:-- Duarte Geraldino: That's Vox reporter Benji Jones. He recently wrote an article about this unusual looking animal.
--:-- Benji Jones: These creatures are hard to describe. They sort of look like cartoonish aliens, but they're also kind of adorable.
--:-- Shamita Basu: They typically spend their whole lives underwater and they're very cute.
--:-- Duarte Geraldino: They're often pink in color and they have like an emoji-like smile on their face.
--:-- Shamita Basu: So they've become very popular as pets as a result of that.
--:-- Benji Jones: They're also really big in the scientific community. Researchers have studied them for years to try and understand this really rare trait of them.
--:-- Duarte Geraldino: Axolotls can regenerate limbs. They can regenerate parts of their spinal cord, even parts of their heart.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And so as researchers try to figure out how we can promote better healing in humans, promote limb regeneration in humans, we can kind of look to axolotls and see what might be able to translate to human medical research.
--:-- Benji Jones: But even though there are around a million axolotls in homes and in labs, there are hardly any wild axolotls left in their native Mexico City.
--:-- Duarte Geraldino: Benji recently went there, and he told me why they're disappearing.
--:-- Shamita Basu: That's because their native habitat, the water in these canals in a borough of Mexico City, the water is polluted by chemicals from runoff from farms, from sewage.
--:-- Benji Jones: There are also two kinds of introduced fish, and those fish compete with them for food. They also eat them.
--:-- Duarte Geraldino: And then there's also just a lot of development happening in this borough of Mexico City where they live, and that only increases the amount of sewage and waste that's flowing into their habitat.
--:-- Shamita Basu: So it's really a story about a degraded ecosystem that they live in now.
--:-- Benji Jones: And I should say, they're only found in this one part of Mexico City, in the south of Mexico City, and nowhere else in the world in the wild.
--:-- Duarte Geraldino: Why does it matter that their population in the wild is diminishing?
--:-- Shamita Basu: What I found in my reporting is basically that in many ways to sustain wild axolotls is to help sustain ourselves as well.
--:-- Benji Jones: So for example having wild axolotls indicates that the water in their environment is clean and that water is used to clean crops and to irrigate crops.
--:-- Duarte Geraldino: And that means that the crops can be healthier, less polluted.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And that's also good for the farmers who sell them because people in the markets don't want to buy produce from a polluted farm.
--:-- Benji Jones: So in many ways, axolotls are kind of an indicator species, an indication that the ecosystem is healthy.
--:-- Duarte Geraldino: And I think every species in an ecosystem, whether or not we know about them, or we interact with them at all, they play some kind of role.
--:-- Shamita Basu: So axolotls, they're considered a kind of top predator in their environment.
--:-- Benji Jones: They eat smaller marine organisms, those organisms eat other things. And it creates this, I know this sounds cliche, but it's like this tree of life.
--:-- Duarte Geraldino: It's a, it's a, it's a, I mean, it is literally a circle of life.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And I know that we hear about that all the time and why should we care?
--:-- Benji Jones: But it really does matter that we maintain the sustainability of these trees of life because ultimately that maintains a healthy environment.
--:-- Duarte Geraldino: And especially for people who live in this ecosystem, that really matters for their livelihood.
--:-- Shamita Basu: So it does matter that they are alive in the wild.
--:-- Duarte Geraldino: The last few days were full of NFL news both on and off the field.
--:-- Shamita Basu: You had all those questions about whether Tom Brady is retiring and then there were the playoff games that set the stage for the big game next month at Super Bowl 56.
--:-- Duarte Geraldino: You're going to see the Cincinnati Bengals against the LA Rams.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The Bengals, by the way, earned their spot in overtime.
--:-- Duarte Geraldino: And Cincinnati is heading to the Super Bowl.
--:-- Shamita Basu: He called it again, I'm sure. He walked up and he goes, can you believe, coach? We're going to the Super Bowl.
--:-- Duarte Geraldino: Did you see that coming? Hardly anyone saw that coming.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The Bengals were 125 to 1 long shots to get to the Super Bowl.
--:-- Duarte Geraldino: They only won four games in the previous season.
--:-- Shamita Basu: We've curated a special selection of Super Bowl stories.
--:-- Duarte Geraldino: For football fans, we've got details on the teams and the players.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And for everyone else, we've got coverage of those ads and the halftime show.
--:-- Duarte Geraldino: That's all on the Apple News app, along with all the stories we talked about today.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And when you're in the app, keep listening to hear narrated articles from our News Plus partners.
--:-- Duarte Geraldino: We'll talk with you again tomorrow.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Thanks for listening to Apple News Today.
