--:-- Duarte Giraldino: Good morning. It's Monday, October 18th. I'm Duarte Giraldino. Shemitah Basu is off. This is Apple News Today.
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--:-- Duarte Giraldino: Each morning, hear about some of the most fascinating stories in the news and how the world's best journalists are covering them. Today is the beginning of the trial in the February 2020 killing of Ahmaud Arbery. This black jogger was shot and killed after being chased down by men in pickup trucks. Three white men are now on trial in Glynn County, Georgia. They're accused of murder and other crimes. This is one of the most significant racial justice cases since the murder of George Floyd. In that trial, former police officer Derek Chauvin was convicted of murder.
--:-- [Local activist Bobby Henderson is introduced]
--:-- Bobby Henderson: Here we are again with another opportunity. Can we sustain any of this momentum toward true equity, equality and justice? Or are we just stuck in a cycle of some people get it and some people don't?
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: It depends. The American Constitution should not be a parchment of it depends. This case may not have gotten this far were it not for the release of cell phone video of a killing. That footage was a turning point that drew national attention. Local law enforcement was criticized for waiting until several months after the killing to make arrests. The former DA, Jackie Johnson, faces charges she tried to hinder the investigation. She has defended her actions. The Georgia Bureau investigation took over the case. The DA lost her re-election bid. There's also a new police chief in Glynn County, and he is the first black man to lead the department.
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--:-- Duarte Giraldino: Lawyers for the accused men will argue they had cause to make a citizen's arrest because they thought Arbery was trespassing, that they were detaining him until police arrived. They will also argue the gun was fired in self defense when Arbery resisted.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: More than 1 people have been summoned for jury duty. The pool of potential jurors is so large it suggests it could take weeks to assemble a jury for a case that drawing national attention.
--:-- [Colin Powell's death is announced]
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: Colin Powell has died. He was 84 years old. The general was America's first black secretary of state and chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. According to CNN, his family says he died of complications from COVID-19. He was a key player in many of the biggest American conflicts of recent decades. And in the 1990s, after the U.S. victory in the Gulf War, some predicted that Colin Powell would become the first black president of the United States.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: During George W. Bush's administration, Powell appeared at the U.N. to argue for invading Iraq. The intelligence he cited was later proven faulty. He would call the speech a blot on his record. Announcing his passing, Powell's family called him a remarkable and loving family man and a great American.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: An extensive new investigation from Reuters looks into what Amazon does to boost its own brands. What we saw was a document from 2016 that was a strategy report on its private brand products in India. That's Steve Steklow. He's one of the investigative journalists on this story.
--:-- Steve Steklow: And it detailed step by step how the company planned to target certain other companies' popular products. They called these their benchmark brand products and that they would copy them and then they would promote them on the website. India is a key market for Amazon. Just like here in the U.S., Amazon sells products it makes there. This investigation shows Amazon used internal data about other sellers to give its own products an advantage.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: You know Amazon was able to look at all the top men formal shirt brands and how they were doing on the platform and use that to determine which products they should target, to knock off.
--:-- Steve Steklow: Amazon has faced similar accusations here in the U.S. It repeatedly denied using non-public data for the benefit of its own brands. It said as much to reporters on this story, but it didn't answer all of Reuters' questions.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: Pressure is building the online retailers under investigation in the U.S., Europe, and India for alleged anti-competitive behavior that hurts merchants.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: And this is new from the Wall Street Journal this morning. Several members of Congress wrote to Amazon's CEO. In light of recent reporting, the New Letter questions whether Amazon misled Congress when it was investigating the company.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: Congress is entering a high-stakes period. As Politico reports, the next few days could determine whether Democrats can turn their agenda into reality. In some ways, this tiny window of opportunity has been a decade or more in the making. It's a critical time right now because there are only a few weeks to do legislative business before the year's end. Democrats do have control of Congress But only by a very small margin And next year's election Could put that control in jeopardy
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: One senator laid it all out for Politico Saying the party needs to put points on the board If it wants to keep that control As you've heard on the show before Some of this depends on the support Of moderate Democratic Senators Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema Manchin is reportedly against The clean energy plan in the spending bill Basically, nothing can pass without him So the behind talks they going to focus on creating a package that can get the support of enough progressive and moderate Democrats That could mean a trillion proposal may need to get cut in half Political explains Democrats could drop some of their long priorities Clean energy, nationwide paid family leave, Medicare expansion. The fate of all these policies depends on how talks play out in the days ahead.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: Oh, travel has been such a drag during the pandemic. Figuring out the rules, the testing, the masks. But there's this walrus who managed to pull off a grand tour of Europe. And he became a media darling in the process. The Wall Street Journal looks at the unusual journey of a 2,000-pound walrus named Wally.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: He popped up in Ireland, Wales, England, France, and Spain. Walruses like him are normally in Arctic waters, and a marine expert tells the journal, an appearance like this used to be a once-every-century event. But with oceans warming and ice shrinking, some animals have to travel farther to search for food or a place to rest.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: At first, coastal European towns were delighted to have this visitor from the Arctic. Local stores sold walrus-themed merchandise. He made news headlines, but being a big guy, Wally soon caused problems. He did thousands of dollars of damage, climbing onto people's yachts and fishing boats.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: Getting Wally back to the Arctic would be good for him and for people. Through trial and error, marine scientists managed to encourage him to rest up and get going. Good news came from Iceland recently. Fishermen spotted a walrus that matched Wally's description. Wally was heading in the right direction, it seems, toward home.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: 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. I'll talk with you again tomorrow.
