--:-- Host Yasmin Khan: Good morning. It's Monday, March 11th. I'm Yasmin Khan, in for Shamita Basu. This is Apple News Today.
--:-- Host Yasmin Khan: Coming up, escalating violence in Haiti, the preventable disease killing more and more American babies, and the highlights from Oscars night. But first, Israel and Hamas failed to reach a ceasefire deal before the start of Ramadan, the Islamic holy month, which officially began on Sunday.
--:-- Host Yasmin Khan: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned that if a deal was not met, he would order a ground invasion on Rafah, a city in the south where 1.5 million Palestinians are sheltering. On Saturday, President Biden warned that escalating attacks on Rafa, which would likely result in significant civilian casualties, would cross a, quote, red line.
--:-- [Audio clip of President Biden]
--:-- President Biden: He must, he must, he must pay more attention to the innocent lives being lost as a consequence of the actions taken. He's hurting, in my view, he's hurting Israel more than helping Israel by making the rest of the world as contrary to what Israel stands for.
--:-- Host Yasmin Khan: Netanyahu responded Sunday, telling the German media company Axel Springer that October 7th was a red line for Israel. He says Israel plans to move ahead with the ground invasion of Rafa, and said, quote, we're not going to leave.
--:-- Host Yasmin Khan: This comes as the chief of the U.N. aid agency for Palestinians, known as UNRWA, says extreme hunger is spreading rapidly. Two more Palestinians died over the weekend of starvation, bringing the total deaths from malnutrition to at least 25.
--:-- Host Yasmin Khan: Over the weekend, there were a flurry of efforts to get more aid into Gaza. The United States military sent its first ship carrying aid to a floating pier on Gaza's coast, something Biden promised in his State of the Union address. And many countries continued to airdrop aid, though CBS News reports that one airdropped package killed five people in a refugee camp when its parachute failed to deploy.
--:-- [Audio clip of CNN's Clarissa Ward]
--:-- CNN's Clarissa Ward: If we knew it's getting to children of Gaza, we would do it. This does not arrive at the doorstep. This arrives into the tunnels of Hamas that are fighting us and holding our hostages. There's no evidence to support the idea that all of this aid is going to Hamas. Not to the rest of the population. This is intelligence only for terror.
--:-- CNN's Clarissa Ward: That why they getting they should get only the minimum calories required to survive. They starving to death. They are starving to death. You know what? If they starving to death, give us back, give the hostages back. No single loaf of bread should go there till our hostages are coming back.
--:-- Host Yasmin Khan: Netanyahu told Axel Springer he does not believe people in Gaza are starving. And a recent poll by the Israel Democracy Institute found that 68% of Jewish Israelis agree that no more aid should be getting into Gaza until hostages are released.
--:-- Host Yasmin Khan: Now that Ramadan is underway, there are growing fears that the war will only escalate, both in Gaza but also in other parts of Israel. The Wall Street Journal reports that the holy month could bring violence at religious sites in Jerusalem.
--:-- Host Yasmin Khan: Transcription by CastingWords has descended into chaos in recent days, with gangs overrunning the city. They've attacked police stations and prisons, looted seaports and public buildings, and shut down the airport. They're calling for the removal of Haiti's Prime Minister, Ariel Henry.
--:-- [Audio clip of a Canadian man named Richard Phillips]
--:-- Richard Phillips: The country just deteriorated really, really quickly. The real fear is that if the police force collapses in Haiti, you become very vulnerable as a hostage, quite frankly.
--:-- Host Yasmin Khan: In Nigeria, the country is grappling with mass abductions. Gunmen kidnapped some 15 children over the weekend from a boarding school in the northwestern part of the country, just days after armed men abducted nearly 300 children from another school.
--:-- Host Yasmin Khan: The Army is on the hunt for those students who range in age from 7 years old to 18. The kidnapping late last week was the largest mass abduction there in three years.
--:-- Host Yasmin Khan: And now to a story in the United Kingdom that is becoming hard to ignore, even if you are someone who tries to ignore the royals. Kate Middleton, the Princess of Wales, has apologized on social media after she says she edited a photo of herself and her children that was released for Mother's Day in the UK.
--:-- Host Yasmin Khan: The photo was initially published by Kensington Palace and picked up by the media, but was then retracted after outlets like the Associated Press determined that the photo had been manipulated and did not meet standards for publication.
--:-- Host Yasmin Khan: The edited photo has only fueled speculation about Kate Middleton well after having abdominal surgery in January. She has not been seen publicly since Christmas Day.
--:-- Host Yasmin Khan: Over the last five years or so, the United States has seen an alarming rise in cases of syphilis, a highly contagious sexually transmitted infection. As of 2022, the most recent year the CDC has data, cases were up nearly 80% nationwide.
--:-- Host Yasmin Khan: And for one particularly vulnerable group, pregnant women and babies, cases were up more than 250%. The spike has physicians and public health experts deeply concerned because syphilis is entirely treatable and preventable.
--:-- Host Yasmin Khan: But it can be devastating when transmitted from pregnant mother to infant in the womb. Four out of 10 babies born to women with untreated syphilis can be stillborn or die as newborns, according to the CDC.
--:-- Host Yasmin Khan: Anna Maria Barry-Jester wrote about this for ProPublica. In infants that survive, they can have very severe consequences, including deformed bones, excruciating pain, problems with their organs. Sometimes they struggle to hear or see.
--:-- Host Yasmin Khan: Physicians and public health experts told her they've been unable to treat the surgeon cases because of repeated shortages of a critical drug. It's a form of penicillin. It's the only syphilis treatment safe to take during pregnancy.
--:-- Host Yasmin Khan: And Pfizer is the only U.S. drugmaker that produces it. So in one case, a nurse in a county jail in South Dakota found that one of the people in the jail had syphilis and was pregnant and needed treatment.
--:-- Host Yasmin Khan: And so she started calling around to all the pharmacies and no one had it. She started calling to all the pharmacies she could find within an hour and no one had it. She reached out to the state and they could give her one dose, but this woman needed three.
--:-- Host Yasmin Khan: It ended up taking the nurse three weeks to secure the doses for her patient. Health experts told Barry Jester that Pfizer and the federal government are falling short in their response to the growing crisis.
--:-- Host Yasmin Khan: Providers on the ground say they don't have enough information about when the shots will be available and the timelines and how much will be available when. The FDA says it cannot force Pfizer or any drug maker to produce more.
--:-- Host Yasmin Khan: So for now, the government has a task force working on the crisis and it approved the import of a similar drug made in France, which many clinics say they cannot afford. Some have suggested the U.S. government create a stockpile, manufacture the drug itself, or declare a federal emergency.
--:-- Host Yasmin Khan: Others want to see the government flex its power as the number one buyer of this drug and add more pressure to Pfizer. The company says it's doing what it can in the face of increased demand.
--:-- Host Yasmin Khan: But public health experts have argued the shortage was easy to see coming. And since this is entirely preventable this is seen as just an absolute tragedy.
--:-- Host Yasmin Khan: Hollywood's biggest night of the year, the Oscars, belonged to Oppenheimer. The film took home seven out of 13 awards it was nominated for, including the very first Oscar win for Christopher Nolan, who directed the film, and actor Cillian Murphy won Best Actor for playing Oppenheimer.
--:-- Host Yasmin Khan: You know, we made a film, we made a film about the man who created the atomic bomb. And for better or for worse, we're all living in Oppenheimer's world. So I would really like to dedicate this to the peacemakers everywhere.
--:-- Host Yasmin Khan: Global politics and the wars in Gaza and Ukraine hung heavy over the night. Some stars wore pins to show support for a ceasefire in Gaza. And some attendees were delayed by protesters outside the Dolby Theater.
--:-- Host Yasmin Khan: Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny was among those honored in the In Memoriam tribute. And filmmaker Mstislav Chernov became the first Ukrainian to take home an Oscar.
--:-- Host Yasmin Khan: His film, 20 Days in Mariupol, was named Best Documentary Feature. And I'm honored. I'm honored. But probably I will be the first director on this stage who will say, I wish I would never made this film. I wish to be able to exchange this to Russia, never attacking Ukraine, never occupying our cities.
--:-- Host Yasmin Khan: In the biggest surprise of the night, Emma Stone took home her second Best Actress Award for her role in Poor Things. It was widely expected to go to Lily Gladstone for Killers of the Flower Moon.
--:-- Host Yasmin Khan: Sandra, Annette, Carrie, Lily, I share this with you. I'm in awe of you. And it has been such an honor to do all of this together. I hope we get to keep doing more together.
--:-- Host Yasmin Khan: And Godzilla, an iconic movie monster that had never been nominated before, took home its very first award for Best Visual Effects. Godzilla Minus One beat out several Hollywood-backed movies with much larger budgets.
--:-- Host Yasmin Khan: Needless to say, members of the crew were ecstatic. And they even brought tiny Godzilla toys on stage to help accept their award.
--:-- Host Yasmin Khan: You can find all these stories and more in the Apple News app. And if you're already listening in the News app right now, we've got a narrated article coming up next from the San Francisco Chronicle.
--:-- Host Yasmin Khan: Reporters investigated a lethal national trend. Police chases are killing more and more Americans. The Chronicle found lax rules for law enforcement caused fatalities to climb, and a lack of government accountability has meant the true totals are going undercounted.
--:-- Host Yasmin Khan: If you're listening in the Podcasts app, follow Apple News Plus Narrated to find that story. And I'll be back with the news tomorrow.
