--:-- [Upbeat music fades out, and the host, Yasmin Khan, begins speaking]
--:-- Yasmin Khan: Good morning. It's Wednesday, March 6th. I'm Yasmin Khan, in for Shamita Basu. This is Apple News Today.
--:-- Yasmin Khan: Coming up, the U.S. airdrops another round of aid into Gaza, a historic first in college sports, and how to cast a ballot from outer space. But first, let's take a quick look at some major stories in the news.
--:-- Yasmin Khan: Republican Nikki Haley is now out of the presidential race. She suspended her campaign this morning. That effectively gives former President Trump the GOP nomination and sets up a rematch with President Biden.
--:-- Yasmin Khan: Last night, Haley won only Vermont. Trump spoke to supporters gathered at Mar-a-Lago after his victories in 14 other states.
--:-- Yasmin Khan: Well, thank you very much. They call it Super Tuesday for a reason. This is a big one.
--:-- Yasmin Khan: President Biden said in a statement that voters showed they're ready to fight to keep Trump from getting another term.
--:-- Yasmin Khan: Biden won big last night, as expected, though he did have a surprise loss in American Samoa to a political novice, entrepreneur Jason Palmer.
--:-- Yasmin Khan: Also, more Democratic voters chose the option uncommitted as a protest vote of Biden's backing for Israel in the Gaza War.
--:-- Yasmin Khan: Further down the ballot, the race to succeed late California Senator Dianne Feinstein is set. Democratic Congressman Adam Schiff and Republican Steve Garvey, a former Major League Baseball star, advanced to the general election.
--:-- Yasmin Khan: And in Texas, Congressman Colin Allred, a former NFL linebacker, won the Democratic Senate primary. The party sees him as someone who could be strong enough to unseat Republican Senator Ted Cruz.
--:-- Yasmin Khan: Speaking of the Senate, Arizona Senator Kyrsten Sinema is leaving. She says she won't run for re-election.
--:-- Yasmin Khan: She left the Democratic Party in 2022 and would have faced a difficult campaign against Republican and Democratic opponents.
--:-- Yasmin Khan: Sinema gained a reputation as a dealmaker who bridged gaps between parties in a closely divided Senate. She also made enemies on the left who felt she was too sympathetic to conservatives.
--:-- Yasmin Khan: You can get more political analysis including all the Super Tuesday races on the Apple News app.
--:-- Yasmin Khan: The U.S. has airdropped another round of humanitarian aid into Gaza, where at least a quarter of the population is on the brink of famine.
--:-- Yasmin Khan: The drop was coordinated with Jordan's Air Force and included close to 40,000 meals, just a sliver of the amount desperately needed for more than 2 million Palestinians.
--:-- Yasmin Khan: For the U.S., the airdrops are a new attempt to address the humanitarian crisis, but not for Jordan.
--:-- Yasmin Khan: Since November, the country's Air Force has dropped aid into Gaza by air more than a dozen times.
--:-- Yasmin Khan: Washington Post reporter Sarah Dadouche recently flew with them in one of these drops, which was aiming for a hospital.
--:-- Yasmin Khan: And from the sky, you can see the destruction. You can see what looks like stable, what looks like normal structures.
--:-- Yasmin Khan: And then around it, you just see the kind of fainted gray of rubble. And it's quite massive in scale, even from the sky.
--:-- Yasmin Khan: The crates strapped by Jordan typically contain supplies like food, medicine, diapers, and other necessities.
--:-- Yasmin Khan: Israel approves the airdrops and the timing. Gazans are not told when they're coming.
--:-- Yasmin Khan: Dardouche says witnessing the devastation in Gaza has been especially difficult for many Jordanians.
--:-- Yasmin Khan: The Palestinian issue is a very emotional, evocative issue for many Arab countries, but specifically Jordan, who has a large number of its citizens and residents are of Palestinian origin.
--:-- Yasmin Khan: One member of the Air Force who was on the plane with Dardouche shared that he'd been sleeping at their base for weeks so he could keep working.
--:-- Yasmin Khan: He just couldn't imagine going home when they finally had a chance to help what they see as their brothers.
--:-- Yasmin Khan: Before the war, the amount of aid entering Gaza did not come close to meeting the humanitarian needs of civilians, according to aid agencies.
--:-- Yasmin Khan: That was when roughly 500 trucks per day entered Gaza. The number has steadily dropped since.
--:-- Yasmin Khan: By January, it was 170 trucks of aid on average. By February, just 98.
--:-- Yasmin Khan: With so few aid trucks getting in, countries like France, Egypt, and the United Arab Emirates have joined efforts to airdrop aid.
--:-- Yasmin Khan: But Dadouche says it won't be a long solution.
--:-- Yasmin Khan: The issues with delivering aid via airdrops is that they exorbitantly expensive.
--:-- Yasmin Khan: They are best when trying to serve a specific area with specific needs, and there's no alternative route.
--:-- Yasmin Khan: But because of the expense, aid is not going to go in as quickly and in as large amounts as it needs to go into Gaza.
--:-- Yasmin Khan: Trucking is the main solution.
--:-- Yasmin Khan: Now, to a landmark development in the world of college sports and organized labor in America.
--:-- Yasmin Khan: Yesterday, players on Dartmouth's men's basketball team voted to form a union.
--:-- Yasmin Khan: That puts them in position to make history as the first unionized players in American college sports.
--:-- Yasmin Khan: Forming a union would allow players to collectively bargain with the school over pay and working conditions.
--:-- Yasmin Khan: This is a big deal that could dramatically change the sports landscape.
--:-- Yasmin Khan: For years, college athletes have argued that they deserve to be paid and treated like employees, especially as certain sports, like basketball and football, have become mega-moneymakers for a lot of schools, bringing in billions of dollars.
--:-- Yasmin Khan: Here's Kevin Blackistone, a frequent panelist on ESPN and a guest on a recent episode of Apple News in Conversation.
--:-- Kevin Blackistone: They've made so much money recently that in the past year, they've been able to pay their head football coaches on average $6.2 million a year.
--:-- Kevin Blackistone: Players have said they should be paid too, and not just money, but also better health care.
--:-- Kevin Blackistone: Blackistone told us about an event he attended at the University of Maryland.
--:-- Kevin Blackistone: A student said she resented athletes already getting a lot of preferential treatment.
--:-- Kevin Blackistone: And an athlete had a strong response.
--:-- Kevin Blackistone: He said, well, I understand your point of view, but I just want you to know that I've been on a gurney four times for playing football.
--:-- Kevin Blackistone: You may have to sacrifice time or you may have to figure out a way to piece together enough money to continue her education here at the University of Maryland.
--:-- Kevin Blackistone: He said, but I'm giving my body. I have to persevere in a different sort of way.
--:-- Yasmin Khan: As for the Dartmouth players, their battle to unionize isn't over.
--:-- Yasmin Khan: The school is appealing to federal labor officials.
--:-- Yasmin Khan: Dartmouth argues that students can be classified as employees simply because they play basketball.
--:-- Yasmin Khan: And the NCAA has opposed union efforts.
--:-- Yasmin Khan: Let's end the show on one more Super Tuesday-related story.
--:-- Yasmin Khan: For a small group of American voters, their Super Tuesday polling place was 250 miles above Earth aboard the International Space Station.
--:-- Yasmin Khan: Astronauts have been voting from space for almost 20 years now.
--:-- Yasmin Khan: The Texas state legislature passed a bill allowing it in 1997.
--:-- Yasmin Khan: USA Today explains the voting process for astronauts starts roughly a year before they leave for a mission on the space station.
--:-- Yasmin Khan: Those missions typically last around six months.
--:-- Yasmin Khan: The actual voting is not so different from what it's like here on Earth.
--:-- Yasmin Khan: NASA astronaut Kate Rubins voted in two presidential elections from space, from a very small voting booth that the crew assembled in their living quarters.
--:-- Kate Rubins: And so we fill out, it's called a federal postcard application for voting overseas.
--:-- Kate Rubins: And I don't know that I'm technically overseas. We are far away from the United States at times, depending on our orbit.
--:-- Kate Rubins: So we fill out this application. We actually get the ballot is encrypted to us.
--:-- Kate Rubins: We send it back down to our county clerk and they record the vote.
--:-- Yasmin Khan: A few years back, NPR spoke with a Texas clerk, Mary Ann Daigle, about receiving ballots from orbit.
--:-- Yasmin Khan: It's kind of exciting when you open up your computer in the morning, you got a message from outer space or something like that.
--:-- Yasmin Khan: And there's one extra cool perk of voting this way, the ability to list their home address as low Earth orbit.
--:-- Yasmin Khan: You can find all these stories and more in the Apple News app.
--:-- Yasmin Khan: And if you're already listening in the News app right now, stick around.
--:-- Yasmin Khan: We've got a narrated article coming up next from The New Yorker.
--:-- Yasmin Khan: It has an extensive interview with President Biden on his final presidential campaign and why he and the White House are so confident, even while many Democrats worry he could lose.
--:-- Yasmin Khan: If you're listening in the podcast app, follow Apple News Plus narrated to find that story.
--:-- Yasmin Khan: And I'll be back with the news tomorrow.
