--:-- Shamita Basu: Good morning. It's Monday, January 17th. I'm Shamita Basu. Duarte Geraldino is off. 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. Today is Martin Luther King Jr. Day, and Democrats are nowhere close to passing their voting rights legislation.
--:-- Mike DeBonis: They wanted to hold votes before MLK Day, but slowed down when it was clear they didn't have the numbers. It's pretty simple. If the filibuster isn't changed in some way to reduce that 60-vote margin, these bills are not passing. It's really that simple.
--:-- Shamita Basu: That's Washington Post congressional reporter Mike DeBonis. We spoke to him about what's slated to come up in the Senate this week. Legislation named for the late Congressman John Lewis would restore parts of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 that were weakened by the Supreme Court.
--:-- Mike DeBonis: DeBonis walked us through other changes Democrats want to put into law. A federal standard for voting by mail, for early voting, for ballot drop boxes, things like that.
--:-- Mike DeBonis: But it doesn't stop there. There are other things like anti-gerrymandering provisions. There's things relating to campaign finance, pilot programs for public financing of congressional campaigns, a national standard for voter ID.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The urgency to pass federal voting rights legislation comes as Republican-controlled state legislatures pass laws that'll make it harder for some people to register and vote. And we're already seeing the effects of some of these laws.
--:-- Mike DeBonis: In Texas, one county clerk had to reject hundreds of applications for mail-in ballots because of the state's strict new requirements.
--:-- Shamita Basu: This year, the family of Martin Luther King Jr. says they want to see people focusing on voting rights as they celebrate his legacy. Here's what Martin Luther King III told Washington Post columnist Jonathan Capehart.
--:-- Martin Luther King III: Voting is a nonpartisan issue. We're not going out telling people who to vote for. We're just saying make it easy, very easy for everyone to be able to vote, to cast their votes. That's what democracy is supposed to be about.
--:-- Martin Luther King III: He also told The Post that given the dynamics in Congress, right now he's hoping for a miracle. You know my dad and his team and so many others there were always dark times that it felt like things were not going to change But then something miraculously occurred And that almost where we are at this point We need something miraculously to occur
--:-- Shamita Basu: As it stands now with no Republican votes, there's no hope of beating a filibuster. Some Democrats want to change the Senate rules to get around that. But Democratic Senators Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema say they are not on board with watering down the filibuster.
--:-- Mike DeBonis: There's no doubt that this would be a major failure for Democrats. I mean, this is something they've been talking about as an existential threat to democracy for a year now. I have to say, it's also not a surprise that it's ended up here.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Closing schools has negative consequences for kids. We know that at this point in the pandemic. But in developing nations, the difference between a closed school and an open one, especially for a girl, can determine what the rest of her life will look like.
--:-- Jill Filipovich: This Bloomberg Businessweek story comes from reporter Jill Filipovich, who says pandemic disruptions are wiping out decades of progress for young women in countries like Kenya.
--:-- Jill Filipovich: She tells us the story of two teenage girls, best friends, like sisters. So Purity and Lucy were two of the first girls in each of their respective communities to go to school through high school. Both of them were hoping to graduate from high school and both of them had thought about maybe going to college.
--:-- Jill Filipovich: But when the Kenyan government shut down schools and shelters to stop the spread of COVID, these girls didn't have a choice. They had to leave their dormitories and go back to their homes. Both say they had fathers who drank heavily and were violent. They were often kicked out of their homes and forced to sleep outside.
--:-- Jill Filipovich: Almost a year later, the two teens were pregnant, and returning to school seemed like an almost impossible goal. When girls in developing countries get pregnant, they tend to drop out of school. When mothers drop out of school, their children are less likely to go to school. Those mothers are more likely to be stuck in abusive relationships.
--:-- Jill Filipovich: And so you really do see these widespread ripple effects. Filipovich writes, before the pandemic, there was a lot of progress being made for young women in low- and middle-income countries. The gender gap in education had closed in most countries Rates of child marriage and female genital mutilation had gone down And adolescent pregnancy which is the leading cause of death for young women in developing countries, was also on the decline.
--:-- Jill Filipovich: But COVID has put a halt to so much of this progress. Filipovich calls these young women the lost girls of COVID.
--:-- Shamita Basu: As for solutions, a top education official in Kenya acknowledged the setbacks from the pandemic and said they're committed to helping girls re-enter schools. And Filipovich says wealthier countries can also step in to help.
--:-- Jill Filipovich: If wealthy countries are looking around at a really hurting global economy and thinking, you know, what do we have to do to reverse course on this? Really making sure that we are investing in the future of girls and the developing world is crucial.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The South Pacific island nation of Tonga is dealing with the aftermath of a powerful underwater volcano. Saturday's eruption covered the area in ash and triggered a tsunami.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Reuters reports on the severe damage the giant wave did all along the coast. And there are now concerns about the volcanic ash contaminating the air and the water.
--:-- Shamita Basu: There's a lot we don't know about how people are doing in Tonga. Australia and New Zealand sent surveillance flights there to assess the situation. But communication is severely limited because of damage to undersea cables.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Early data suggests this eruption was the biggest in decades. It was powerful enough to be felt in the U.S. and Japan. The sound of the sonic boom was heard for hundreds of miles. and waves from the tsunami reached faraway coasts.
--:-- Shamita Basu: In Peru, two people drowned in high waves. National Geographic looks at the science behind this eruption.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Based on the geologic history of this volcano, an explosion like this is expected to happen only about once every thousand years. There was also an unusual amount of lightning as the ash particles collided and generated electrical charges.
--:-- Shamita Basu: This can happen with other volcanoes as well, but this one appears to have produced the most lightning of any eruption ever recorded. At one point, there were 200,000 discharges in an hour.
--:-- Shamita Basu: A meteorologist who tracks lightning said he couldn believe these numbers As the ash clears and Tonga is able to reconnect with the world there going to be a lot of damage to recover from
--:-- Shamita Basu: This next story is one where big business and online culture collide. We're talking about TikTok. Now, I sometimes scroll around TikTok. I like to know what's going on. And of course, I see big influencers like Charli D'Amelio.
--:-- Shamita Basu: She's a 17-year-old. She blew up on the platform with all of her dance videos. And I've noticed whether she's dancing or putting on makeup or whatever, sometimes there's a Dunkin' Donuts cup sort of lurking somewhere in the frame.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And maybe she sips on it for two seconds, but she's mostly doing other stuff. And it makes me wonder, wow, how much did Dunkin' pay for just that? I mean, this is the future of product placement.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The product, casually and subtly, made part of an influencer's day. The money those influencers are paid for all those little sponsored content moments adds up to a lot.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The biggest stars on TikTok can get half a million for a single post. Forbes estimates that D'Amelio made $17.5 million last year. That's about $4 million more than the median pay for CEOs of the biggest publicly traded companies in America.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The Wall Street Journal went deep into compensation data for big companies, and it found Charli D'Amelio's take put her ahead of the bosses of ExxonMobil, Delta Airlines, and McDonald's.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Her sister Dixie also did well. She brought in $10 million, according to Forbes, which is more than the CEO of Southwest Airlines.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Another TikTok star, Addison Rae, pulled $8.5 million last year. She just edged out the boss of Costco.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Now, this isn't that surprising. Blogs, YouTube, now TikTok. This is what the most successful people on any platform do. They build a following, and then they launch clothing lines and reality shows and build business empires.
--:-- Shamita Basu: One marketing expert says the numbers are only getting bigger.
--:-- Shamita Basu: You can find all these stories and more in the Apple News app. And when you're in the app, keep listening to hear narrated articles from our News Plus partners. We'll talk with you again tomorrow.
