--:-- Shamita Basu: Good morning. It's Thursday, May 8th. I'm Shamita Basu. This is Apple News Today.
--:-- Shamita Basu: On today's show, the Vatican's messy financial picture. Why more states are considering taking fluoride out of the public drinking water. And an AI-generated video allows a dead man to confront his killer.
--:-- Shamita Basu: But first, in the past few weeks, there's been a lot of talk of recession indicators. Some of it's been in the form of snarky memes online in response to the seesaw tariff policy from the Trump administration.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Some of it is trying to translate the general sense of economic anxiety and figure out whether it's a temporary blip or here to stay. Economists are trying to sort out what's anecdotal, vibes-based, if you will, from what's showing up in the data.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Take McDonald's, which recently saw a drop in spending in U.S. stores, as acknowledged by their chief financial officer on a recent earnings call.
--:-- Shamita Basu: People are choosing either to skip breakfast or they're choosing to eat at home for breakfast. And I think that's more to explain what's going on in the U.S. versus any kind of segment shift.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And the Washington Post reports that a number of major airlines have withdrawn their financial forecasts for the year, uncertain about how things are going to shape up.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Companies like Procter & Gamble, responsible for so many of our household brands, are raising some prices. Mattel, the makers of Barbie, have also said their prices will go up due to the administration's tariffs on China.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And for smaller businesses, the effects of the tariffs will be harder to mitigate. CNN spoke to Stephen Borelli, the CEO of a California-based clothing store, Cutts, about his concerns.
--:-- Stephen Borelli: When the 145% tariff hit, it caused a lot of stress on our business where we had to raise prices and it caused demand to go down a little bit.
--:-- Stephen Borelli: And I just want to reiterate, I am a Trump supporter and I believe he's going to figure out how to help us out.
--:-- Stephen Borelli: But I just want to say that, you know, Cutts represents the small businesses and the American dream. And the 145 percent tariff really threatens that.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Meanwhile, if you zoom out and look at the larger economic picture, many of the key economic markers have largely remained steady.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Yesterday, Fed Chair Jerome Powell kept interest rates unchanged, but said the path ahead was not clear.
--:-- Shamita Basu: My gut tells me that uncertainty about the path of the economy is extremely elevated. And that the downside risks have increased.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The risks of higher unemployment and higher inflation have risen, but they haven't materialized yet. They're really not in the data yet.
--:-- Shamita Basu: In other words, what he's saying is there's uncertainty, sure, but those recession indicators are not jumping out to him right now.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Overall, consumer spending hasn't fallen yet. The labor market has remained strong.
--:-- Shamita Basu: But some economists believe it will only be a matter of time before the tariff policy back and forth does, in fact, start to show up in data.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The New York Times reports that for some economists, the uncertainty feels a bit like hunting for clues during the pandemic.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Back then, things like a drop in restaurant reservations and screenings at TSA checkpoints were signals of potential economic damage to come.
--:-- Shamita Basu: But one challenge the Fed now faces, as Powell said, is trying to decide whether to focus more on the risk of rising unemployment or inflation going up.
--:-- Shamita Basu: If consumer confidence is low then demand may fall. Just ask the McRiddle.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And it is still possible that the current tariff outlook could change. In fact, this weekend Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent is scheduled to meet with Chinese officials to discuss trade.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Though Trump said yesterday he does not plan to change the tariffs in advance of the meeting to secure a deal.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Let's turn now to a huge problem the new pope will inherit, the Vatican's extremely messy finances.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The combination of deficit spending and financial mismanagement has driven the Vatican into unsustainable debt.
--:-- Shamita Basu: When Pope Francis was elected in 2013, he was given a mandate to fix this problem, but it only got worse.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The Vatican's deficit tripled during his tenure, though to be clear, he did try to push for reforms.
--:-- Shamita Basu: He hires auditors, essentially. One of them had been an executive at the accountant firm Deloitte, and these auditors are sort of shocked what they find.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Drew Henshaw with The Wall Street Journal spoke to us from Rome.
--:-- Drew Henshaw: There's nuns who are doing calculations and keeping budget ledgers with pencil and paper. There are clergy who are moving money from their Vatican accounts to bank accounts under a cardinal's name to hide money from the auditors.
--:-- Drew Henshaw: To understand the Vatican's finances, Hinshaw and other journal reporters met with officials from the Vatican's bank, pension fund and regulatory institutions.
--:-- Drew Henshaw: They also spoke to cardinals attending this week's conclave. A Vatican spokesman didn't respond to a request for comment.
--:-- Drew Henshaw: Several interviews had to be held in secret, with their sources citing an atmosphere of suspicion and blame over the Vatican's deteriorating financial situation.
--:-- Drew Henshaw: The journal learned members of the clergy resisted the rules Francis tried to impose, things like obtaining multiple sign-offs for expenses.
--:-- Drew Henshaw: Some tried to hide funds, citing security concerns for missionaries in countries where proselytizing is a crime.
--:-- Drew Henshaw: Hinshaw says trying to balance a budget for a papal state that's existed for more than a millennium was not a priority for many of them.
--:-- Drew Henshaw: You have clergy who, in their minds, they're doing God's work on Earth. And why an outside auditor or an accountant should tell them how to do those things, you're going to hit resistance.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The struggle between Francis and the Vatican's bureaucracy continued to escalate.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Ultimately, he decided to shift his focus to other priorities. But he kept trying to find solutions, up until pneumonia put him in the hospital for weeks this February.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Three days before he was hospitalized, Francis signed a papal directive to boost donations from the Catholic faithful, hoping that that would help.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Who will inherit the financial puzzle is still in question. Black smoke rose above the Vatican yesterday, signaling a new pope had not yet been chosen.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Now to Utah, where the first domestic ban on fluoride in public drinking water went into effect yesterday.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Florida will soon follow. On Tuesday, Florida's Republican Governor Ron DeSantis signed a bill into law that will prevent local municipalities from adding fluoride to their water starting July 1st.
--:-- Shamita Basu: It's forced medication when they're jamming fluoride into your water supply. And they did it because, you know, if you have fluoride, it'll help with dental.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And I'm not saying that's not true, but we have other ways where people can get access to fluoride When you do this in the water supply you taking away a choice of someone who may not want to have overexposure to fluoride
--:-- Shamita Basu: Dentists and public health experts are sounding the alarm saying that rolling back community fluoridation policies, which are widely considered one of the top public health success stories of the last century, could lead to a rise in avoidable dental health issues.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Fluoride is a naturally occurring mineral found in the soil, air, and in some areas, the water. Too much of it can stain your teeth, but the right amount can play a vital role in preventing tooth decay.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Dentists figured this out roughly 100 years ago, and starting in 1945, municipalities across the U.S. started to add very small amounts to the public drinking supply.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Fox reports the goal was to make sure everyone got some amount of protection from tooth decay, regardless of whether they had access to dental care.
--:-- Shamita Basu: In Grand Rapids, Michigan, the very first city to fluoridate its water, researchers monitored almost 30,000 school-aged children over the course of 15 years, and the rate of tooth decay dropped by more than 60 percent.
--:-- Shamita Basu: In 2011, the city council in Calgary, Canada, voted to remove fluoride from its water, but a decade later, residents voted to bring it back.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Calgary City Council member Giancarlo Carra spoke with NPR last year about this decision.
--:-- Giancarlo Carra: He says they noticed when fluoride was removed, tooth decay was on the rise. The rate of dental caries has increased significantly more than the rate of dental caries was increasing before.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The rate of dental caries has increased significantly more than the rate of dental caries was increasing before.
--:-- Shamita Basu: I think another meta-study came out also in that 10-year period that looked at all the other studies and made it pretty clear that, yeah, there probably are meaningful benefits.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Some people who have been outspoken opponents of adding fluoride to water, like Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., have warned that it can be dangerous and lead to adverse health effects.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And there's some truth to that if too much is consumed. Bruce Lamphere, a professor of health sciences who studies neurotoxins, told Box about research in China.
--:-- Bruce Lamphere: It compared villages with high amounts of naturally occurring fluoride in their water to villages without high levels of fluoride. And what they found is comparing the high versus the low populations, they saw about a 7 IQ point difference.
--:-- Bruce Lamphere: When it's that large, it's hard to sort of just dismiss. But what's also worth noting, we are talking about high, high levels of fluoride exposure.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Here in the United States, municipalities set fluoride limits and most follow CDC guidance, which is much lower, no more than 0.7 milligrams of fluoride per liter of water.
--:-- Shamita Basu: That's around five times less than the Chinese villages from the study Lamphere cited.
--:-- Shamita Basu: To put it another way, the National Institutes of Health says it's, quote, virtually impossible to get a toxic dose from fluoride at the recommended levels.
--:-- Shamita Basu: As Utah's ban takes effect, dentists who treat children and low-income patients told the Associated Press they're bracing for an increase in tooth decay among the state's most vulnerable people.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Still, other states are plowing ahead, with Ohio and South Carolina considering similar measures.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Before we let you go, a few other stories we're following. In other health news, Secretary Kennedy has announced a new database that will keep track of autism patients enrolled in Medicare and Medicaid.
--:-- Shamita Basu: He says it be used to help researchers studying the causes of the condition A petition criticizing the move has drawn more than 50 signatures with people saying that they felt an effective registry would be invasive and against the wishes of many families.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The Autism Science Foundation raised privacy red flags. The National Institutes of Health denied that it amounted to a registry, and the health department says it would comply with all privacy laws.
--:-- Shamita Basu: In other Trump administration news, the Wall Street Journal has some exclusive reporting on Trump's efforts to take over Greenland.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard recently ordered U.S. intelligence agencies to ramp up their spying to learn more about the movement in Greenland to seek independence from Denmark.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Remember, Greenland is a self-governing territory of the Danish kingdom.
--:-- Shamita Basu: According to two sources familiar with the intelligence effort, officers were told to collect information on how locals feel about the U.S. extracting resources from the island, which is rich in valuable minerals.
--:-- Shamita Basu: In response, Gabbard said the journal's reporting was, quote, politicizing and leaking classified information.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The Danish embassy in Washington declined to comment, and the prime minister of Greenland didn't immediately respond.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Now to what we think is a first for U.S. courtrooms, the sister of a man who died in a road raid shooting, used AI to recreate his face and voice in order to play a message at his killer's sentencing.
--:-- Shamita Basu: NPR reports that Stacey Wales was struggling to find the words after she lost her brother, Christopher, so instead she wrote something as though it was from her brother, and with the help of her husband created a hyper-realistic AI video, which said this.
--:-- [Audio of AI-generated video plays]
--:-- Shamita Basu: To Gabriel Horkasitas, the man who shot me. It is a shame we encountered each other that day in those circumstances.
--:-- Shamita Basu: In another life, we probably could have been friends. I believe in forgiveness and in God who forgives.
--:-- Shamita Basu: I always have, and I still do.
--:-- Shamita Basu: There were no objections from the judge or defense, and it wasn't used as evidence.
--:-- Shamita Basu: But NPR notes some concern from experts as to other ways AI might be used in courtrooms, and whether cases like this raise issues of consent for the deceased.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And finally, a number of news outlets have been putting out explainers on the papal conclave in recent days.
--:-- Shamita Basu: We covered this yesterday. But it seems like a lot of people, including the cardinals participating in the process, are turning to the Oscar-winning movie Conclave for a primer.
--:-- Shamita Basu: A cleric told Politico some of the cardinals now locked in the Sistine Chapel saw the film in theaters and found it very helpful.
--:-- Shamita Basu: For many of the cardinals voting in this conclave, it's their first time navigating the politics and protocol.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The majority were appointed by the late Pope Francis. And the cardinals interviewed by Politico say the film is remarkably accurate.
--:-- Shamita Basu: They're not the only ones who've been tuning in. After Pope Francis passed, streaming viewership of conclave spiked 283 percent.
--:-- Shamita Basu: You can find all these stories and more in the Apple News app.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And if you're already listening in the news app right now, we've got a narrated article coming up next.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The Los Angeles Times spoke with the creators of Girls Gone Bible. It's a podcast hosted by two Christian influencers who have no formal training in ministry, but their fan base is now larger than many of the nation's most popular preachers.
--:-- Shamita Basu: If you're listening in the podcast app, follow Apple News Plus Narrated to find that story.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And I'll be back with the news tomorrow.
