--:-- Shamita Basu: Good morning. It's Wednesday, September 14th. I'm Shamita Basu. This is Apple News Today. Each morning, hear about some of the most fascinating stories in the news and how the world's best journalists are covering them.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Tens of thousands of American railroad workers could go on strike starting Friday. If there's no deal between freight companies and unions, this could put a massive kink in America's supply chain. We spoke to Lorianne Larocco, who was monitoring the story from CNBC's newsroom.
--:-- Lorianne Larocco: It's ginormous. You have 52 percent of all rail freight ranging from bulk commodities like agriculture and energy products, chemicals for drinking water to 40 percent of consumer goods and other miscellaneous products, right, that go on retail shelves. All of these products go on rail. And the reason why is rail is actually a cheaper way of transporting your product versus truck.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The American Trucking Association estimates the U.S. would need nearly half a million extra long haul trucks daily to replace freight trains. And that's basically impossible.
--:-- Lorianne Larocco: Yesterday's inflation numbers show that prices for things we buy are still very high. We could have to pay even more if a rail strike cuts down supply.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Some unions say they want better sick time rules. And they say on-call policies are too strict, making it hard for rail workers to take care of personal and family needs.
--:-- Lorianne Larocco: I was told that, you know, some are on call for, say, 24 hours. Some are on call for 12 hours. You also have to be within 90 minutes away from the destination of where you're going to be going. So this prohibits workers from, say, going to the doctor, going to see their child's baseball game.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The rail companies say they give significant time off through paid vacation and personal days, and they're offering wage increases. They really pushing back on this quality of life accusation that the unions are putting forward.
--:-- Lorianne Larocco: Several unions have already agreed to deals with the railroad companies but some are holding out meaning that a strike could still happen at the end of this week.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The Biden administration is making emergency plans if that happens. And it's telling both the companies and the unions a strike would be too damaging to American shipping, so they need to make a deal.
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--:-- Shamita Basu: The primaries in New Hampshire, Rhode Island and Delaware were the last bit of stage setting for midterm election matchups. But the most impactful thing in the 2022 race that happened yesterday may have been a bill that has practically no chance of becoming a law anytime soon.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Republican Senator Lindsey Graham rolled out a bill to ban abortion nationwide at 15 weeks. This would override more permissive laws in some blue states.
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--:-- Shamita Basu: The bill goes further than he's gone in the past. Graham's previous proposal for a 20-week ban had some Democratic support, but this one is proving to be a hard sell even with his own party.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Politico reports on how making this move, this close to the election, has some Republicans angry. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell was quick to downplay the bill.
--:-- Mitch McConnell: Most of the members of my conference prefer that this be dealt with at the state level.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The Supreme Court decision to overturn Roe v. Wade seems to have some voters wavering about supporting Republicans. We talked recently on the show about how polls show hopeful signs for Democrats in the wake of the ruling.
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--:-- Shamita Basu: Forecasters now see some realistic scenarios where Democrats hold the Senate, maybe even the House, too. Democrats pounced on Graham's bill yesterday. The timing made it a welcome distraction from the worrying new inflation numbers.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The data helped push stock markets to their worst close in over two years. One snarky Democrat told Politico the party should send gift baskets and champagne to Graham for introducing the anti-abortion bill now.
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--:-- Shamita Basu: You can find more coverage of the 2022 campaign, including the latest primary results, on the Apple News app.
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--:-- Shamita Basu: Here's a pretty jaw number. In just two years, 109 soldiers assigned to the Fort Bragg military base in North Carolina have died. But only four of those deaths were in overseas combat.
--:-- Seth Harp: It's almost hard to know where to begin. That's me, Seth Harp. I'm an Iraq War veteran reporting on this for Rolling Stone.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And he says there are three main drivers behind these high numbers. One is suicide. They've had more suicides in the last two years than any other military base in the United States has ever experienced.
--:-- Seth Harp: The second driver, soldier-on-soldier violence with several murders. And there's a third issue. They've had a large number of drug overdoses, at least 15 and as many as 30. drug overdoses since the start of 2020.
--:-- Shamita Basu: It's important to understand what kinds of soldiers are at Fort Bragg. It's full of elite troops, the people sent on the most dangerous and stressful missions. It's the home of the Green Berets, the whole Airborne Corps, and the Joint Special Operations Command.
--:-- Seth Harp: So this is a base full of trigger pullers. It's guys who have done multiple combat deployments. And when you're seeing off the charts, suicide, drug overdoses, and homicides there, it's hard not to connect it to the amount of trauma that this community has absorbed over the last 20 years.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Harp takes a close look at drug problems at Fort Bragg. He writes about a 20-year-old named Matthew Disney. Last year, he was found dead in the barracks. The cause of death was fentanyl, except it seems that Disney thought he was taking the painkiller Percocet.
--:-- Seth Harp: Military investigators told Disney's family that what he took was a fake. Imitation pills can contain fentanyl, which can be deadly. There is an infinitesimal margin of error when it comes to fentanyl overdoses, just a tiny bit more than is expected, can kill a person.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Harp says the families of soldiers who've died at Fort Bragg say that when they try to get answers from the government about what happened to their loved ones, they're stonewalled.
--:-- Seth Harp: They want the army to acknowledge that there is a problem with drug overdoses specifically on the base And for them to do something at a minimum to educate soldiers about the dangers of the illicit drugs that are getting onto the base through drug distribution networks and drug trafficking networks.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Fort Bragg says it's increased existing steps to fight illegal drugs, including background checks on visitors, drug-sniffing dogs, and random testing of troops.
--:-- Seth Harp: I want to see more action at higher levels. Up to the Pentagon and the White House. Drug overdose deaths are rising alarmingly among active-duty military men over the last two or three years, so they really need to say something and do something about it.
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--:-- Shamita Basu: When a house is put up for sale, there's typically inspections of the roof, the wiring, the plumbing, and also the foundation. And sometimes a look deep under a house reveals pretty dark secrets.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The L.A. Times has the story of a team of structural assessors who have found all kinds of things under people's homes. And this story has all the hits, no matter what your phobia is. If it's tight spaces like me, yep, check.
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--:-- Shamita Basu: Mummified animals, black widow spiders, even a human skull that still had black hair attached to it. Okay, I gotta tell you more about the skull story because it's really wild.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The assessor who found it was so spooked, he called the cops, who showed up with a forensic anthropologist, and they were sort of relieved to learn that the skull was about 2,000 years old, from Peru.
--:-- Shamita Basu: A family member of the homeowner had gone on vacation there, found this ancient skull, thought it was pretty cool, smuggled it home and buried it under the house.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Police ended up taking the skull. No arrests were made. And the home sale eventually went through.
--:-- 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.
--:-- Shamita Basu: I'll talk with you again tomorrow. Thank you.
