--:-- Shamita Basu: Hey there, it's Shamita. I've got a quick request. If Apple News Today is an essential part of your morning routine, follow the show in Apple Podcasts. And if you have another 30 seconds, leave us a rating and review too. Thanks. Good morning. It's Thursday, August 15th. I'm Shamita Basu. This is Apple News Today.
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--:-- Shamita Basu: On today's show, what secret videos tell us about Project 2025's plans for a Trump presidency, Columbia University's president steps down, and the backstory on the viral Australian breakdancer. But first, a look at two major peace talks this week that are already not going as planned. One focused on Gaza, the other on Sudan.
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--:-- Shamita Basu: Getting everyone around the table has been a challenge for mediators. Hamas is not participating in initial talks today after Israel added new conditions to President Biden's ceasefire framework from several months ago. Hamas says it may re-engage depending on what Israel does.
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--:-- Shamita Basu: Meanwhile, both parties in Sudan's civil war failed to appear at the U.S.-led peace talks in Switzerland yesterday. Let's take some time to zoom in on Sudan. where the war has been raging for 16 months now.
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--:-- Shamita Basu: The fighting between the Sudanese armed forces and the paramilitary rapid support forces has created crisis conditions. An estimated 150,000 people are dead. Millions have been displaced. Roughly 25 million don't have enough to eat. That's around half the population.
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--:-- Shamita Basu: One estimate says that food shortages could kill more than 2 million people by September. PBS NewsHour special correspondent Leila Malana-Allen is just back from reporting in Sudan. She had to fight for months to get access. She focused on the civilians caught in the middle as the opposing militaries fight and trade blame.
--:-- Leila Malana-Allen: There are accusations towards both parties in this conflict that the RSF is, of course, not supplying the people in the areas they are in and that they're not allowing aid to come in, and that the Sudanese armed forces are blocking aid organizations from crossing into RSF territory.
--:-- Leila Malana-Allen: The accusation is both because they don't want the RSF to get their hands on this aid, and secondly, because they want people, no matter how dangerous it is, to leave RSF areas because that supports their cause. So we're seeing people facing horrific conditions.
--:-- Leila Malana-Allen: Milana Allen says many people in Sudan don't see this as a war between rival generals. It feels like a war on civilians. The RSF will come on the back of Toyota pickup trucks with guns with shoulder-held rocket launchers. So they attack incredibly swiftly and people really don't have time to do anything except drop what they're doing and run.
--:-- Leila Malana-Allen: That means families get separated from each other. That means that people leave all money, all possessions, all food they have behind them. Everywhere I went to, and we're really talking about makeshift displacement camps, we're talking about people living in bus stations.
--:-- Leila Malana-Allen: The authorities are just completely overwhelmed. The aid organizations don't have the money to help everyone because they're not being funded properly. The U.S. has accused both the RSF and the Sudanese military of war crimes. Aid groups have called the war in Sudan the largest humanitarian crisis in the world.
--:-- Leila Malana-Allen: Yet it's not getting the same attention, funding, and urgency from the international community compared to other conflicts. Getting aid to and around Sudan is difficult. Infrastructure has been decimated and the health care system is under intense strain.
--:-- Leila Malana-Allen: According to UNICEF, at least 77 hospitals have been attacked since the start of the war. And Doctors Without Borders has warned that the last operating public hospital in North Darfur is at risk of closing after undergoing severe damage in recent fighting.
--:-- Leila Malana-Allen: For Milana Allen, the scale of devastation she saw during her trip was crushing. The civilians she spoke with told her they couldn't understand why aid has been so slow to arrive.
--:-- Leila Malana-Allen: It's deeply apparent to the people who are waiting for help. They say, "Why don't we matter? What do people think we're doing here? Why is no one standing up and helping us? Why is the international community not forcing this to stop?"
--:-- Shamita Basu: Let's turn to Project 2025, the controversial policy agenda for the next conservative presidential administration created by the Heritage Foundation.
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--:-- Shamita Basu: There's been a lot of talk about their nearly 900-page policy book that lays out a blueprint for overhauling the federal government. Recently, the organization announced it would pivot away from policy work, and the Trump campaign has tried to distance itself from the group.
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--:-- Shamita Basu: But that's not to say Project 2025 is winding down. What's new here is another key pillar, you could say, of Project 2025, which is training future political appointees to serve in a government, a future Trump administration, if Donald Trump wins in November.
--:-- Andy Kroll: That's right. Andy Kroll, an investigative reporter with ProPublica, got his hands on 23 never-before-published training videos for Project 2025 aimed at coaching future conservative political appointees.
--:-- Andy Kroll: He watched all 14 hours which covered everything from the basic nuts and bolts of government work to how to avoid creating a paper trail.
--:-- Andy Kroll: There were many appearances from alumni of the Trump administration. 36 different speakers appear in the videos, and of those 36 speakers, 29 of them have a direct link to former President Trump.
--:-- Andy Kroll: Some gave advice on how to outmaneuver the courts and other government bureaucrats. Hey, look, we did some things right. We did some things wrong. We got stopped in the courts with some of our rules and regulations and policies.
--:-- Andy Kroll: Here's why that happened. And here is how you, future political appointee, can avoid that from happening in the future if you learn from what we did before.
--:-- Andy Kroll: And Kroll said there were some revealing policy discussions. A former Trump administration official talks about the need to, quote unquote, eradicate all references to climate change in federal government documents because climate change is not really a real threat.
--:-- Andy Kroll: It's not a real issue. There is a reference in these documents to abortion as murder, which obviously has pretty serious implications for the debate around reproductive health and reproductive rights.
--:-- Andy Kroll: And then there are all kinds of other smaller policy-related matters, a lot of them kind of on the cultural side of things, reference to critical race theory, reference to gender and racial justice.
--:-- Andy Kroll: Most of the people featured in these videos did not respond to his request for comment. Neither did the Heritage Foundation.
--:-- Andy Kroll: In one of the videos, a former Trump White House staffer who served on his 2016 transition team talked about why personnel preparation is so important.
--:-- Andy Kroll: He said it was tough to fill all the necessary positions in the early days of the 2016 administration. So establishing a database of ready-to-go potential appointees will be key.
--:-- Andy Kroll: That way they can carry out Project 2025's conservative agenda right away. They don't want to repeat the mistakes of 16 and 17 where they were unprepared.
--:-- Andy Kroll: and didn't have that list of people ready to go. They want to be able to, as Project 2025 says on its own website, have people ready to hit the ground on day one and start putting these policies into action.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Kroll's full report is on the Apple News app, where you can watch some of these secret training videos for yourself.
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--:-- Shamita Basu: Before we let you go, a few other stories being featured in the Apple News app. First, Columbia University's president is out. Minouche Shafiq said she's leaving after what she called, quote, a period of turmoil where it has been difficult to overcome divergent views across our community.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Her time was short, and the war in Gaza started just months after she took the job. Some of the biggest protests were at Columbia. Shafiq was heavily criticized for calling in police to evict pro-demonstrators who set up encampments and occupied a building.
--:-- Shamita Basu: But unlike the presidents of Harvard and Penn, Shafiq wasn't forced out during that period of campus demonstrations. So it might sound surprising to hear that Shafiq is leaving now, so long after protests died down.
--:-- Shamita Basu: But in many ways, Columbia is still tense. Just this month, three deans resigned. Shafiq had reprimanded them for text messages that were dismissive of concerns about anti-Semitism.
--:-- Shamita Basu: In her resignation letter, Shafiq said it was best that she left, given the impact all the controversies have had on her family and the university community.
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--:-- Shamita Basu: On to international news, where the World Health Organization says M-pox is now a global health emergency.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The disease, formerly known as monkeypox, is spreading in several African countries, including South Africa, Kenya, and Rwanda. Symptoms include fever, muscle aches, and respiratory distress.
--:-- Shamita Basu: It's especially dangerous for children and people whose immune systems are compromised. There are M-pox vaccines, but they're in short supply.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The new WHO emergency declaration could help raise attention and money to fight the outbreak.
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--:-- Shamita Basu: And finally, we are witnessing the life cycle of a viral moment. This one is about the Australian breakdancer at the Paris Olympics.
--:-- Shamita Basu: You've probably seen some videos by now. Lots of writhing around on the floor, erratic jerks, a move that could only be described as kangaroo hops.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Clips got shared, dubbed, and relentlessly memed on social media. Then came the criticism. Some wondered how the dancer got to the Olympic stage in the first place.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Well, we are now entering our fact-checking era of the viral story. Vox has the backstory on how the dancer Ray Gunn, whose real name is Rachel Gunn, got chosen to represent Australia.
--:-- Shamita Basu: She's got a PhD in breaking and has spent years in international breaking competitions. When Olympic qualifiers rolled around, she won by a majority decision of a 10-judge panel.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And Vox points out while the rest of the world is scrutinizing her, the actual breaking community is rallying behind her.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The head judge of the Olympic event said, breaking is all about originality and bringing something new to the table, which is exactly what Reagan was doing.
--:-- Shamita Basu: 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 have a narrated article coming up next. It's about what happens when Ozempic basically takes over an entire town.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Bloomberg Businessweek traveled to a place in America with the highest concentration of people on prescription weight loss drugs.
--:-- Shamita Basu: You might think it's some image-obsessed coastal city like L.A. or New York. In fact, data shows that it's tiny, Bowling Green, Kentucky.
--:-- Shamita Basu: 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.
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--:-- Shamita Basu: Thanks for listening to Apple News Today.
