--:-- Shamita Basu: Hey there, it's Shamita. I've got a quick request for you. 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 a review too. It helps other people find our show and it helps us know what you like about it. Thanks.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Good morning. It's Thursday, November 6th. I'm Shemitah Basu. This is Apple News Today. On today's show, the latest escalation in Sudan's civil war, how delivery apps transformed American dining, and the scramble to secure the country's last pennies. But first, to the shutdown.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Officially the longest ever. Yesterday, we had another unprecedented announcement. The Trump administration has ordered a 10% flight reduction in 40 of the country's major airports, which Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said would bring additional disruptions.
--:-- Sean Duffy: We have seen staffing pressures throughout our airspace. Those who travel will see that we've had more delays. We've had more cancellations. We do not want to see disruptions at the FAA or here at DOT. We don't want that. But our number one priority is to make sure when you travel, you travel safely.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Duffy said high-volume pressure points would be targeted and the locations would be announced today with reductions starting Friday. He's previously warned of mass chaos for travelers if the shutdown continued. Remember, the country is already 2,000 people short of the air traffic controllers it needs.
--:-- Shamita Basu: FAA Administrator Brian Bedford suggested that the issues, if left unchecked, would prevent him from being able to declare the U.S. airline system the safest in the world.
--:-- Brian Bedford: I'm not aware in my 35-year history in the aviation market where we've had a situation where we're taking these kind of measures. I think it is unusual, just as the shutdown is unusual, just on the fact that our controllers haven't been paid for a month is unusual. These are unusual times, and we look forward to a time when we can get back to business as usual.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Until then, the shutdown is continuing to put pressure on people's lives in big and small ways. And Trump has begun to show his frustration to lawmakers, particularly after the GOP election defeats on Tuesday.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Yesterday, he gathered a group of Republican senators for a breakfast. There, he delivered his own verdict on what went wrong for the party.
--:-- Donald Trump: I think if you read the pollsters, the shutdown was a big factor, negative for the Republicans. And that was a big factor. And they say that I wasn't on the ballot was the biggest factor. But I don't know about that, but I was honored that they said that.
--:-- Shamita Basu: After the cameras left, Axios reports that it became an uncomfortable meeting. As Trump warned lawmakers, they would be seen as do-nothing Republicans if the shutdown continued. And he again called for Republicans to pursue what's long been seen as a radical option, eliminate the filibuster that is changing the Senate rules requiring 60 votes for most legislation.
--:-- Shamita Basu: But this call has inspired rare dissent from GOP leadership. Both Senate Majority Leader John Thune and House Speaker Mike Johnson have dismissed the idea, either because the votes aren't there or because they fear what it would mean if Democrats won majorities.
--:-- Shamita Basu: In his assessment of this week's election results, Johnson avoided joining Trump in pinning the blame on the congressional standoff.
--:-- Mike Johnson: What happened last night was blue states and blue cities voted blue We all saw that coming And no one should read too much into last night election results Off elections are not indicative of what to come That's what history teaches us.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Meanwhile, talks on how to get the government moving again are stepping up, according to Politico. They're centered on whether to at least agree on a short-term measure called a continuing resolution and for how long, and whether Democrats could agree to a guaranteed vote on expanding health care subsidies.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Senator Bernie Sanders outlined the steps he would need to see.
--:-- Bernie Sanders: If we had a commitment from the Speaker of the House that he was prepared to support a strong extension of ACA credits, and if the President of the United States, and I don't trust him, so you're going to have to figure out how he structured this, was saying that he was prepared to sign it, I think we should end the shutdown tomorrow, if you had that commitment. But if you simply had a nebulous vote that wasn't going to go anyplace, I think we've got to continue the fight.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Axios reports that for some Democrats, that positioning has only strengthened following the election.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Let's turn to an underreported part of the world. The ongoing civil war in Sudan has been escalating in recent weeks, and it's now being called the worst humanitarian crisis on Earth.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And a warning, this story has some graphic descriptions of war and violence. Mass executions and sexual violence have been reported, and this week a famine was formally declared.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The world has condemned the killings, but this is a complicated conflict with no clear route to peace. We spoke to Alex Duvall, the executive director of the World Peace Foundation at the Fletcher School at Tufts University and an Africa analyst for the BBC.
--:-- Alex Duvall: So this is a war between two generals who are really fighting over who gets to be the ruler of Sudan. Deval told us at its core, this conflict centers on two factions who ruled the country together after ousting the president back in 2019. But that alliance soon broke down and descended into a power struggle between the Sudanese armed forces and a militia group called the Rapid Support Forces, or RSF.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Since 2023, over 150,000 people are thought to have been killed and millions displaced. And now the war appears to be heading for a violent turning point.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Last week, the militias seized Al-Fasha, the Sudanese armed forces' last stronghold in Darfur. The people of Al-Fasha feared that they would be literally put to the sword, shot to death if Al-Fasha were overrun.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And that is what we are seeing happening today. The United Nations believes that 200,000 civilians were stuck in El Fascia at the time it was overrun by the RSF.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And shocking reports note that the devastation can quite literally be seen from space. We also have satellites that can actually track the numbers of bodies. You see them from satellite photographs like autumn leaves strewn across the streets and squares and fields of El Fascia.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And we have the reports of local humanitarian workers who tell us the stories of the survivors of these massacres and whose children come in, every single one of them malnourished and starving because hunger is being used as a weapon in this war as well as massacre.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Thousands of people have tried to flee Al-Fasha, including Ikrem Abdel Ahmed, who shared her story with a local journalist via an interpreter on PBS NewsHour.
--:-- Ikrem Abdel Ahmed: Her daughter and son were killed and she now raising her infant grandson with little to no food We came running They were chasing us firing rockets over our heads They took the men out and lined them up, and they shot them in front of us. They lined them up and shot them in the street and left them.
--:-- Shamita Basu: This is not the first time Darfur has witnessed large-scale suffering. 20 years ago, massacres in the Darfur region provoked international horror and captured the attention of Western leaders.
--:-- Shamita Basu: At the time, President Bush became the first UN Security Council member to declare it a genocide and gave billions of dollars in humanitarian aid, while A-list celebrities like George Clooney took on UN roles to raise awareness.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The capture of al-Fasha and the possibility of the RSF controlling an entire vast region of Sudan has added urgency to conversations about an end to the atrocities.
--:-- Shamita Basu: In recent days, the Sudanese armed forces rejected a U.S. proposal for a ceasefire and vowed to fight on against the RSF. But the Trump administration said yesterday they would continue their efforts with the region's stakeholders.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Is ordering in eating away at the traditional idea of the restaurant? That's the question asked in a recent piece in The Atlantic.
--:-- Shamita Basu: It wasn't so long ago that there was a clear culinary divide between what's traditionally considered a takeout food like pizza and everything else. But last year, nearly three out of every four restaurant orders in the U.S. weren't eaten in a restaurant.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The food delivery industry that didn't really exist 15 years ago brings in tens of billions of dollars each year. And as the U.S. has transformed into a nation of order-inners, restaurants are struggling to keep up.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Atlantic staff writer Ellen Cushing told us what this has meant for establishments.
--:-- Ellen Cushing: The change that is happening right now is that these full-service restaurants that previously used to be full of people on a Friday night celebrating a birthday or a graduation or something, those are the restaurants that are now being really taken over by deliveries.
--:-- Shamita Basu: In other words, as Cushing puts it in her piece, more and more new restaurants opening in big cities aren't geared toward in-person dining at all, but are basically dinner factories built for deliveries.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The shift in restaurants operating more like pickup counters was supercharged by tech companies like DoorDash and Postmates in the early 2010s.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Apps like Grubhub and Seamless stepped in to be the intermediary between customers and restaurants who weren't really sure how to build their own websites and payment portals.
--:-- Shamita Basu: These companies subsidized the cost of delivery to attract new customers and get them hooked on takeout. Customers got cheap delivery, restaurants made money, and Silicon Valley covered the difference.
--:-- Shamita Basu: That was a huge, huge change. And that kicked off an era where individual restaurants are no longer in charge of delivery. They're handing over a major part of their operation to other companies.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And that kicked off the era that we are in now where delivery is kind of eating the American restaurant.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The COVID pandemic entrenched the idea that restaurant food at home was no longer just an occasional indulgence for those who could afford it.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Restaurants who hadn't started offering delivery yet began to in order to survive. And because the people making these deliveries are generally paid by the delivery and not by the hour Cushing points out that delivery workers now have one of the most dangerous jobs in the country often feeling pressure to make as many deliveries as possible even in periods of heavy traffic or hazardous weather conditions
--:-- Shamita Basu: Delivery unleashed hundreds of thousands of vehicles onto American streets and then gave the people driving them or riding them, in the case of e-bikes, like a huge incentive to move really fast.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Eventually, delivery companies consolidated with DoorDash and Uber, which together now control about 90 percent of the U.S. market for delivery. The subsidies went away and those costs were passed on to consumers and restaurants.
--:-- Shamita Basu: We've reached a point where, as Cushing points out, customers are getting charged more, drivers are making less, and restaurants are mostly losing out.
--:-- Shamita Basu: One restaurant group owner told Cushing last year her restaurants made half their sales on delivery. Of that, 23 percent went to delivery companies.
--:-- Shamita Basu: She said, quote, delivery saved us during the pandemic, now they are killing us.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Before we let you go, a few other stories we're following. The Supreme Court expressed skepticism over the legality of President Trump's tariffs during oral arguments Wednesday.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Several of the court's conservative members, along with the liberal wing appeared doubtful the president had the authority to impose wide-ranging tariffs on goods from nearly every country the U.S. does business with.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Justice Neil Gorsuch noted that Congress has the power to levy taxes and regulate foreign commerce, and he seemed wary of expanding the president's power, asking what would prevent lawmakers from simply handing other powers, like declaring war, to the president.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The court's decision could have major implications on global trade and the economy, it's also the first big test as to whether the court will expand or limit Trump's assertion of power in his second term.
--:-- Shamita Basu: A judge criticized Justice Department prosecutors for their highly unusual handling of James Comey's case, which a judge said had a feeling of indict now, investigate second.
--:-- Shamita Basu: At a hearing yesterday, a judge pressed for direct answers on what evidence the prosecutors had and ordered them to present their materials.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Comey is charged with lying to Congress. In a case President Trump urged the DOJ to pursue, he's pleaded not guilty and says it's a vindictive prosecution.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And finally, to what's being called the penny pinch. Earlier this year, the Trump administration halted production of the penny as a cost-cutting measure.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Each penny costs 3.7 cents to make. But that left some retailers caught off guard and scrambling to shore up the remaining one-cent coins, kind of like an inverse gold rush.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The Wall Street Journal cites a Burger King operator who has told staff to stockpile them so they can continue giving customers paying with cash the change that they're owed.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And Axios mentions a supermarket chain, Giant Eagle, that held a penny exchange day, offering customers double value gift cards for whatever they brought in in pennies.
--:-- 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've got a narrated article coming up next.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The New Yorker reports on the condition known as aphantasia, which is the inability to see images in your mind, and how research shows the wide array of connections it has to things like trauma, emotional awareness, and making art.
--:-- 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. Thank you.
