--:-- Shamita Basu: Good morning. It's Friday, April 16th. I'm Shamita Basu. And I'm Duarte Giraldino. This is Apple News Today.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: 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: We're following a couple of developing stories through the day on the Apple News app. In Indianapolis, police say at least eight people are dead after a shooting at a FedEx facility last night. Investigators say the shooter killed himself.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: And separately, in Chicago, people are reacting to the release of videos showing the fatal police shooting of 13-year-old Adam Toledo in March.
--:-- Shamita Basu: It's difficult to make out exactly what's happening in this footage. The Chicago incident happened at night and it unfolds quickly. Officer Eric Stillman chases after Toledo and repeatedly tells him to stop and to drop it.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: The Chicago Tribune describes, in a frame-by-frame breakdown of the video, it appears as if the teenager throws a pistol-shaped object to the ground just before he turns to face the officer. A gun is later found near the scene. Toledo's hands are up and appear to be empty at the moment that the officer shoots him.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The officer's attorney says it was clear Toledo was armed. He also says the officer had to use deadly force. Toledo's family's attorney, she's saying what's relevant here is that the teen complied with the officer's orders and didn't have a gun in the exact moment he was shot.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: Chicago's Civilian Office of Police Accountability is now investigating the shooting.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The defense in Derek Chauvin trial rested its case. Chauvin is the former Minneapolis police officer accused of killing George Floyd and yesterday he spoke to the court for the first time and made it clear he won't be testifying in this trial.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: I will invoke my Fifth Amendment privilege today.
--:-- Shamita Basu: For the past several weeks, the prosecution has urged jurors to believe their eyes, to focus on what they could see in the videos. But the defense's argument has revolved around other factors that they say contributed to Floyd's death, namely drugs in his system and heart problems.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: Harvard Law School professor Jeanne Sook-Gerson has been closely watching this trial. In The New Yorker, she reminds us, powerful videos like this don't guarantee convictions.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Take the 1991 beating of Rodney King by LAPD officers. It was also caught on tape, but the jury did not convict. As she sees it, the best option for the defense is to introduce doubt about the cause of death.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: Chauvin's lawyers only need to inspire doubt in the mind of a single juror. To do this, the defense called a medical expert to the stand, David Fowler, a former chief medical examiner for the state of Maryland.
--:-- Shamita Basu: He testified that he believes Floyd's death should be classified as undetermined because there were multiple factors. So in my opinion, Mr. Floyd had a sudden cardiac arrhythmia or cardiac arrhythmia due to his atherosclerotic and hypertensive heart disease, or you can write that down multiple different ways, during his restraint and subjured by the police or restraint by the police.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: But NPR explains, during cross-examination, Fowler said after Floyd appeared to lose consciousness after suffering cardiac arrest, he might have been revived if he had been given immediate medical attention.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Are you critical of the fact that he wasn't given immediate emergency care when he went into cardiac arrest?
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: As a physician, I would agree.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The trial is now in recess until Monday. Next week each side makes their closing arguments and then the jury will deliberate.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: President Joe Biden is on pace to accept what advocates say is the lowest number of refugees this year of any president.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Keep in mind, back in February, he promised to significantly raise the refugee cap as soon as possible. But he hasn't taken clear action yet.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: Human rights groups are confused and alarmed, saying there's really nothing standing in his way.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The Washington Post reports on what's happening behind the scenes here. Senator Dick Durbin tells the Post he heard that the Biden administration is reluctant to raise the refugee cap while it's also dealing with a separate migrant crisis at the U.S.-Mexico border.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: This refugee issue is coming at a really tricky political time. Republican critics want to paint Biden as soft on immigration.
--:-- Shamita Basu: This week, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki said Biden is still committed to raising the cap on refugees. And administration officials told The Washington Post it takes time to reassemble a system that was gutted by President Trump.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: But they didn't specify what kind of timing to expect. According to the International Rescue Committee, this fiscal year, the Biden administration admitted barely 2,000 refugees. In February, he told Congress his target was more than 62,000.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Tens of thousands of refugees have already been cleared to come over to the U.S. And right now, while activists are urging the administration to do more, those refugees are living in a state of limbo.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: Think back to the early days of the pandemic. We were all being told disinfect everything. Don't touch anything unless it was scrubbed down. Everybody started flocking to buy wipes and sprays. And suddenly, we were slathering everything that came into our homes with disinfectants.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Now that offices are starting to open up again, many businesses are showcasing their sanitization rituals as a way to inspire confidence among their employees and customers.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: But new guidance from the CDC suggests you might be better off putting down the bleach.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Yeah, The Atlantic puts it this way. Scientists have been saying this for months and months, and now the CDC is finally acknowledging the evidence on surface transmission.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: The data suggests, unlike some diseases which can be passed on through surfaces, the coronavirus primarily spreads through the air we breathe.
--:-- Shamita Basu: So sanitizing everything in sight is not going to make you much safer from COVID. You're far better off opening your windows and socializing outdoors.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: This early focus on washing and scrubbing had a huge impact on how businesses and local governments fought the pandemic. New York, for example, stopped running subways at night so that trains could be sanitized.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And daily deep cleanings are now normal at schools that resumed in-person classes.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: But even as the science says we should be focusing more on ventilation than sanitation, there hasn't been a wholesale rethinking about hyper cleanliness.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The Atlantic calls it hygiene theater and says that this focus makes us waste a ton of time and money. Plus, it might also give people a false sense of security and make them ease off on doing the things that really will help, like social distancing and wearing masks.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: You can find all these stories and more in the Apple News app. And while you're there, check out some of our audio stories.
--:-- Shamita Basu: We'll talk to you again on Monday. Thank you.
