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--:-- Shamita Basu: Good morning. It's Friday, July 28th. I'm Shamita Basu. This is Apple News Today.
--:-- Shamita Basu: On today's show, the rise of a disturbing type of domestic violence, what all this extreme heat is doing to our bodies, and new research on the positive long-term impact of a four-day workweek. But first, let's take a quick look at some other stories in the news.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The classified documents case against former President Donald Trump is getting bigger. New charges say Trump and his staff tried to get surveillance footage from Mar-a-Lago deleted. Trump has pleaded not guilty to previous charges. As for the new ones, Trump's spokesman says they're part of a campaign of harassment against Trump and his supporters.
--:-- Shamita Basu: In Haiti, growing violence has the U.S. State Department ordering U.S. citizens to leave the country. Only emergency U.S. government employees are staying behind. The order cites spreading unrest, with armed clashes between gangs and police. Tens of thousands of Haitians have been displaced, trying to escape frequent kidnappings and other violence. The country hasn't elected a new leader since the president was assassinated in 2021.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Here in the States, the CDC is sounding the alarm about an unusual allergy to red meat spread by ticks. New data shows that around half a million people may have been affected in the last decade. That's a big jump in cases. And the CDC says many more people may be undiagnosed.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And moving to the entertainment world, Variety and the LA Times report that the Emmy Awards will be postponed. They were going to happen in September, but with actors and writers still on strike. Now the ceremony looks to be moving to January, but the details aren't yet set.
--:-- Shamita Basu: A warning that this next story involves violence and suicide. In 2020 Jeffrey Mumper shot and killed his son Jacob, daughter Emma, and wife Greta at home during the night. He also killed himself. This kind of violence is common enough in America that researchers have a name for it: family annihilation.
--:-- Mary Claire Malloy: Family annihilation is when a person, most often a man statistically, kills immediate family members. So their wife or partner, their children, their parents, their siblings.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Mary Claire Malloy reported on the impact of these kinds of killings for the Indianapolis Star. It's like a bomb detonating. It's a selfish act. One person decides to take the lives closest to him and potentially his own life. But he also is harming every single person that's ever loved those people he killed.
--:-- Mary Claire Malloy: I saw no follow-up coverage about who they were as people. And I thought that someone should look into this family and then they should also see if this is a huge problem across the nation. And, you know, as I tracked cases, I hoped it wouldn't be a story, you know, for the good of humanity. But cases piled up and I saw a trend.
--:-- Mary Claire Malloy: The Indianapolis Star analyzed data and found more than 200 family annihilations across the U.S. since 2020, with more than 750 deaths. That's about one incident every five days. Risk factors included access to a gun, previous domestic violence, and substance abuse.
--:-- Mary Claire Malloy: Malloy explained how the aftermath of a family annihilation for families and friends is especially painful. When a man or a person annihilates their family and then they also kill themselves, there is no justice for victims. There's no answers for people who are left behind. And police often don't follow up because there's nobody to arrest. There's nobody to prosecute.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Family annihilations appear to be on the rise since the pandemic, along with other domestic violence. But there's a shortage of data and understanding of how to predict and prevent these murders. Advocates say better awareness of the issue is a vital part of dealing with the nationwide problem.
--:-- Shamita Basu: We'll be right back.
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--:-- Shamita Basu: Welcome back to Apple News Today. July is on track to be the hottest month ever recorded on the planet in records going back to the 1800s. The White House announced new measures to try and help people working in the heat, including more enforcement of safety protections in agriculture and construction.
--:-- Jeff Goodell: At times in recent weeks, half of the U.S. population has been under heat alerts. And as we've talked about on this show a few times, the extreme temperatures we're feeling right now can be deadly. It is a killer in a way that all of these other kind of climate change impacts are not.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Jeff Goodell is a longtime climate reporter and my guest this week on Apple News in Conversation. He's out with a new book on heat, how it affects the human body, and what happens to us biologically when we overheat.
--:-- Jeff Goodell: Your body temperature gets to around 104, 105 degrees, which is only 6 or 7 degrees above normal. Your body actually starts sort of melting from within. The cell membranes around all of your cells actually begin to melt. This can have lasting effects. Sometimes people will have a heat stroke and get to a hospital and they will survive, but they will have permanent damage to their kidneys or other internal organs because some of the cells, cellular structures of those organs have begun to melt and there's no sort of fixing that.
--:-- Jeff Goodell: He says if you feel like you're having a heat stroke, your number one priority should be lowering your body temperature immediately, either by getting into cold water or at least into the shade. In serious cases, place ice packs on your body. Drinking water is important too, but Goodell says hydration alone isn't enough to lower your body's temperature to a safe level.
--:-- Shamita Basu: There are many cases, and I write about them in my book, where people, whether they're athletes, construction workers, wildfire fighters who are wearing heavy gear, where even though they're well hydrated, they're working in such hot conditions and accumulating so much heat so fast that even though they're sweating and all their body natural cooling mechanisms are functioning fine, they can't dump the heat out fast enough because it's so hot.
--:-- Jeff Goodell: Goodell told me we are in a new climate era and we need to find ways to adapt to the heat and cut carbon emissions to stop the planet from getting even hotter. But he also told me he hasn't lost hope for the future.
--:-- Shamita Basu: We talk about all of that and much more in this episode of In Conversation. You can find that in the podcast app. And if you're listening in Apple News right now, it's queued up to play for you next at the end of this show.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The work still gets done. The people doing it just get more and more efficient. That's the latest takeaway from one of the largest studies on four-day work weeks. The Wall Street Journal looks at how the trials, after 18 months running, are giving us insight into long-term impact on employees and companies.
--:-- Shamita Basu: After six months, workers said they were happier with their jobs and healthier in their lives. They'd cut their total average weekly work time from 38 hours to 34. A full year into a four-day week trial, data shows workers were even more efficient. They shaved off another hour per week, and through various trials of shorter weeks, workers still got the job done.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Companies report that productivity was largely steady, and they say turnover in absences went down. In one trial, the majority of companies decided to stay with a four-day week.
--:-- Shamita Basu: An advocacy group for four-day work weeks conducted this study. A Boston College economist who was involved with it told the journal about what helped people keep productivity up. A lot of it came down to scheduling, making more time for focused work and less time for meetings.
--:-- Shamita Basu: So it turns out the data backs up something you've probably thought while sitting around a conference table or staring at a Zoom screen. This meeting really could have just been an email.
--:-- 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, as I mentioned, the In Conversation episode about extreme heat is queued up for you next.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Have a great weekend and stay safe if it's hot where you are. I'll be back with the news on Monday.
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