--:-- Yasmin Khan: Good morning. It's Friday, July 12th. I'm Yasmin Khan, in for Shamita Basu. This is Apple News Today.
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--:-- Yasmin Khan: On today's show, Texans continue to face brutal heat and power outages after Hurricane Beryl, how social media affects the brains of kids and teens, and a huge weekend in soccer awaits. But first, let's take a look at some other stories in the news.
--:-- President Biden: [audio clip plays] President Biden participated in a high-stakes press conference at the end of the NATO summit yesterday. Taking questions for nearly an hour, the president addressed U.S. relations with Europe, China, and the Middle East, demonstrating detailed foreign policy acumen.
--:-- Yasmin Khan: He also fielded many questions about his age and the calls for him to step away from the presidential election. During one exchange, he erroneously referred to Vice President Harris by a different name when asked about her ability to win the election if she were at the top of the ticket.
--:-- President Biden: Look, I wouldn't have picked Vice President Trump to be vice president until I think she was not qualified to be president. So let's start there. Number one, the fact is that the consideration is that I think I'm the most qualified person to run for president. I beat him once and I will beat him again.
--:-- Yasmin Khan: Earlier in the day, he also accidentally referred to Ukraine's president, Volodymyr Zelensky as Russian President Vladimir Putin before quickly correcting himself.
--:-- President Biden: During the press conference, Biden maintained that he was the best candidate to take on former President Trump, but opened the door to the possibility that others could as well.
--:-- Yasmin Khan: But I think I'm the best qual—I know, I believe I'm the best qualified to govern. And I think I'm the best qualified to win. But there are other people who could beat Trump too. But it's all to start from scratch.
--:-- Emily Foxhall: [audio clip plays] Texans continue to face brutal heat and power outages after Hurricane Beryl. The heat index is expected to hover over triple digits for the next few days. AC plays a really big role in keeping people safe and making life more manageable here during the summer, because when you're out in the heat, it's oppressive.
--:-- Yasmin Khan: People in Houston and in Texas are very tired of having power outages. It almost feels like it's a disaster compounding a disaster. In the brutal Houston summer, outages are especially dangerous. Experts call heat a silent killer.
--:-- Emily Foxhall: Nationwide, it's responsible for more deaths every year than any other weather condition. The lack of electricity is creating other crises, straining Houston's health care system. Doctors cannot safely discharge patients to homes without power, so patients are going to a temporary medical facility at the football stadium.
--:-- Yasmin Khan: And the outages are threatening Houstonians who use medical devices at home or need to refrigerate medication. Fox Hall went to a church this week that has power and is now functioning as a cooling center for the community. Some people are storing their medicine there.
--:-- Emily Foxhall: You know, one woman had said she just picked up a couple months supply of her medication and she was really concerned about losing it. So it's not just the heat that poses a harm to people without power. There's also, you know, medical needs that hinge on having electricity.
--:-- Yasmin Khan: Foxhall says locals and lawmakers are largely pointing the finger at Houston's primary power company, Centerpoint. But the Tribune reviewed state records and found the company's actually been moving faster than ever before to get power back up and running.
--:-- Emily Foxhall: Still, residents are frustrated and feel it's not fast enough. And experts told Fox Hall the company's communication has been lacking. CenterPoint's live power outage map was downed by a storm in May and remained down when the hurricane first struck.
--:-- Yasmin Khan: Some people in Houston are so desperate for information, they're relying on a pretty unusual resource. People turned to Whataburger, sort of a beloved fast food chain here in Texas, and people were looking at a map of the Houston area that showed where Whataburger was open and where Whataburger was closed. And that's what they were using to guess where power was on and where it was not.
--:-- Emily Foxhall: And that sort of exemplified for people a big communication failing on the part of this utility that was not meeting people's expectations for telling them what to expect in terms of restoration in the days following the storm.
--:-- Yasmin Khan: The utility said on Thursday that it would start providing restoration times on its status tracker. But Foxall said there are bigger questions to address about the power grid as climate change makes hurricanes stronger and summers hotter.
--:-- Emily Foxhall: Texas has had to make a calculation about how much they want to spend on the power infrastructure we have versus how much they want to charge residents for power who live here. So the question that people are hoping that everyone from state regulators to state politicians down to everyday people who live here, that they should be asking themselves is how much are they willing to pay to make the grid stronger and how strong do they want to see the grid get?
--:-- Yasmin Khan: We got some exciting news. Shamita Basu is back from maternity leave. She'll be hosting this show very soon, but this weekend you'll be able to hear her first episode back with Apple News in Conversation.
--:-- Shamita Basu: [audio clip plays] We've seen a lot of movement these past few weeks to limit kids' exposure to social media. School bans on smartphones, the Surgeon General's proposed warning label on social media apps, and a bill being considered by Congress to boost protection for kids online.
--:-- Yasmin Khan: With more teens reporting anxiety and depression, and more research on the link between mental health and social media use, there's a lot of conversation happening about what to do about it, especially if you're a parent who's already let your child have a device.
--:-- Shamita Basu: These platforms, most of them, are now geared towards keeping your kids on for as long as humanly possible. And it doesn't seem like there's a willingness to change that.
--:-- Yasmin Khan: So you weren't wrong to give your kids a device and to give your kids access to social media. But in the absence of anyone else doing anything about it right now, I'm afraid that it's up to us to have to be the gatekeepers.
--:-- Mitch Prinstein: [audio clip plays] Kids' brains actually change when they use social media. I like to call the prefrontal cortex the brain's brakes. And when the brakes fail to work the way they're supposed to, it can be detrimental.
--:-- Yasmin Khan: So we're really seeing that social media is changing how the brain is processing information. Right now, the experience of an 8-year-old on social media is no different than a 58-year-old, right? It's not made for kids. So they're exposed to the full adult version of these platforms, but their brains aren't adult yet.
--:-- Shamita Basu: [audio clip plays] We wanted some personal stories, too. So we asked you, our listeners, what's worked for you in your homes? What's been challenging?
--:-- Mandy: [audio clip plays] We started to plant the seed early with our seven and 10-year-old. And we've made a commitment, my husband and I, not to set expectations that he and I are not prepared to follow ourselves. We weren't prepared to even be able to practice what we were expecting our kids to do because our kids are going to do what they see, not what we say.
--:-- Amy: [audio clip plays] We have four kids ages 12, 15, 17, 19. We made a rule in our house that our children get social media at age 16, at which point when they get social media, they have a time limit of about 20 minutes a day on it.
--:-- Shamita Basu: [audio clip plays] We have four kids ages 12, 15, 17, 19. We made a rule in our house that our children get social media at age 16, at which point when they get social media, they have a time limit of about 20 minutes a day on it.
--:-- Yasmin Khan: We'll have more on this story in a future episode of Apple News in Conversation. If you're listening in the Apple News app right now, that episode is queued up to play for you after the show.
--:-- Shaker Saman: [audio clip plays] This Sunday is the finals for two premier international soccer tournaments on two different continents. First in the European Championship, Spain and England will go head to head.
--:-- Yasmin Khan: Then, a few hours later, Argentina and Colombia will be battling it out for the Copa America title in a game set to take place in Miami.
--:-- Shaker Saman: We started with the Copa and the prospects for Lionel Messi and Argentina, the reigning World Cup champs, and a team that's only lost two matches out of the last 61 they've played.
--:-- Yasmin Khan: Argentina's strategy has been let Lionel Messi be Lionel Messi and good things will happen. And for the most part, it's worked out, especially in recent years.
--:-- Shaker Saman: So if I had to guess, I would say letting the greatest soccer player to ever live just absolutely cut through all of his opponents is probably a good bet for what Argentina should do this time around as well.
--:-- Yasmin Khan: The United States is the host country, and a lot of people have seen this tournament as a rehearsal of sorts for the Men's World Cup, which the U.S. will be hosting in 2026, along with Canada and Mexico.
--:-- Shaker Saman: How has the Copa gone so far? Well, if you're an American soccer fan, pretty poorly because, well, they crashed out, they fired their coach. It's a disaster. Everything's on fire.
--:-- Yasmin Khan: If you're a soccer fan, you know, it hasn't been the most confidence-inspiring tournament. There's been concerns with the quality of the fields. There have been really blatant refereeing issues. The broadcasts haven't been what you'd expect for a top-tier tournament.
--:-- Shaker Saman: And I think part of that has to do with Copa itself. There's almost a chaos inherent every year in Copa America. In the Euros, you have this very tactically based game. There's a little bit of finesse there. And then you get to the Copa, where the style of the game is so physical, it more closely resembles just dudes running around with hammers trying to hit each other.
--:-- Yasmin Khan: Okay, so then let's turn to the more polished Euros. We have Spain and England in the finals. The England men haven't won an international tournament since 1966.
--:-- Shaker Saman: Shocker, is it coming home? The question that every English person has been wondering for decades, And I think it just might be. This England team, they're not fun to watch. They do things in the most painful, excruciating way imaginable for their fans.
--:-- Yasmin Khan: Nothing comes easy. But the nature of a knockout tournament means they are 90 minutes away from winning their first trophy since the 1966 World Cup when they hosted it in England.
--:-- Shaker Saman: And it's just something beautiful about soccer and more specifically the Euros, where this has happened a couple of times. Greece, very famously in 2004, won the Euros. Playing what many described the ugliest version of championship soccer imaginable.
--:-- Yasmin Khan: And so, yeah, I think they're going to do it. I think they have an up-depth. They have the young talent. As wonderful as Spain has been and as stylistically beautiful as they have been to watch, England's going to drag them down into the mud and they somehow escape with a 1-0 win.
--:-- Shaker Saman: Thanks for having me.
--:-- Yasmin Khan: You can find all these stories and more in the Apple News app. And if you're already listening in the app, stick around for Shamita's first episode, Back with Apple News and Conversation. That's queued up to play for you next. Or you can find it in podcasts by searching Apple News and Conversation.
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--:-- Yasmin Khan: Enjoy the weekend, and we'll be back with the news on Monday.
