--:-- [Theme music fades out]
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: Good morning. It's Tuesday, November 9th. I'm Duarte Giraldino. And I'm Shamita Basu. This is Apple News Today.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Each morning, hear about some of the most fascinating stories in the news and how the world's best journalists are covering them.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: President Biden says the new infrastructure spending plan is going to help improve America's aging water system. It's going to create jobs replacing lead and lead water pipes. So every American, every child can drink clean water, improving their health and putting plumbers in pipefitters' work.
--:-- Shamita Basu: How long have we been talking about that? It's a gigantic issue. But in Jackson, Mississippi, people have been suffering for a long time. And some of them are skeptical that real help is going to come to their city.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: 82% of the people who live there are black. And after decades of disinvestment and neglect, the city's drinking water and sewage systems, they're now in pretty bad shape.
--:-- Shamita Basu: I didn't talk to a single person in Jackson who said that they trusted the public water supply. Everyone I spoke with said that they drank bottled water exclusively.
--:-- [Griff Witte is introduced as a guest]
--:-- Griff Witte: It's a place where people have to deal with daily indignities. The fact that the schools, the public schools are substandard, the fact that the roads have potholes everywhere, and the fact that the water, when it comes out, is just not very drinkable.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The city's crumbling infrastructure turned 68-year-old Annie Bolden's yard into a mess. Woody describes the damage. She had a river of sewage running through her front yard when I was there. And that river of sewage had been there for weeks. And it was the kind of thing I was astonished when I saw this.
--:-- Griff Witte: But her next door neighbor, who's a member of the state legislature, said, you shouldn't be shocked by this. This is the kind of thing that happens all the time in Jackson.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Jackson history is one of white flight and dwindling tax dollars Its population has been on the decline for more than 40 years The city chief engineer estimates that fixing the drinking water and sewage problems could cost billion But that's more than four times the federal water money the entire state of Mississippi expects to get.
--:-- Griff Witte: In the past, state officials, including the Republican governor, have suggested the water problems are the city's responsibility.
--:-- Shamita Basu: So there's a very strong feeling among officeholders as well as residents in Jackson that this is a city that's being neglected in large part because it is predominantly Black, it is predominantly Democratic, it is poor, and there's a feeling that statewide officials who are Republican, who are white, just are not very interested in the plight of Jackson.
--:-- [Discussion turns to the nursing shortage]
--:-- Shamita Basu: The problems with Jackson's water system are really bad. But unfortunately, they're not unique. Cities like Philadelphia, Newark, and Detroit are all seeing water quality drop as their systems get older.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: Hospitals in America are seriously short of nurses. And as we prepare for a possible COVID surge during the cold weather, alongside flu season, that nursing shortage is a bigger concern.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The problem is especially bad for rural facilities. In a new survey, 96% of them say they were especially struggling to find nurses.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: Vox takes a look at what's driving the shortage of nurses in the U.S. One problem. Burnout is driving nurses to leave the workforce.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Nurses were on the front lines of the pandemic. They were dealing with extreme stress as hospitals were overloaded with patients. They saw the worst of COVID. And many decided to leave.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: The average age of a nurse in the U.S. is 50 years old. And many of them who were worn out by the pandemic decided to retire early.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Another key complication for the industry is the growth of traveling nurses. These are trained nurses who make excellent money moving from hospital to hospital, doing shorter assignments at places facing staffing crunches
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: Sometimes a traveling nurse can make four times the pay of a permanent nurse And as you can imagine here where economics kicks in People in permanent roles are getting lured away to work as traveling nurses.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Hospitals find it hard to compete for talent. Just imagine being a nurse, basically doing the same work as the traveling nurse next to you.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: Once the talk turns to money, some permanent nurses are going to be tempted to hit the road and boost their paychecks.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Then there's a question of where future nurses going to come from. There aren't enough students enrolling in nursing school programs to meet demand.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: There are proposals in Congress to do more about the talent pipeline, like forgiving student debt, funding education, and providing incentives to work in underserved areas.
--:-- Shamita Basu: But Bach says many hospitals don't even think that's going to be enough. They're preparing for a world where short staffs are the norm.
--:-- [Discussion turns to the art market]
--:-- Shamita Basu: Starting today, the world's biggest auction houses are going on a two-week selling spree. They could sell $1.6 billion worth of art, and several works are expected to go for more than $20 million a piece.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: I'm talking about big-name artists. Vincent van Gogh, Frida Kahlo, Mark Rothko, Georgia O'Keeffe.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The Wall Street Journal explains why the high-end market is so hot right now. First, you got to understand the wealthy got even wealthier during the pandemic. Their stock holdings got more valuable. Their real estate went up. They're seeing their net worth grow and deciding to spend some of it on trophy works.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: And not only that, there's also a lot of new rich people on this side of the pandemic. The Journal reports more than 5 million people worldwide became first-time millionaires last year.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And all this means art auctions are getting a little out of hand. But Christie's chairman says buyers are making up their own rules. He says they don't care if a piece is priced at $60,000. They'll go ahead and pay a million dollars for it anyway.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: Concerns about possible tax hikes also seem to be driving wealthy buyers to auction houses Now as part of the big spending plan Congress is debating it could slap new taxes on the ultra This is one of the reasons some of the richest Americans would rather sink some of their fortune into prestigious paintings rather than hand it over to the IRS.
--:-- [Discussion turns to pickleball]
--:-- Shamita Basu: I am very into this Vanity Fair article about pickleball. And this is not the place I expected to find a long read about the sport that's probably mostly associated with retirement communities.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: But this scaled down, mellowed out version of tennis now has a massive celebrity following. Leonardo DiCaprio, Jamie Foxx, the Kardashians, all big pickleball fans.
--:-- Shamita Basu: George and Amal Clooney have a pickleball court at home, and apparently she regularly smokes him.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: I might have to join the crowd and pick up a pickleball, you know, between 2019 and 2020. pickleball participation shot up more than 20% in the U.S.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Hollywood loves it for a lot of the same reasons many older people do. It's easy to play and anybody can play anybody, regardless of age, gender, how athletic you are.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: Now, tennis can get intense. Golf takes forever. Basketball is hard on the knees, but just about anybody can whack a plastic ball around a micro-sized tennis court.
--:-- Shamita Basu: So in L.A., an aging mogul can have a game with a young actor. Spouses and friends are welcome to play doubles.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: Now, this Vanity Fair writer does not solve the crucial mystery of where the sports name came from. Some say it came from a dog named Pickles who used to chase after the balls.
--:-- Shamita Basu: But whatever its origins, it's got a very bright future. The article points out that many schools are adding pickleball to their P.E. classes. And some fans are hoping next stop, the Olympics.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: You can find all these stories and more in the Apple News app while you're in the app keep listening to hear narrated articles from our news plus partners.
--:-- Shamita Basu: We'll talk to you again tomorrow.
