--:-- Gideon Resnick: Good morning. It's Thursday, June 12th. I'm Gideon Resnick in for Shamita Basu. This is Apple News Today.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: On today's show, the rare minerals at the heart of a trade truce between China and the U.S. Why some states have more gun deaths than others. And the importance of K-pop and giant trash balloons in diplomacy with North Korea. But first, a Boeing passenger jet bound for London carrying 230 passengers and 12 crew members crashed into India shortly after takeoff.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: Indian authorities say emergency crews have recovered over 200 bodies. They and airline officials did not rule out the possibility for survivors. And police are reporting dozens of injuries, which could include both passengers and people on the ground.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: The Air India flight was leaving the western city of Ahmedabad on Thursday, and crashed in a nearby residential area. It hit a dining hall of a local medical college, and the dean of the school reports that at least five students were killed.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: The passengers on board were from India, the UK, Canada, and Portugal, according to Air India. This is the first time that a Boeing Dreamliner has been involved in a fatal crash, and it's not immediately clear what caused it.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: The NTSB said Thursday that a team of U.S. investigators would travel to India to support an investigation, which will be led by India. In recent years, Boeing has been mired in safety and production issues, and this crash will bring new scrutiny to the company.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: In a statement, Boeing said, quote, its thoughts are with the passengers, crew, first responders, and all affected. This is a quickly moving story, and you can find the latest information in the Apple News app.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: The protest movement against federal immigration raids is spreading. There were some isolated demonstrations again in L.A. yesterday, in small parts of the downtown area and across Orange County.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: And more demonstrations have popped up in cities like New York, Chicago, Seattle, Dallas, and Atlanta. As they've spread, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth told senators at a hearing yesterday in Washington, that the government is considering deploying troops to more cities.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: And to do so, he said they'd use the very same order issued earlier this week, that when authorized sending thousands of National Guard troops to L.A. Hegseth's comments came in response to a question from Hawaii Senator Brian Schatz, a Democrat, who wanted the defense secretary to explain why that order did not specify where exactly the government could choose to deploy troops and what types of troops it could send.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: I'm just trying to figure out, did you just potentially mobilize every guard everywhere and every service member everywhere? Part of it is getting ahead of a problem so that if in other places, if there are other riots in places where law enforcement officers are threatened, we would have the capability to surge National Guard there if necessary.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: Right now, members of the National Guard and Marines deployed to L.A. are authorized to protect federal property and personnel. They can participate in law enforcement if Trump invokes the Insurrection Act, which he has said he's considering.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: But for now, these troops can only detain people. They cannot make arrests, and they're supposed to hand people over to local law enforcement immediately.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: Today, we're going to take a closer look at how local police in L.A. have responded to the protests so far and the tactics that they've been using. To disperse protesters, police have used what are often described as, quote, non-lethal munitions.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: But a lot of news outlets like Reuters now describe them as quote less lethal because many of these weapons have led to serious injuries and in some past cases death In a high incident captured on live TV a police officer fired at an Australian journalist with a projectile.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: The LAPD moving in on horseback, firing rubber bullets at protesters, moving them on through the heart of LA. You just f***ing shut the f***ing. She wasn't seriously hurt, but one British photojournalist had emergency surgery, when he felt a plastic bullet hit his thigh.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: Reuters has been examining the weapons that LA police have used based on eyewitness accounts and what the LAPD itself has shared. A number of journalists and media outlets have documented the use of rubber bullets, which are often made of metal, wood, or hard plastic, and they're only coated in rubber.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: Reuters, however, reports that the LAPD says they use bullets made of hard foam, along with beanbag rounds that contain rubber and some lead. Rubber bullets can cause long-term serious damage or fatalities depending on where a person is hit.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: These bullets have been linked to blindness, traumatic brain injuries, organ injury, and broken bones. Police have been spotted striking people with batons as well as using tear gas and pepper spray, two other common deterrents.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: These chemical irritants can cause temporary blindness and make it difficult for people to breathe. Long-term effects are less common, but they can include asthma, wheezing, loss of vision, and even nerve or brain damage.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: It's been difficult for journalists to tally the total number of injuries caused by police in the L.A. protests so far. But according to research from the University of Illinois-Chicago, cited in Wired, police force of all types results in 75,000 non-fatal injuries requiring hospital treatment and 600 to 1,100 deaths every year.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: Now to trade, where after several days of negotiations, the U.S. and China agreed to a truce of sorts. Now the two biggest economies are back on track in terms of upholding an initial trade agreement both sides forged in Geneva in May.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: Lingling Wei, the chief China correspondent for The Wall Street Journal, has been following these talks. When they met in Geneva, the countries agreed to lower tariff rates for a temporary period. But since then, the U.S. and China have accused each other of violating parts of the deal, and they each implemented punitive measures.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: This latest agreement, which Trump announced on social media, rolls back some of those penalties and effectively returns to the terms that were agreed to in May. So not all the barriers brought up since February have come down, and the framework still does need to be formally approved by President Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: But some initial details of the plan have been shared. The tariff rates will not change. Trump says that tariffs on imports from China will be 55 percent, and China agreed to a 10 percent tariff on U.S. imports.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: But Trump says that he is dropping his plan to revoke visas for Chinese students. And the United States has agreed to remove some recent restrictions on the sale of things like jet engines and other raw materials to China.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: And the Chinese have agreed to resume exports of rare earth and some other critical minerals to American automakers and other manufacturers. Rare earth minerals were a major sticking point in these negotiations.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: They are a group of 17 metallic elements which show up in products that we use every day. Cars, computers, smartphones, magnets, LED lights, MRI machines, and a whole lot more.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: Until the 1980s, the U.S. dominated the rare earth industry. But these days China owns about 70 of the world supply In fact it owns the entire global supply of samarium That a rare earth metal used by the U military to manufacture missiles fighter jets, certain types of bombs, and other military gear.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: So in this case, China is holding some big leverage over the United States. In recent weeks, while negotiations were stalled, the U.S. auto industry has been frantic to find alternate sources of rare earth minerals, with some factories threatening to shut down.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: But China agreed to only ease restrictions on rare earth export licenses for six months. That gives Beijing an upper hand if trade tensions escalate again. It's conceivable if the U.S. does something that the Chinese side perceives as provocative, they might, you know, suspend the sale of rare earth again.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: So it's agreement for now, but how long it will last is anyone's guess. If the United States wants to change this power balance, it will need to ramp up domestic rare earth production.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: An expert on these minerals told the New York Times it would take five years for the U.S. to break its dependence on China. But he says the domestic industry is making significant progress.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: Nevertheless, supply chain executives told CNBC the damage from the various trade frictions won't be easily reversed, with job losses and higher consumer prices still likely.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: Now to some new research that's been tracking the impact of state-level gun laws on fatalities, especially among kids and teens, where it has been the number one cause of death in the U.S.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: The results suggest the numbers have been diverging between states, and that local laws could hold the key for understanding why. It all goes back to a 2010 Supreme Court ruling.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: That ruling said the Second Amendment doesn't just apply at the federal level. It applies to state and local governments, too. The ruling gave states the power to regulate firearms independently of the federal government, so long as their laws complied with the Second Amendment.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: An NPR health correspondent, Ritu Chatterjee, told us that state policies started to change quickly. Many states went on to make it easier for people to own and carry firearms, whereas other states like California ended up passing regulations that essentially made it harder to own and carry a firearm, you know, putting in restrictions like background checks and things like that.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: The rate of pediatric mortalities started to change quickly state to state as well. The research published by the American Medical Association measured that change by organizing states into three categories based on their firearm laws after the court's ruling.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: The most permissive states had the loosest regulations, where it's easier for residents to get a firearm quickly and to carry it openly. Then there's a middle group, the permissive states. And finally, the least permissive states, places with strict gun regulations, like waiting periods and background checks.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: Researchers measured over a period from 2011 to 2023 and compared the overall deaths to the decade prior. States that made it easier to carry guns, about 30 total, saw the biggest rise in gun-related deaths in kids and teens.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: That was almost in excess of 6,000 deaths than they would have seen had these laws not changed to become easier than what they were before. In the second group, the permissive states, there was also an increase in deaths, putting the total number of preventable deaths in these two groups of states at over 7,000, or 500 deaths a year.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: Whereas in the least permissive groups so in the states with the strictest gun regulations they did not see a rise in pediatric mortalities In fact in four California Maryland New York and Rhode Island they dropped significantly
--:-- Gideon Resnick: And these states, as Dr. Maya has, an emergency physician at the University of Colorado School of Medicine explained to Trottergy, could provide a window into how to lower the number of kids and teens killed by guns in states nationwide.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: This doesn't mean we should change all our laws at once, but it says perhaps if we could look at these laws and see which ones are effective, then we could start moving towards safety.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: Before we let you go, a few other stories we're following. Yesterday, a jury in New York convicted Harvey Weinstein of sex crimes for a second time.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: This case is a retrial of his 2020 New York conviction, which a state appeals court overturned last year on procedural grounds. The disgraced Hollywood producer was accused of sexually assaulting three women, including an aspiring actor, a TV producer, and a 19-year-old model.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: So far, the jury has reached decisions on two of those three charges. Weinstein was found guilty of one count of criminal sexual act in the first degree, and not guilty of another count for the same charge.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: Today, the jury will reportedly reconvene to decide on the third charge. Weinstein has pleaded not guilty to the charges.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: In Washington, the Trump administration decided to rehire more staffers who had been previously let go as part of an effort by DOGE to downsize the federal government.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are set to bring back more than 450 staffers that were let go in a previous reorganization effort.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: Stat reports that those staffers worked at a number of key divisions within the CDC. That includes ones that work to keep cruise lines safe, to track and prevent HIV, and to prevent childhood lead poisoning.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: The move comes amid other recent efforts from the federal government to bring back workers who had been previously let go.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: Additionally, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. named eight new members to a CDC vaccine committee after firing the prior group earlier this week.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: The new members, NBC notes, include vaccine skeptics and others who have been critical of pandemic lockdowns.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: And finally, a detente of sorts between North and South Korea. The latter's new president has switched off high-powered loudspeakers that had been broadcasting news and propaganda and even K-pop music into the neighbor's country.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: It could mark an end to the recent tit-for-tat confrontation between the two nations that's come to resemble a kind of diplomatic trolling.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: Before being impeached, the former South Korean president had given a free pass for activists to launch large balloons into the North that criticized Kim Jong-un.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: In response to that, North Korea began sending their own balloons loaded with cigarette butts and other trash. And as the South turned up the loudspeakers, the North responded with eerie noises, so unpleasant that nearby Southern residents began installing sound insulation.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: A spokesperson for South Korea's president said that he hoped the K-pop withdrawal would, quote, restore trust and help build peace on the Korean peninsula.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: You can find all these stories and more in the Apple News app.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: And if you're already listening to the News app right now, we have a narrated article that is coming up next.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: Bloomberg Businessweek goes inside a hack at the SEC by a notorious gang of Ukrainian cybercriminals.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: How the regulator downplayed the breach and how their system could still be vulnerable today. If you're listening in the podcast app, follow Apple News Plus Narrated to find that story.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: And I'll be back with the news tomorrow. Thank you.
