--:-- Duarte Giraldino: Good morning. It's Thursday, May 27th. I'm Duarte Giraldino. And I'm Shamita Basu. This is Apple News Today. 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: President Biden wants to know how the coronavirus pandemic began. NPR has this story. He's saying he's giving the U.S. intelligence community 90 days to gather more information and move closer to a definitive conclusion. So far, the president says the intelligence community has coalesced around two likely scenarios. One, that the coronavirus came from human contact with an infected animal, or two, that it came from a laboratory accident in Wuhan.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: Biden says most intelligence entities don't think there's enough data to reach a conclusion. The Chinese embassy in the U.S. is calling the idea of a lab leak, a conspiracy theory. It says the world should focus on fighting the pandemic, not on what it calls political manipulation and blame game.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Biden says the CDC's lack of access in China has hurt efforts to investigate COVID-19's origins. He says the U.S. and global partners will continue to press China to cooperate fully with an investigation.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: When it comes to getting COVID-19 vaccines for their people, developing countries are losing out to rich ones. Now a fight's breaking out over whether waiving drug patents could make shots more widely available. The Wall Street Journal reports on this battle.
--:-- Shamita Basu: In one corner, you have the Biden administration and developing countries. In the other, you have the global drug companies and nations including Germany and Japan. Some background here. Earlier this month, the U.S. backed a proposal to temporarily waive some intellectual property protection. The idea was this would allow countries to make their own versions of existing vaccines.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: India and South Africa are among those that have been pushing for this plan. After the Biden administration spoke out, pharma companies started intensifying their lobbying and PR efforts. This industry consistently fights to protect its patents; it doesn't want a precedent to be set that could impact future drugs.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And as the journal explains, pharma lobbyists argue there are better ways to deliver more doses to the developing world. These include better distribution and having companies form voluntary partnerships.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: And this lobbying, it could get even more intense in the months ahead. See, the World Trade Organization has a conference coming up in November, and it has the power to grant drug patent waivers. So the stakes are high ahead of that meeting.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Meanwhile, there's this international initiative to get vaccines to the developing world, and it's off to a slow start. It's called COVAX. Its goal is to deliver 2 billion doses by the end of this year, but so far, it's only a bit over 3% of the way towards reaching its target.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: Vox explains a few reasons why COVAX isn't getting results faster. One problem is money. There wasn't enough, and what did come in arrived too late to reserve enough doses. A second challenge? Tight vaccine supply, driven by raw material shortages and production bottlenecks.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And finally, many rich countries aren't sharing vaccine doses, even though in some cases they have far more than they're likely to need.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: Laura Bembry owes $127,000 in student debt. For many years, she was writing a check for $750 a month, and it really stretched her budget. During the pandemic, she says for the first time in a long time, she was able to save a little money for emergencies, thanks to forbearance.
--:-- Shamita Basu: But if lawmakers don't extend this pause in payments past the end of September, Laura and millions of other people are going to have to start making student loan payments again.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: BuzzFeed News introduces us to several people like Laura who benefited from forbearance. They're all worried about what's going to happen this fall.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Temporary relief from federal student debt allowed people like Allie Gritty from Minneapolis to start saving for a family. She owes more than $100,000 in student loans. She has the gene that causes ALS. Loan forbearance made it possible for her to save enough money to pay for an IVF process that could prevent her from passing the ALS gene to her children.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: Jonathan Magers-Zayas from upstate New York owes $110,000 in student loans. He and his husband haven't made a payment in 13 months. They kept their jobs during the pandemic, and by not making student loan payments, managed to save up enough money to make a down payment on a house.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Jonathan says it's frustrating that student loan forgiveness is used as a political tool and that there's never any progress made. He and his husband are public servants. He told BuzzFeed News, we try every day to make the community a better place, and we also want the opportunity to be happy in our own lives.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: Every year, a lot of people are driving on the road when a deer runs in front of them. This causes accidents which can be deadly for the deer and sometimes for the people in those cars. With medical costs and car repairs, this can also turn into an expensive problem.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Now a new study is offering a surprising solution. Let the wolves out. Researchers looking at data from Wisconsin found the presence of wolves reduced accidents where cars hit deer.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: The wolves either scare the deer away from busy roads or reduce the deer population by hunting them. Wolves might be one of the most controversial animals in the United States. It turns out people have really strong feelings about them. Some people want them to be protected. Some call for them to be hunted.
--:-- Shamita Basu: As a result of this, wolves have been moved on and off the endangered species list over the years.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: The Atlantic's Ed Young brings us this story. Natural resource economist Jennifer Rayner authored the study, and she says wolves reduce deer vehicle collisions by a quarter in Wisconsin. That means fewer injuries, deaths, and damage. That saved the state nearly $11 million in losses annually.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Now, literally throwing deer to the wolves may sound like a really weird way to solve a traffic problem, but Rayner argues that cheap measures like putting up warning signs are effective and solutions like building special overpasses for deer are expensive with limited impact.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: She argues wolves are cost-effective and there are few cases where cars hit wolves. Some wildlife experts aren't ready to conclude wolves make roads safer. They say researchers need to study different places to really strengthen the argument.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And there are downsides to more wolves. They prey on livestock and pets. One expert tells The Atlantic there is a need for more of this type of research. It helps us understand the ripple effects of a single wild animal and how it could possibly help humans.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: For professional bug collector Floyd Shockley, a typical day of work might involve hours spent on the ground in a South American rainforest, crawling on his belly, searching for beetles.
--:-- Shamita Basu: But this year, like so many of us, he's basically able to work from home. That's because the Brood 10 cicadas have emerged by the billions in the Northeast, right in his backyard.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: Shockley works at the Smithsonian, and the Washington Post reports as part of his job, he has to catch lots of these noisy cicadas in the D.C. area.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The museum's been collecting this brood since the mid-1800s. And Shockley isn't just looking for any old cicada. He needs perfect specimens. They have to be caught alive because the dead ones aren't as pristine. The wings have to be the right shape, no imperfections.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: Once he's collected his haul, Shockley freezes them alive. It's said to be the most humane way to kill them. Then he'll preserve them for study both at the Smithsonian and other museums around the country.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Shockley says he hopes to be retired by the time Route 10 makes its next appearance in 17 years. But if he's called back into work, it's not going to be a big deal. These cicadas show up everywhere. He says it's the easiest bug collecting he has ever done.
--:-- 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. We'll talk with you again tomorrow.
