--:-- Mark Garrison: Good morning. It's Thursday, May 9th. I'm Mark Garrison in for Shemitah Basu. This is Apple News Today.
--:-- Mark Garrison: Coming up, what happens to Americans brought home after years in an ISIS camp? The 911 call that's frustrating older adults and first responders? And a massive new operation to suck carbon pollution from our air? But first, let's take a quick look at some big stories in the news.
--:-- Mark Garrison: President Biden is telling Israel that a full-scale invasion of Rafa will mean that the U.S. holds back some weapons. He said this for the first time publicly on CNN.
--:-- Mark Garrison: I made it clear that if they go into Rafa, they haven't gone into Rafa yet. If they go into Rafa, I'm not supplying the weapons that have been used historically to deal with Rafa, to deal with the cities, to deal with that problem.
--:-- Mark Garrison: The U.S. recently paused a delivery of hundreds of 2,000-pound bombs because of the risk they pose to civilians in Gaza. These are among the most powerful and destructive weapons that Western militaries have, capable of wiping out entire neighborhoods.
--:-- Mark Garrison: There are concerns about dropping these in a dense urban area like much of Gaza. Israel says it was disappointed by that move. The U.S. is not cutting off shipments of defensive military equipment to Israel, like anti-rocket systems.
--:-- Mark Garrison: Caught in the middle of all this are more than a million civilians sheltering in Rafah, who fled fighting elsewhere. The UN and aid groups warned that a large attack on Rafah would worsen an already dire humanitarian situation.
--:-- Mark Garrison: Gaza's population is already dealing with catastrophic hunger and shortages of critical medical supplies. The UN says no aid trucks have entered Gaza since Sunday.
--:-- Mark Garrison: In the U.S., a House hearing focused on how debates around the war in Gaza are playing out at public schools. Lawmakers questioned three school leaders from New York City, Maryland, and Berkeley about how they're handling anti-Semitism.
--:-- Mark Garrison: This was a closely watched hearing after university presidents were criticized for their responses to similar questions, with two later resigning.
--:-- Mark Garrison: Yesterday, school leaders pushed back on assertions by lawmakers that they've failed to protect Jewish students and staff. They said they don't tolerate anti-Semitism in their schools and have taken disciplinary action.
--:-- David Banks: If we really care about solving for anti and I believe this deeply it not about having gotcha moments It about teaching You have to raise the consciousness of young people.
--:-- David Banks: And the challenge we have as a system is that we do have some adults who bring their own bias into the classroom. And we've got to figure out how do we unpack all of it at the same time.
--:-- David Banks: But the ultimate answer for anti-Semitism is to teach, to expose young people to the Jewish community so that they understand our common humanity.
--:-- Mark Garrison: Also in the House, Republican Marjorie Taylor Greene failed in her effort to remove Speaker Mike Johnson. Normally, speaker votes are on party lines. But in this case, a number of Democrats joined Republicans in voting to keep Johnson in place.
--:-- Mark Garrison: Only two Republicans voted with Green.
--:-- Mark Garrison: This week, the United States brought home 11 American citizens after they spent years in a camp for relatives of ISIS members in Syria. Ten are from the same family, many are children.
--:-- Mark Garrison: It's the largest single repatriation of Americans from northern Syria. Critics say bringing people home from these camps is dangerous, that this could be importing potential terrorists.
--:-- Mark Garrison: But State Department counterterrorism official Ian Moss told NPR it's better to get families out of these places.
--:-- Ian Moss: The longer we leave them there, the more vulnerable they are to radicalization and to exploitation by extremists and folks that have an extremist agenda.
--:-- Ian Moss: And they're vulnerable. I mean, certainly these kids are vulnerable.
--:-- Mark Garrison: Some people brought home face charges. One of the adults recently brought back to the U.S. was arrested, accused of getting ISIS military training.
--:-- Mark Garrison: But many aren't in the camps by choice. Of the roughly 45,000 people in these camps, two-thirds are children.
--:-- Mark Garrison: In 2022, Human Rights Watch interviewed some of the kids who were taken to Syria. They say they were tricked by adults, told they were packing for a vacation.
--:-- Sasha Pfeiffer: My father lied to me. He told me that we're going to Disneyland, and he bring me here in Syria. We were supposed to go to Turkey to have vacation or something like that, or go camping.
--:-- Sasha Pfeiffer: And then suddenly we came to Syria.
--:-- Mark Garrison: Investigative correspondent Sasha Pfeiffer explained on NPR how this week operation is an attempt to deal with a much larger global issue.
--:-- Sasha Pfeiffer: Another 11 people were returned to Canada and Finland and the Netherlands Eight of those 11 people were children So in total, 23 people got out from Canada, the U.S., and Europe.
--:-- Sasha Pfeiffer: That is a tiny dent and a massive problem. But the U.S. and those other countries hope that by bringing all those people home, it will set an example for the rest of the world, and more countries will start to do the same and shrink the populations of those camps.
--:-- Mark Garrison: For the Americans arriving, there's a rough road ahead. As we mentioned, some will face trial, and all have the challenge of integrating into a society where some people won't welcome them.
--:-- Mark Garrison: There's a surge nationwide in a certain type of 911 call, and often, no one's injured. Most people don't know, I certainly didn't know, that this was even a call that existed.
--:-- Mark Garrison: I think it's like the number seven most popular 911 call in the country, right? It's right alongside a car accident without injury.
--:-- Todd Frankel: That's Washington Post reporter Todd Frankel. He's talking about calls known as lift assists.
--:-- Todd Frankel: When an older adult falls at an assisted living facility, staff are often required to call 911 for help, even if all the seniors need is a hand getting back on their feet.
--:-- Todd Frankel: Firefighters say workers at these facilities should be able to handle falls. And all the calls for help picking up seniors get expensive and distract first responders who need to deal with serious emergencies.
--:-- Todd Frankel: Assisted living or senior care facilities are geared for older adults who may not need full-time health care but still can't live fully independently.
--:-- Todd Frankel: These facilities have lower staffing requirements than nursing homes. And Frankel found assisted living facilities appear to make far more 911 calls for lift assists. than nursing homes.
--:-- Todd Frankel: Overall, lift assist calls to fire departments have spiked 30 percent in recent years.
--:-- Todd Frankel: Frankel explains that's in part because assisted living facilities don't want to take the risk of picking up residents. It's basically a liability concern of insurance.
--:-- Todd Frankel: Someone could get hurt if one of their caretakers lifts somebody. Even if it's a 100-pound grandma who's 89 years old, they could hurt their back.
--:-- Todd Frankel: First responders told Frankel it's frustrating to spend so much time responding to calls that aren't related to emergencies.
--:-- Todd Frankel: Some fire departments now charge care facilities for lifting If that happens once in a blue moon or every so often these departments I talk to you know they mind It a public service They know what they doing
--:-- Todd Frankel: It was the repeat nature of these calls being called back to these addresses again and again Frankel spoke with a former staff member who said residents were often embarrassed at being picked up by firefighters.
--:-- Todd Frankel: I think one thing that sort of provoked outrage amongst folks we heard from was we're paying good money for help to sort of help us age gracefully and live with a little dignity.
--:-- Todd Frankel: And there's no dignity in being forced to like lay on the floor and wait for the firefighter to come pick us up.
--:-- Mark Garrison: These days, fire and other emergency agencies are more likely to deal with a fall victim than a fire victim. And firefighters point out when they're called to assist, they're not bringing any special skills.
--:-- Mark Garrison: It all comes down to who's doing the work of helping older adults in need.
--:-- Mark Garrison: Finally, a big development that could help our climate. Yesterday, an enormous new plant designed to suck carbon pollution out of the air switched on.
--:-- Mark Garrison: The designers say it's the largest of its kind on Earth, ten times bigger than anything running now.
--:-- Mark Garrison: Essentially, the Iceland facility operates like a super-powered vacuum. It draws air in and strips out carbon.
--:-- Mark Garrison: This plant, called mammoth, moves the carbon underground, where it turns into stone, locked up for good.
--:-- Mark Garrison: At full capacity, the plant will do the equivalent of taking nearly 8,000 gas-powered cars off the road for a year.
--:-- Mark Garrison: And the plant's powered by clean geothermal energy, which Iceland has plenty of with all its volcanoes.
--:-- Mark Garrison: Carbon capture has some critics. It's expensive, uses a lot of energy, and it's not proven at a large scale.
--:-- Mark Garrison: And many environmentalists think it's a distraction. The world should focus more on transitioning to green energy so there's less carbon going into the atmosphere in the first place.
--:-- Mark Garrison: But still, experts say this is an exciting and important unveiling of a new technology that could offer a piece of the solution for our warming planet.
--:-- Mark Garrison: You can find all these stories and more in the Apple News app.
--:-- Mark Garrison: And if you're already listening in the News app right now, we've got a narrated article playing next from The Atlantic.
--:-- Mark Garrison: With all the buzz around Ozempic, the story looks at the history of America's attempts to deal with the obesity epidemic and how many initially promising ideas haven't panned out.
--:-- Mark Garrison: If you're listening in the podcast app, follow Apple News Plus Narrated to find that story.
--:-- Mark Garrison: And I'll be back with the news tomorrow.
