--:-- Gideon Resnick: Good morning. It's Thursday, November 21st. I'm Gideon Resnick in for Shamit Abassu. This is Apple News Today.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: On today's show, the kitchen item you should toss out immediately, the International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants for top Israeli leaders, and the last episode for an iconic voice actor. But first, a look at how the military could change under President-elect Donald Trump.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: Trump has selected Pete Hegseth as his nominee for defense secretary. Hegseth is a veteran and most recently a Fox News host, but he doesn't have military leadership experience.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: In fact, NPR reports that if Hegseth is confirmed, he would be the least experienced defense secretary in American history. And he would come into the role with some big criticisms of the military, characterizing it as ineffective, quote-unquote woke, and saying that some of the top brass should be fired.
--:-- [Audio clip of Pete Hegseth on The Sean Ryan Show]
--:-- Pete Hegseth: You gotta fire the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, and you gotta fire this. I mean, obviously you're gonna bring in a new secretary of defense, but any general that was involved, general, admiral, whatever, that was involved in any of the DEI woke s**t has gotta go.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: Hegseth has also been critical of women serving in combat roles, saying that it's made our military less lethal and effective.
--:-- [Audio clip of Pete Hegseth on The Sean Ryan Show]
--:-- Pete Hegseth: You don't like women in combat? No. Why not? I love women service members who contribute amazingly because everything about men and women serving together makes the situation more complicated.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: According to a Pentagon report from a year ago, women made up roughly 20% of the U.S. military's active duty force and selected reserve in 2022.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: And outgoing Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin recently told NBC News how vital women are to our military. They make us better. They make us stronger. And again, what I've seen from our women is quite incredible. This is not hyperbole. This is fact. I'm just telling you what I've seen.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: Dan Lamothe is a Washington Post reporter who covers the Pentagon. He told us how Hegseth's nomination is resonating with people who work there.
--:-- Dan Lamothe: We've got an incoming president who has openly and repeatedly threatened to fire anyone associated with the fall of Afghanistan. We've got a nominee for the defense secretary job in Pete Tagseth, who has said that one of the first things he would do would be to fire the chairman of the Joint Chiefs.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: So I think at minimum, there's a great deal of apprehension and concern and alarm that I'm hearing from my sources right now in the Pentagon and just kind of around the Defense Department as an institution in general.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: While we've heard a lot of rhetoric from Trump and Hegseth about their goals, we know very little about the details so far.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: For example, what would it mean to end diversity programs in the military or to fire, quote unquote, woke generals?
--:-- Gideon Resnick: And depending on where you fall on that issue, you know, you could be doing an awful lot of house cleaning or more something that very you know targeted
--:-- Dan Lamothe: I also told us there a lot of concern about Trump vows to go after the generals involved with the decision to leave Afghanistan and the chaotic withdrawal
--:-- Gideon Resnick: I think one thing they hear that I watching for and I concerned about just as an American citizen is how do we define who quote unquote to blame for the fall of Afghanistan?
--:-- Gideon Resnick: Knowing a lot of these senior officers, knowing that they spent years there themselves and in a lot of cases managed the operations, tried to take care of their people the best they could, but also had orders to follow.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: And in many cases, particularly when it came to the end in Afghanistan, often gritted their teeth and followed the rules and followed the laws.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: It's got to hit some kind of way for these senior officers, for their families, for Pentagon employees in general who are watching this all play out and kind of feel like they're being scapegoated after the fact.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: There will be a lot to watch for, including how and if Trump follows through on his promise to use the military to conduct the biggest deportation program in U.S. history.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: For clarity on all these questions, The Washington Post reached out to Hegsef, but was not able to reach him for comment.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: Now to Springfield, Ohio, a community that was thrown into the national spotlight by President-elect Trump when he falsely claimed before millions of viewers at the presidential debate that Haitian immigrants living in the community were eating pets.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: The lie originally circulated online by far-right activists and even neo-Nazis. But when Trump repeated it, it went viral.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: Bomb threats to Springfield followed. State troopers had to escort kids to school. It just put this huge spotlight on the city in a way that I don't think they were ready for.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: That's CNN correspondent Omar Jimenez, who's been to Springfield several times since Trump's comments after the political world and many media outlets moved on.
--:-- Omar Jimenez: He told us the immediate reaction from Haitians in the community was confusion. Why them?
--:-- Gideon Resnick: On top of the confusion was a little bit of hurt with how much people actually latched on to those claims, that this was something that people actually believed they could be capable of doing.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: There are an estimated 12 to 15,000 immigrants living in the county that contained Springfield.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: Many are believed to be Haitians who have arrived in the past four years fleeing deadly gang violence.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: Springfield was an attractive destination for some because it had available jobs and a low cost of living.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: Local officials acknowledged to CNN, yes, they could have had better infrastructure in place to accommodate the arrival of these immigrants and that the growing population has led to some growing pains.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: But the community had been trying to tackle problems collaboratively before false claims spread.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: And today, Jimenez says, many Haitians still don't feel safe in Springfield, so they're leaving.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: They just weren't sure as to how long this attention was going to stick around and in many ways complicate their lives.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: Attention isn't their only concern. Trump has threatened to end temporary protection status, a provision that allows immigrants from countries like Haiti going through humanitarian emergencies to live and work here in the U.S. legally
--:-- Gideon Resnick: And Jimenez says that Trump mass deportation threat is another motivating factor
--:-- Omar Jimenez: I spoken to members of the community there since the election and they told me they have noticed Haitians leaving going to either other parts of Ohio or different parts of the country, because unfounded or not, they are under the belief that Springfield will be one of the first places that these potential mass deportations start.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: City officials told Jimenez that if Haitians leave Springfield in mass numbers, by choice or not, it would hurt their community.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: Some of these employers and city officials have told me personally that with the population increase of Haitian immigrants in the Springfield area, yes, there have been challenges, there have been stresses on education, there have been stresses on health care, stresses on trying to find enough translators to make those sectors of life work, but also that it's helped revitalize the community economically.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: We are exactly one week out from Thanksgiving, and as you prepare to whip up a feast for your loved ones, there are a few items in your kitchen you might want to seriously consider throwing out before that day, namely your black plastic spatula, spoons, and other similar utensils.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: That's because they were found in some cases to contain dangerous levels of flame retardants.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: That's according to a new study published in the journal Chemisphere, which found all sorts of black plastic items are more likely to contain dangerous levels of toxic chemicals because many are made from recycled electronic waste, like old TV sets and computers.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: And it's not just kitchen tools. The study looked at things like black plastic takeout containers and kids' toys as well.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: The real concern is anything that ends up in someone's mouth.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: That's Jessica Roy, a columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle, who recently wrote about this.
--:-- Jessica Roy: And so when you look at something like a black plastic spatula, that is getting heated up and that's touching your food.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: And that heat, especially, and the oil as sort of a transfer mechanism, increases the chemical migration so that if there are flame retardants in your spatula, the oil and the heat, that combination makes it more likely for those chemicals to then leach into the food that you're eating.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: Now, before you rush to throw out all of the black plastic that might be in your home, a number of scientists who reviewed this study have called attention to the fact that it did not examine the extent to which these toxic chemicals are transferred to people when they put these products in their mouths or if that happens at all.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: Now, Roy told us she personally felt safer throwing all of her black plastic utensils away, especially since there's just no easy way to tell which items contain these toxic chemicals and which do not.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: Unfortunately, there's no way to know if your black plastic spatula has those flame retardants in it.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: There's no sort of like home test. There's no mark on the product that says this was made with recycled plastic or anything like that.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: And so really the safest thing to do is just to get rid of stuff.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: Experts agree, including one of the authors of this study who told The Atlantic she no longer saves black takeout containers.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: And experts say even if you've had kitchen tools like these for years and might think, oh, well, I've already been exposed, you should still consider buying alternatives.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: Roy suggested non materials like wood or silicone
--:-- Gideon Resnick: But I think more broadly and a takeaway I hope people get from this story every time we study plastic of any color we find things in it that are dangerous If it's not flame retardants, it seems like it's something else.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: And so I think looking critically at other plastics in your house, in your kitchen, makes a lot of sense.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: And when you upgrade things, if you are going to buy new measuring cups anyways, if you're going to buy a new coffee maker anyways, looking for stuff that doesn't use as much plastic, especially black plastic, makes sense.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: Before we let you go, a few other stories being featured in the Apple News app.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: Early this morning, the International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the former Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Galant.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: The court accuses the two of crimes against humanity and war crimes in the Gaza Strip, alleging that Israel has used starvation as a weapon of war and has intentionally targeted civilian populations.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: Israel has strongly denied the allegations.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: The court also issued an arrest warrant from Mohammed Daith, Hamas's military chief.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: Israel said earlier this year that he had been killed.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: Neither Israel nor the United States recognize the court's jurisdiction.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: In entertainment news, the controversial film Rust premiered yesterday at a film festival.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: As you might remember, this is the movie where the actor Alec Baldwin fired a prop gun on set that turned out to be loaded, killing cinematographer Helena Hutchins and wounding the director.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: The film's armorer was found guilty of involuntary manslaughter and is currently in prison.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: Baldwin was also charged, but the case against him was eventually dismissed.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: NPR spoke with the director, Joel Sousa, about why he wanted to complete the project.
--:-- Joel Sousa: It was a really tough decision, and I'll be very honest, I was a wreck through most of the second go around.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: It's something I still struggle with that I should have or shouldn't have.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: But, you know, I just feel like for me, that was the right thing to do.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: According to a source who spoke to NPR, the film's original producers will not gain financially from the movie.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: Instead, profits will go to Hutchins' husband and son.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: And finally, an iconic voice in comedy is retiring.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: Hey, we're working. My feet are soaked, but my cups are bone dry. Everything's coming up Millhouse!
--:-- Gideon Resnick: Yes, that is Millhouse from The Simpsons.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: He will stick around, but Pamela Hayden, the voice of his beloved character and others on the show, is retiring after 35 years.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: Her voice has appeared in over 600 episodes, and her last one will be Sunday.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: Fox is going to start casting a new voice for her characters, so we'll have to see who they hire to bring Bart's buddy to life next.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: You can find all these stories and more in the Apple News app.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: And if you're already in the News app, we have a narrated article coming up next from The Atlantic about Lucy Calkins.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: Thousands of schools used her curriculum to teach kids to read and write, which put more emphasis on teaching them to love reading than going through exercises like phonics.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: But for many kids, it didn't work.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: And Calkins was ultimately blamed for the reading crisis in America.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: If you're listening in the podcast app, you can follow Apple News Plus Narrated to find that story.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: And I'll be back with the news tomorrow.
