--:-- Duarte Giraldino: Good morning. It's Thursday, October 14th. I'm Duarte Giraldino. Shemitah Basu is off. This is Apple News Today.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: 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: A congressional investigation is stepping up its probe into the January 6th attack on the Capitol. The House committee subpoenaed Jeffrey Clark. He was a high-level Justice Department official in the Trump administration. He is also a key figure in a recent Senate report about attempts to overturn the results of the 2020 election.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: According to the report, among other things, it was Clark who pushed for the Justice Department to pressure Georgia election officials. The January 6th committee has been steadily interviewing witnesses. Bloomberg is reporting. Former acting attorney general Jeffrey Rosen privately met with the committee for several hours yesterday.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: Quite a few Trump advisors have been called for depositions, but we don't know if they're going to show. Trump's lawyer has instructed former aides not to cooperate. Steve Bannon's lawyer has said he's refusing to do so because of Trump's request. And all of this is setting up a possible showdown with the panel.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: Committee members are promising to use legal means to get key people to comply. Representative Liz Cheney, who is the top Republican on the panel, said this week, people who don't appear can expect to be charged with contempt.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: Throughout the pandemic doctors and public health officials have really struggled to deal with misinformation. A recent report looks at a network of right health care providers called America Frontline Doctors.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: It's played a role in spreading false information about the virus. This pro-Trump group has promoted COVID-19 treatments that were discredited, like hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin. They're kind of lying to people and saying that this medicine cures COVID.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: And in fact, they're going further than that. That's Micah Lee. He wrote the story for The Intercept.
--:-- Micah Lee: So they're saying all of this wild stuff that just isn't true. But then they're saying, oh, also, we have these miracle cures. You should come by them.
--:-- Micah Lee: His investigation reveals thousands of people paid millions of dollars for treatments and consultations that America's frontline doctors promoted. Starting around January, they have been charging people $90 for a phone consultation to get this medicine that they're pushing.
--:-- Micah Lee: Lee got access to hacked documents from a network of telehealth providers that were working with America's frontline doctors. These documents show an enormous amount of money at play here.
--:-- Micah Lee: And so if you add all that up, that ends up being $6.8 million. And there was more. So we got 340,000 prescription records, and we found that the vast majority of them were all these kind of quack medicine cures for COVID that have been shown to be ineffective.
--:-- Micah Lee: And it looks like they made $4.7 million selling ivermectin. That's how much it costs patients. It costs patients $1.2 million for hydroxychloroquine.
--:-- Micah Lee: A lawyer for America's frontline doctors told Lee, it launched a third-party audit. As for the various companies that made up the telehealth network they now distanced themselves from America frontline doctors.
--:-- Micah Lee: Since we published the story the whole telemedicine platform has been down. I'm not sure how long it's going to be down, but I think it's going to take them some time to recover.
--:-- Micah Lee: So they're going to have to build some new telemedicine system before they get up and running again.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: When COVID lockdowns ended, hiking at a national park seemed like a pretty good idea. Problem was, a lot of Americans had the same idea.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: Today, many iconic parks are struggling with overcrowding. The Deseret News in Utah looks at how this is playing out at Arches National Park.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: Parking lots fill to capacity before 9 a.m., and park rangers are dealing with lines of idling cars that seem to sneak down roads.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: Most years, this particular park has to restrict access maybe a dozen times a year. In 2021, the park had to close its gates more than 100 times.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: You see, the park is trying to balance giving people access and protecting the space. Arches National Park tried a few things, but hasn't solved this problem yet.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: So it's going to pilot a timed entry system, which is becoming more common at many national parks. If you want to visit popular spots like Rocky Mountain, Glacier, or Acadia, you now need a reservation.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: Some locals tell the Deseret News, because of these new rules, they're worried they won't be able to visit on a whim anymore.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: The park says it may take some getting used to, but over time, it could be as normal as making a restaurant reservation, and it lead to a better less crowded experience for visitors
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: You can find this and other great local stories every Thursday on our Read Local collection in the Apple News app.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: Only 33 living people can claim the honor or maybe burden of being a presidential kid. People magazine spoke with a few of them about it.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: Many say one of the worst parts of being that kid is losing your privacy. Michael Reagan remembers his dad telling him the best way to annoy your neighbors, just have dad and his 26 car motorcade stop by.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: He also told people about when his daughter was born, before he even knew she was a girl, the Secret Service had already given her a codename, Raindrop. She now has a tattoo of raindrops on her foot.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: Now there are tons of perks, of course. These kids get to be on the front lines of history. Lucy Baines Johnson turned 17 years old the day President Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: She tells people her father didn't have time that day to pick up a birthday card, so she got a handwritten note instead.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: Then there are the events. Being invited to state dinners, dancing with diplomats. Some presidential kids got married in the White House. Susan Ford even got to have her prom there. How cool is that?
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: You can find all these stories and more in the Apple News app. And while you're in the app, keep listening to hear narrated articles from our News Plus partners.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: I'll talk with you again tomorrow.
