--:-- Shamita Basu: Good morning. It's Monday, April 26th. I'm Shamita Basu. And I'm Dwight Giraldino. 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.
--:-- Dwight Giraldino: There is growing pressure on the United States to help India address its current surge in coronavirus cases. Yesterday, the Biden administration announced it's sending raw materials to manufacture vaccines, ventilators, test kits and other aid. But in India and around the world, there's criticism of the U.S. and other wealthy countries for keeping too many doses for themselves.
--:-- Shamita Basu: One reason for this global disparity is the Defense Production Act. As The Washington Post reports, both the Trump and Biden administrations used this policy to ramp up vaccine development at a time when the worst of the global pandemic was hitting the U.S., which still has the highest number of deaths. The act allows Washington to get U.S. companies priority access to supplies. Critics argue this policy is effectively an export ban.
--:-- Dwight Giraldino: Another crucial piece in this conversation about vaccine access is intellectual property rights. Right now, pharmaceutical companies hold the patent rights for COVID-19 vaccines. And a number of countries, including India, have petitioned the WHO to say temporarily waive these rights. The idea is that other countries could produce generic versions of COVID vaccines to better meet demand.
--:-- Shamita Basu: A group of Senate Democrats is urging Biden to waive these rules, too. There have been a few notable times in history when a country successfully pushed back against this global system of IP protection for pharmaceuticals. Paul Adler is a history professor at Colorado College. He wrote about this in the Washington Post.
--:-- Paul Adler: One example he gives was the HIV-AIDS epidemic. South Africa was one of the hardest hit countries, and it couldn't afford the medicines that were becoming available in the late 90s. So it passed a law challenging IP rights. Now drug companies around the world responded to that by suing the South African government. But Adler writes that advocacy groups in South Africa held protests. They fought back in courts. In the U.S., activists put pressure on then-President Bill Clinton, accusing his administration of putting profits over people.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And in this rare situation, the advocacy groups succeeded. Lawsuits were dropped and the prices went down.
--:-- Dwight Giraldino: The once-in-a-decade process of redrawing our congressional maps kicks off this week. The Census Bureau is going to be publishing the first data from its 2020 count. These results are going to impact the balance of power in Congress and future presidential races. States that saw a lot of growth are poised to get more seats in the House of Representatives. But, of course, those seats have to come from somewhere, and so other states are bound to lose seats.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Politico has a good overview of how this plays out and what's at stake. First, the Census Bureau will tell us how many people live in each state, which determines how many representatives states get in the House. By September, the Bureau will release more granular data, and that's what states will use to redraw district lines. Any advantage either party can eke out is going to impact who controls Congress.
--:-- Dwight Giraldino: Right now, Democrats have a majority in the House, but it's a small one. And a lot has changed since the last redistricting. Political says this year's count could show more and more people moving to states in the South and the West. If that holds true, states like Texas and Florida, where Republicans are in control of redistricting, those places will gain seats. Key states where Democrats are in power could lose seats.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And by the way, it didn't always work this way. For a long time, as the population of the country grew, Congress grew too. NPR explains how in 1929 a law put a cap on adding seats unless new states were added. So the House of Representatives has held firm at 435 seats for decades. And it's kind of changed the nature of representation over the years. A hundred years ago, a member of the House represented about 200,000 people. Today, each member represents 700,000.
--:-- Dwight Giraldino: The Oscars were last night, and like a lot of award shows during the pandemic, it was a little bumpy at times. There was an awkward setting, of course, and then there was an ending that left many people in the audience feeling frustrated and mostly just confused.
--:-- Shamita Basu: But there were also history-making moments. Chloe Zhao was named the first woman of color to win Best Director. Her film, Nomadland, also took home best picture. Even though sometimes it might seem like the opposite is true, but I have always found goodness in the people I met everywhere I went in the world. So this is for anyone who has the faith and the courage to hold on to the goodness in themselves and to hold on to the goodness in each other, no matter how difficult it is to do that. And this is for you. You inspire me to keep going.
--:-- Dwight Giraldino: Now, normally, the Best Picture Award is what ends the night. But the show's producers decided to change the order so that the final award presented was Best Actor. The late Chadwick Boseman was nominated, and a posthumous win could have provided an emotional ending to the evening. But people in charge of the show, of course, don't know who's going to win the awards. So there was a lot riding on what Joaquin Phoenix said when he opened his envelope.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And the Academy Award for Actor goes to Anthony Hopkins, the father. You might have expected an elegant and gracious acceptance speech from Hopkins, one paying tribute to Bozeman and the power of film. But Hopkins wasn't even there to accept the award. So the ceremony just ended. It was abrupt and awkward. On social media viewers were complaining. For many it summed up all the difficulties for the movie business during the pandemic. Production shut down, theaters closed. A strange year capped off with a strange ending.
--:-- Dwight Giraldino: This is a story about a little girl who everyone assumed was fighting against the odds. Ten-year-old Lucia Scotti recently went to see the Baltimore Orioles with her mom and dad. The Wall Street Journal says she had a big goal. She wanted to catch a foul ball. Her parents told her it was probably not going to happen.
--:-- Shamita Basu: You know how this goes. If you've ever brought a baseball mitt to a major league game hoping that you might catch a souvenir to bring home, it's like the odds are all stacked against you, right? The seats at the ballpark are usually jam-packed. And even if a ball does manage to fly within arm's reach of you, everyone around you also has their hands up. And then, of course, you actually have to make the catch.
--:-- Dwight Giraldino: But this year, most stadiums are only letting in a fraction of their usual fans. There are a whole bunch of rules in place for social distancing. The journal says, for catching a foul ball, the pandemic rigged the lottery. More space, fewer fans. It's simple math.
--:-- Shamita Basu: So you can guess how things worked out for Lucia Scotti. A ball came soaring her way. It didn't come close enough for her to catch it, but there was no one sitting in the row where it landed. So she just hopped on over and picked up her prize off the floor.
--:-- Dwight Giraldino: Now, if you've ever wanted to scratch catching a foul ball off your bucket list, now might be the time to go to a game. 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 to you again tomorrow.
