--:-- Shamita Basu: Good morning. It's Monday, May 16th. 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: It was the deadliest mass shooting so far this year. Ten people shot and killed, three injured, after an 18-year-old man opened fire at a grocery store in Buffalo, New York. President Biden addressed the shooting on Sunday. The Justice Department has stated publicly that it is investigating the matter as a hate crime, racially motivated act of white supremacy and violent extremism.
--:-- Shamita Basu: As they do, we must all work together to address the hate that remains a stain on the soul of America. The suspect, who's white, allegedly posted a document online where he clearly outlined his belief system that white America is under attack and at risk of being replaced by immigrants and people of color. This idea is known as replacement theory.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The Washington Post reports on how this racist conspiracy theory has moved from the fringes of the Internet to mainstream media and politics. But before we get into that, let's briefly talk about what's in this 180-page document.
--:-- Shamita Basu: According to the Post, the document describes how the gunman was radicalized on Internet forums like 4chan, and it details his plan to target Black people in Buffalo, a city 200 miles away from his home. He explicitly said he takes inspiration from others who've committed similar acts, like the gunman who killed 51 people at two mosques in New Zealand in 2019.
--:-- Shamita Basu: In fact, according to analysis done by a think tank that combats extremism, 28% of his online screed is plagiarized from a similar document written by the New Zealand shooter.
--:-- Shamita Basu: This sprawling conspiracy theory may have started in online forums, but it's made it to cable news and congressional hearings. For example, Tucker Carlson on Fox News.
--:-- Tucker Carlson: An analysis from the New York Times found that since his show went on the air in 2016, Carlson has discussed the idea of replacement theory in more than 400 shows.
--:-- Tucker Carlson: Here's just one example from April of 2021. I know that the left and all the little gatekeepers on Twitter become literally hysterical if you use the term replacement If you suggest the Democratic Party is trying to replace the current electorate the voters now casting ballots with new people more obedient voters from the third world But they become hysterical because that's that's what's happening, actually.
--:-- Tucker Carlson: Let's just say it. That's true.
--:-- Fox Spokesperson: A Fox spokesperson told The Post that Tucker Carlson is against political violence.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Last year, Pennsylvania Congressman Scott Perry brought up a similar idea in a congressional hearing, saying that native-born Americans are being replaced to, quote, permanently transform the political landscape of the country.
--:-- Shamita Basu: His office did not respond to the Post's request for comment.
--:-- Shamita Basu: One expert in political violence told the Post, there are consequences to these ideas being repeated on TV and by elected officials.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Recent polling from the Associated Press and NORC found that nearly one in three Americans say that they're extremely or very concerned that native-born Americans are being replaced by immigrants.
--:-- Shamita Basu: That same political violence expert said the most dangerous proponents of this idea, the ones who are calling for violence, they still appear to be limited to fringe forums.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Meanwhile, the suspect in Buffalo pleaded not guilty to charges of first-degree murder. If the district attorney decides to charge him with domestic terrorism, too, he could face life in prison without parole.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The ends of the earth. It's normally just an expression, but a Time magazine reporter took it literally. She traveled to the North and South Poles to see for herself just how serious the threat of climate change is.
--:-- Erin Baker: What happens in the Arctic does not stay there. I traveled to the North and South Poles to see the impact of climate change there for myself.
--:-- Erin Baker: Turbulent weather or too hot weather in the poles is going to send ripple effects and increase either humidity in certain weather patterns, which increases the intensity and the rainfall of hurricanes, or it can skew weather patterns and wind patterns so that there's no rainfall at all in other areas that are prone to drought.
--:-- Erin Baker: So the minute something goes wrong in the poles, it will ripple all the way down elsewhere on the planet.
--:-- Erin Baker: She told us that she and the science team that she was with saw a lot that was wrong. She could tell the moment that she arrived in Antarctica It just wasn't that cold We were walking around in just our leggings that you would normally wear under your protective gear because it was so warm That's not supposed to be happening in an Antarctic summer.
--:-- Erin Baker: She spent some time with researchers doing a census of the penguin population. Penguins aren't just cute little icons of the Antarctic. They are what is called a sentinel species, and that is a species that scientists can observe and understand bigger issues going on in the region.
--:-- Erin Baker: Baker explains why the decline in the number of penguins should worry us. So what that tells us is that if there is not enough food in the ocean to sustain these penguin populations, it also means there's not enough food in the ocean to sustain the fish population that we need as humans to eat to survive.
--:-- Erin Baker: She saw many more things in her travels, which you can read about in the full piece. You come away with a very real sense of how interconnected things are. What happens in the Arctic and the Antarctic is not just a sign of what's going to happen elsewhere on the planet, but it also fundamentally impacts our daily life.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Fans of live music are facing a bleak new reality. Your favorite smaller music venues might have closed sometime in the past two years. And tickets are now way more expensive.
--:-- Shamita Basu: It's almost as though these ticketers are preying on people's desperation to be able to see shows.
--:-- Kristen Corey: The live music industry was already on a troubling path before the pandemic hit. Take a big corporation like Ticketmaster. The company says its pricing is a reflection of the market. But it's more accurate to say Ticketmaster has near-monopoly control of the market.
--:-- Kristen Corey: It drives ticket prices up when demand is high, kind of like Uber surge pricing. And then it tacks on servicing fees, sometimes as high as 27% of the ticket's original cost.
--:-- Kristen Corey: It's similar to kind of like the hospitality industry or the airline industry where they're looking to see, OK, people want to go to X show. This is festival season. We can mark it up because people will buy it.
--:-- Kristen Corey: Those markups combined with inflation are pushing prices to new highs. General admission for Coachella cost nearly $500 this year. That's up 15 percent from just a few years ago.
--:-- Kristen Corey: But Corey says the thing that really concerns her is seeing small venues go under Sometimes I feel a little dramatic for thinking about this I think the music ecosystem is in danger by not having an infrastructure that supports artists at every level
--:-- Kristen Corey: When you don't have smaller venues, you don't have an outlet for these emerging artists to play. Corey told us not only does it hurt artists, but it also hurts fans. People who enjoy feeling like they discovered an artist early and stuck with them since the beginning.
--:-- Kristen Corey: I just think that it does a disservice to the industry at large when you don't have those sort of grassroots communities to be able to say, hey, I saw Frank Ocean when he was just starting and it only cost me $30.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The Eurovision Song Contest crowned its winner this weekend, a folk rap group from Ukraine.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Here is the moment that they found out they won. The performers jumped up and down together, draped in the Ukrainian flag. It was an easy victory for them. They had a lot of support from the crowd.
--:-- Shamita Basu: NPR has a nice write-up on the winning group. Kalush Orchestra were granted special permission to leave Ukraine just to compete in Eurovision.
--:-- Shamita Basu: In fact, one of their bandmates stayed behind to help defend Kyiv. One of the band members told NPR that he wrote their winning song, Stefania, about his mother.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And even though he wrote it before the war, it's taken on a patriotic meaning now. He said many Ukrainians listen to it and think of it as a reference to Ukraine as the motherland.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Here you can listen and see how the band mixes rap verses with traditional Ukrainian woodwind instruments.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Usually, the country that wins Eurovision hosts it the next year. Kalush Orchestra told NPR they're hopeful that Ukraine will be able to do that safely. But in the meantime, they're celebrating the win.
--:-- Shamita Basu: You can find all these stories and more in the Apple News app. Plus, can I just say it was a really fun weekend in sports across the NBA and the Stanley Cup playoffs. We saw seven winner-take-all matchups. Catch up on scores and more in the Apple News app.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And when you're in the app, keep listening to hear narrated articles from our News Plus partners. I'll talk with you again tomorrow.
