--:-- Shumita Basu: Good morning. It's Wednesday, July 23rd. I'm Shamitza Basu. This is Apple News Today.
--:-- [Theme music fades out]
--:-- Shumita Basu: On today's show, Israeli troops push into parts of central Gaza so far untouched by war. A new report details the revealing cockpit exchange from the Air India crash and the mystery at the Earth's core that's shortchanging our summers. But first, to President Trump's lawsuit against the publisher of The Wall Street Journal, which he filed last week after the outlet reported that Trump wrote a birthday note for convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein back in 2003.
--:-- Shumita Basu: The note apparently included a hand-drawn image of a naked woman. Trump has denied ever writing it, and he wants a minimum of $20 billion in damages. He also banned the Journal from the White House press pool for his upcoming trip to Scotland. This is far from the first time Trump has retaliated against the media over coverage he doesn't like or support.
--:-- Shumita Basu: Last year, he sued ABC and CBS, both of whom agreed to pay tens of millions of dollars to settle. Not long after he took office this year, he banned the Associated Press from the White House press pool over its decision to use the term Gulf of Mexico, then seized full control of the press pool from the White House press corps entirely.
--:-- Shumita Basu: He pushed to cut federal funding for Voice of America, PBS, and NPR, and very recently succeeded with PBS and NPR. But this suit against the journal is unusual. It appears to be the first time a sitting president has ever sued a media organization over a story.
--:-- Brian Stelter: Historically, presidents have used their free speech platforms to push back on articles, to push back on publishers, but they've never gone to court alleging defamation.
--:-- Shumita Basu: That's Brian Stelter, chief media analyst at CNN. Assessing the merits of the case is difficult because the journal did not publish a copy of the letter. It only described the contents.
--:-- Brian Stelter: But Stelter says we do know the journal gave Trump advance warning their report was coming so he could comment, a standard journalistic practice. Trump told them he would sue, and they published anyway, which Stelter says indicates they stood behind their journalism.
--:-- Shumita Basu: In response to the lawsuit, a spokesperson for Dow Jones said that they have full confidence in the accuracy of their reporting. There's also the question of whether Trump followed Florida law when filing the lawsuit.
--:-- Brian Stelter: Anyone suing a newspaper for defamation has to provide a five-day notice, which legal experts told Reuters did not appear to happen in this case.
--:-- Shumita Basu: So we'll have to see where things go next in court. But bigger picture, Stelter says this suit is worth paying attention to because it seems to be a clear warning to all news outlets.
--:-- Brian Stelter: When you sue someone for $20 billion, you're not just saying, I will ruin you. You also saying to others you better watch out or I try to ruin you next.
--:-- Shumita Basu: And that essentially is the chilling effect that this lawsuit could be having. And that presents some difficult questions for the media at large.
--:-- Brian Stelter: What we're seeing from the media industry is the same dynamic we've seen from universities and big law firms and other Trump targets. It's a question of fight or fold.
--:-- Shumita Basu: Some of these media companies are willing to fold. They're willing to pay lots of millions of dollars to make Trump's threats go away and to achieve some form of peace for the time being.
--:-- Brian Stelter: I think it's deeply disheartening to a lot of journalists, to a lot of entertainers like Stephen Colbert, for that matter.
--:-- Shumita Basu: Now to Gaza, where, for the first time since the war started, Israeli ground troops pushed into part of central Gaza, where tens of thousands of Palestinians live.
--:-- Shumita Basu: Homes and mosques were among those hit by Israeli attacks, according to The Guardian. So were warehouses and staff accommodations for the World Health Organization.
--:-- Dr. Nick Maynard: We were just going to get food to bring for our children. We were not going to beg or fight. We just wanted to eat.
--:-- Shumita Basu: Dr. Nick Maynard, a surgeon volunteering at Nasser Hospital, told NPR about the types of injuries he's treated in recent weeks, some in patients as young as 11 or 12 years old.
--:-- Dr. Nick Maynard: One day we will see mainly abdominal gunshot wounds. Another day we'll see head gunshot wounds. Another day we'll see neck gunshot wounds.
--:-- Shumita Basu: So there's a very clear pattern that not just me, but all of us have seen in this hospital, whereby particular body parts are targeted on particular days.
--:-- Shumita Basu: He called it beyond coincidence. NPR asked the IDF for comment, and it responded by saying it rejects claims of intentional harm to individuals and that casualties at AIDS sites are under examination.
--:-- Dr. Nick Maynard: Dr Maynard also said that he and his colleagues are seeing extreme malnutrition.
--:-- Shumita Basu: I saw the signs of malnutrition on both my previous trips in December, 23 January, 24 and then later that year. But the malnutrition now is much, much worse.
--:-- Shumita Basu: Al Jazeera spoke to another physician at the hospital, Dr. Deirdre Noonan, an orthopedic surgeon from Canada.
--:-- Dr. Deirdre Noonan: Young adult men, adult women, teenagers that should be at the prime of their life and the peak of their health that are just skin and bones that I can trace out every rib on people who have no other reason to be hungry than the fact that they are being intentionally deprived of food.
--:-- Shumita Basu: The head of Gaza's largest hospital, Al-Shifa, says at least 21 children in their care have died from malnutrition and starvation in recent days.
--:-- Shumita Basu: International outcry, meanwhile, continues. UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres told the UN Security Council yesterday that the, quote, last lifelines keeping people alive are collapsing.
--:-- Shumita Basu: And the foreign ministers of 28 countries signed a letter on Monday condemning the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, criticizing Israel's blockade on aid and calling for an end to the war.
--:-- Shumita Basu: Let's turn now to what investigations have revealed so far about the Air India crash that killed 260 people last month, including all but one of the passengers.
--:-- Shumita Basu: It was the deadliest aviation disaster in decades. According to a preliminary report recently released by Indian authorities, critical fuel switches were briefly turned off, then on again shortly after takeoff.
--:-- Andrew Tangel: So the plane lost thrust and altitude quickly. Those switches shouldn't be moved at that point of the flight from our understanding.
--:-- Shumita Basu: That's Andrew Tangel, an aviation reporter with The Wall Street Journal. Those are switches that pilots use to turn on the engines at the start of the flight.
--:-- Andrew Tangel: They use them to shut down the engines at the end of a flight. They can use them to shut down an engine if it's on fire after they go through a procedure to diagnose what's happening.
--:-- Shumita Basu: The report cites a black box recording from the cockpit. One pilot is heard asking the other why he moved the switches to cutoff position right after takeoff.
--:-- Andrew Tangel: The other pilot denied doing so in response. What the motivation was, who knows? I mean, could it have been some sort of muscle memory, some sort of confusion, some sort of just terrible mistake?
--:-- Shumita Basu: Could it have been something worse? We really don't know at this point.
--:-- Andrew Tangel: The rest of the cockpit voice recorder will be key, as will anything from the biographical, medical, psychological histories from the pilots.
--:-- Shumita Basu: Authorities Tangle spoke to said it's still very early in the investigation and too soon to draw any definitive conclusions.
--:-- Andrew Tangel: And new information discovered later could potentially contradict initial assessments.
--:-- Shumita Basu: There are many parties involved, including the U.S. agency, the National Transportation Safety Board, since the plane was a Boeing 787.
--:-- Shumita Basu: Yesterday, Air India said that it found no issues with the locking mechanisms across its Boeing fleet after inspecting all of the planes.
--:-- Andrew Tangel: But the report from Indian authorities has not ruled out malfunctions maintenance issues or potential design flaws.
--:-- Shumita Basu: It's good to keep an open mind and investigators I think are generally trained to do that.
--:-- Andrew Tangel: They talk about how they have to examine all factors, and a lot of times in articles about these accidents, we point out that new information that comes to light can contradict early assessments and shift the focus and totally change the direction of investigation.
--:-- Shumita Basu: So that still could play out. It could take months or even years for the investigation to conclude.
--:-- Shumita Basu: Before we let you go, a few other stories we're following. Former President Barack Obama issued a rare rebuke of President Trump, responding to Trump claiming without evidence that Obama committed treason and helped rig the 2016 and 2020 elections.
--:-- Shumita Basu: Trump spoke yesterday from the Oval Office on the heels of Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard publishing a short report claiming that evidence was suppressed that demonstrated Russia did not try and influence the 2016 outcome.
--:-- Shumita Basu: Multiple U.S. intelligence reports have concluded the opposite, that Russia was trying to disrupt American democracy in 2016.
--:-- Shumita Basu: That includes the probe by Robert Mueller and a bipartisan investigation by the Senate Intelligence Committee, led at the time by now Secretary of State Marco Rubio.
--:-- Shumita Basu: Obama's office described Trump's claims as ridiculous, bizarre and an attempt at distraction.
--:-- Shumita Basu: These attacks come as Trump faces pressure over his links to Epstein and what the Department of Justice might release about his criminal activity.
--:-- Shumita Basu: Meanwhile, in Congress, House Speaker Mike Johnson cut business short today, a day early, and is sending members home for their five-week summer recess after fallout from the debate over the Epstein files effectively ground business to a halt.
--:-- Shumita Basu: Democrats had planned to force more votes on amendments intended to pressure the Justice Department to release additional information in the investigation, and Republicans tabled bringing more bills to the floor in order to avoid that.
--:-- Shumita Basu: Axios reports that some rank-and-file Republican members are still pushing for additional information from the DOJ before the recess officially starts later today, but Johnson has resisted.
--:-- Shumita Basu: And finally, to a mystery that's shrinking your summer, maybe not noticeably, but definitely measurably.
--:-- Shumita Basu: Over the last 10 years or so, scientists say the average length of a day has been shrinking, usually by just a matter of milliseconds.
--:-- Shumita Basu: Variations in Earth's rotation are largely to blame, but there's also something weird happening in Earth's core that physicists can't explain.
--:-- Shumita Basu: Its rotation has been slowing down for the last 50 years, which has forced everything around Earth's core to speed up in order to compensate.
--:-- Shumita Basu: So far, July 9th has been the shortest day of the year. Yesterday was projected to be short by a blink of an eye, too.
--:-- Shumita Basu: And there's one more historically short day coming up on the calendar, August 5th.
--:-- Shumita Basu: You can find all these stories and more in the Apple News app.
--:-- Shumita Basu: And if you're already listening in the News app right now, we've got a narrated article coming up next.
--:-- Shumita Basu: The New Yorker profiles a New York pediatrician who experienced a horrific personal tragedy and the unique life he pursued in its aftermath, finding redemption in helping patients and strangers alike.
--:-- Shumita Basu: If you're listening in the podcast app, follow Apple News Plus Narrated to find that story.
--:-- Shumita Basu: And I'll be back with the news tomorrow.
--:-- Shumita Basu: Thanks for listening to Apple News Today.
