--:-- Shamita Basu: Good morning. It's Monday, April 5th. I'm Shamita Basu. And I'm Duarte 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.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: 165 million doses down in the U.S. Many more to go. That's according to Bloomberg's vaccination tracker. It sounds like a big number, but around two-thirds of the country still hasn't received a first dose.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And public health officials are warning people, don't let your guard down just yet. They're saying we're looking at a possible fourth wave in America. Here's CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky.
--:-- Dr. Rochelle Walensky: I'm going to pause here. I'm going to lose the script. And I'm going to reflect on the recurring feeling I have of impending doom. We have so much to look forward to, so much promise and potential of where we are, and so much reason for hope. But right now, I'm scared.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And yesterday, infectious disease expert Dr. Michael Osterholm echoed that sentiment on NBC's Meet the Press.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: We're just at the beginning of this surge. We haven't even really begun to see it yet. Numbers out of Michigan are disturbing. Just a couple of months ago, the state was seeing around 600 new cases a day. On Saturday, it recorded more than 8,400 new positive tests.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The spike is largely affecting people between 30 and 50 years old. This is a really important point because people in that age range are less likely to have been vaccinated. Dr. Osterholm explains, the Michigan numbers are also alarming because surges like this have tended to move to other regions.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: The CDC is telling people, remember, you're not fully immunized until two weeks after getting your final shot. But Catherine Wu writes in The Atlantic what we're seeing is a lot of people thinking we are so close to the end. Can we just cheat a little?
--:-- Shamita Basu: Some people are starting to take their masks off before those two weeks are over or they're getting together indoors with friends before everyone's had their shots. But those cheat days might be adding up.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: The article explains the coronavirus has always been a problem of scale. When everyone gets too lax at the same time, conditions are ripe for the number of infections to explode. And Wu says there's another reason to stay vigilant. The fact that the virus spreads, the more chance there is for it to mutate, potentially to a point where our vaccines could be less effective.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The takeaway here is we are so close to the finish line. Now is not the time to get complacent.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: More than six weeks after a severe cold snap overwhelmed Texas's energy grid, the true extent of the human toll is coming into focus. An analysis by the Houston Chronicle shows nearly 200 people died. That's double the state's official count.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The Chronicle is citing experts who say if the state had winterized its energy grid and planned to protect residents during extreme cold, these deaths could have been avoided. Weeks ago on this show, you heard about how, even after the storm passed, many people in Houston were still dealing with problems from burst water pipes.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: The situation in Texas may no longer be in the national headlines, but for a lot of folks in America's fourth largest city, this nightmare is not over. Texas Monthly spoke to people in Houston's third ward who still don't have running water.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Keep this in mind. This is a historically black part of Houston that's actually very central to the city, and some people call sections of it midtown. Many of the people interviewed for this article have the same landlord, a person who owns a lot of properties in the city.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: This landlord said tenants are behind on their rent and he can afford to repair all the damage. Now these tenants shared their stories with the paper. Three elderly people who were packed in a one apartment relying on bottled water. Some people said that they had to pay for hotels just to take showers.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Many of them want to find new housing within the third ward, but the forces of gentrification are making affordable housing harder to find. People are telling Texas Monthly they've gone without water and power before during hurricanes, often for weeks at a time. But this time, this time they say something is different. They feel forgotten, like the city has simply moved on.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: College basketball has a new champion. That is it! Stanford survives! Again! The Stanford Cardinal National Champions in 2021! The Stanford women defeated Arizona. They won the title in a game that came down to the final shot.
--:-- Shamita Basu: For Stanford, it's the first women's basketball championship in nearly 30 years. And tonight, it's the men's turn. Gonzaga will take on Baylor for the championship. And there's a lot of excitement about this matchup after Gonzaga's last-second win over the weekend.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: If you didn't check out that game, you gotta watch the final seconds. They were in overtime. UCLA had just tied the game. There were three seconds left, and from nearly the half-court line, Gonzaga freshman Jalen Suggs launched a buzzer-beater shot. Suggs for the win! Oh yes!
--:-- Shamita Basu: That means Gonzaga held on to their immaculate record, their 31-0 as they head into the final against Baylor. And now the question is, can they do it one last time? Might not be so easy. Baylor is a tough team to beat, and they absolutely crushed Houston on Saturday.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: So they're going to be better rested going into the final. This is a championship matchup two years in the making after the pandemic shut down last year March Madness. Gonzaga and Baylor get to wrap up the season, hopefully with enough drama to make up for what fans and players missed out on last year.
--:-- Shamita Basu: So this is the time of day when millions of us are sipping our morning coffee, trying to get that little extra boost. Turns out forests get a jolt too. National Geographic has the scoop on new research that shows coffee can help struggling rainforests come back to life.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: Researchers in Costa Rica used a byproduct of the coffee-making process basically as a fertilizer. They spread coffee pulp over deforested land. And two years later, the caffeinated land was doing way better than the plot that didn't get the coffee treatment.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The coffee pulp sets up this chain reaction, right? It makes the soil more fertile, which brings in more bugs. Those bugs attract birds who want to eat the bugs. While they're in the neighborhood for lunch, the birds drop these little seeds in that soil. You know how that happens.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: And because it's so rich, plants grow like crazy. Oh, and by the way, if you're thinking that it might smell like delicious dark roast in the forests of Costa Rica, one researcher says that coffee pulp is actually smelly, like it's really stinky. But if you hold your nose, it is a win-win. The soil benefits and coffee producers get to use their leftover pulp for something good instead of just throwing it away.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The ecologists behind this study are now looking into whether we could use other food byproducts in similar sustainable ways. 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 with you again tomorrow. Thank you.
