--:-- Shamita Basu: Good morning. It's Thursday, July 20th. I'm Shamita Basu. This is Apple News Today.
--:-- Shamita Basu: On today's show, the Women's World Cup kicks off. Alabama's execution system will undergo a major test today. And how an actor could be on a hit streaming show and only get 82 cent checks in the mail. But first, let's catch up on some major stories in the news.
--:-- Shamita Basu: There's more fallout from Russia's decision to pull out of the Black Sea grain deal, a food security agreement that affects the global wheat supply. The Kremlin had initially agreed to suspend its blockade of Ukrainian ports to allow grain exports. But now Russia's defense ministry says any ships sailing to those ports would be considered possible carriers of military cargo.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Ukraine is one of the world's leading exporters of wheat, and the Russian threats are sending global wheat prices sharply higher. In the U.S., extreme weather is still wreaking havoc. A tornado touched down in North Carolina on Wednesday, damaging a Pfizer plant.
--:-- Shamita Basu: While there were no reports of serious injuries, a local sheriff said that large quantities of medicine had to be thrown out. The plant reportedly produces anesthesia and almost 25% of all sterile injectable medications used in U.S. hospitals.
--:-- Shamita Basu: So there's concerns about the possibility of long-term shortages. And in Auckland, New Zealand, just hours ahead of the start of the Women's World Cup there, a shooting. Three people are dead, including the gunman, and several others were injured.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Gun violence is rare in the country, which tightened its laws following a mass shooting in 2019. The prime minister said that there was no national security risk and that the tournament will continue as planned.
--:-- Lynn Williams: I mean, gun violence was something we'd seen far too many times in the U.S. There was definitely a sense of like, let's come together. We still have a job to do. But also recognizing that there were lives lost and that is very real and very devastating.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Let's stay with the Women's World Cup, which is already underway. Results from the first match are in New Zealand upset Norway, making this New Zealand's first ever World Cup match win in either men's or women's soccer history.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The returning champions of this year's tournament are the U.S. women's national team. They've won the last two World Cups and are hoping to bring home their third trophy this summer.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The U team and their predecessors aren't just the most dominant team in their sport. Last May they did something historic. They won a long fight to get equal pay with the men. It makes them the only one of the 32 teams competing in this year's tournament to have achieved this kind of parity.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And it's having a huge global domino effect. Now players around the world are bargaining with their national football associations for better pay, equal treatment, and more. But they're not seeing quick progress.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Many of these talks are either stalled or the athletes say they feel their voices are being ignored. Rebecca Lowe hosts the Apple News podcast After the Whistle, which is back for a new season to cover the tournament.
--:-- Rebecca Lowe: In their first episode, I explained what's happening with England's national football team, the Lionesses. So FIFA are going to give at least $30,000 to every player at this Women's World Cup, which let's not even get into, by the way, the pittance that that is in comparison to the men's game.
--:-- Rebecca Lowe: And the England women would like to be compensated more than that from the FA on top of what FIFA paid them. And the FA are basically saying, no, no, we won't be doing that. And this has been a standoff for a long time.
--:-- Rebecca Lowe: Keep in mind, the English team is one of the favorites to win it all. And they're the European champions. There's also a standoff in Spain between the Football Association and players who say the coach's management style is so problematic that it's affecting their emotional and mental health.
--:-- Rebecca Lowe: Things got so bad that a few months ago, 15 of the athletes said they planned to sit this World Cup out. The Spanish Federation criticized the athletes and said it would not be pressured into making changes.
--:-- Rebecca Lowe: While a couple of the players have decided to play, most of their stars won't be there. In Canada, France, South Africa, even host country New Zealand, there are similar stories.
--:-- Rebecca Lowe: The most shocking story, though, is out of Zambia. So this article came out in The Guardian this week. Their head coach is called Bruce Mwappe. And there are allegations, in fact, there's a quoted allegation from an anonymous player to The Guardian that says, this is basically what it said.
--:-- Rebecca Lowe: If the coach wants to sleep with a player, you have to say yes. It is normal that the coach sleeps with players in our team. And The Guardian goes on to say that players are being threatened with punitive action if they dare say anything about what's happened.
--:-- Rebecca Lowe: Zambia's Football Association says FIFA and the police are now investigating. The coach, Bruce Mwappe, has denied these allegations, and he'll be coaching the team during the World Cup.
--:-- Shamita Basu: In my experience, with allegations as serious as those are, the person gets suspended whilst the investigation goes on. We don't risk allowing, were they to be true, the allegations.
--:-- Shamita Basu: We don't risk allowing these things to continue. While we're investigating. I mean, it's bizarre to me that he's allowed to stay in his job, no?
--:-- Rebecca Lowe: Rebecca and her co-host, Brendan Hunt, say these stories are ugly and frustrating. But the fact that they are being talked about at all means something. It's a sign of progress.
--:-- Rebecca Lowe: Progress that wouldn't have been possible if the U.S. women didn't achieve what they did last year. On the podcast Rebecca and Brendan talk about what to look forward to in this year's tournament and they make some early predictions.
--:-- Brendan Hunt: Despite my reservations, despite my timidity, my cautiousness, my responsibly wide view, gotta go USA. Gotta go USA here we come Australia get ready for it Yeah.
--:-- Shamita Basu: You? Head, says Germany. Sort of full body, says USA. Heart. says those cheeky little line lessons. Oh, yeah, I'm going for it.
--:-- Shamita Basu: I mean, by the way, by the way, how predictable are we? Literally, how predictable are our predictions? So predictable.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Hold on. You made me go first. Yeah. And you picked three winners. Correct. I've never seen a fence straddled so hard.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Follow After the Whistle on Apple Podcasts to make sure you never miss an episode. And if you're listening in the Apple News app right now, stick around at the end of the show. We'll have the first episode of that queued up to play for you next.
--:-- Shamita Basu: A man is scheduled to be executed today in the state of Alabama. It's the first execution on the calendar since Republican Governor Kay Ivey ordered a pause last fall after the state botched three in a row.
--:-- Shamita Basu: In each of those cases, they had issues inserting IV lines to administer the lethal injection. Two of the three people survived because executioners were forced to stop at midnight when the death warrants technically expired.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Elizabeth Brunig has been writing about Alabama's track record of botched executions for The Atlantic. She was a Pulitzer Prize finalist this year.
--:-- Elizabeth Brunig: The review that Governor Ivey ordered of Alabama's execution process was inadequate from the start. That review was not conducted externally by a third-party commission.
--:-- Elizabeth Brunig: It was conducted internally by the Department of Corrections itself, and no report was ever issued declaring its findings to the public. So there is a lot of mystery surrounding that review and what it found and what the problems really were with those botched executions last year.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Brunig says one area that calls for more scrutiny is the team of people who administer the IV. Were they trained at all for this job, or were they just taken in from whatever work they had been doing and directed to do this work without any kind of occupational training?
--:-- Shamita Basu: I mean, these are all really important questions, but the state's privacy regime for protecting the identities of executioners is so extreme that none of these questions have been publicly answered so far.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The state says it's now using a new IV team whose members are appropriately licensed. The man scheduled to be executed today is James Barber. He was convicted of murder in 2001.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Under new rules, executioners will have more time to locate his veins and administer the IV. Barber recently spoke to NBC News by phone from the correctional facility in Alabama where he's set to be executed.
--:-- James Barber: Being the first in line after the state didn't do a true review of the protocol and made no real changes, he said gives him a fair amount of trepidation.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Actors and writers in Hollywood are still on strike. They want fair pay in an industry that's betting big on streaming and AI in the future. But New Yorker staff writer Michael Shulman says to understand what's going on in today's fight, it's useful to turn back the clock.
--:-- Michael Shulman: Specifically, 10 years back to the debut of the Netflix show Orange is the New Black. People didn't really know what a streaming TV show could look like in terms of success.
--:-- Michael Shulman: But Orange is the New Black was a ground-up phenomenon. And the actors on the show realized it immediately because they started getting chased down the street for autographs and pictures.
--:-- Michael Shulman: That show helped introduce the concept of binge watching to the world by releasing an entire season in one drop. This game-changing model transformed Netflix and the whole streaming economy.
--:-- Michael Shulman: Meanwhile, recurring guest stars of the show told me they were still living paycheck to paycheck. They were kept at such a low salary that a lot of them weren't able to quit their day jobs for several seasons into the show's success.
--:-- Michael Shulman: I mean, people were bartending, they were waitressing. They were basically just breaking even on Orange is the New Black.
--:-- Shamita Basu: TV actors have traditionally earned income through residuals when reruns of their show air on TV. But on streaming platforms, it's a different model. Streaming residuals are often not directly linked to the popularity of a show.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And streaming networks tend to keep viewership numbers a secret, which makes it hard for actors and writers to negotiate better deals.
--:-- Michael Shulman: There was one actor on the show, Emma Miles, who played Leanne, one of the two meth heads in the prison. And she told me that she had been on a handful of Law & Order SVU episodes stretching back to 2004, which she still gets hundreds of dollars per year in residuals for.
--:-- Michael Shulman: Meanwhile, she was on five, six seasons of Orange is the New Black. That's the show that made her name, some people still recognize her for, and yet she'll get $20.
--:-- Shamita Basu: So there's a vast, vast difference. These actors told Shulman they're proud of their work on Orange is the New Black, but they feel shortchanged.
--:-- Shamita Basu: They're still feeling like, hey, I was on this show that remains extremely popular. Why can't I afford a bathtub? Why can't I get to the point of income as an actor where I get health insurance from the union?
--:-- Shamita Basu: You know, it just, it's a very mixed legacy. You can find all these stories and more in the Apple News app. And if you're already listening in the News app right now, stick around.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The first episode of After the Whistle, Women's World Cup edition, is up next. Enjoy listening to that, and I'll be back with the news tomorrow.
