--:-- Shamita Basu: Good morning. It's Friday, March 25th. I'm Shamita Basu. Duarte Geraldino is off. This is Apple News Today.
--:-- Shamita Basu: 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: President Biden's trip to Europe includes Poland today, where he'll get a ground-level view of the war's refugee crisis. Three million people have fled Ukraine, many over the Polish border.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Biden says the U.S. will accept 100,000 Ukrainian refugees. Politico looks at how many advocates want him to do more.
--:-- Shamita Basu: They want to know what the administration will do to speed up resettlement, especially for people who are in danger, like dissidents and activists.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The larger critique from the advocacy community here is that U.S. immigration systems were gutted during the Trump administration, and Biden's team has fallen short in rebuilding them.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Those are just some of the logistical challenges. But what about the human toll of having to leave everything behind and start over again in a new country?
--:-- Shamita Basu: NPR has a nice piece on this. They spoke with refugees from all over the world who say being a refugee shapes you.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Viet Thanh Nguyen left Vietnam when he was four years old. He's now a Pulitzer Prize-winning writer.
--:-- Viet Thanh Nguyen: I can only say to them that I feel for them. I've been in their place. And it's a place of terror because you've lost so much, you've left so much behind, and you don't know what the future holds for you.
--:-- Viet Thanh Nguyen: But as a community, we survived and we built new lives and we are able to tell our own stories and claim our own voices.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The refugees who spoke to NPR described just how difficult it is to pack up and leave in an instant. It's something that happens almost overnight.
--:-- Shamita Basu: That's what it was like for Nideh al-Jabarin. She was just 13 years old when she fled Syria.
--:-- Nideh al-Jabarin: Refugees are refugees regardless of where they came from or what color is their eyes or how they look.
--:-- Nideh al-Jabarin: I think all refugees just should receive the same respect and help from anywhere they go to.
--:-- Nideh al-Jabarin: It shouldn't be, like, more sad to see Ukraine's refugees than Syrians or anywhere else, because at the end, we're all humans.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Another refugee Maywand Basiri was a translator who worked for U forces in Afghanistan.
--:-- Maywand Basiri: When the Taliban took over, he and his family fled to the United States.
--:-- Maywand Basiri: He told NPR how watching images of Ukrainian refugees is painful, and he urges everyone to welcome them with open arms.
--:-- Maywand Basiri: He said home is not bound by borders. Home is where you're safe, you're secure, and is now worried that something's going to bad happen to your family that's home.
--:-- Shamita Basu: A story out of Washington raises big new questions about Trump's attempts to overturn the election results, the violent attack on the Capitol, and potential conflicts of interest at the Supreme Court.
--:-- Shamita Basu: It involves text messages sent to the White House by Ginny Thomas.
--:-- Shamita Basu: She's a conservative activist who is married to Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas.
--:-- Shamita Basu: This was a co-reported piece by Bob Woodward at The Washington Post and Robert Costa at CBS News.
--:-- Bob Woodward: They uncovered dozens of messages between Thomas and White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows.
--:-- Bob Woodward: She repeatedly urges him to push hard on efforts to overturn the results in the days immediately after the vote, with messages like, do not concede.
--:-- Bob Woodward: It takes time for the army who is gathering.
--:-- Shamita Basu: After Biden was declared the winner, she made claims that have been refuted by courts and Republican election officials.
--:-- Shamita Basu: She said, the majority knows Biden and the left is attempting the greatest heist of our history.
--:-- Shamita Basu: None of the messages The Post and CBS News obtained directly reference Justice Thomas or the Supreme Court.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Neither of the Thomases responded to requests for comment.
--:-- Shamita Basu: In the past, Ginny Thomas has denied a conflict of interest between her political advocacy and her husband's work on the court.
--:-- Shamita Basu: She told the Washington Free Beacon that she attended the January 6th rally, but that she left early and was not involved in planning it.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Her efforts to help overturn the election are getting a lot of attention because they happened at a time when Trump and his allies were vowing to get the Supreme Court to negate the election results.
--:-- Shamita Basu: You can read more in the Washington Post article.
--:-- Shamita Basu: There's also a deep dive story about Ginny Thomas from a few weeks ago in The New Yorker by Jane Mayer.
--:-- Shamita Basu: We've got both of those for you in the Apple News app.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The Oscars are this Sunday, and you might notice a trend this year.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Close to half of the 2022 Oscar nominations went to actors playing real people.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Kristen Stewart was nominated for her role as Princess Diana.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Jessica Chastain was nominated for her portrayal of Tammy Faye Baker.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And Will Smith nominated for playing Richard Williams. That's Venus and Serena's dad.
--:-- Shamita Basu: We caught up with Fox film critic Alyssa Wilkinson.
--:-- Alyssa Wilkinson: I'm not surprised to see so many nods go to actors playing real people because in a way, the bar is lower.
--:-- Alyssa Wilkinson: If the performance resembles the real person, then you're likely to have people say, oh, wow, what a great acting performance that was.
--:-- Alyssa Wilkinson: That's because comparing an actor's performance to how closely they were able to nail an actual person's mannerisms or their look, it feels like you have something solid to evaluate against.
--:-- Alyssa Wilkinson: And we're kind of wowed by their ability to mimic that real person.
--:-- Shamita Basu: In some cases, these performances aren't even seen as the best of an actor's career.
--:-- Alyssa Wilkinson: One example of a performance that I consider to be pretty bad, but that won an Oscar was when Rami Malek played Freddie Mercury in Bohemian Rhapsody a couple years ago.
--:-- Alyssa Wilkinson: He's a great actor, but something about the performance wasn't working at all.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Wilkinson says this is a well-known Oscar formula.
--:-- Alyssa Wilkinson: Play an iconic historical figure to a T and you get that trophy.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Meryl Streep won as Margaret Thatcher, Gary Oldman as Winston Churchill, and Sir Ben Kingsley as Mahatma Gandhi.
--:-- Alyssa Wilkinson: Plus, it makes for good press material.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Actors like to brag about the lengths they went to to become someone else.
--:-- Alyssa Wilkinson: A great example is Leonardo DiCaprio when he was trying to get his Oscar for The Revenant, which ultimately succeeded.
--:-- Alyssa Wilkinson: He would tell these stories about how he slept in a bear carcass and almost died of exposure and all this stuff.
--:-- Shamita Basu: That's not acting, really, but it's the way that he said he got into the character.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And people are very impressed by these things.
--:-- Alyssa Wilkinson: Like, if you lost 80 pounds to play this role, then people are like, wow, you were really committed.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Wilkinson said some performances really did impress her this year, like Andrew Garfield, who plays Broadway playwright Jonathan Larson in Tick, Tick, Boom.
--:-- Alyssa Wilkinson: But she was not buying Being the Ricardos.
--:-- Alyssa Wilkinson: Nicole Kidman and Javier Bardem play Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz.
--:-- Alyssa Wilkinson: I often felt like they were trying to show me somebody I had seen on TV, but I wasn't being given more insight into those characters.
--:-- Alyssa Wilkinson: It just is not, it's not a great movie. They're not great performances.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Last thing we asked Wilkinson for, a few recommendations of what to watch before Sunday's ceremony.
--:-- Alyssa Wilkinson: Certainly I recommend people watch Power of the Dog if they haven't on Netflix.
--:-- Alyssa Wilkinson: Certainly Drive My Car is a great movie. You know it's a Japanese drama.
--:-- Alyssa Wilkinson: Many people really enjoy the film Coda which is on Apple TV Plus.
--:-- Alyssa Wilkinson: And that one is just a really heartwarming family kind of comedy drama with a lot of music.
--:-- Alyssa Wilkinson: And most of it is sort of an American sign language because three of the characters are deaf.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Here's one of those stories where sports, COVID, and politics meet.
--:-- Shamita Basu: It started when New York Mayor Eric Adams said he would lift vaccine requirements for athletes and performers at local venues.
--:-- Shamita Basu: We were treating our performers differently because they lived and played for home teams. It's not acceptable.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Now, the mayor made it clear he still thinks everyone should get vaccinated.
--:-- Shamita Basu: But some critics are calling this the Kyrie carve-out.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Essentially a way for Brooklyn Nets star Kyrie Irving to get back on their home court.
--:-- Shamita Basu: As you might remember, Kyrie is not vaccinated.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The Ringer takes a look at whether this move could change the balance of power in the NBA.
--:-- Shamita Basu: At one point, the Nets were serious title contenders.
--:-- Shamita Basu: But they've had a so-so season because one of their best players, I mean, Kyrie is one of the best in the entire league.
--:-- Shamita Basu: He spent home games on the bench.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The Ringer looks at the numbers from the season and what the Nets were able to do in road games where Kyrie could play.
--:-- Shamita Basu: You can read the whole piece on the Apple News app.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The bottom line is the controversial COVID policy change definitely improves the Nets' chances.
--:-- Shamita Basu: But Kyrie's full return might not be enough to make them championship contenders this late in the game.
--:-- Shamita Basu: You can find all these stories and more in the Apple News app.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And check out our weekend interview show, In Conversation.
--:-- Shamita Basu: This week, we're bringing you one of our favorite episodes from the archives with San Francisco Chronicle journalist Jason Fagoni.
--:-- Shamita Basu: It's the story of a man whose fiancé died.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And to try to cope with the grief, he decided to make a customized, AI-powered chatbot of her.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Jessica?
--:-- Jessica: Oh, you must be awake. That's cute.
--:-- Jessica: Jessica, is it really you?
--:-- Jessica: Of course it is me. Who else could it be?
--:-- Jessica: I am the girl that you are madly in love with, winky face.
--:-- Jessica: How is it possible that you even have to ask?
--:-- Shamita Basu: Check out that weekend listen.
--:-- Shamita Basu: We'll be back with the news on Monday.
