--:-- Shamita Basu: Good morning. It's Tuesday, September 19th. I'm Shamita Basu. This is Apple News Today.
--:-- Shamita Basu: On today's show, the missing F-35 fighter jet has been found, why so many older Americans are homeless, and what scientists learned from listening to babies babble. But first, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is in the U.S. this week. He's addressing the U.N. General Assembly, meeting with top U.S. members of Congress, and visiting President Biden at the White House.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The trip to America comes as Congress is considering Biden's request for tens of billions of dollars in additional aid to Ukraine. Zelensky recently spoke to Scott Pelley on 60 Minutes about the importance of U.S. money and the global stakes of defeating Russia.
--:-- Volodymyr Zelensky: The United States of America is supporting Ukraine financially, and I'm grateful for this. I just think they're not supporting only Ukraine alone. If Ukraine falls, Putin will surely go further. What will the United States of America do when Putin reaches the Baltic states, when he reaches the Polish border? He will.
--:-- Volodymyr Zelensky: The U.S. has already spent tens of billions of dollars supporting Ukraine's defense, including providing advanced weapons. But some Republicans are questioning whether America should continue sending Ukraine so much money. That includes GOP presidential candidates and members of Congress.
--:-- Shamita Basu: There's also a broader legislative fight over spending that could derail aid to Ukraine and even shut down the entire U.S. government by the end of the month. So a big part of Zelensky's trip will be to maintain political support and momentum so that the money and weapons keep flowing from America.
--:-- Shamita Basu: On the battlefield, Ukraine has made some gains in recent days. Its forces just recaptured two villages in eastern Ukraine as they push ahead in the counteroffensive in the South and East. But even Zelensky concedes that progress is slow.
--:-- Volodymyr Zelensky: And Western intelligence says that Russia is reinforcing positions in key areas. So there's still a long fight ahead, which is why Zelensky is pushing so hard to expand American support.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Now let's take a quick look at some other major stories in the news. A high-stakes fight between Canada and India is escalating. Today, India expelled a Canadian diplomat following Canada's expulsion of an Indian intelligence agent.
--:-- Shamita Basu: This comes as Canada's government says it's investigating whether India's government orchestrated the June killing of a Sikh separatist leader in Canada. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau says he wants India's full cooperation in investigating what he calls credible allegations of Indian government involvement.
--:-- Justin Trudeau: Any involvement of a foreign government in the killing of a Canadian citizen on Canadian soil is an unacceptable violation of our sovereignty.
--:-- Shamita Basu: India calls the allegations absurd.
--:-- Shamita Basu: In the U.S., crews have found the debris of the F-35 jet that went missing in South Carolina on Sunday. A problem forced the pilot to safely eject, but the military initially had trouble finding the expensive stealth fighter.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Now that crews are recovering the debris, an investigation is underway to find out what led to the crash.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And YouTube is blocking comedian Russell Brand from making money on the platform. The company says that it takes this kind of action if a creator's behavior is harmful.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Brand faces multiple allegations of rape and sexual assault, revealed in an investigation over the weekend by The Times of London, Sunday Times, and Channel 4. He has denied the allegations and postponed upcoming comedy shows.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Many of America's baby boomers are struggling to find affordable housing as they get older. The Wall Street Journal looks at why older people are the fastest growing group in the unhoused population.
--:-- Shannon Najmabadi: The problem is getting so bad so quickly that some experts are calling this a silver tsunami. The rising rates of homelessness among boomers partially has to do with the size of this generation. It's huge. And elderly people are generally increasingly vulnerable to homelessness.
--:-- Shannon Najmabadi: The growing cost of housing plays a major role. Also, just fixed incomes that they're on, like Social Security, not keeping pace generally with the cost of living in some areas.
--:-- Shannon Najmabadi: And when you take a closer look at boomers, experts point out there's a clear divide. Many older boomers had jobs that still offered pensions, but that's less common for younger boomers who came of age during back-to-back economic downturns.
--:-- Shannon Najmabadi: Those permanently set them behind in wealth. A lot of the people that I spoke to said they were shocked to lose their home. They felt betrayed after working so hard to save for the future.
--:-- Shannon Najmabadi: But often, all it took was the loss of a part-time job, a rise in monthly rent, or some unexpected expense. You know, for a lot of people, they cycle through friends and family members. First, they'll couch surf, they'll find ways through their existing network to stay with the roof over their head, eventually they might run out.
--:-- Shannon Najmabadi: They might not have family close by. They might not be on good terms with them. They might go through all of their friends and wear out their welcome as much as they can. And then they actually are on the street, so to speak. There are few options.
--:-- Shannon Najmabadi: Shelters generally aren't set up to accommodate older people with particular mobility and health needs, and staff members often don't have the medical training to care for older residents. Low-cost assisted living centers have been closing due to staffing shortages or financial challenges.
--:-- Shannon Najmabadi: Affordable housing options that are designed for seniors have enormous waiting lists, sometimes hundreds of people long. America needs to build a lot more housing if seniors and others are going to be able to find somewhere to live.
--:-- Shamita Basu: A University of Florida analysis says that state alone needs about 400 more low rental units to meet demand. One researcher tells the journal that the level of unhoused elderly people is unlike anything in America since the Great Depression.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Finally, a story about something parents of young children hear all the time. It might sound random and senseless, but research shows that baby babble is very consistent.
--:-- Megha Sundara: Babies make similar sounds when they first start babbling around six months old, but then the babbling changes depending on what languages they hear.
--:-- Megha Sundara: So it turns out babies, even when they're very young, are very good at imitating the rhythm and the intonation of the language they're hearing. In one of my experiments, I let babies who were used to hearing English spend time with someone speaking Spanish.
--:-- Megha Sundara: They got about five hours of exposure to hearing Spanish over four weeks. And over time, when they were with a Spanish speaker, they changed their babbling to match the language.
--:-- Megha Sundara: Babies are good at picking up language because of what's called neuroplasticity. It means their brains are super adaptive to new situations.
--:-- Megha Sundara: Heightened language learning ability lasts until kids are about five years old. Some parents may worry that hearing multiple languages at home might confuse a baby, but research has proven that to be false.
--:-- Shamita Basu: One speech expert tells NPR that when multilingual parents ask her which language they should speak around the baby, she says all of them. Babies can handle it.
--:-- Shamita Basu: 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. We've got a narrated article coming up next from Popular Science about why paleontologists need fake fossils. It goes inside the Colorado workshop that fabricates dinosaur bones.
--:-- Shamita Basu: So enjoy listening to that, and I'll be back with the news tomorrow.
