--:-- Shamita Basu: Good morning. It's Thursday, October 6th. I'm Shamita Basu. 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.
--:-- Shamita Basu: A critical Senate battle has had some major developments in recent days, so it's a good time to catch up on a race that might determine control of the Senate. Republican Herschel Walker is running to unseat Georgia Democrat Raphael Warnock.
--:-- Shamita Basu: New reporting from the Daily Beast has an explosive allegation against Walker, who's a hardline public opponent of abortion rights. It says Walker paid for a woman to have an abortion. She claims they continue to have a relationship and later had a child together.
--:-- Shamita Basu: She spoke anonymously to The Daily Beast, saying he paid for her abortion in 2009. She gave the publication what she says are receipts from the clinic, a copy from a personal check signed by Walker, and a get-well card from him.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Walker has denied the accusations and threatened to sue The Daily Beast. He went on Fox News after the story came out.
--:-- Herschel Walker: I never asked anyone to get an abortion. I never paid for an abortion, and it's a lie. And I'm going to continue to fight.
--:-- Shamita Basu: You know, I tell you, that's what they want. They want this seat. But right now, they've energized me even more.
--:-- Shamita Basu: National Republicans have largely stood behind Walker. Trump also came to his defense. And his campaign claims half a million dollars in donations came in shortly after the story came out.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Walker has faced other allegations. One of his sons is Christian Walker, who's a kind of conservative social media influencer. He says his father was neglectful and violent.
--:-- Shamita Basu: In the past, Christian's mother, Cindy Grossman, said Herschel Walker was physically abusive and threatened to kill her. The candidate previously said he was suffering from mental illness then and didn't remember the events Grossman talked about.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The latest news highlights the risk Republicans took in choosing Walker as the nominee, given past accusations and his tendency to exaggerate his business and academic records.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Polls have shown him trailing Warnock for the Senate seat in a state where the GOP candidate for governor has a strong lead.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Hurricane Ian may be gone, but it's not over for Florida. The Washington Post has some strong on-the-ground reporting on what may end up being the state's deadliest hurricane since 1935.
--:-- Shamita Basu: We don't have a good sense of the total death toll just yet, but so far, at least 103 people have died, according to the Post's count of state and local reports. Most victims drowned.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Yesterday, President Biden visited Florida.
--:-- Joe Biden: Everything, everything, this historic, titanic and unimaginable storm just ripped it to pieces. You got to start from scratch, got to move again. And it's going to take a lot, a lot of time, not weeks or months. It's going to take years for everything to get squared away in the state of Florida.
--:-- Shamita Basu: In some places, the storm surge got as high as 18 feet. Some people, many who were elderly, were trapped in their homes.
--:-- Shamita Basu: It's a reminder of the greatest danger of hurricanes. High winds may get more attention as the storms approach, but disaster experts say it's often overlooked that water typically kills more people than wind.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Rescue teams are still searching through the wreckage, looking for people who may be buried under rubble.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The post was on the ground as teams sawed through debris looking for people.
--:-- Brian Sullivan: We're kind of nearing the end of the window where we may expect to find survivors. Up to, I believe, nine or ten days there have been reports of survivors. I've not heard of any trapped survivors being found in the rubble since we got here.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The Post spoke with an environmental planner who said there's a saying in the field. You run from water and hide from wind.
--:-- Shamita Basu: He underscores the need to do a better job conveying the risks to people in areas where storm surges are possible.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Anyone who's given birth knows that those first few weeks after delivery are brutal and difficult.
--:-- Shamita Basu: It is currently 3 in the morning. I had some frustration with breastfeeding, super sore and feeling defeated. I was just in so much pain. These migraines are unlike anything that I've ever felt in this life.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Glamour magazine collected these stories for a major project that looks at the lack of legally guaranteed paid maternity leave in America.
--:-- Shamita Basu: There are so many statistics to choose from to illustrate just how challenging it is and how out of step we are with other wealthy countries.
--:-- Shamita Basu: In the U.S., one in four women go back to work within two weeks of giving birth. Often, they're still bleeding, swollen, and sleep-deprived. But many can't afford not to get back to work.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The United States is one of only six countries in the world without a paid leave policy. Globally, paid maternity leave averages 29 weeks.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Attempts to change U.S. policy have repeatedly failed in Congress. Just last year, a proposal to fund four weeks ultimately didn't make it through.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And I think that's outrageous, and we need to be shining a spotlight on that.
--:-- Shamita Basu: That's Natasha Perlman, the executive editor of Glamour. She's a mom of two, and she says when she moved to the U.S., she was shocked.
--:-- Natasha Perlman: I realized just how awful it was for women to go through childbirth, or even if they didn't go through childbirth, bring up a baby for the eight to 12 weeks and have zero financial support.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Glamour followed eight women for 28 days after giving birth to call attention to this particularly vulnerable time.
--:-- Shamita Basu: No one, as far as I can tell, has looked at it through the lens of women and opening up those first 28 days postpartum to show how impactful, how difficult it is, how raw and real and full of anxiety birth and post-birth is, and then throw into it the lack of financial support.
--:-- Shamita Basu: One of the women you learn about is a chef named Karina.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Six days after she gave birth, she was in her kitchen working again, and the doughnut bakes start at midnight and they end at eight o'clock in the morning, so exactly at that time when she should be sleeping and resting, she was working because they needed the money.
--:-- Shamita Basu: I think it's that adrenaline of new motherhood sometimes where you think I can do this, I can do everything, and she was really strong in those weeks because she had no other choice.
--:-- Shamita Basu: But three months on, when she was looking back, she said to me, "I really don't know if I can do this again. If we have another child, can we have another child?"
--:-- Shamita Basu: For me, a recovering theater kid, it's backstage at the school play. And I hear my cue, but I'm not in costume and I don't have my props and I'm panicking.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And I've often wondered, why? Like, why does my brain go there?
--:-- Shamita Basu: A story from The Atlantic caught our attention recently. It gives some insight into anxiety dreams, specifically why so many of them come back to a common theme. School.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The Atlantic spoke to people who study dreams to figure out why so many adults who haven't been in school in decades still have nightmares about it.
--:-- Shamita Basu: A Harvard Dream researcher told The Atlantic that these kinds of dreams tend to happen when we're anxious about work. Maybe it's a job interview, a big presentation.
--:-- Shamita Basu: School is the place where we first got evaluated by some kind of authority figure. So our sleeping brains tend to take us back to school days when we're stressed in the office.
--:-- Shamita Basu: If you're sick of your high school popping up in your sleep, a dream analyst has a recommendation for you.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Try imagining a new positive ending to your anxiety dream. Do this right when you wake up while you're still in bed.
--:-- Shamita Basu: So if your dream self was freaking out about failing a test and not graduating, finish the story. You took the test. You did fine. You graduated. And now you're all grown up.
--:-- 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 now, stick around.
--:-- Shamita Basu: We've got a narrated article coming up next, a Politico story about the reporter Maggie Haberman. Her new book about Trump is getting a lot of attention. And the story looks at the ups and downs of owning the Trump beat.
--:-- Shamita Basu: So sit back, enjoy listening to that, and I'll be back here with the news tomorrow.
