--:-- Duarte Giraldino: Good morning. It's Thursday, September 16th. I'm Duarte Giraldino. And 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: Years of alleged cover-ups by the FBI and USA Gymnastics reportedly put dozens of girls in the hands of a now convicted sex offender. On Wednesday, four elite gymnasts told the Senate Judiciary Committee how the FBI failed to protect them from the abuse of former USA Gymnastics doctor Larry Nassar.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: To be clear, I blame Larry Nassar, and I also blame an entire system that enabled and perpetrated his abuse. Simone Biles was one of the survivors of his abuse. She blasted the FBI for mishandling this investigation.
--:-- Shamita Basu: It truly feels like the FBI turned a blind eye to us and went out of its way to help protect USAG and USOPC. A message needs to be sent. If you allow a predator to harm children, the consequences will be swift and severe.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: We only know about the FBI's failure to properly document complaints of abuse because of a report by the inspector general at the Justice Department that came out this summer. The FBI was made aware of Nassar's abuse in 2015, but it wasn't until more than a year later that he was arrested by state law enforcement.
--:-- Shamita Basu: In the time in between, Nassar was free, and the inspector general's report says he abused at least 70 athletes. The victims put that number even higher, at 120.
--:-- Washington Post Reporter (Devlin Barrett): These women are basically saying, look, we were girls, and we were surrounded by adults, and none of the adults around us seemed to understand that, you know, you couldn't let someone do this, that it was wrong. And you see a lot of and hear a lot of in their voices a great deal of disillusionment and anger that all the people who are supposed to be looking out for them didn't seem to be doing that at all.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: They seemed to be looking out for themselves. Former Olympian Michaela Maroney described how she told the FBI that Nassar molested her in London just before she won a gold medal. And again, for hours in Tokyo when she was 15.
--:-- Washington Post Reporter (Devlin Barrett): Michael Langman, the FBI agent who interviewed Maroney, was recently fired. But the Bureau didn't explain why. FBI firings are pretty rare. Most agents who are under serious disciplinary measures choose to retire or resign before they are forced out.
--:-- Shamita Basu: FBI Director Christopher Wray also testified before the Senate. He apologized on behalf of the FBI, but the Justice Department declined to send anyone to answer one of the victim's key demands.
--:-- Washington Post Reporter (Devlin Barrett): One of the big questions that the gymnasts have been asking lawmakers and other officials is, why won't you indict some of these people who helped enable what Nassar did? Now, the inspector general report found that two of the key FBI agents that handled this lied to them about what they did.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: While the hearing focused on the FBI, these athletes also blamed USA Gymnastics for failing to take their abuse seriously. Last month, the organization proposed a $425 million payout to Nassar's victims.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The U.S. is taking a rare step to share with Australia one of the resources that may get the world's strongest military power. I'm talking about nuclear-powered submarine technology. This is part of a new Indo-Pacific security partnership with Australia, the United Kingdom, and the U.S.
--:-- President Biden: We need to be able to address both the current strategic environment in the region and how it may evolve. Because the future of each of our nations, and indeed the world, depends on a free and open Indo-Pacific, enduring and flourishing in the decades ahead.
--:-- NPR Reporter: See, Biden didn't mention China by name in his announcement, but he's made it known that he's trying to refocus U.S. policy to challenge China's growing economic and military power. The technology that's being shared, it's not about nuclear weapons. It's about nuclear propulsion, which is going to allow Australian Navy submarines to travel faster and farther.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: And this is just the beginning of a long process. Building and commissioning the submarines could take decades.
--:-- Shamita Basu: We are living in the time of peak TV. Even if you like me and you don't have a physical TV in your house, there are so many high-quality shows across dozens of networks and streaming services.
--:-- The Atlantic Reporter (Hannah Georgis): The shows that we watch influence the culture. They help us decide what's wrong, what's funny, even what's American. But as The Atlantic reports, even as TV casts became more diverse over the years, the teams behind the scenes, the ones who make the shows, haven't really reflected what our country looks like.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: On screen, racial diversity is better than it's ever been. UCLA's 2020 Hollywood Diversity Report found Black actors played nearly 10% of lead roles on television.
--:-- The Atlantic Reporter (Hannah Georgis): That's probably the closest the industry has come to actual representation, but it's a different story behind the camera. For some context, know that people of color make up about 40% of the U.S. population, but this report found just 11 to 15% of show creators come from any underrepresented racial group.
--:-- Shamita Basu: When writers' rooms don't reflect the diversity of the country, what we see is we get television that presents a distorted image of groups of people who have historically not been allowed into that space.
--:-- The Atlantic Reporter (Hannah Georgis): That's Hannah Georgis, a culture writer with The Atlantic. So it means that when there are Black characters in a show that isn't predominantly Black, that oftentimes they are playing stereotypical roles or they're playing roles that feel not quite right to a lot of viewers.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: There are a lot of high-profile Black show creators. Shonda Rhimes of Grey's Anatomy, Kenya Barris of Blackish. But 91% of shows are led by white showrunners.
--:-- The Atlantic Reporter (Hannah Georgis): Things have come a long way from the days of Sanford and Son and the Jeffersons, but Georgia says Black creators often feel like they have to make Blackness palatable to white audiences. And that comes at a huge personal cost.
--:-- Felicia D. Henderson: Negotiated authenticity is a phrase that I use to describe what have been a number of my experiences in which I'm asked, and other Black writers are asked to come in to make sure that a show reflects how Black people really act or really talk.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: But that often if she or if another writer pushes back on an idea that a showrunner or a senior writer who is white is really attached to, then their viewpoints can still get shut down, even if they're there to say whether or not the thing is realistically Black.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Some of the oldest-known painted pottery on Earth may have been used for beer. Ars Technica is reporting about how a team of researchers studied these ancient ceramic vessels from a burial site.
--:-- Ars Technica Reporter: Who knew beer residue apparently lasts so long? When researchers analyzed these vessels, they found molecules showing signs of being heated and fermented. Also yeast, which is a key ingredient for brewing up something strong.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: It seems like it was some kind of rice beer. And rice was thought to be a luxury crop at the time. Now, the researchers are using the term beer kind of loosely here. This drink would have been sweet, pretty cloudy looking, nothing like the New England IPAs that you see right now.
--:-- Ars Technica Reporter: One of the researchers is an expert on ancient alcohol. Yes, there's such a thing. And she tells Ars Technica her thinking is brewing may have been accidentally discovered. Some leftover rice got moldy, it fermented on its own, then somebody tried it and liked the taste and the buzz.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And after a bit of trial and error, they figured out how to make beer. And in time, they had a powerful drink to toast life and apparently death.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: You can find all these stories and more in the Apple News app. And while you're in the app, be sure to check out the Read Local feature. Every Thursday we highlight standout stories from local news outlets across the U.S.
--:-- Shamita Basu: We'll talk with you again tomorrow.
