--:-- Duarte Giraldino: Good morning. It's Tuesday, January 5th. I'm Duarte Giraldino. And I'm Shamita Basu. 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.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: Today's Georgia's runoff election, voters are not only going to decide which two candidates will represent them in the U.S. Senate, they'll also effectively be deciding whether Democrats or Republicans control the Senate.
--:-- Shamita Basu: But there's also another race happening in the background. It's not on today's ballot, but it's just as consequential. The contest between Stacey Abrams and current Republican Governor Brian Kemp.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: Sure, neither of them are technically running this year, but Politico says it's kind of like the worst kept secret in Georgia that Abrams plans to challenge Kemp again for the governor's seat in 2022.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And today's elections are a chapter in that story. These runoffs could tell us where Georgia's heading in the future politically, whether this once reliably red state is turning purple or even blue.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: If Democrats keep scoring victories in Georgia, Abrams may be the one who deserves the credit. After she lost the governor's race to Kemp in 2018, Abrams built a powerful ground game operation for Democratic candidates.
--:-- Shamita Basu: She helped raise millions of dollars and registered hundreds of thousands of new voters. If Democrats John Ossoff and Raphael Warnock win tonight, take that as a sign of Abrams' influence in the state.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: So tonight's results could impact her political future, too. Meanwhile, Governor Kemp is facing trouble in his own party.
--:-- Shamita Basu: I'm going to be here in a year and a half, and I'm going to be campaigning against your governor and your crazy secretary of state
--:-- [Audio of President Trump speaking]
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: The president was in Georgia last night rallying for Republican senators and he used a good chunk of his stage time to repeat false claims about election results and to attack Kemp and other Republicans for not intervening on his behalf.
--:-- Shamita Basu: For his part, Kemp is dismissing Trump's criticism and his threats. At a recent press conference, he said he worked hard to support Trump's re-election, but, quote, at the end of the day, I also have to follow the laws and constitution.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: Here's a story that might have gone under the radar over the holidays. You probably heard that President Trump vetoed the National Defense Authorization Act and that Congress then voted to override his veto.
--:-- Shamita Basu: But did you know in that act is one of the most impactful pieces of legislation ever passed by Congress to fight corruption and tax evasion?
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: Fortune magazine has this story. It turns out, buried deep inside the laws nearly 1,800 pages is something known as the Corporate Transparency Act.
--:-- Shamita Basu: It requires people to disclose their identity when they form a company in the U.S. So, in effect, what this act does is ban the practice of setting up anonymous shell companies through which you can launder money or evade taxes.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: Yeah, the way Fortune explains it, the United States is currently one of the easiest places on Earth to form an anonymous shell company.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The think tank Global Financial Integrity found that you need to share more information to get a library card than to form a secret company.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: So this new law doesn't just make it harder for tax cheats and drug traffickers to operate. It may also cut off bad actors in countries like Russia, North Korea or Syria who use anonymous shell companies to circumvent sanctions and financially back repressive regimes.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Now this act won't single-handedly end all of these types of corrupt activities, but it is a big step by Congress.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: And here's something that we don't say a whole lot these days. The bill passed with overwhelming bipartisan support.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Iran may soon have the capacity to build a nuclear weapon. This is the closest it's ever been.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: Now, President-elect Joe Biden has said once he's in office, he wants to restore the Iran nuclear deal.
--:-- Shamita Basu: But as Robin Wright explains in The New Yorker, reengaging with this Middle Eastern country is not going to be easy.
--:-- [Audio of Robin Wright speaking]
--:-- Shamita Basu: Wright has been covering this region for decades. And if you want to understand just how tense things have gotten, this New Yorker article lays out the drip drip of events that have led to this moment.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: I'll lay out just a few of the big points on the timeline. Early on in Trump's presidency, he withdrew the U.S. from the Iran nuclear deal and imposed sanctions, which Iran says caused $250 billion in losses over the past two years.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Then, almost exactly a year ago, the U.S. killed General Qasem Soleimani in an airstrike. He was Iran's top military commander.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: In November, Iran's top nuclear scientist was assassinated. Now, Iran blames Israel, a key U.S. ally, although Israel denied responsibility.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Wright explains, Iran sees all of this as provocation and is now pushing back. Just this week, we're getting reports that Iran is enriching uranium to 20% purity.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: That's an important number because it exceeds the limits set in the nuclear deal we mentioned earlier. And this week, Iran also seized a South Korean oil tanker and its crew.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Tensions are high with U.S. sanctions in place, which locked down some $7 billion in South Korean banks.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: According to The New Yorker, at the rate Iran has been developing its nuclear program since the breakdown of the nuclear deal, the country is currently about three months away from being able to make enough highly enriched uranium to build a bomb.
--:-- Shamita Basu: This all goes to say this tit is pushing the U and Iran dangerously close to a much bigger escalation.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: And when President-elect Biden walks into the Oval Office in 15 days, he won't have much time to stabilize things.
--:-- Shamita Basu: You see, Iran's leadership will change in June when they elect a new president.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: This is the final week we'll ever hear. And now, here is the host of Jeopardy, Alex Trebek.
--:-- Alex Trebek: Thanks, Donnie. Hi, everyone. Happy to be with you.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Alex Trebek's final episodes air this week. They were taped shortly before his death in November.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: Speaking to NBC's Today show, Jeopardy executive producer Mike Richards said, despite the fact that Trebek was gravely ill and in enormous pain in the final days of his life, he wanted to be on set filming those final episodes.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The week before we taped those episodes, he was in the hospital and this man was unbelievable. He calls me and he said, Mike, I'm going to be fine. I'll be in the tape.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: And I was able to eat jello today.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And he went, Alex, that's great, but that doesn't mean you're going to be ready to host five episodes of a game show, which is an enormous amount of effort.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: And he said, Do not cancel. I will be there.
--:-- Shamita Basu: He said Trebek made being smart cool. It's one of the reasons so many of us are going to miss him after his last episode airs on Friday.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: You can find all these stories and more in the Apple News app.
--:-- Shamita Basu: We'll be covering Georgia's runoff elections live with real-time results, breaking news and analysis from FiveThirtyEight.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: To follow along, check out Apple News starting at 7 p.m. Eastern.
--:-- Shamita Basu: We'll talk with you again tomorrow.
