--:-- Shamita Basu: Good morning. It's Tuesday, August 17th. I'm Shamita Basu. And I'm Duarte Giraldino. This is Apple News Today.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: 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 quick headline to start the show on booster shots. CNN and other news outlets report the Biden administration is expected to recommend additional COVID shots for most Americans. You would get the additional shot eight months after you're fully vaccinated. Currently, the CDC recommends booster shots for people with compromised immune systems.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: Did you see the video footage of the chaos at Kabul's airport? Afghans were running after American military planes. They were grabbing any part they could get their hands on trying to get out. That's how bad the situation on the ground is.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Yesterday, President Biden spoke about what the U.S. is doing to evacuate Afghans who helped American forces over the years. Over the coming days, we intend to transport out thousands of American citizens who have been living and working in Afghanistan. We'll also continue to support the safe departure of civilian personnel, the civilian personnel of our allies who are still serving in Afghanistan.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: Amanda Demer is a historian at Virginia Tech, and she says this is the urgent unanswered question. What exactly do we owe the tens of thousands of Afghans who supported the U.S.'s efforts in Afghanistan?
--:-- Amanda Demer: In an article for The Washington Post, Demer says the U.S. has faced this moral question before in the 70s. We reached out to Demer to talk about the resettlement of people from Southeast Asia after America left Vietnam.
--:-- Shamita Basu: As the country was falling, as North Vietnamese troops were moving south, it's interesting in terms of the Gerald Ford administration that the conversation was sort of taken as a matter of course that the United States does have an obligation to its allies what Ford called a profound moral obligation And so the discussions were less about whether there was an obligation that was sort of taken for granted but more about what could be done and what could be done quickly in a highly volatile and rapidly changing on the ground situation.
--:-- Amanda Demer: After Saigon fell, along with U.S. personnel, about 130,000 South Vietnamese were evacuated. And as the years went by, more than a million South Vietnamese would resettle in the United States, along with hundreds of thousands of people from Laos and Cambodia.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Demmer explained for American policymakers, whether they supported the Vietnam War or were against it, many found common ground and supported refugee resettlement. Both war hawks and war doves were able to sort of see assisting Vietnamese as politically prudent.
--:-- Amanda Demer: And the rise of Vietnam veterans in Congress, people like John Kerry and John McCain, Bob Dole, who did not fight in Vietnam, but who was, you know, an esteemed veteran. So the fact that these veterans oftentimes aligned with or worked with human rights organizations and diasporic organizations, so Vietnamese American organizations to help these programs, that gave them political cover in a way.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And people who, you know, might question the immigration of refugees might still be personally very proud of and trust their senator. So all of these sort of very unique things came together to help create this momentum.
--:-- Amanda Demer: There are some key differences between then and now. Last year, refugee resettlement in the United States was at a historic low. And at this point, it's anyone's guess how many Afghans are going to actually be allowed into the U.S.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: Heat waves in southern Europe, flooding in China, fires in the American West. Right now, the effects of climate change are being felt around the world. The recent U.N. report on climate shows how extreme weather could get even worse.
--:-- Shamita Basu: These reports get updated every few years and rely on forecasts of different scenarios based on scientific factors like ocean currents and greenhouse gases But there is another factor a big one that finally being accounted for in this latest report political leadership.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: Quartz has this story. The thinking is so much of how we respond to climate emergencies depends on decisions by the world's governments. When leadership changes, so can policy.
--:-- Shamita Basu: We saw this when the Obama administration signed on to the Paris Climate Agreement and the Trump administration announced it would withdraw. Over the span of those few years, we saw drastically different goalposts for how much carbon dioxide and methane would get pumped into the atmosphere by the U.S.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: Quartz says various socioeconomic factors like childhood education or trade policies can also shape the climate equation over time. By mapping out five scenarios, the latest report tries to take these factors into consideration.
--:-- Shamita Basu: In one, political leaders move towards a more sustainable path. They take steps to reduce the risks of climate change, and economic growth emphasizes our collective well-being. In a pessimistic version of the future, nationalism takes over the world. regional conflicts rise, countries turn inward, global development slows, inequality soars, and major economies like the U.S. give up leadership on climate action.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: Emissions increase and temperatures soar. This new modeling, it is limited. It uses broad strokes to paint possible futures for the world. But the key takeaway here is climate change isn't something that's simply happening to us. And the more we can quantify our role in the process, the better we'll be able to understand what our environmental future might look like.
--:-- Shamita Basu: If you bought something online recently, you might have come across the option to break up your payment into smaller installments. You know, rather than pay $100 for a pair of shoes today, You might do multiple smaller payments over several weeks.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: Buy now, pay later services are getting more and more popular. Klarna, Affirm, Quadpay. These are just some of the companies that are heavily marketing to millennials and Gen Z. And as these companies grow they raising concerns for generations who are already saddled with debt
--:-- Shamita Basu: The LA Times looks into the pros and cons of these services They can be a way for people with low credit scores to expand their buying power but folks who miss payments can rack up fees and face debt collection.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: Buy Now Pay Later apps also are less transparent than credit cards, and some consumers complain about problems with returns or disputes.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The other thing is these services don't offer the opportunity for people to increase their credit scores the way that traditional credit cards do. Buy now, pay later apps don't tell credit bureaus when customers pay their bills. So people who need to build a credit history won't benefit from using these.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: And the Better Business Bureau is racking up complaints about these companies. Consumer advocates say it might be time for regulators to take a closer look at these apps. They're popular outside the U.S. too, and regulators in other countries are also concerned.
--:-- Shamita Basu: We've been talking about supply chain issues during the pandemic. Here's a story about an unexpected fix. In Kenya, at an orphanage for baby elephants, the people there were giving human baby formula to the animals. Now, the import costs were high, and the pandemic made baby formula even harder to get.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: So these people found an unusual, hyper-local solution. Send in the goats. Literally. National Geographic reports on how swapping goat milk into the elephant's diet was transformational.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Goat milk was cheaper than imported formula. And there was plenty of it nearby. Plus, buying it from local herds helped the regional economy.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: This is a Nat Geo article. So, of course, it's got great pictures of these hungry little elephants. In one of the pictures, this elephant is holding its own bottle and it's got its trunk wrapped all the way around it. It's very, very cute.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And it turns out a goat milk-based diet is actually really healthy for these elephants, too.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: If you want to see them and you're in the Apple News app, you can get the full story through the notification we just sent you. And while you're in the app, keep listening to hear narrated articles from our News Plus partners. We'll talk with you again tomorrow.
