--:-- Shumita Basu: Good morning. It's Monday, March 14th. I'm Shumita Basu. And I'm Duarte Giraldino. 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.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: Dozens of people are dead after a Russian missile attack on a military facility in western Ukraine. It's only about 15 miles from the Polish border, the closest attack yet to a NATO country. And the target was a place where, in the past, NATO troops have trained Ukrainian forces.
--:-- Shumita Basu: BuzzFeed News has new video that takes us inside that deadly night. We hear someone breathing heavily, trying to stay calm, taking cover as missiles streak overhead. Then they hit. Then another strike lights up the night sky. This video came from a non-Ukrainian, a foreigner who traveled to Ukraine to join the fight against Russia.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: Several of these foreign fighters spoke to BuzzFeed, including one American. He says he signed up to fight after seeing images of women and children being bombed.
--:-- Shumita Basu: The Wall Street Journal looks at the bigger picture of foreign fighters who are answering Ukraine's call for global help. Its government claims 20,000 foreigners have signed up to join Ukraine's International Legion.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: The U.S. discourages Americans from taking part in the war, but many Americans are signing up, including those with combat experience. The journal spoke to a U.S. veteran who is helping the Ukrainian embassy in D.C. by vetting Americans who want to enlist.
--:-- Shumita Basu: And he said so far, he's cleared people with experience using javelin missiles and other weapons the U.S. and allies have been sending to Ukraine recently. Russia's calling these foreign fighters mercenaries. If they're captured, the Russian military says it will not give them prisoner of war status under the Geneva Conventions. That includes humane treatment of captives.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: Ukraine says no foreign legion fighters were killed in the attack on the base near Poland One fighter tells BuzzFeed I not going home because of a few missiles
--:-- Shumita Basu: Among the dead in Ukraine is an award-winning American journalist, Brent Renault. He was killed in a suburb of Kiev. Times editor-in-chief says he was working on a project that focused on the global refugee crisis.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: For some refugees, this isn't the first war they're running from. The Washington Post has the stories of people from Afghanistan, Yemen, and other war-torn countries who settled in Ukraine, only to have to run again, this time from Russian attacks.
--:-- Shumita Basu: The Post has the story of Masuma Tajik. She arrived in Ukraine from Afghanistan after the Taliban takeover, and she said when she got to Kiev, she felt like she could finally breathe. Now she's on the run again with the same backpack she took with her when she left Kabul.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: She tells the Post she realized nothing is guaranteed in life. Or you might have seen images over the weekend of an 11-year-old boy who escaped alone with a phone number scribbled on his hand. He'd fled Syria years earlier.
--:-- Shumita Basu: For these refugees, their fate is not so certain because they're not originally from Europe. The EU has put in unprecedented measures for Ukrainians who are on the run, more than it did for people who escaped conflicts in the Middle East and Africa in the past.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: Ukrainians are being granted a special kind of temporary protection that lets them bypass the asylum system that many non-Europeans have struggled with. Many non-Ukrainians say they've been discriminated against.
--:-- Shumita Basu: Some people of color who tried to get out through evacuation buses or border crossings say they were blocked so that white Ukrainians could go first. Still, some people made it through. A man from Yemen says he walked until he could no longer feel his legs.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: He finally made it to Poland, he says with the help of a Polish family, who also helped a man from Iraq. He says he misses his Ukrainian friends. And he told the Post even though he fled Yemen he never could imagine the level of destruction he saw back in Ukraine
--:-- Shumita Basu: On this show, we've talked a lot about supply chain issues during the pandemic. One piece of that is truck drivers. They play a vital role in getting stuff we need to where we need it. And there aren't enough of them on the road.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: So we were struck by this Time Magazine article that frames this issue in a new way. It's by senior economics correspondent Alana Samuels. There's not a truck driver shortage. There's a trucker retention problem.
--:-- Shumita Basu: And so when you hear this phrase trucker shortage, that's often a way for the trucking industry to try to recruit more people. Recruiters will tell you trucking pays a six-figure salary and gives you a lot of independence. But the reality is new drivers can earn far less, just a few cents per mile.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: So you have all these people hearing about the truck driver shortage, learning to become truckers. And because there are so many of them at the kind of very bottom, they're all competing against each other for the low rates that the trucking companies offer.
--:-- Shumita Basu: And as a result of that, lots of drivers who get their commercial driver's licenses leave the industry. Samuel has told us there's another huge problem in the trucking business, and that is training. To be a barber, you have to spend a thousand hours or more in training before you get a license in most states.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: There is no minimum number of hours of training to drive a truck. Semuels points out that as trucking companies hurry to hire more drivers, and those drivers haven't had much experience behind the wheel of a 40,000 pound vehicle, that means roads could become less safe.
--:-- Shumita Basu: In 2020, there were close to 5,000 people killed in crashes involving large trucks. That's 33 percent more than a decade before. So I talk in the story about this guy who got his truck driving license in Texas. He'd only been driving a car for a couple of years before that.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: And his job had him going through the mountains in Colorado and he lost control of the truck. His brakes went out and he had just never really driven that way on a mountain before And he crashed and killed four people
--:-- Shumita Basu: That driver was sentenced to 110 years in prison for manslaughter The governor later commuted his sentence to 10 years. The driver's lawyer argued he never received training in how to drive through mountain passes.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: And there could be new safety concerns as teenagers get behind the wheels of these massive trucks. The minimum age for interstate trucking has been 21. The Biden administration is launching a pilot apprenticeship program for people as young as 18.
--:-- Shumita Basu: One highway safety advocate tells Time that trucking companies have long been pushing for younger drivers, and now they're using supply chain challenges to make their case.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: 40 days. That's how long Tom Brady stayed in retirement. The 44-year-old shocked the sports world yesterday by announcing his un-retirement. He's back. The seven-time Super Bowl champ says he'll be back with the Tampa Bay Bucs for 23rd season.
--:-- Shumita Basu: He explained his change of heart on social media as a need to take care of, quote, unfinished business. Yeah, the team said they're stoked. Fans are really excited, too. And the hope is, with Brady back, they'll have a shot at another championship run.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: But it's pretty bad news for one sports memorabilia collector, as USA Today reports. Just hours before Brady announced his unretirement, the football Brady threw on his final career touchdown pass sold for more than half a million dollars.
--:-- Shumita Basu: Brady's going to be able to throw a lot more touchdown passes next season, so that ball could lose a lot of value. Coaches, players, fans, and now collectors are learning just how tricky it is to bet on Tom Brady being done.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: You can find all these stories and more in the Apple News app. And when you're in the app, keep listening to hear narrated articles from our News Plus partners. We'll talk with you again tomorrow.
