--:-- Duarte Giraldino: Good morning. It's Wednesday, February 9th. 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: The highest-ranking Republican in the Senate is taking a swing at his own party. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell criticized the Republican National Committee. He did this because it censured Representatives Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger for taking part in the House committee investigating the January 6th insurrection.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: McConnell's disapproval highlights a growing rift within the party. The issue is whether or not the RNC should be sort of singling out members of our party who may have different views from the majority. That's not the job of the RNC.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Cheney and Kinzinger are the only Republicans on the committee investigating the violent attack at the Capitol. The RNC described the insurrection as legitimate political discourse. McConnell seemed to take issue with that choice of words.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: Well, let me give you my view of what happened January the 6th. And we're all here. We're here. We saw what happened. It was a violent insurrection for the purpose of trying to prevent the peaceful transfer of power after a legitimately certified election from one administration to the next. That's what it was.
--:-- Shamita Basu: McConnell's criticism of the RNC underscores what USA Today describes as a widening breach among Republicans. McConnell and some other Republicans are saying this is going to needlessly divide the party ahead of the midterm elections. Fears about Republicans disagreeing over their allegiance to Trump are particularly strong in closely contested states like Ohio, Florida, and North Carolina.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: Senator John Cornyn of Texas sided with McConnell. He said, I don't think you can kick out of the party everybody you disagree with or it's going to be a minority party.
--:-- Shamita Basu: It's the Justice Department's biggest seizure of money ever. Yesterday, officials at the DOJ announced they seized more than $3.6 billion worth of Bitcoin and arrested a husband and wife in New York who were allegedly trying to launder it.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: In case you're wondering, that's around 120 Bitcoin. And it was stolen in 2016 by a hacker who breached the virtual currency exchange Bitfinex. At the time of the hack, the stolen coins were worth only about $70 million, but it's now worth billions of dollars.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Federal officials say they were able to recover most of it. The husband and wife named in this suit are Elia Lichtenstein and Heather Morgan. They're both in their 30s. The DOJ didn't say much about the pair, but journalists and the Internet quickly got on the case.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: BuzzFeed News reports how the pair had various side hustles and alternate personas, some more bizarre than others. Morgan wrote a few articles for Forbes, and her bio on the website says she writes about combating fraud and cybercrime. She enjoys designing streetwear and rapping.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Yes, you heard that right, rapping. She performs under the name Razzlecon. NBC News reporter Kevin Collier found some of her music videos, including this one where she raps about being many things, a CEO, an economist, and a crocodile of Wall Street.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: Spirit of a revolutionary, power of a dictator, love to be contrary, but I'm fly like a gator. I've got pilot blood. I'm a real risk taker, Pirate riding the flood. Babsatony maker. Grandmother crocodile. Weirder than an egg.
--:-- Shamita Basu: On to her husband, Lichtenstein. According to court documents, he went by the alias Dutch. According to BuzzFeed, Lichtenstein is credited with founding an advertising research startup that raised more than $1.5 million from venture capitalists like Mark Cuban.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: Together, Lichtenstein and Morgan co-founded a venture capital fund and a cryptocurrency wallet. The two have been charged with conspiracy to commit money laundering and conspiracy to defraud the United States, which carry maximum prison sentences of 20 years and five years, respectively.
--:-- Shamita Basu: They were not charged with actually hacking the currency exchange. As The Washington Post reports, the DOJ's recently started going after cryptocurrency crimes more aggressively. This is their most high-profile prosecution of its kind to date.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: The Wall Street Journal spoke with financial crime experts who say this case and others like it show that law enforcement is getting increasingly savvy when it comes to monitoring crimes in the cryptocurrency markets. After all, the blockchain leaves a digital trail.
--:-- Shamita Basu: It started as a demonstration by Canadian truckers who were angry about cross vaccine requirements. But now it's stretched into a second week of protests that's putting Ottawa at the epicenter of the far-right movement against vaccine mandates.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: In protests, hundreds of truckers parked in the streets of the capital. As of yesterday, the convoy moved beyond Ottawa and onto the Ambassador Bridge. They're blocking a key trade route between the U.S. and Canada.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Andy Blatchford is a reporter with Politico based in Ottawa. The city of Ottawa is like any government town. In normal times, it's very quiet. But since the convoy rolled into town, it's been a whole different story.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: Blatchford told us local politicians are saying the situation is out of control. Trucks clogging all the streets downtown around Parliament Hill and then stretching into neighborhoods. You know, big rig trucks, lots of protesters as well, lots of banners being waved, people shouting loud music, people chanting slogans.
--:-- Shamita Basu: A city politician told NPR some of those banners had anti-Semitic messages and hate symbols. The mayor of Ottawa declared a state of emergency and asked federal authorities for more law enforcement.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: The truckers who are protesting say they are staying until all public health mandates are lifted. NPR reports some of them want the whole government to be overturned. They're particularly angry with Prime Minister Trudeau.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has condemned them. You know, he said he wouldn't meet with the organizers of these convoys. He's been a very strong advocate of strong public health measures since the beginning and, of course, of vaccinations.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: He's also the person who put in these vaccine mandates on the truckers. NPR also points out the Canadian Trucking Alliance says the vast majority of the country's trucking industry is vaccinated.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The fact that this convoy is now blocking the Ambassador Bridge has real implications for the United States. This is the busiest border crossing between the U.S. and Canada. Traffic on this bridge makes up about a quarter of $400 billion in annual trade between the two countries.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: But beyond trade, Politico wants us to consider the political implications here. These demonstrations have galvanized far-right movements worldwide. They've gotten praise from U.S. politicians like former President Trump and Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Now similar convoys are reportedly being considered in the U.S. and in Europe. The concerns about this sort of far-right elements that are part of this convoy, you know, authorities and other people have linked some of the organizers to these groups.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: This push to dissolve the government, to take some control over the government in Canada has drawn comparisons to January 6th in the United States. It's raised a lot of concerns among authorities here in Canada about what the real intentions are of these organizers.
--:-- Shamita Basu: He might have been a great writer, but Charles Dickens had terrible penmanship. Even he said it. His was the devil's handwriting. Random lines, squiggles. I'm not exaggerating when I say it looks like hieroglyphics or something.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: Yeah, you got to click on this article to see the picture and you're going to be like, Dickens, come on. But it was so bad that thousands of people around the world responded to a cry for help from a university in the UK.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Researchers were looking for help deciphering Dickens' chicken scratch. They wanted to know what Dickens was trying to say in this mysterious letter that had been kept in an archive for more than a century.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: Now, this was all part of a competition called the Dickens Code. Yeah, the Guardian explains what happened here.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The tricky thing is that Dickens used a lot of symbols. He used a version of shorthand code, and he had this notebook where he even explained some of his signs. For example, he would use the at symbol to mean about, or a version of the letter T to mean extraordinary.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: Altogether, the code crackers were able to piece together about 70% of this letter. And the person who deciphered the most symbols was declared the winner. He's an IT worker and code enthusiast in California.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And he says he used to get C's in literature classes. So he was pleasantly surprised to find himself contributing to the world's understanding of Charles Dickens.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: You can find all these stories and more in the Apple News app. Plus, check out our Olympics coverage. The U.S. scored its first gold medal of the Games today thanks to snowboarder Lindsay Jacobellis.
--:-- Shamita Basu: She's got a pretty amazing redemption story, 16 years in the making. You can read more in our Olympics Hub throughout the day.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: 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. Thank you.
