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--:-- Duarte Giraldino: Good morning. It's Monday, November 29th. I'm Duarte Giraldino.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: Shmi Dabassu is off. 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: If you got a chance to unplug from the news over Thanksgiving, you've probably got a lot of questions about Omicron. This new coronavirus variant is causing countries to put in travel restrictions and rocking stock markets. New York's governor has already declared a state of emergency.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: So while all this is happening, scientists and world leaders are trying to figure out how serious of a threat we're dealing with. Dr. Francis Collins is head of the National Institutes of Health. He was on Fox News Sunday and made it clear there's a lot we don't know yet, such as whether it's more contagious.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: This is early enough that it's hard to be sure we know the answers. And that's what a lot of us are spending our time on. He said it'll also take time to understand how well our vaccines will work against Omicron. We need to find that out. To be honest, though, that's going to take two or three weeks in both laboratory and field studies to figure out the answer.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: And that's what all of us as scientists want to know. Right now, there are so many unknowns. It's a point Catherine Wu drives home in the Atlantic to get a baseline about what we do know and why scientists are concerned.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: She talked to infectious disease expert Dr. Bahuma Tatanji. We do know that Omicron has the kind of mutations that have made previous variants more transmissible, but we just don't know how all of these mutations might work together.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: That uncertainty is why world leaders are reacting the way they are. Many countries, including the U.S., quickly imposed travel bans on the region that includes South Africa, where the variant was first identified. Some have banned all foreign travelers, but Dr. Tatanji points to evidence showing that by the time travel bans are implemented, it's usually too late.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: And these travel bans could backfire. Countries like South Africa are helping the global scientific community by tracking variants and letting the rest of the world know. Travel bans could unfairly stigmatize countries and make them less likely to share.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: Hearing all of this after you just finished gathering with people for the holidays can be a little scary, I know. But keep in mind we are in a much better position than we were when COVID first emerged two years ago. We have vaccines and a better understanding of treatment.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: On Meet the Press, Dr. Anthony Fauci put it this way, despite what we don't know about Omicron, We do know how to fight COVID. If you're not vaccinated, get vaccinated. If you're fully vaccinated, get boosted and get the children vaccinated also.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: Today, opening arguments begin in the trial of Ghislaine Maxwell. She's Jeffrey Epstein's longtime associate. Epstein died by suicide in 2019 while awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges. His death makes Maxwell's trial one of the only chances for Epstein's accusers to have their day in court.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: Danielle Benski is one of Epstein's accusers. She spoke with reporters at a hearing where Maxwell pleaded not guilty. To be honest, I was too afraid to come to the Epstein trial. And this is a new feeling for me to be able to sort of sit there and accept, you know, a lot.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: And, yeah, I do think that it's hard to sit through it, and it's painful, but it's good, too. It's healing.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: USA Today breaks down what to expect in Maxwell's trial. She faces federal charges, including sex trafficking and conspiracy, involving girls as young as 14.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: According to the indictment, Maxwell befriended girls by talking to them about their lives, school and family, and by taking them out to movies or shopping. Then, as the indictment alleges, Maxwell would discuss sexual topics, sometimes undress in front of them.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: Ultimately, Maxwell would allegedly take them to Epstein, where they were sexually abused. The alleged victims testifying in court, they will use pseudonyms. Courtroom artists have been instructed not to draw them.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: Prosecutors are also going to present evidence, including flight and business records, along with diary entries. Maxwell lawyers they expected to challenge the reliability of witness accounts in court decades after events.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: And their expert witness list includes specialists who testified in the trials of Jeffrey Dahmer and Harvey Weinstein. A law professor tells USA Today that this case is likely to rise or fall based on the strength of the testimonies that the alleged victims provide, as well as whether the prosecution can prove Maxwell was so close to Epstein that she had to know what was going on.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: In 2018 and 2019, two Boeing 737 MAX airplanes crashed. 189 people died in the crash of a Lion Air jet shortly after it took off from Indonesia. And then there were the 157 people who died in an Ethiopian Airlines crash.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: After the first crash, the plane's makers said pilots could safely fly it. The message that Boeing sent at the time publicly was that any competent pilot should have been able to determine what was happening, run an existing checklist in the plane, and take over control of the stabilizer.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: That's Peter Robinson. He's a reporter for Bloomberg and author of the new book, Flying Blind, the 737 MAX tragedy in the fall of Boeing. His reporting reveals gaps in training for the 737 MAX. The only training they got was 40 minutes on an iPad.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: And they, at the time, said to Boeing that they believed that this was a cost-cutting measure, that Boeing had minimized this new system because if it had highlighted it, it would have led to more expensive training, which would have damaged the plane's commercial prospects and would have been more expensive for the airline customers.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: Robison did hundreds of hours of interviews with current and former Boeing employees, many worried. In order to please Wall Street, the company cut corners over the years. You had an extreme shift in the focus from great products, which had always been how Boeing succeeded to shareholders.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: At one point from 2013 to 2018 80 of the free cash was going to shareholders in the form of buybacks and dividends billion from 2013 to 2018 went to buybacks which instead of going to investments in the airplane to R to the labor force that's going directly to shareholders and to the top executives who are paid largely in stock.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: Criticism of how the company handled the 737 MAX rollout grew, and Boeing ultimately replaced its CEO. At the time, the board said a leadership change was needed to repair relationships with regulators, customers, and all other stakeholders.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: I'm a big fan of maple syrup and not the fake stuff. I'm talking about 100% pure maple syrup. When I go to Latin America, one of the gifts I bring my friends are these little bottles of mel de maple.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: Now, what they and many people don't know is that a cartel in Quebec controls the vast majority of the world's maple syrup. And because of a recent shortage, it's tapping into its emergency stockpile.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: Yes, there's a stockpile of syrup. Now, The Washington Post explains how Quebec produces nearly three quarters of the world's maple syrup. That means the Federation of Quebec Maple Syrup Producers is the powerhouse when it comes to global supply. It's basically like OPEC but for syrup.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: The Post explains that this year multiple factors strain supply. First, warmer temperatures cut the sugaring season short. Also, global sales spiked more than a third during the pandemic. So now the cartel is releasing about 50 million pounds of syrup from its stockpile. That's almost half of its reserve.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: All to make sure that the sticky sweet topping makes its way to breakfast tables around the world. You can find all these stories and more in the Apple News app.
--:-- 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.
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