--:-- Shamita Basu: Good morning. It's Tuesday, December 20th. I'm Shamita Basu. This is Apple News Today.
--:-- Shamita Basu: On today's show, migrants struggle as the Supreme Court makes a move on immigration policy. Inside the COVID surge in China, why bird flu is so bad this year. And a burning cinematic question about Titanic answered 25 years later.
--:-- Shamita Basu: But first, a quick update to a story we talked about yesterday morning. The January 6th committee voted to recommend charging Donald Trump with four crimes related to the attack on the Capitol. They are obstructing an official proceeding of Congress, conspiracy to defraud the U.S., making false statements, and aiding or inciting an insurrection.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Trump's campaign responded by repeating past criticisms of the January 6th committee. As we mentioned, whether he's actually prosecuted is not the committee's call. That's up to the Justice Department, which declined to comment to Reuters.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Now let's turn to U.S. immigration news, where there's a big legal development. The Supreme Court is temporarily blocking the Biden administration from ending a Trump-era immigration policy. It's called Title 42, and the policy allows border officials to expel migrants without the usual legal review.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The Trump administration said this was to prevent the spread of COVID, but immigrant advocates said it was unfair to asylum seekers. In blocking the change for now, the court sided with 19 conservative states who argued that Title 42 should stay in place because lifting it would encourage more migrants to come, which they say the system can't handle.
--:-- Uriel Garcia: What this means for migrants is that many of them who are subject to Title 42 are going to have to wait until this issue gets resolved in the courts. Title 42 was supposed to have ended tomorrow.
--:-- Uriel Garcia: Garcia explains that there's been a buildup of people heading to America to escape difficult conditions in Latin America. There are thousands of migrants who have been waiting to be able to come into the U and start an asylum process.
--:-- Uriel Garcia: On top of those who have been waiting, we have even more recent migrants who are fleeing their countries right now trying to come into the U. And lots of migrants are already here. Many cities and states say they're straining to help them.
--:-- Uriel Garcia: Border patrol agents in El Paso have been releasing people to local shelters, but some people end up on the streets. Garcia told us about a migrant from Nicaragua trying to make his way to Florida, where he has family, and work lined up to support his wife and sons back home.
--:-- Uriel Garcia: And I asked him where he was going to sleep that night. He said, well, because it's so cold and it's so windy, he told me, we're going to go to a nearby parking garage and sleep there.
--:-- Uriel Garcia: It was him and dozens of other migrants who were carrying cardboard that they were using sort of as a makeshift mattress. Migrants sleeping on the streets are facing brutal winter weather.
--:-- Uriel Garcia: El Paso will be freezing this weekend, with windchill making it feel like single-digit temperatures. Last weekend, El Paso's mayor declared a state of emergency to free up additional resources for shelter.
--:-- Shamita Basu: It's not clear what the courts will do about Title 42, but many communities say they need help to keep migrants who are here right now safe.
--:-- Michaelene Duclef: China is facing an enormous surge of COVID-19 infections. Public health officials say the virus is spreading faster than ever.
--:-- Michaelene Duclef: So we're talking about estimates of like 700, 800 million people being infected over like the course of a month or two months. So that is just completely unprecedented in this outbreak in the world, really.
--:-- Michaelene Duclef: Up until recently, China had a strict zero-COVID policy, including lockdowns and quarantine rules. But after nationwide protests, the Chinese government pulled back on those restrictions earlier this month, exposing a previously sheltered population.
--:-- Michaelene Duclef: Health officials say the case count was already growing before restrictions were lifted. Basically, 1.4 billion people in China are vulnerable, essentially, to this virus, to an infection.
--:-- Michaelene Duclef: And in places where that's been, where the whole population is vulnerable to the virus, to an infection, essentially, when Omicron has come, it has infected about 40 to 60 percent of the population over the course of about 90 days.
--:-- Michaelene Duclef: Roughly 90 percent of adults in China have received two shots of the Chinese vaccine which protects them from severe disease. But some public health experts say the country could have done more for vulnerable groups and acted sooner.
--:-- Michaelene Duclef: This summer was when China should have started vaccinating those elderly, giving them the third shot, the booster, because elderly people to be protected against severe infection need three shots of the Chinese vaccine.
--:-- Michaelene Duclef: So they really waited till the last minute, like the last month, when it's already kind of exploded in a lot of places, to prepare for this massive surge that's coming.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The next few weeks could prove crucial, especially with millions of people expected to travel during the Lunar New Year next month.
--:-- Shamita Basu: You've probably heard about the bird flu epidemic, but you might not appreciate the massive scale until you see a couple of jaw-dropping charts from Bloomberg recently.
--:-- Shamita Basu: One shows the number of birds that have been euthanized because of infection, and the bar for this year is more than double the size of last year. It's literally off the chart.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Another shows the hockey stick rise of U.S. egg prices, which have doubled this year, soaring because of bird flu's impact on supply, as well as rising energy and feed costs for farmers.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Vox asks the top question for pandemic-minded people, why don't we vaccinate chickens and turkeys against bird flu?
--:-- Shamita Basu: It's about money, as you might expect. When vaccination is more expensive than culling infected flocks, farmers just won't do it.
--:-- Shamita Basu: But it's a little bit more complicated than that. One issue that Vox focuses on is trade. The U.S. exports nearly a fifth of its poultry.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And if a bird's been vaccinated, the eggs might have flu antibodies. Now, it's hard to tell whether those antibodies come from vaccination or infection.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Countries won't import eggs and meat if they think they might be infected. So poultry producers won't vaccinate because they might risk their product being rejected.
--:-- Shamita Basu: To overcome this problem, there would need to be some coordinated system internationally to keep track of bird vaccinations.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And this is where it comes down to, and I'm sorry to use this analogy, basically a game of chicken. No one wants to be the first to start a vaccination program because they'd risk losing business if no one else gets on board.
--:-- Shamita Basu: But as Vox explains, with bird flu becoming a bigger and bigger problem, international cooperation might be more likely in the future.
--:-- Shamita Basu: There's a new Avatar movie out in theaters, and that means that director James Cameron is out and about doing interviews.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And it's funny, it's been 25 years since he made Titanic, and yet he still gets asked all the time about that iconic scene. Never let go. I will never let go, Jack. I'll never let go.
--:-- Shamita Basu: You know the debate. Why couldn't Rose just scoot over and make room on that floating door for Jack? He didn't have to die?
--:-- Shamita Basu: Well, James Cameron has heard all of your griping and he's always said it's nonsense. And when he was asked about it by the Toronto Sun recently, he said that he commissioned a study to put that question to rest for good.
--:-- James Cameron: We took two stunt people that were the exact body mass of Kate and Leo, and we put sensors all over them and inside them, and we put them in ice water, and we tested to see whether they could have survived by this method or that method or that method.
--:-- James Cameron: And the answer was there was no way they could both survive. Only one could survive.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Cameron says he'll share more details on this science project in February, when Titanic is set to be re-released in theaters for its 25th anniversary.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The son also asked him if he regrets killing Jack. No. No, he needed to die. It's like Romeo and Juliet, right? It's a movie about love and sacrifice and mortality, right?
--:-- Shamita Basu: Now, maybe I didn't do it in a way that everybody agrees with, but Jack had to die. It's that simple.
--:-- Shamita Basu: He also said maybe he should have made that door that Rose was floating on a little bit smaller to never invite the debate in the first place.
--:-- Shamita Basu: You can find all these stories and more in the Apple News app. And if you're already listening in the News app right now, stick around. We have a narrated article coming up next that's especially relevant after a jury in L.A. found Harvey Weinstein guilty of three charges, including rape.
--:-- Shamita Basu: He's already serving time in New York for other crimes. The Hollywood Reporter has the story of the woman whose memo documenting Weinstein's harassment helped launch the Me Too movement. She's now speaking out.
--:-- Shamita Basu: That story is queued up to play next. I'll be back with the news tomorrow.
