--:-- Shamita Basu: Good morning. It's Monday, August 7th. I'm Shamita Basu. This is Apple News Today.
--:-- Shamita Basu: On today's show, Simone Biles has a victorious return to competition. Beyond the film Oppenheimer, the lasting health impact for families who live near the atomic bomb test. And visiting every country on Earth without taking a single flight. But first, the U.S. women are out of the World Cup.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Sunday's loss was the earliest the team has been knocked out in its history. The game was scoreless, sending it to a penalty shootout. There was a tense moment at the end where U.S. goalkeeper Alyssa Nair appeared to deflect a penalty shot, but officials reviewed the footage and found the ball had in fact made it just millimeters over the goal line, giving Sweden the win.
--:-- [Audio clip of the U.S. players and the stadium crowd reacting to the loss]
--:-- Shamita Basu: That sent the American team home, with a lot to think about after the historically disappointing result.
--:-- Michelle Akers: The heartbreak and the agony is like, how do you work through that?
--:-- Shamita Basu: That's American soccer legend Michelle Akers. She scored the first goal in the history of the U.S. women's national team. Akers spoke with After the Whistle hosts Brendan Hunt and Rebecca Lowe about how it feels to fall short.
--:-- Michelle Akers: In 1995, we lost to Norway, and we played for third place. And it was just a gut punch and gut-wrenching. And like, it's unfathomable and you're completely lost for the next six months because you've put so much into it. And that that is this team. It's shown all World Cup that we our mentality is not there at the level that it needs to be.
--:-- Michelle Akers: When we aren't scoring goals, it's a reflection of our overall team mentality. And that's kind of what how I've been looking at it. And at the same time so many freaking players did awesome and so much to be proud of
--:-- Michelle Akers: Aker says in the long run this could be good for the U just like that loss to Norway was a motivator for her squad back in the 90s.
--:-- Michelle Akers: I loved playing that team, and I have the ultimate respect for those players because they made us better every single game, and they beat us because we didn't have mentality. Then we had to go away from that and go, what do we need to do to win? And then we reconfigured and rebuilt ourselves to step into the 1996 Olympics and we won gold.
--:-- Michelle Akers: They can do the same thing. This is absolutely a gift, painful as it is. And so let's see where we go from here. I mean, we have a lot to be proud of. And there's nothing wrong with saying we weren't good enough and we have to do better.
--:-- Shamita Basu: If you're listening in the Apple News app, you can hear that full episode of After the Whistle right after this show.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Now let's take a look at some other stories in the news. Record-breaking flooding in Alaska has led to evacuations. In the capital of Juneau, the rushing water has destroyed buildings.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Some of the worst flooding over the weekend appears to be receding, but residents are still warned to stay clear of the Mendenhall River.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Moving to the entertainment business, Barbie is now a billion-dollar film. Warner Brothers says the movie's global box office numbers have blown away even the most optimistic predictions.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The latest numbers put director Greta Gerwig into the record books. Barbie is the first film directed solely by a woman to break the billion-dollar mark.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And Simone Biles has landed the most difficult vault in women's gymnastic history. She returned to competition over the weekend in Chicago. She won the all-around, balance beam, and floor titles.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And she had the highest score on the vault, where she landed the Yurchenko double pike, cementing her place as the only woman to ever perform the move in competition.
--:-- Shamita Basu: files pulled out in the middle of the last olympics in tokyo she said she was worried her mental health wasn at a place where she could compete safely her return has people wondering if she make a run at the Paris Olympics next year
--:-- Shamita Basu: The hit film Oppenheimer shows the first test of the atomic bomb, codenamed Trinity, in New Mexico in 1945. It was just weeks later that the U.S. dropped bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan.
--:-- Shamita Basu: But the film doesn't address the impact of the test on people in New Mexico. Now, those people are hoping that the hype around the film can help raise awareness of their stories.
--:-- Karin Brouillard: In the film, you hear that the Trinity test site was chosen because it was an isolated area. But almost half a million people lived within 150 miles.
--:-- Karin Brouillard: And because of the secrecy of the war mission, no one was told to evacuate. The blast sent a mushroom cloud 10 miles into the sky. Witnesses say radioactive ash fell for days on food supplies and drinking water.
--:-- Karin Brouillard: Washington Post reporter Karin Brouillard spoke with people who say the community was misled about the test. They had no context for what happened.
--:-- Karin Brouillard: And the government actually came up with a cover story and said it was an ammunition magazine explosion. Nothing to worry about.
--:-- Karin Brouillard: And that was, published by the AP. And that was the story until the bombings in Japan when the truth came out.
--:-- Karin Brouillard: The National Cancer Institute later concluded that by 2034, the Trinity test could contribute to as many as 1,000 cases of cancer.
--:-- Karin Brouillard: I talked to people who had family trees mapped out on pieces of paper, naming all the people back to their great-great-grandparents who've had cancers.
--:-- Karin Brouillard: and they believe strongly that this is a result of the test.
--:-- Karin Brouillard: Brouillard told us about one woman whose father grew up on a ranch 27 miles from the Trinity site. He was 14 years old the day the bomb detonated.
--:-- Karin Brouillard: She says more than two dozen relatives have had cancer. So she herself has had breast cancer and her father, who just years after the test walked around the site of the test, the gate was open, picked up some of the debris, also had cancer as have many of her other relatives
--:-- Karin Brouillard: In 1990 a program was established to compensate people in Nevada who were exposed to radiation from nuclear testing in the 1950s
--:-- Karin Brouillard: But people in New Mexico, near the earlier test, have never been eligible.
--:-- Karin Brouillard: There is some movement in Congress, though. Recently, the Senate passed an amendment that would add people in New Mexico and other states where testing happened.
--:-- Karin Brouillard: But at this point, it's not clear whether it'll become law.
--:-- Karin Brouillard: Many of the people who spoke to Brouillard said they were conflicted about actually watching the Oppenheimer movie.
--:-- Karin Brouillard: Some wished they'd been acknowledged somehow.
--:-- Karin Brouillard: But one of them hopes that people watch the movie and do their own research to learn about these families' stories.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Finally, an unconventional travel story that started 10 years ago, with one guy from Denmark taking on a wild challenge.
--:-- Shamita Basu: He decided he wanted to visit every country in the world without flying. Thor Peterson now says he has returned home triumphantly.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Along the way, he kept count of all the different modes of transportation he took. Ships, trains, buses, taxis, even boats and rickshaws.
--:-- Shamita Basu: He gave himself a few rules. He budgeted around 20 bucks a day and tried to spend at least 24 hours in each country before moving on.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And as you can guess, things got pretty tricky during the pandemic. When COVID hit, he was in Hong Kong.
--:-- Shamita Basu: He talked to CNN about getting stuck there for two years.
--:-- Thor Peterson: I look back at Hong Kong today and I'd have to say that was simultaneously perhaps the best time of my life and the worst time of my life.
--:-- Shamita Basu: That was the point he thought about giving up, but he decided to stick with it as soon as he could leave.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Peterson's 203rd and final country was the Maldives. He sailed back to Denmark where he was greeted by a cheering crowd.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Now he's working on a book and a documentary called The Impossible Journey.
--:-- Shamita Basu: You can find all these stories and more in the Apple News app.
--:-- Shamita Basu: If you're listening in the News app right now, after the whistle is queued up to play for you next, then we'll be back with the news tomorrow.
