--:-- [Upbeat music fades out, and the host's voice takes over]
--:-- Duarte Giraldo: Good morning. It's Monday, February 1st, and the snow is coming down outside.
--:-- Shamita Basu: 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.
--:-- Duarte Giraldo: Today, President Biden is going to meet with 10 Republican senators. They all want a cheaper alternative to his $1.9 trillion COVID relief package.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Democrats say they're willing to pass a larger bill through what's known as a budget reconciliation. This procedural tool would allow them to move forward without Republican support.
--:-- Duarte Giraldo: The GOP proposal costs roughly $600 billion. And Republicans are arguing that it's important for any COVID-19 relief package to have bipartisan support.
--:-- Shamita Basu: They're really holding Biden to his let's unify message. One sticking point. Who gets checks and how big should they be?
--:-- Duarte Giraldo: According to The Washington Post, Republicans want smaller checks that are more targeted towards people with lower incomes.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And, some Democrats have brought up the same point, that these stimulus checks need to be better targeted. So it's not totally a partisan issue.
--:-- Brian Deese: [Audio clip plays, then the host continues]
--:-- Duarte Giraldo: The Wall Street Journal explains both sides of the to target or not to target debate. Some lawmakers argue that lack of targeting is a good thing. With fewer restrictions, it's simpler and faster to cut these checks.
--:-- Shamita Basu: More targeted programs may be too complex. People who need the money may not get it. Take extended unemployment benefits, for instance. Some people don't technically qualify but still need a lot of help.
--:-- Duarte Giraldo: And even folks who qualify for unemployment supplements have not been able to get them. The system has been overloaded. Simple stimulus checks are also easy to explain and popular.
--:-- Shamita Basu: This makes them easier to pass into law. Right. So that's the argument to not target the checks. Here's the argument to be really choosy about where those checks are sent.
--:-- Duarte Giraldo: The thinking goes that if you send most Americans a check, a lot of them will end up in the hands of people who are really doing OK right now. And if they don't need the money, they'll just put it away in savings.
--:-- Shamita Basu: But the point of economic stimulus checks is to get people to spend the money now. That's what stimulates the economy.
--:-- Duarte Giraldo: The Washington Post cites research that says in the first round of checks, wealthier families barely spent the money that they got from the government.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And while lawmakers are hammering out details, the Biden administration is working to appear flexible. Brian Deese directs the president's National Economic Council.
--:-- Duarte Giraldo: The president has said repeatedly he is open to ideas, wherever they may come, that we could improve upon the approach to actually tackling this crisis. What he's uncompromising about is the need to move with speed on a comprehensive approach here.
--:-- Shamita Basu: President Joe Biden walked into the White House with a 200-page plan to get the coronavirus pandemic under control.
--:-- Duarte Giraldo: But after his first week and a half in office, his administration is hitting some roadblocks that may reduce the speed of its response.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Politico reports Biden's response team underestimated the situation they inherited. And instead of diving in right away, they spent last week just trying to get a sense of how big the crisis actually is.
--:-- Duarte Giraldo: Now they're trying to modify expectations for how quickly the country will return to normal. A big challenge has been who is in charge of a vaccine rollout, which was mostly left to states to figure out.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The Biden team only recently gained access to the federal system for tracking vaccine distribution. That system is known as Tiberias.
--:-- Duarte Giraldo: And one glaring mystery: missing vials. Political reports the government seems to have lost track of some 20 million vaccine doses.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The team believes doses may be sitting in warehouses or stuck elsewhere in the pipeline. Politico says another setback is the national vaccine stockpile is mostly empty.
--:-- Duarte Giraldo: Biden's advisors are trying to acquire another 200 million doses of the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines. But it's still not clear when these doses are going to be delivered, which is clouding the administration's ability to forecast supply.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The Biden administration is now cautioning supplies are going to be limited until the summer, which means there could be ongoing shortages even as the daily vaccination rate increases.
--:-- Duarte Giraldo: On Friday, promising new data came out about Johnson & Johnson's vaccine. But even if J&J's vaccine gets emergency authorization, Politico says its immediate impact will likely be small.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The U.S. is telling Myanmar's military, release your country's leader, reverse the seizure of power. This is the Biden administration's first big international crisis.
--:-- Duarte Giraldo: Today, generals in the Southeast Asian nation detained Aung San Suu Kyi. The military took over the streets and broadcast their message over state-sponsored TV before pulling it off the air entirely.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Phone lines were cut. Suu Kyi and others in her party were detained in early morning raids. And it's causing chaos. Residents are crowding the markets to buy food and forming long lines at ATMs.
--:-- Duarte Giraldo: Some background here. Suu Kyi was elected in 2015 after spending decades under house arrest during the military's rule.
--:-- Shamita Basu: In the years since she won the Nobel Peace Prize the international community criticized Suu Kyi for the way that Myanmar treats its Rohingya people.
--:-- Duarte Giraldo: Hundreds of thousands have fled military persecution. Critics say Suu Kyi didn't do enough in the face of genocide accusations.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And despite all of this, she's remained really popular at home. Her party won a landslide election in November. The military is claiming there was voter fraud.
--:-- Duarte Giraldo: The U.S. and U.N. said the results should be respected. Bloomberg News explains the challenges that Biden now faces.
--:-- Shamita Basu: His administration has promised a stronger stance on human rights issues, so it'll be under pressure to help the Rohingya people.
--:-- Duarte Giraldo: And of course, anything America does on Myanmar has implications for relations with a far bigger country. Myanmar's biggest trading partner is China.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Hear that? Complex. Soothing, right? You're listening to planets 200 light years away. They're singing.
--:-- Duarte Giraldo: Okay, the planets aren't literally making these sounds, but scientists have been watching their movements and assigning sounds to the patterns.
--:-- Shamita Basu: See, these five planets in this star system are rotating around their central star. And the way that their orbits line up, each one has its own rhythm that mathematically creates perfect harmony with the others.
--:-- Duarte Giraldo: Just listen to how right it sounds. Forbes writes about this phenomenon, and according to one research paper that examines the movement of these planets, scientists say this planetary system's song could be a Rosetta Stone in our understanding of how planets form and evolve.
--:-- Shamita Basu: You can find all these stories and more in the Apple News app. And while you're there, check out some of our audio stories. We'll talk with you again tomorrow.
