--:-- Shamita Basu: Good morning. It's Thursday, March 30th. I'm Shamita Basu. This is Apple News Today.
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--:-- Shamita Basu: On today's show, Russia takes a Wall Street Journal reporter into custody, America's troubled organ donation system, and Major League Baseball is making a change to speed up games. But first, more on the AR-15.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Yesterday, we talked about the Washington Post's reporting on just how much damage the assault-style rifle does to the human body. Today, we're looking at another part of the series on how the AR-15 became one of the most common guns in the United States.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Roughly one in 20 American adults own at least one. And it's not just popular. It's also a powerful symbol. Anti-government protesters carry them. Politicians wear them as lapel pins. The Tennessee Republican congressman, who represents the district where this week's school shooting happened, posed with what looks like AR-15s in his family Christmas card. And after the killings, he said he didn't regret the card.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Post reporter Todd Frankel is part of the team that tracked the rise of the AR-15 in America. It's more than just a gun. It's a symbol of the cultural and political divides that we see in this country. And it's a fairly recent phenomenon.
--:-- Todd Frankel: The weapon wasn't originally made for civilians. It was designed for soldiers in the 1950s. It became standard issue for U.S. troops in Vietnam, known as the M-16. For years, hunters had little interest in owning one, and gun companies didn't see much sales potential.
--:-- Todd Frankel: But things changed. The U.S. banned assault weapons in 1994. Ten years later, when that policy expired, gunmakers saw an opportunity to boost sales. Ad campaigns began to sell the AR-15 as a way for civilians to own military-grade hardware. The marketing traded on images of U.S. troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, whose weapons were similar to AR-15s.
--:-- Todd Frankel: Those images were everywhere in popular culture, especially movies and video games. Frankel told us how effective the militarized sales pitch was.
--:-- Todd Frankel: Today it is about a quarter of all the guns produced for sale and they almost all sold are AR. If you go into a gun store today, you wouldn't see an AR a generation ago. Now, they line the walls, they dominate the shops. It's handguns and AR-15s is what you see for sale. And it just reflects the demand for this weapon. It's huge.
--:-- Todd Frankel: Today, there are at least 20 million AR-15s in the U.S. Most were made after the 2012 mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary in Connecticut. When a gunman with an AR-15 killed 20 children and six adults. Sales consistently rise after school shootings.
--:-- Todd Frankel: The Post calls the AR-15 a barometer of fear and a gauge of political identity in this country. It has become a symbol of the gun that needs to be banned right away and also the symbol of a gun that needs to be protected that symbolizes constitutional rights.
--:-- Shamita Basu: So Americans are very divided on the AR-15. It has come to mean much more than the sum of its parts.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Let's take a quick look now at a few big stories developing today. A Wall Street Journal reporter is in Russian custody. The country's main security agency says Evan Gershkovich was spying.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The journal says it vehemently denies the allegations and that he should be immediately released. Gershkovich recently reported on problems in the Russian economy. He is the first journalist with an American news outlet to be arrested on espionage charges in Russia since the Cold War.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Pope Francis is hospitalized. The 86-year-old has a respiratory infection. The Vatican says he'll need several days of treatment.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The Vatican traditionally says very little about the health of popes, but it did say that it wasn't COVID.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Taiwan's president is in the U.S. today in a visit that's ratcheting up already high tensions between Washington and Beijing.
--:-- Shamita Basu: There is a possibility that Tsai Ing-wen will meet with House Speaker Kevin McCarthy at some point during her trip. China says such a meeting would lead to a, quote, serious confrontation.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Beijing considers Taiwan part of China, and China has made aggressive statements and military moves in recent years.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The Biden administration is trying to play down the event, pointing out that several previous presidents of Taiwan have been in the U.S. before.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Republican lawmakers in Kentucky have overturned the Democratic governor veto of a bill banning transgender children from getting gender health care. It also restricts which bathrooms they can use in public schools.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Opponents shouted during the session about the bill. Some were even removed by guards.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The Kentucky legislation is part of a wave of similar anti-trans rights bills across the country that have been sharply criticized as dangerous by organizations including the American Medical Association and the American Academy of Pediatrics.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And more than a thousand business leaders and academics, including Elon Musk and Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak, say artificial intelligence researchers need to slow down.
--:-- Shamita Basu: In an open letter, they are asking companies to pause development on more powerful AI systems for at least six months to consider the dangers that AI could pose to humans.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The letter says governments may need to take action to make sure there's enough planning and management in place to develop AI safely.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Our latest episode of In Conversation is all about artificial intelligence, the big fast changes in the field and what it means for our future.
--:-- Shamita Basu: You can hear that episode in the podcast app.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The organ transplant system is deeply flawed in this country. Not only do we have over 100,000 people sitting on the national waiting list, but in many cases, organs get damaged or wasted.
--:-- Shamita Basu: More than a dozen people on the waiting list die every day. A new joint investigation from the Washington Post and the Markup looks into how recent changes in how we manage liver distributions are helping people in wealthy states at the expense of poorer ones.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The policy change prioritized the sickest patients on wait lists, and that meant less focus on how far the organ had to travel. Now, patients in New York have access to livers as far away as Ohio.
--:-- Shamita Basu: But looking at the data, life-saving surgeries declined in many Midwestern and Southern states as well as in Puerto Rico. By contrast, California and New York had the highest number of liver transplants in more than a decade.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The investigation also finds that the median distance livers are being transported has nearly doubled and we're seeing the highest number of wasted livers in almost 10 years.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Livers are fragile and can only survive for about 12 hours outside the human body.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The United Network for Organ Sharing, which oversees the National Organ Transplant System, responded to this reporting, acknowledging that livers are traveling further, but also saying this is a better allocation of resources. It's getting organs to the sickest people.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The Biden administration is proposing reforms. Just last week, it called on Congress to double the current funding to address equity issues and help modernize the transplant system.
--:-- Shamita Basu: It's opening day for Major League Baseball. And if you're a fan, or especially if you're not, you know one thing is true. Games have gotten super long over the years.
--:-- Shamita Basu: That's a good thing if you're selling hot dogs or beer. But the league wants the game to be faster and more interesting for people who are watching.
--:-- Shamita Basu: So this year, it's making a big change. A pitch clock. When bases are empty, pitchers have 15 seconds to throw to the batter. 20 seconds when there are runners on base.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Now, this one change is expected to shave off some serious time in games. When pitch clocks were used in the minor leagues and during spring training, games wrapped up nearly 30 minutes faster on average.
--:-- Shamita Basu: If you're a baseball history fan looking for a long read, check out The Ringer's story on the enduring discussion about the length of ballgames.
--:-- Shamita Basu: It goes all the way back to the mid-19th century. The concept of a pitch clock is actually a lot older than you might realize.
--:-- Shamita Basu: You can read the whole thing in the Apple News app, along with all the stories that we talked about today.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And if you're already listening in the News app right now, stick around. We have a narrated article coming up next about a possible future change for Major League Baseball, robot umpires.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Sports Illustrated looks at the implications of using tech to help or even replace the humans who call balls and strikes. It's already been tested in the minor leagues.
--:-- Shamita Basu: So sit back, enjoy listening to that, and I'll be back with the news tomorrow.
