--:-- Shamita Basu: Good morning. It's Wednesday, September 21st. 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.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Russian President Vladimir Putin is ordering more Russian troops to mobilize to fight in Ukraine. He's calling for 300,000 members of Russia's reserve forces to step in. This marks a significant escalation in the war.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The announcement comes just one day after four Russian-controlled regions in eastern and southern Ukraine announced plans to hold votes on becoming part of Russia. These so-called referendums are expected to happen in the next week. And the provinces they cover account for about 15 percent of Ukraine's landmass.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Now remember, in 2014, Russia pulled a similar move to annex Crimea. Ukrainian forces have recently had some wins. They've managed to push Russia out of some strategic areas. But if these four regions are annexed by Russia through referendums, Moscow might try to argue that any fighting happening there is an attack on Russia, and use that to justify calling in even more troops.
--:-- Shamita Basu: As the Wall Street Journal reports, The Russian parliament appears to be clearing a pathway for this possibility. On Tuesday, it pushed forward new legislation related to military service. It would tighten penalties for people who try to dodge Putin's calls to mobilize, and people who desert, surrender, and loot during wartime. The penalty? Up to 15 years in prison.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Ukraine and the West say that these areas of Ukraine at risk of annexation are being occupied by Russia illegally. And leaders of the EU and Canada say they will refuse to recognize the outcome of the votes. Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky is expected to address the United Nations today.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The Justice Department announced on Tuesday that dozens of people have been charged for allegedly defrauding a pandemic program meant to feed children in need. The DOJ said that 47 defendants stole at least $250 million from a food program and used it to buy cars, luxury goods, and even property in the U.S. and other countries.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The federal food aid program at the center of this provides free meals to children in lower-income families. During the pandemic, Congress expanded this program. Prosecutors allege that one nonprofit, the Minnesota-based Feeding Our Future, took in millions and used it for kickbacks.
--:-- Shamita Basu: U.S. Attorney for Minnesota Andrew Lugar called it a brazen scheme. These individuals believed they could steal tens of millions of dollars from a federal child nutrition program by claiming to serve food to needy children when they were not.
--:-- Shamita Basu: He went on to describe how the scheme involved creating fake lists of children and groups throughout the state would be paid for meals that they never served to children who didn't exist. Before long, the scheme that began with a simple idea in March of 2020 grew to become the largest pandemic fraud in the United States.
--:-- Shamita Basu: This case of pandemic fraud is huge in its scale, but it's not unique. According to The New York Times, the federal government has opened 39,000 investigations related to trillions of dollars in authorized pandemic spending that was ultimately misused.
--:-- Shamita Basu: David McSwain is a ProPublica reporter who's been following cases of pandemic-related fraud and corruption. He told me on a recent episode of Apple News in Conversation that part of the problem was the government was ill-prepared to manage distribution and oversight of these funds.
--:-- Shamita Basu: We overburdened people who were just trying to do their jobs and put them in an impossible situation. And then you add the real crooks who are coming in and doing crazy things. And before you know it, it's out of control.
--:-- Shamita Basu: But I think on the front lines, in the nitty-gritty, in the weeds, government bureaucrats, I think most of them were just trying to get by and do what they could.
--:-- Shamita Basu: So far, the Justice Department has taken enforcement actions related to more than $8 billion in suspected pandemic fraud.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Protests have broken out in cities across Iran following the death of a 22-year-old in police custody. Mahsa Amini was arrested last week for allegedly not properly wearing a hijab by the country's morality police, the group that enforces mandatory Islamic dress codes.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The government claims she had a fatal heart attack while in police custody. Her family says she was dressed appropriately, she didn't have prior health problems, and that she was beaten by police.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Images circulated on social media showing her lying unconscious in a hospital bed with tubes in her mouth and nose. She died on Friday.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Hadi Ghaimi is the executive director of the Center for Human Rights in Iran, based in New York. He says that Mahsa Amini's death comes at a time when Iranian women's rights are under attack.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Massa's death really is the match that set the storage of fuel on fire in many ways. It was ready to explode, and we're seeing it in the past 48 hours.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The hijab, or rousari in Iran as they call it, and conservative attire have been required since the 1979 revolution. Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi is a hard-line cleric who's pushed for strict enforcement.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Just last month, Raisi ordered harsher punishments for women who violate religious dress code. The Washington Post reports that under his administration, the morality police have become emboldened.
--:-- Shamita Basu: But Amini's death has motivated many women to take a risky move, to protest publicly. It's been very notable that these protests are predominantly young people, especially young women and middle-aged women. And it's amazing.
--:-- Shamita Basu: It looks like a moment where women are going to reject hijab very publicly and loudly. In these protests, they're taking off their headscarves, setting them on fire, and marching without headscarves and targeting the very top of the political system.
--:-- Shamita Basu: So this is really a moment of reckoning for the Islamic Republic. So far, at least four people have been killed after security forces opened fire during protests. Still, people are taking to the streets.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Some women are protesting by cutting their hair. In this video shared to social media, the crowd chants, "death to the dictator," and cheers as a woman cuts off her hair in the street.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Raimi says this is Iran's George Floyd moment. The fact that everyone can relate to it, everyone saying that it could be my daughter, my wife, my sister, who could have stepped out of the house and never returned.
--:-- Shamita Basu: So the same way that a lot of Black parents were saying here that I'm so terrified when my son walks out of the house, would he return or not? The same mentality is now in every Iranian family.
--:-- Shamita Basu: This week as Raisi is in New York for the United Nations General Assembly, Gaimi and others are urging world leaders to hold him accountable for Amini's death.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Have you been seeing a lot of stories recently about quiet quitting? The idea is that lots of people are slowly letting themselves care less at work. It's not exactly slacking off. It's more like coasting.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Employers who are worried that low morale is bad for the bottom line may point to data that shows that labor productivity is down. Or to a recent Gallup poll where Americans said they're feeling less engaged with their jobs. Or to social media. Quiet quitting is all over TikTok these days.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And yes, if you look at any of these things in isolation, you might think, oh boy, we've got a real labor problem on our hands. But The Atlantic's Derek Thompson is out with a new article that challenges that idea.
--:-- Shamita Basu: He debunks some of the data driving the conversation around quiet quitting. But he also points out workers aren't being lazy. They're just creating healthy workplace boundaries.
--:-- Shamita Basu: All this talk about quiet quitting is just an old conversation dressed up in fresh 2022 lingo. NPR spoke with a bunch of workers who seemed to agree.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Here's one of them, 19-year-old Arjun Bhargava. They're still showing up to their job. They're still doing their work. And yet we're associating a word like quitting with an action that's really not quitting. It's doing something that's preventing you from eventually burning out.
--:-- Shamita Basu: As for falling productivity, Thompson says that's not a morale thing either. He says the real problem is the United States has an inexperience bubble. Industries like the service sector have seen record levels of job hopping among workers.
--:-- Shamita Basu: We just have so many new people on the job that productivity has dipped. And that's after it surged in the first year of the pandemic. Thompson writes, he gets why people like the phrase quiet quitting or just talking about it as a phenomenon.
--:-- Shamita Basu: But it's nothing new. It's just a way to put words to what a lot of workers are feeling right now. A mix of anxieties, a little bit of guilt, maybe. And ultimately, the feeling of not wanting work to take over their life anymore.
--:-- Shamita Basu: You can find all these stories and more in the Apple News app. And when you're in the app, keep listening to hear narrated articles from our News Plus partners.
--:-- Shamita Basu: I'll talk with you again tomorrow.
