--:-- Duarte Giraldino: Good morning. It's Thursday, January 13th. I'm Duarte Giraldino. And I'm Shemitah Basu.
--:-- Shemitah 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 Giraldino: New numbers show U.S. inflation hitting 7 percent. We haven't seen yearly increases like that since 1982. Think about how long ago that was. Ronald Reagan was president.
--:-- Shemitah Basu: Right now, you may already be feeling the pinch because some food prices are rising even faster. Meat, fish, eggs, they're all up about 12.5%.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: High inflation is connected to something else we're hearing a lot about now. Empty shelves. Grocery store shelves are empty yet again, and it could reportedly be months before they're stocked to normal levels.
--:-- Shemitah Basu: Empty shelves left and right. Finding your favorite food's a lot tougher right now. Customers couldn't find what they were looking for. What'd you find in there? Absolutely nothing.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: You're seeing it on social media. I mean, for me, this came up yesterday in the group chat with some of my friends who live in different cities. People are seeing empty shelves. And we're not just talking about supermarkets being out of some obscure flavor of Pringles.
--:-- Shemitah Basu: Some stores are out of the basics. The Wall Street Journal reports on how some parents are saying baby formula is getting hard to find.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: As for the rest of the grocery aisles, CNN explains what's going on with all the empty shelves. To be clear, there's plenty of food in America. There isn't a shortage, so don't panic.
--:-- Shemitah Basu: But you may have to be patient. You probably won't get everything you want exactly when you want it. And the causes include things that you probably already know about. The supply chain crisis is still a huge problem.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: And in some ways, it's even more squeezed right now with Omicron. Meat packers, farm workers, truck drivers, people are getting sick. They're missing work, which means that the cereal that you like doesn't get delivered to the store.
--:-- Shemitah Basu: And how bleak it looks at your local supermarket also depends on where you live. I've seen plenty of empty shelves in my neighborhood in New York, and if you're in the Midwest or the Northeast, good luck.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: Nasty weather has done a number on transport in those areas especially and it's not letting up. That makes it hard for stuff you want to buy to get to a store near you.
--:-- Shemitah Basu: But there's something else going on too. Many Americans are eating out less and cooking in more. Some of that has to do with staying safe from Omicron. But a big factor is inflation.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: So many things in our life are way more expensive right now. And a lot of Americans are cutting back on eating out to save some money. That has grocery stores racing to catch up with our cooking habits.
--:-- Shemitah Basu: It might take a little while for things to get back to normal. A new report shows there's tons of campaign money from around the country pouring into secretary of state races in swing states.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: That's a major change because the big money, well, it generally goes to higher-profile races. And this matters a lot because secretaries of state have power over election rules and certifying results.
--:-- Shemitah Basu: In a lot of ways, these people are the front lines of protecting our democracy. On top of all that campaign money coming in, many candidates have endorsed Donald Trump's failed attempt to overturn the election he lost.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: An NPR analysis found at least 15 Republican secretary of state candidates who questioned the legitimacy of Biden's win, despite there being no evidence of widespread fraud.
--:-- Shemitah Basu: Just look at candidates like Mark Fincham in Arizona. He downplayed the Capitol insurrection and appeared at a QAnon conference. Or look to Georgia. Republican incumbent Brad Raffensperger stood up to Trump.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: He was the guy on the other end of this phone call. So, look, all I want to do is this. I just want to find 11,780 votes, which is one more that we have. He certified Georgia's results in 2020. And now he's being challenged by two Republicans who claim that Trump won the state.
--:-- Shemitah Basu: Trump has endorsed Republican Jody Heiss in that race. And Reuters reports that candidate has raised more than any other. And to be clear, a lot of this money is coming from outside the states where the races are happening.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: They're getting nearly double what came in 2018. This suggests positions which are usually pretty low profile are in the middle of a high-stakes contest to influence future election results.
--:-- Shemitah Basu: Sometimes there's a story that really sticks with you because of one character. For us, that happened when we read about a kidnapping negotiator who got the test of his life. His own wife was taken hostage.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: He could hear gunfire in the background when the kidnappers gave her a phone to call him. His name is Abdullahi Tumbarkai. He lives in Nigeria, where kidnapping for ransom has become a profitable business.
--:-- Shemitah Basu: He's not a trained expert. He kind of fell into hostage negotiation about a year ago when he got a 3 a.m. phone call. He learned his brothers were taken.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: Wall Street Journal reporter Drew Hinshaw explains Tumbarkai managed to get his brothers back, which opened up the floodgates. Other people started asking him to help bring back their loved ones too.
--:-- Shemitah Basu: He is not a professional hostage negotiator. He's a corn farmer, and sometimes he writes reports for a local newspaper. I mean, a very kind of working or middle-class guy who's doing his best to try to free dozens and dozens of people in what has become an epidemic of kidnapping that really is hard to compare to anything happening anywhere else on Earth.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: I used to live in Lagos, and in Nigeria these days, kidnapping isn't something people only see in the movies. It's a threat everyone worries about.
--:-- Shemitah Basu: This is a really heartbreaking story. I mean, you have farmers who own very little being asked to pay million-dollar ransoms, which, of course, the kidnappers know they can't pay. But farmers end up selling their crops, their animals, their cars, their homes, not just farmers, villagers, people in towns.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: An entire middle class is being eliminated. The Nigerian government says making deals with kidnappers just encourages them. It's tried violent crackdowns against the hostage takers, but this problem isn't going away.
--:-- Shemitah Basu: Hinshaw explains more and more criminals there see kidnapping as a way to make fast money. I think that there's a cycle here, a vicious cycle, where kidnappers have shown that if you are willing to run into a school and grab hundreds of children and run out with them, you can make money.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: If you're willing and brazen to do that, there's an economy there. Timbarco's wife was kidnapped along with several other people. He worked with their families to raise the equivalent of around [pause] a whole lot of money in Nigeria.
--:-- Shemitah Basu: The ransom was delivered by motorbike. Days passed. And finally he got a call. It was his wife. She was free. He'd saved her and the other people, making the deal of his life.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: Okay, so let's say you want to fix something around the house and you want to save money by doing it yourself. But the job might need a big tool you don't have, like a drill, a sander, or something.
--:-- Shemitah Basu: Normally, you might have to drag yourself to a hardware store. It can be annoying and expensive. Plus, once you do the job, you might never use that expensive tool again.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: But what if you could just borrow the tool you need, like a library book? This model is taking off. Tool libraries are popping up across the country.
--:-- Shemitah Basu: The Washington Post reports on this trend. Many of them charge a small fee for membership. Some are totally free.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: One guy in Chicago checked out a tree pruner, then a waffle maker and some kind of car diagnostic scanner. So man of many interests.
--:-- Shemitah Basu: And he says not only did he make back the 20 bucks he spent on library membership, but he also finally tackled a bunch of projects that he'd been putting off because he didn't have the right gear.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: According to The Post, dozens of similar tool libraries exist across America. Saving money is a big draw, but people are also doing something good for the environment.
--:-- Shemitah Basu: Buying an expensive tool that might only be used once or twice, that's not sustainable. But with a tool library, tools don't gather dust or quickly end up in a landfill. Lots of people can use them.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: The Chicago Tool Library is a nonprofit. It just asks people to pay what they can. One of the founders says it's pretty rare that they don't get a tool back.
--:-- Shemitah Basu: The library has grown, has thousands of items to borrow, more than 1,700 members. One founder says she's been advising other communities on how to start their own tool libraries.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: 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.
--:-- Shemitah Basu: We'll talk with you again tomorrow.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: Goodbye.
--:-- Shemitah Basu: Goodbye.
