--:-- Gideon Resnick: Good morning. It's Tuesday, September 12th. I'm Gideon Resnick in for Shamita Basu. This is Apple News Today.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: On today's show, relief efforts are underway after disasters in Morocco and Libya. What to know about vaccines this fall and winter. And how AI may enable humans to talk to whales. But first, time is running out for the big three U.S. car makers and the United Auto Workers to reach a deal to avoid a strike.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: UAW members want a new deal with Ford, GM, and Stellantis, or as you might know them, the makers of Chryslers. The current contract expires Thursday night, so around 146,000 workers are ready to strike as early as Friday if they don't come to an agreement.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: I'm told there's papers flying across the table with all of them right now, so it's intense negotiation. Jamie Leroux covers the auto industry for the Detroit Free Press.
--:-- Jamie Leroux: In order to understand this moment, there's some important historical context about deals made during the financial crisis. So workers hired after 2007 didn't get defined benefit pensions. Their health care was less generous. And the union gave up general pay rises and cost of living adjustments.
--:-- Jamie Leroux: The concessions were to help the industry survive the downturn. It did. And now the union wants payback. There's a lot of things on the table that they feel are owed to them at this point, given, again, what they gave up back during the Great Recession and given how much money the automakers have made.
--:-- Jamie Leroux: The UAW has asked for a 40% pay raise over four years. They've also talked about a 32-hour week for 40 hours of pay and other benefits like bringing back those pensions. They know they're probably not going to get that much, but they want close to it. They want some more economic parity.
--:-- Jamie Leroux: They look at how much money the automakers have made over the last decade and they feel they want their fair share of it. The counteroffers from the car makers vary but raises are more in the 10 range not 40.
--:-- Jamie Leroux: Companies argue that the union is asking for too much which would make the big three less competitive with non-union factories making Teslas and foreign cars. They say raising labor costs would mean higher prices for consumers, who would then buy other cars instead.
--:-- Jamie Leroux: So there's a lot on the line for both workers and automakers if a walkout does happen later this week. Workers would make about $500 a week, far less than they earn on the job. And big money is at stake for General Motors, Ford, and Stellantis.
--:-- Jamie Leroux: By one estimate, a 10-day strike against all three companies would cost them nearly $1 billion. But LaRose says both sides have been pretty far apart in their proposals.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: You know, there's always a chance that they will reach some kind of an agreement before Thursday at 11.59, midnight basically. But right now people are anticipating there will be some kind of a strike.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: Now let's take a quick look at some other stories in the news. The death toll from the Morocco quake keeps rising. It now stands at more than 2,800 people.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: And it's hard to know how many people are still missing because so much of the worst impact is in areas that have been hard to reach. The clock is ticking, but rescue workers are still working to find survivors buried under destroyed homes.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: There is another disaster in Libya where authorities say at least 2,000 people are dead after massive flooding in the country's east.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: The military there says thousands more are missing. The dangerous situation is further complicated by political divisions between East and West and destroyed infrastructure following years of conflict.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: The U.S. has taken a key step toward the release of five Americans held in Iran. It cleared international banks to release $6 billion in frozen Iranian money in exchange.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: The funds will be restricted to spending for humanitarian purposes. The U.S. has also agreed to release five Iranians held in America.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: Netta Shargi's brother, Imad Shargi, is one of the Americans who has been held in Iran. She spoke to CBS last month as signs of a release deal emerged.
--:-- Netta Shargi: I wish they had done it sooner but they're doing it now. I want them to finish this and bring my brother home, let my aging parents see him before it's too late.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: And I want them to work on bringing other Americans home. And in Turkey, an American caver is now safe after a complicated rescue from a cave that extends thousands of feet underground.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: Mark Dickey has decades of experience in caves, but got extremely sick while he was deep underground. He was stuck for more than a week, but teams of cavers worked together to get him treated and gradually out to the surface.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: New COVID booster shots from Moderna and Pfizer are now FDA approved and today the CDC meets to discuss and recommend who should get these new shots.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: Cases and hospitalizations are still low overall compared to the worst of the pandemic, but they do tend to rise around this time of year. And we are in the middle of a mini COVID wave.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: So if you can't remember the last time you got vaccinated or boosted, experts say now is a good time to consider it.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: NPR spoke to Deepta Bhattacharya from the University of Arizona's College of Medicine.
--:-- Deepta Bhattacharya: COVID-19 is not a pleasant thing to get, even if you're not at particularly high risk of getting really sick.
--:-- Deepta Bhattacharya: And so to the extent that the vaccines reduce that chance, and I'm pretty sure they will, then again, unless you have got some really compelling reason not to get it, you should probably go ahead and get it.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: And COVID is not the only illness to prepare for. Depending on who you are, there are three different vaccines to think about heading into fall and winter. COVID, the flu, and the new vaccine for RSV, a potentially lethal respiratory virus that is especially dangerous for infants and older adults.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: Time magazine looks at everything available. The vaccine for RSV is approved for people over 60 and also those who are between 32 and 36 weeks of pregnancy.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: There's also a separate antibody treatment approved for babies under eight months old. So that's RSV.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: The guidance for the flu shot remains pretty simple. It's the same as every year. Doctors say anyone over six months old should get one.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: And it's important to remember with the flu what might be a case of the sniffles for one person could send another to the hospital.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: Some years, in fact, tens of thousands of Americans die from the flu. So much like COVID, experts say with the flu, it's important to think about protecting not just yourself, but the vulnerable people around you.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: You can read more about what protection is available from KFF Health News and Time magazine in the Apple News app.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: In Finding Nemo, you may recall the scene where the blue fish Dory insists that she can talk to whales. We need to find a son.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: Now in real life, scientists are trying to figure out if we can talk to whales. The New Yorker spent time with researchers who are trying to see if artificial intelligence could help decode the languages of other species, potentially making it possible for us to talk with them.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: Their research focuses on sperm whales. They're very chatty and communicate through clicks, kind of like Morse code that sounds like this.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: Researchers say when sperm whales click at each other, the structure looks a lot like a conversation.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: AI systems are now quite good at human languages, so it's possible that one could translate these whale clicks into something that humans can understand.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: The challenge is AI systems need a lot of data to figure out a language, so researchers are trying to get more whale clicks on tape.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: The New Yorker tagged along as scientists race through the ocean to strap recording devices to whales. It can involve a long pole, sometimes a drone, and always a lot of patience and care dealing with giant creatures that can be tough to find.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: If you're listening in the Apple News app right now, you can hear the whole story as a narrated article. It is truly great. So enjoy listening to that, and we'll be back with the news tomorrow.
