--:-- Shamita Basu: Good morning. It's Friday, March 17th. I'm Shamita Basu. This is Apple News Today.
--:-- Shamita Basu: On today's show, as life expectancy rises, should the age of retirement rise too? The hotline that's helping Russian soldiers surrender in Ukraine and putting a dollar value to decades worth of household chores. But first, how many guns are in the United States? How many guns are in your town or on your block? You might be surprised to learn no one really knows.
--:-- Shamita Basu: So we don't have gun registration in the United States. Other countries do. A gun comes from a manufacturer, and it is tracked all the way to the buyer. We don't have that here.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Jennifer Masia is a senior news writer at The Trace. A newsroom that focuses on covering gun violence in America.
--:-- Jennifer Masia: Our laws have always been pretty liberal on that. We track machine guns, short-barreled rifles, silencers, but not handguns, rifles, shotguns.
--:-- Jennifer Masia: Part of the problem is we're not keeping an accurate count of how many guns we make right from the start. Roughly 30% of active, licensed gun makers didn't file manufacturing reports to the federal government between 2016 and 2020.
--:-- Jennifer Masia: And the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives doesn't track 3D printed guns and most guns assembled from kits. Still, I dug into the numbers that are available, pulling from a lot of sources.
--:-- Jennifer Masia: So I added up manufacturing and imports, subtracted exports, and I came up with there have been 465 million guns produced and sent to federally licensed dealers and disposed of in commerce within that calendar year since 1899.
--:-- Jennifer Masia: So that's how many guns, 465 million, have flooded the marketplace. One expert told The Trace, after you subtract the number of guns that get confiscated, illegally exported, or broken, you're looking at an estimated 352 million guns that are likely in circulation today.
--:-- Jennifer Masia: That's more guns than there are people in this country. And some experts say this estimate is probably on the low side.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Without this data or knowing how many guns are in any given neighborhood, gun violence researchers say it's really difficult to come up with effective policy.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Just this week President Biden passed an executive order to increase the number of buyers who have to submit background checks if they want a gun. It's an incremental move that comes as Republican and Democratic lawmakers are still divided on taking new actions to reduce gun violence.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Researchers have consistently found more guns means more gun deaths. And I saw that same connection in my own data reporting. It's worth checking out my coverage in The Trace for yourself.
--:-- Shamita Basu: A brief update now on the state of the U.S. financial system. A group of 11 of the country's largest banks are coming together to inject funds into First Republic Bank, which was on the brink of collapse.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The $30 billion lifeline was coordinated by Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen and bank executives. It's being called an extraordinary effort to show support and resilience and stop spreading panic following recent bank failures.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The Wall Street Journal explains it this way. Some of these big banks got an influx of billions of deposits from midsize lenders over the past week after the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Now, several of them are effectively giving back some of the money they raked in. You can read more about it on the Apple News app.
--:-- Shamita Basu: French President Emmanuel Macron is reckoning with the fallout of a bold and highly unpopular move yesterday, raising the legal retirement age from 62 to 64.
--:-- Shamita Basu: He says this is necessary to keep the pension system financially viable as life expectancy rises. Macron did it using executive power. He sidestepped Parliament.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And members of Parliament were furious they didn't get a say. A lot of people in France are upset too. They've been protesting this bill since January.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Labor unions organized marches and mass strikes that shut down transit, schools, trash collection. For many people, this fight over retirement age comes down to work-life balance philosophies.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And what we owe ourselves after decades on the job. Here's what the leader of France's main teachers union told the BBC last week.
--:-- French Teachers Union Leader: The real debate is about a healthy life expectancy. And this is not rising, OK? What we want is a period of time for people out of work when they can do whatever they want and they won't worry about how much they will make and if they can live a decent life.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And that's the matter. That's the point here. Some version of this debate about retirement is happening here in the United States.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Nikki Haley who announced she is running for president recently proposed raising the retirement age for people who are now in their 20s to better match life expectancy for their generation.
--:-- Shamita Basu: USA Today recently ran a fact check on a misleading social media post that got a lot of traction. It claimed that 156 House Republicans voted to raise the retirement age to 70.
--:-- Shamita Basu: That's not true. What did happen was a conservative committee floated the idea of raising the retirement age to 70 back in 2022, but that proposal was never voted on.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Still, with people generally living longer and pension programs running out of money, this debate will likely need to move from a hypothetical realm to a reality in many countries.
--:-- Shamita Basu: In fact, just this week, the country with one of the lowest retirement ages in the world showed signs that it's considering a change. In China.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Currently, 60 is the retirement age for men, 55 for women in white-collar jobs, and 50 for women who work in factories.
--:-- Shamita Basu: There's been a lot of big news this week related to the war in Ukraine. Notably, Poland became the first NATO country to pledge giving fighter jets to Ukraine.
--:-- Shamita Basu: That was announced yesterday. Intense fighting continues around the eastern city of Bakhmut. And next week, Chinese President Xi Jinping will travel to Russia for the first time since the war began in what's being seen as a show of support for Moscow.
--:-- Shamita Basu: As the fighting continues, Ukrainians are banking on waning support for the war among Russians who've been sent to fight on the front lines.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And they're trying to make it as easy as possible for Russians to wave the white flag. As easy as a phone call.
--:-- Shamita Basu: This is what you hear when you dial up the so-called I-want-to-live hotline, operated by Ukraine's military. It's a surrender line.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The operator in Ukraine is giving step-by-step instructions to a Russian soldier who wants to quit. The Los Angeles Times explains how it works.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The people who answer the phones are all active-duty Ukrainian military, with backgrounds in psychology, which helps them screen for the differences between potential bad actors and people who genuinely want to surrender.
--:-- Shamita Basu: They give clear and concise instructions on what to do to send the surrender signal on the battlefield, like pointing your gun to the ground or literally pointing your tank in the opposite direction.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And they're told their identities won't be revealed as voluntary surrenderers. For security reasons, Ukrainian officials haven't shared how many people they helped through the hotline.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And the voices in the audio you're hearing are distorted. But millions of people from Russian territory have visited a companion website with instructions on how to contact the hotline.
--:-- Shamita Basu: In one exchange obtained by the LA Times, a Russian soldier asks the operator if he'll be filmed while he's surrendering.
--:-- Shamita Basu: She reassures him, no, he will not. At this crucial juncture in the war, Ukrainian officials hope that this hotline program will serve two purposes.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Remove as many Russian soldiers from the battlefield as possible, and lead more Russians to question the role that they've been asked to play.
--:-- Shamita Basu: If you had to put a price, a dollar amount, on 25 years worth of housework, what number would you land on? Okay, hold on to that number in your head while I tell you this.
--:-- Shamita Basu: A judge in a divorce case in Spain recently determined that it was worth the equivalent of just over $200,000.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The Miami Herald has this story, which struck a chord with a lot of people because it calls attention to traditionally unpaid labor.
--:-- Shamita Basu: In this divorce settlement in Spain, a woman argued that her ex-husband owed her money because she spent years taking care of their family at home while he worked and grew his businesses.
--:-- Shamita Basu: She said in spite of having signed a prenup that shielded her husband from having to share his money, she was owed unpaid wages for housework.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The judge ultimately agreed with her. The settlement was calculated based on the minimum monthly wage during the time she was married.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The Miami Herald quoted one comment from social media that seemed to sum up a lot of people's reactions. Good for her, but that seems low for 25 years.
--:-- Shamita Basu: You can find all these stories and more in the Apple News app. And make sure to check out our interview show, In Conversation.
--:-- Shamita Basu: This week, we'll explain everything we know to date about Havana Syndrome, the series of mysterious health incidents that's affected some of America's best spies and diplomats.
--:-- Shamita Basu: I was at the top physical, psychological, emotional place I could have ever been in my life. And within six months, I was a zombie and non-functional as a human being.
--:-- Shamita Basu: We speak to the reporters behind Havana Syndrome, a podcast from Vice World News, about their search for answers.
--:-- Shamita Basu: If you're listening to us in the Apple News app right now, that episode of In Conversation is queued up to play for you next.
--:-- Shamita Basu: So enjoy your weekend, and I'll be back with the news on Monday.
