--:-- Shamita Vasu: Good morning. It's Wednesday, March 16th. I'm Shamita Vasu. Duarte Geraldino is off. This is Apple News Today.
--:-- Shamita Vasu: Each morning, hear about some of the most fascinating stories in the news and how the world's best journalists are covering them. Today, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky remotely addressed a joint session of Congress. He called on American lawmakers to do more.
--:-- Shamita Vasu: The American people are helping not just Ukraine, but Europe and the world to keep the planet alive, to keep justice in history. It was an emotional speech. Politico reports that some lawmakers were seen wiping away tears.
--:-- Shamita Vasu: Zelensky evoked moments from American history, Pearl Harbor, 9-11, and through an interpreter while calling for fighter aircraft, he quoted Martin Luther King Jr. I have a dream. These words are known to each of you today. I can say I have a need. I need to protect our sky.
--:-- Shamita Vasu: It's very rare for a foreign leader to speak directly to Congress in this way. In his video address, Zelensky wore a green T-shirt and sat beside a Ukrainian flag. He asked the West to implement a no-fly zone. It's something key American leaders have clearly said they won't do, as it could escalate into a much bigger global conflict with Russia.
--:-- Shamita Vasu: Zelensky also asked for more military aid and called on lawmakers to appeal to businesses in their states to send more help. At one point, Zelensky showed lawmakers a graphic video of images of war. You could see bombs hitting civilian targets throughout Ukraine, people who were injured and bloodied.
--:-- Shamita Vasu: And he called on President Biden to be, quote, the leader of the world, which he says means being the leader of peace.
--:-- Shamita Vasu: Where is Brittany Griner? That's the question a lot of people are asking after the news that the WNBA star was arrested in Russia weeks ago.
--:-- Shamita Vasu: The Russian government says she's being detained after they found cannabis oil in her luggage. But one Washington Post journalist is skeptical of those claims. He's calling her detention politically motivated. And he's worried about her.
--:-- Jason Rezayan: We're about a month into this and we still have not heard from Brittany Griner.
--:-- Jason Rezayan: I was working very transparently as a member of the international media for The Washington Post. I was abducted from my home, taken with my wife, thrown in solitary confinement, interrogated relentlessly for weeks, held incommunicado from my family, from my employers and everyone else.
--:-- Jason Rezayan: I was released in 2016. When I asked him about Greiner's case, he said he sees two major issues.
--:-- Jason Rezayan: First and foremost, any time an American is detained in another country, when that country's state media is the source of that information, I think that's the first red flag.
--:-- Jason Rezayan: The other big red flag is the fact that as far as her congressional representatives say, she's not had consular access. Anytime an American or national of any country is arrested in a foreign country, one of the first things that is a right that you have is the ability to talk to people of your home country that represent you.
--:-- Jason Rezayan: So from what we understand, she's been denied that right. Greiner is not the only American currently being held in Russia. There are at least two other Americans there, both veterans, Trevor Reed and Paul Whelan.
--:-- Jason Rezayan: The U.S. government has referred to Reed and Whelan's arrests as, quote, wrongful detentions. But I don't like to use that phrase.
--:-- Jason Rezayan: I'd like to use the term state hostage when we talk about wrongful detention, because I think the diplomatic niceties often confuse the public.
--:-- Jason Rezayan: He says more and more Americans are being held hostage by foreign governments, especially during moments of intense political or military conflict.
--:-- Jason Rezayan: I say the U.S. needs to view these actions as serial crimes and do more to deter governments from doing this, because unless there are consequences, it'll keep happening.
--:-- Jason Rezayan: Until that changes, for Greiner and others held abroad, that may mean difficult negotiations. Ultimately, the idea that the U.S. does not provide concessions to hostage takers is a longstanding myth.
--:-- Jason Rezayan: All of the past experience that I have and everything that I've seen is that there's always a concession to getting Americans freed from being held hostage.
--:-- Jason Rezayan: I wish that were not the case, but until we have deterrents in place that makes it so that adversarial countries want to do this anymore, we're going to have to come up with ways to secure releases and sometimes it's going to be unsavory.
--:-- Shamita Vasu: If you're interested in learning more about other Americans who are being held hostage by foreign governments, Rezayan worked on a documentary about this issue for The Post. It's called Bring Them Home.
--:-- Shamita Vasu: It's been one year since a man shot and killed eight people in spas in the Atlanta area. Six of the victims were Asian women.
--:-- Shamita Vasu: These murders brought new attention to the rise of anti-Asian violence since the start of the pandemic. And sadly, in the years since then, there have been a number of high-profile, violent, and even fatal attacks on Asians in America.
--:-- Shamita Vasu: CNN takes an in-depth look at the traumatic effect this is having on Asian American women especially, and the difficulty of identifying a clear root of the problem.
--:-- Jason Rezayan: The numbers are large. Around three in four Asian American and Pacific Islander women say they experienced racism or discrimination in the past year.
--:-- Jason Rezayan: Many feel the climate of hatred sets the stage for violence. Communities have taken different steps toward finding solutions.
--:-- Jason Rezayan: Some Asian American women see the seeds of violence in street harassment. In California, state lawmakers have worked with an anti-racist group to treat street harassment as a public health issue.
--:-- Jason Rezayan: In New York, the death of a woman who was pushed onto the subway tracks led to a plan to make public transit safer.
--:-- Jason Rezayan: An advocate for the Asian community said this was a step, but worried that throwing police at the problem was not a complete answer.
--:-- Jason Rezayan: Another activist says none of the moves made in the last year are a cure-all to the problem, but she's optimistic that many of these approaches are about making public spaces safer.
--:-- Jason Rezayan: A majority of incidents reported to the group Stop AAPI Hate happened out in the open.
--:-- Jason Rezayan: One woman spoke to CNN about a racist encounter she had in public.
--:-- Jason Rezayan: This was in August of 2020. A man asked her to lunch. She declined. And he yelled derogatory insults at her for several minutes, which she filmed.
--:-- Jason Rezayan: When police arrived, they told her it wasn't a crime. She struggled with what else to do. And eventually she decided to post the video on social media.
--:-- Jason Rezayan: Her story prompted others to come forward with similar accounts, and she says the police department later apologized to her and documented her experience as a hate incident.
--:-- Shamita Vasu: COVID cases are rising in Europe, which could be a preview of what's in store for America.
--:-- Shamita Vasu: And this comes as there are new worries about funding for U.S. government programs to fight the coronavirus.
--:-- Jason Rezayan: The numbers that U.S. doctors are concerned about come from the UK. COVID cases rose by around half in a week.
--:-- Jason Rezayan: Hospitalizations were up nearly 20 percent in the same period. Daily cases are still below the Omicron peak, though.
--:-- Jason Rezayan: Now, the timing here matters because it's now been two weeks since the UK dropped its last standing COVID mitigation measure.
--:-- Jason Rezayan: More and more U.S. states have rolled back their rules, too, so health officials say we may be in for a similar jump in cases here.
--:-- Shamita Vasu: So that's what may be coming.
--:-- Jason Rezayan: NPR's reporting looks at America's defenses, specifically concerns about funding to fight COVID here.
--:-- Jason Rezayan: The White House says it's running out of money to vaccinate, test and treat people who don't have insurance.
--:-- Jason Rezayan: Press Secretary Jen Psaki has argued that there will be major problems if Congress doesn't provide more funding.
--:-- Jason Rezayan: Those consequences are dire. Fewer monoclonal antibodies sent to states and inability to purchase additional treatments.
--:-- Jason Rezayan: Fewer tests available to Americans. Less surveillance for future variants. And a risk of running short on vaccines.
--:-- Jason Rezayan: But tens of billions of dollars in additional COVID money didn't make it into the spending bill that Biden signed into law yesterday.
--:-- Jason Rezayan: Republicans and Democrats couldn't agree on details around allocating money for key COVID programs.
--:-- Jason Rezayan: There was typical partisan finger-pointing, but in the end, the thing to know is new money is not coming.
--:-- Shamita Vasu: The U.S. has to make things work with what's there now, even as signs from Europe point to possible new dangers.
--:-- Shamita Vasu: You can find all these stories and more in the Apple News app.
--:-- Shamita Vasu: And it's not just hard news stories like we focused on in today's show. If you want something different, I like this story from Washingtonian about daylight saving time.
--:-- Shamita Vasu: Maybe you heard the Senate just passed a bill to end the changing of the clocks. But this article points out we've tried this before, twice. And apparently America hated it.
--:-- Shamita Vasu: So check out that article. It's an interesting bit of history.
--:-- Shamita Vasu: And we'll talk with you again tomorrow.
