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Food prices skyrocket because of Russia’s attack · Apple News Today

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  Duarte Geraldino, Narrating: Good morning! It's Wednesday, March 23rd. I'm Duarte Geraldino.
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  Shumita Basu, Narrating: And I'm Shumita 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.
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  Geraldino: Russia's ground offensive may be stalling, but its fierce bombardment and siege tactics are targeting Ukrainian cities. Mariupol is among the worst hit. It's under constant shelling and facing shortages of food, water and heat. Around Kyiv, Ukrainian forces say they've retaken control of a strategically important town just outside the capital. And this comes as President Biden heads to Europe for an emergency summit. This is his first trip abroad since the invasion began.
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  Basu: We're feeling the impact of the war here at home in many ways. Spikes in oil prices helped send gas prices to record levels. And there's also concern about food prices, which were already rising because of pandemic supply-chain issues. Russia and Ukraine are major producers of some food staples. Together, they provide more than half of the world's sunflower oil and a third of cereals.
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  Geraldino: "The Wall Street Journal" had a team of global journalists report on places where Russia's war with Ukraine is making the price of food skyrocket. And what these people are experiencing is nothing like the price increases you may be seeing at grocery stores. In Lebanon, for example, flour prices are up 1000 percent. In Kenya, some bread prices jumped 40 percent. And these increases sting because these are places where people were already struggling to afford to get enough to eat.
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  Basu: As the "Journal" explains, countries in the Middle East and North Africa are especially dependent on wheat from Ukraine and Russia. For some, it makes up 70, even 80 percent of their supply. We talked recently on this show about the various global food crises that existed before the war. Higher costs are making them worse. The World Food Program said it had to cut rations in some regions, partly because of higher prices.
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  Geraldino: The "Journal's" piece has some striking personal stories of how this is hurting ordinary people. A baker in Lebanon, a grocer in Uganda, a woman in Cairo. You can read their stories in the Apple News app.
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  Basu: Today is day three in confirmation hearings for Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson, President Biden's Supreme Court nominee. So far, senators have asked her about legal issues, her faith, policing in America, about so-called "critical race theory" in schools. And she kept responding by pointing out what does and doesn't fall under her purview as a judge. Here's an exchange with Arkansas Senator Tom Cotton.
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  Tom Cotton: Does the United States need more or fewer police?
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  Ketanji Brown Jackson: Senator, the determination about whether there should be more or fewer police is a policy decision by another branch of government. It is not something that judges have control over. And I will stay in my lane in terms of the kinds of things that are properly in the judicial branch.
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  Geraldino: Senators will have more questions for her today. They're going to be pouring over her background as a judge and public defender. There's this piece in "The Atlantic" that sticks out to us because it looks at her time as a Supreme Court clerk during the 1999-2000 term. This part of her career is getting less attention. She clerked for Justice Stephen Breyer, who she's now nominated to replace.
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  Basu: This article is by Linda Greenhouse, who has spent decades covering the Supreme Court, so she's able to connect the dots in Judge Jackson's experiences. And she says, even though her time as a clerk was more than 20 years ago, there are a lot of similarities between the Court then and the Court she would be joining if she's confirmed.
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  Geraldino: Just like today, back then, things were particularly contentious. The Court took on hot-button issues: prayer in schools, abortion, whether the Boy Scouts had to accept gay men as scout leaders.
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  Basu: And a lot of these issues, they are still with us, still being debated, still being challenged in courts. As Greenhouse writes, that's maybe an early lesson in Judge Jackson's career that yes, the Court resolves disputes in the short-term, but the issues that divide America transcend any one Supreme Court term. Greenhouse describes it as inevitable, like water flowing downstream, the same issues reemerge over and over again.
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  Geraldino: There's also a lesson from that term about how Supreme Court decisions can be changed over time. Greenhouse cites a key majority opinion that Justice Breyer wrote about an abortion case. This was a 5-4 decision. Seven years later, after Justice Samuel Alito replaced Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, that decision was effectively wiped away.
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  Basu: The Court was also heavily divided during the term that Judge Jackson clerked. More than a quarter of the decisions came down to 5-4 votes. Justice Breyer was often in the minority, so his most important writing came in dissenting opinions. As Greenhouse points out, given the more conservative makeup of the court today, Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson could find herself in a similar position.
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  Geraldino: This next story is one that got a lot of us talking after we read it. It explains what became of Afghanistan's finance minister after the Taliban took over. He and his family were able to escape to America. But the life he leads now, it's very different. These days, he drives for Uber in the D.C. area. "Washington Post" reporter Greg Jaffe recently rode around with Khalid Payenda.
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  Greg Jaffe: Khalid's story is, in some ways, the story of our relationship with Afghanistan of late. He went from being at the center of U.S. foreign policy, the center of a big story for the world to being somebody kind of on the outside.
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  Basu: Jaffe explains, Khalid once worked for the U.S. Agency for International Development and the World Bank. When he was offered the role of finance minister, people warned him not to accept it. They pointed to corruption, Taliban gains and the upcoming U.S. withdrawal. But Khalid took the job. He saw it as a way to help his country. These days, he drives past the same places where he used to conduct business.
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  Jaffe: One really interesting thing for Khalid being a driver in Washington, D.C. is it is sort of a form of time travel. He goes past the World Bank headquarters, the International Monetary Fund headquarters where he attended training sessions or meetings about the Afghan economy and the future of the Afghan economy. You know, he passes the White House and the State Department and the Pentagon, these places where all these decisions about Afghanistan, and his life in many cases, were made.
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  Geraldino: Khalid says he's learned a lot about people by driving an Uber. He likes to listen to Delilah. She's that soft-rock radio host who gives people relationship advice. He says she's very wise. His current job has a lot of surprises.
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  Jaffe: Uber provides this weird, sort of intimate window into other people's lives in this sort of very foreign country for him. You become invisible as an Uber driver in some instances, and you hear these strange conversations happening in your backseat that maybe help make sense of this new place.
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  Basu: Jaffe told us the question of what allowed Afghanistan to fall to the Taliban haunts Khalid. He partly blames America for empowering corrupt warlords and abandoning the principles that American leaders claimed sent them into the country in the first place. And he partly blames his fellow Afghans, including himself, for not being able to reform the government. Jaffe says leaving the country is a choice Khalid thinks about almost every day.
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  Jaffe: I think his decision to leave was a very spur of the moment one and a very painful one. He didn't know that the Taliban were going to seize the country that quickly. Leaving, for him, was an admission not only that the government had failed, but that he failed.
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  Geraldino: Okay, so this year's March Madness is a totally new ballgame. And I'm not talking about the action on the court. I'm talking about the money players are making on the side. Money that has the potential to change what it means to be a collegiate athlete.
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  Basu: It used to be the case that college athletes were not allowed to cut sponsorship deals. Recently, those rules changed. So this is the first March Madness where players can sign endorsement deals. And so far, the players are cashing in.
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  Ira Boudway: In less than a year, it has really reshaped the landscape of college sports.
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  Geraldino: Ira Boudway is covering this for "Bloomberg Businessweek." Within hours of the NCAA's rule change, players were promoting car dealerships, luxury hair picks and sweet teas. This market is now on track to reach hundreds of millions of dollars in the first year.
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  Boudway: It's unlocked a source of revenue for thousands and thousands of athletes who probably will never play professional sports. And in many cases, it's not huge sums. It might be a hundred bucks for going online and giving someone a shout-out. Which is a big deal when you're in college on a Friday night. If you have 300 dollars in your back pocket, you feel pretty good.
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  Basu: In some cases though, star athletes are making six figures. The consulting firm Opendorse connects brands with players. And it says the college athletes making the most so far are football players. Right behind that is women's hoops.
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  Boudway: Zia Cooke is a women's basketball player in South Carolina. And she's been doing deals with Bojangles, Dick's Sporting Goods, Fenty. So it's a job, but it's a pretty efficient way for them to make, in some cases if you're a big enough star, hundreds of thousands of dollars.
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  Geraldino: You can find all these stories and more in the Apple News app, including the latest on that tornado that hit New Orleans.
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  Basu: And when you're in the app, keep listening to hear narrated articles from our News+ partners.
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  Geraldino: We'll talk with you again tomorrow.
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