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The Women’s World Cup is back. Can the U.S. win again? · Apple News Today

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  Shumita Basu, Narrating: Good morning! It's Thursday, July 20. I'm Shumita Basu. This is “Apple News Today.” On today's show the Women's World Cup kicks off. Alabama's execution system will undergo a major test today, and actors explain how you can be on a hit streaming show and get 82 cent checks in the mail.
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  But first, let's catch up on some major stories in the news.
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  There's more fallout from Russia's decision to pull out of the Black Sea Grain deal, a food security agreement that affects the global wheat supply. The Kremlin had initially agreed to suspend its blockade of Ukrainian ports to allow grain exports. But now, Russia's defense ministry says any ships sailing to those ports would be considered possible carriers of military cargo. Ukraine is one of the world's leading exporters of wheat and the Russian threats are sending global wheat prices sharply higher.
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  In the U.S. extreme weather is still wreaking havoc, a tornado touched down in North Carolina on Wednesday damaging a Pfizer plant. While there were no reports of serious injuries, a local sheriff said that large quantities of medicine had to be thrown out. The plant reportedly produces anesthesia and almost 25 percent of all sterile injectable medications used in U.S. hospitals there's concerns about the possibility of long-term shortages.
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  And in Auckland, New Zealand, just hours ahead of the start of the Women's World Cup there, a shooting. Three people are dead, including the gunman, at least two people were killed and several others were injured in a shooting. Gun violence is rare in the country, which tightened its laws following a mass shooting in 2019. The Prime Minister said that there was no national security risk and that the tournament will continue as planned.
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  Lynn Williams, a forward for the U.S. team said in a press conference that gun violence was something she and her teammates had seen "far too many times" in the U.S.
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  Lynn Williams: But there was definitely a sense of like, let's come together. We still have a job to do, but also recognizing that there was lives lost, and that is very real and very devastating.
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  [END TWITTER ARCHIVAL CLIP]
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  Let's stay with the Women's World Cup, which is already underway. Results from the first match are in New Zealand upset Norway, making this New Zealand's first-ever world cup match win, in either men's or women's soccer history.
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  The returning champions of this year's tournament are the US Women's National Team. They've won the last two World Cups and are hoping to bring home their third trophy this summer.
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  The US team and their predecessors, aren't just the most dominant team in their sport. Last May, they did something historic, they won a long fight to get equal pay with the men. It makes them the only one of the 32 teams competing in this year's tournament to have achieved this kind of parity. And it's having a huge, global, domino effect.
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  Now, players around the world are bargaining with their national football associations for better pay, equal treatment and more. But they're not seeing quick progress, many of these talks are either stalled or the athletes say they feel their voices are being ignored. Rebecca Lowe hosts the Apple News podcast “After the Whistle,” which is back for a new season to cover the tournament. In their first episode, she explained what's happening with England's national football team, the Lionesses.
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  Rebecca Lowe: So FIFA are going to give at least $30,000 to every player at this Women's World Cup. Which, let's not even get into, by the way, the pittance that that is in comparison to the men's game. And the England women would like to be compensated more than that from the FA on top of what FIFA pay them. And the FA are basically saying no, no, we won't be doing that. And this has been a standoff for a long time.
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  Keep in mind, the English team is one of the favorites to win it all. And they are the European champions.
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  There's also a standoff in Spain between the football association and players, who say the coach's management style is so problematic that it's affecting their emotional and mental health. It was so bad that a few months ago, 15 of the athletes said they planned to sit this World Cup out. The Spanish federation criticized the athletes and said it would not be pressured into making changes. While a couple of players have decided to play, most of their stars won't be there. In Canada, France, South Africa, even host country, New Zealand there are similar stories.
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  The most shocking one, though, is out of Zambia.
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  Lowe: So this article came out in “the Guardian” this week. The head coach is called Bruce Mwape. And there are allegations, in fact, there's a quoted allegation from an anonymous player to “the Guardian” that says, this is basically what it said. If the coach wants to sleep with a player, you have to say yes, it is normal that the coach sleeps with players in our team. And “the Guardian” goes on to say that players are being threatened with punitive action if they dare say anything about what's happened.
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  Zambia's football association says FIFA and the police are now investigating. The coach, Bruce Mwape, has denied these allegations and he'll be coaching the team during the World Cup.
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  Lowe: In my experience, with allegations as serious as those are, the person gets suspended whilst the investigation goes on. We don't risk allowing, were they to be true, the allegations, we don't risk allowing these things to continue while we're investigating. I mean, it's bizarre to me that he's allowed to stay in his job. No?
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  Rebecca and her co-host Brendan Hunt say these stories are ugly and frustrating. But the fact that they are being talked about at all means something it's a sign of progress. Progress that wouldn't have been possible if the U.S. women didn't achieve what they did last year.
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  On the podcast, Rebecca and Brendan talk about what to look forward to in this year's tournament, and make some early predictions.
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  Brenden Hunt: Despite my, despite my, my reservations, despite my, timidity, my cautiousness, my responsibly wide view. Gotta go USA, gotta USA. Here we come, Australia. Get ready for it. You?
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  [LAUGHS]
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  Lowe: Head says Germany. Sort of full body says USA. Heart says those cheeky little Lionesses! Oh yeah, I'm going for it! I mean, by the way, by the way, so how predictable are we? Literally? How predictable are our predictions? So predictable.
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  [LAUGHS]
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  [LAUGHS]
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  Hunt: Hold on, you made me go first and you picked three winners. Like, I've never seen a fence straddled so hard.
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  Follow “After the Whistle” on Apple Podcasts to make sure you never miss an episode. And if you're listening in the Apple News app, stick around at the end of the show, we have the first episode queued up to play next.
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  A man is scheduled to be executed today in the state of Alabama. It's the first execution on the calendar since Republican Governor Kay Ivey ordered a pause last fall, after the state botched three in a row. In each of those cases, they had issues inserting IV lines to administer the lethal injection. Two of the three people survived because executioners were forced to stop at midnight, when the death warrants technically expired.
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  Elizabeth Bruenig, has been writing about Alabama's track record of botched executions for "the Atlantic." She was a Pulitzer Prize finalist this year. And she told us, the review that Governor Ivey ordered of Alabama's execution process was inadequate from the start.
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  Elizabeth Bruenig: That review was not conducted externally by a third-party commission. It was conducted internally by the Department of Corrections itself, and no report was ever issued declaring its findings to the public. So, there's a lot of mystery surrounding that review and what it found and what the problems really were with those botched executions last year.
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  Bruenig says, one area that calls for more scrutiny is the team of people who administer the IV.
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  Bruenig: Were they trained at all for this job or were they just taken in from whatever work they had been doing and directed to do this work without any kind of occupational training? I mean, these are all really important questions, but the state's privacy regime for protecting the identities of executioners is so extreme that none of these questions have been publicly answered so far.
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  The state says it's now using a new IV team whose members are appropriately licensed.
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  The man scheduled to be executed today is James Barber. He was convicted of murder in 2001. Under new rules, executioners will have more time to locate his veins and administer the IV. Barber recently spoke to “NBC News” by phone, from the correctional facility in Alabama where he's set to be executed. Being the first in line after the state didn't do a true review of the protocol and made no real changes, he said, gives him "a fair amount of trepidation."
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  Actors and writers in Hollywood are still on strike. They want fair pay in an industry that's betting big on streaming and Al in the future. But “New Yorker” staff writer Michael Schulman says to understand what's going on in today's fight, it's useful to turn back the clock. Specifically, ten years back to the debut of the Netflix show “Orange is the New Black.”
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  Michael Schulman: People didn't really know what a streaming TV show could look like in terms of success. But “Orange is the New Black” was a ground up phenomenon. And the actors on the show realized it immediately because they started getting chased down the street for autographs and pictures.
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  That show helped introduce the concept of binge-watching to the world by releasing an entire season in one drop. This game-changing model transformed Netflix and the whole streaming economy. Meanwhile, recurring guest stars of the show told Schulman, they were still living paycheck to paycheck.
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  Schulman: They were kept at such a low salary that a lot of them weren't able to quit their day jobs for several seasons into the show's success. I mean, people were bartending. They were waitressing. They were basically just breaking even on “Orange is the New Black.”
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  TV actors have traditionally earned income through residuals when re-runs of their show air on TV. But on streaming platforms, it's a different model. Streaming residuals are often not directly linked to the popularity of a show, and streaming networks tend to keep viewership numbers a secret, which makes it hard for actors and writers to negotiate better deals.
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  Schulman: There was one, actor on the show, Emma Miles, who played Leanne, one of the two meth heads in the prison. And she told me that she had been on a handful of “Law Order SVU” episodes stretching back to 2004, which she still gets hundreds of dollars per year in residuals for. Meanwhile, she was on five, six seasons of “Orange is the New Black.” It's the show that made her name, some people still recognize her for. And yet, she'll get 20 bucks. So there's a vast, vast difference.
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  These actors told Schulman, they're proud of their work on “Orange Is the New Black.” But they feel shortchanged.
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  Schulman: They're still feeling like, hey, I was on this show that remains extremely popular. Why can't I afford a bathtub? Why can't I get to the point of income as an actor where I get health insurance from the union? You know, it just, it, it's a very mixed legacy.
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  You can find all these stories and more in the Apple News app. And if you're already listening in the News app right now, stick around.
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  The first episode of “After the Whistle” Women's World Cup edition is up next. Enjoy listening to that, and I'll be back with the news tomorrow.
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