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How one Turkish town survived the earthquakes with no deaths · Apple News Today

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  Shumita Basu, Narrating: Good morning! It's Thursday, February 16th. I'm Shumita Basu. This is "Apple News Today." On today's show, how one town in Turkey avoided death and collapsed buildings, how ChatGPT and other AI could transform white-collar work, and the new head coach of a storied college team who's only 22 years old.
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  [START CBS NEWS PITTSBURGH ARCHIVAL CLIP]
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  Ohio Health Official: Is everybody satisfied with my answer?
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  Unsatisfied Ohio Residents: No.
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  Ohio Health Official: Well, [INDISCERNIBLE]. I... Listen, I can't help it. That's, that's what we have to go by.
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  [END CBS NEWS PITTSBURGH ARCHIVAL CLIP]
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  The rail operator Norfolk Southern was not at the meeting, saying it feared violent threats to its employees. Rail worker union officials say that train safety has been hurt by company cost cutting. Norfolk Southern says its safety record has improved recently. Federal investigators are looking into what caused the derailment.
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  Let's turn now to some big news from Washington, where there are new details about when the U.S. government could default on its debt. A new estimate from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office says a default could happen as soon as July if lawmakers don't make a deal to raise the debt ceiling. The government has already technically hit the debt ceiling. For now, the Treasury is keeping the money flowing with some accounting moves, but time is running out.
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  Also in D.C., the acting FAA administrator faced some tough questions at a congressional hearing yesterday. Lawmakers asked Billy Nolen about recent incidents where planes narrowly avoided serious accidents, as well as the technology outage that halted flights for about 90 minutes in early January.
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  Billy Nolen: We are experiencing the safest period in aviation history, but we do not take that for granted. Recent events remind us that we cannot and must not become complacent and must continually invest in our aviation system.
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  Nolen says the FAA is modernizing computer systems and improving backups to prevent another outage.
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  In Turkey, survivors of last week's earthquakes, which killed more than 41,000 people there and in Syria, are now demanding accountability from the government. Many see the tens of thousands of collapsed buildings as preventable destruction. Now, the Turkish government's enforcement of construction codes is under scrutiny, all the way up to the president.
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  See, Turkey sits on two major fault lines and has always been vulnerable to strong earthquakes. These natural disasters can't be predicted, but they can be prepared for. After a deadly earthquake in 1999, Turkey did pass stricter building codes. But they haven't been consistently enforced.
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  Dozens of people involved in construction are now under investigation by Turkey's Justice Ministry. But as "Vox" explains, the blame spreads much further than contractors. As one expert on Turkish government puts it, cronyism, politics, and construction are all intertwined.
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  President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's party has been in power for almost 20 years. His regime controlled access to lucrative government building contracts. At the same time, he consolidated control over the courts, civil service, and the press. So, there was a lack of forces to hold unethical contractors and their political allies accountable.
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  Amnesty policies in Turkey have also allowed developers to sidestep some safety requirements and move ahead with construction if they paid a fine. Some of these policies predate Erdogan, but he continued them and even praised them for speeding up building. Turkey's building safety problem wasn't just contractors cutting corners. It was also regulators looking the other way.
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  Now if you look elsewhere in Turkey, it's clear that following safety and code requirements in construction makes a difference. NBC reports on the small town of Erzin, about 70 miles from the quake's epicenter, where there are no reports of deaths or building collapses. Residents there credit the mayor and predecessors for refusing to allow construction that violated safety codes. They also took down buildings that were built illegally. One city worker estimates that in the last few days, 20,000 people have come there from elsewhere in Turkey, looking for a safe place to stay.
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  We've talked on the show before about ChatGPT, the AI tool that can write convincingly well. So, this recent story in "The Atlantic" caught our eye because it cuts through the hype and gets right to the question of what the impact could be on the labor market. New technology often changes work and can eliminate jobs. But across history, it's mostly changed blue-collar jobs in factories, mines, shipyards.
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  In this piece, Annie Lowrey argues that this kind of technology could have a different impact. It could threaten white-collar jobs, the jobs of humans who write legal briefs, textbooks, software code, and more.
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  Annie Lowrey: I think why people are really, really, like, nervous about this is this feels like the first one where oh my goodness, is this going to, you know, turn Silicon Valley into the Rust Belt?
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  Lowrey says when you think about science fiction examples of Al, there's sort of two versions that come to mind. There's the friendly version. Think "Star Trek." AI handles all the heavy stuff, and we're free to explore the galaxy. But then there's the not-so-friendly version, the one where AI takes your job and leaves you in the lurch.
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  Lowrey: You know, we can imagine a dystopic version of that in which there isn't enough work for people. And so, everybody's kind of on the government dole, and this leads to all sorts of social unrest. So, I think that that's the other thing, is that we have all of these kind of like science fictional ideas in our heads, and we're kind of like, well, which one's going to come to pass?
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  As Lowrey and others point out, it's not a question of whether AI will change our working lives, only how fast that change will happen.
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  The new coach tapped to lead the University of North Carolina's field hockey team knows what it takes to win, and that's because she was on the team just three months ago.
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  "Sports Illustrated" celebrates the story of 22-year-old Erin Matson and why, despite her young age, she was such an obvious choice to be named head coach. Matson's playing resume is seriously impressive. She won four national titles in five seasons at UNC. She's been called the Michael Jordan of her sport, and when it came time for her to graduate and the team's legendary coach was retiring, the athletic director didn't want to lose Matson. Another school would've hired her, at least as an assistant coach.
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  For Matson, all of this has been a whirlwind. The team won the national title in November. She graduated in December, and then she was named head coach this year. She recently talked about coaching players who used to be her peers on the "Carolina Insider" podcast.
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  Erin Matson: There's no doubt that this is going to be something super special. It's just, yeah, navigating this very unique situation and executing it well. But yeah, I'm super excited to coach, and help, and everything, and I think the girls are, too.
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  You can read more about Matson and all of the day's news in the Apple News app, and if you're already listening in the News app right now, stick around for another sports story. We've got a narrated article coming up next from "GQ." It's about a new Netflix series about golf that turned into something very different, as a new Saudi-backed league emerged to challenge the PGA. So, sit back, enjoy listening to that, and I'll be back with the news tomorrow.
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