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What to know about the man leading Russia’s military · Apple News Today

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  Duarte Geraldino, Narrating: Good morning! It's Tuesday, April 12th. 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: The mayor of Mariupol says more than 10,000 civilians have died in Russia's siege of the city, and the BBC is now reporting the U.S. and Britain are looking into allegations that Russian forces used chemical weapons in this area. This comes as eastern Ukraine is preparing to defend against another offensive. Russian troops have a new commander and his reputation suggests Russia's attack could enter a brutal new phase.
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  Basu: The newly-appointed leader is General Alexander Dvornikov. He has experience leading troops in Syria and eastern Ukraine. Both are places where Russia has been accused of war crimes. Retired U.S. Army General Barry McCaffrey talked to MSNBC about his reputation, and what that may mean about what's next.
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  Barry McCaffrey: They've now gone to terrorizing civilians as their primary tool. And Dvornikov was the first Russian commander in Syria, awarded the Hero of the Russian Federation award for primarily dropping barrel bombs on defenseless civilians and using poison gas against them.
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  Geraldino: Biden's national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, told CNN this is a sign that, after the setbacks it had in the war so far, Russia may resort to more severe tactics.
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  Jake Sullivan: No appointment of any general can erase the fact that Russia has already faced a strategic failure in Ukraine. This particular general has a résumé that includes brutality against civilians in other theaters, in Syria, and we can expect more of the same in this theater.
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  Basu: "The Washington Post" reports on how this appointment seems to confirm what a lot of analysts have expected Russia to do. Dvornikov has extensive experience in Ukraine's south and east. After failing to capture Kyiv, the focus for Russia appears to be taking control of territory closer to Russia. Troops appear to be regrouping for a more concentrated assault, and they'll be following the orders of a man accused of caring very little about whether civilians are killed.
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  Geraldino: We're entering the intense part of political primaries, and in this year's midterms, election workers are going to get a heightened level of attention. Critics concerned about access to the polls, and people's votes not being counted, will be ready to pounce. Georgia will be in the spotlight. It has its primary in a few weeks. Remember, during the 2020 presidential election, it was one of the hardest-fought states. The 2018 governor's race was also contentious and controversial.
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  Basu: NPR went to a conference in Georgia for election workers. It's where they learn how to run elections, everything from conducting post-election audits to verifying absentee ballots under the state's new rules. Now, typically at this conference, there would be a lot of familiar faces, but this year was different.
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  Dorothy Glisson: I would say that we've probably got as many first-time attendees as we do all of the others put together, so that tells us something.
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  Geraldino: That's Dorothy Glisson. She's president of Georgia's association of election officials. These workers, they have a tough job. Recent survey research shows many across America plan to leave ahead of the next presidential election. They cite the harassment and stress.
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  Basu: But NPR found a lot of people who are eager to do the job, like 28-year-old Tyrell Golden.
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  Tyrell Golden: It's just the time now for my generation, and even the ones after me and older than me, to step up into these positions, because without voting in elections, I don't see how the democracy will carry on.
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  Big picture economic numbers show we're in an extremely competitive labor market and inflation is high. Sometimes it's easier to understand the economy if you zoom in, which is why "Bloomberg" reporter Shawn Donnan takes us to what he calls the "red-hot center" of the tightest job market since World War II.
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  Shawn Donnan: We headed to Hamilton County in Indiana because it has one of the lowest unemployment rates in the country and we were kind of curious about what life looks like in a place like that.
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  Geraldino: In the past few decades, the area has boomed. It's one of the most affluent counties in the country, and its unemployment rate is more than two percentage points lower than the national average. This sounds like the dream, right? But Donnan found in the long-term, this is a mixed picture.
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  Shawn Donnan: Yes, the economy looks really good on the ground there. You see construction all over the place, this is a rapidly growing corner of the United States. But you also see, and this is kind of what surprised us, you also see the U.S. economy running up against some of the bigger structural issues, and one of the big ones is the lack of workers.
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  Basu: All the progress made in this area could be lost if companies can't get workers. Jim Brainard understands this. He's mayor of Carmel, the biggest city in Hamilton County. He's a Republican, but he disagrees with a lot of the national figures in his party on how to fill jobs.
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  Shawn Donnan: Jim Brainard's really interesting in that, if you ask him what his top economic priorities are, he lists two for the country and that is one: loosening immigration laws to attract more migrants. And the second one is raising wages for low-income service workers so that they can have a livable wage and they can afford to live in a place like Carmel.
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  Geraldino: Donnan also talked to business leaders who can't wait for policies to change. One company overhauled how they operate…
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  Shawn Donnan: They started not just raising pay but also reducing the shifts that people have to work from eight hours to six hours, partly to try and attract stay-at-home mothers to the workplace and draw on them as a source of workers.
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  Basu: This is part of the strategy: how do we open up opportunities for people who we might not have hired in the past, like stay-at-home mothers, people with criminal records? One company embedded a high school in its factory…
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  Shawn Donnan: You literally have this situation where you have high school workers on the floor working next to inmates on work release.
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  Geraldino: Politicians all over the country are fighting to bring jobs to their towns, but as this corner of Indiana shows, growth also requires people to fill those jobs. And it's important to understand what's happening there because the rest of the country faces similar challenges.
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  Shawn Donnan: Hamilton county is absolutely an example of where we're all heading in the U.S. economy, in that the demographics are just getting worse. We've seen over the last five, six years a real decline in immigration to the United States. We've also seen a real, over the last few decades, a real decline in birth rates. The U.S. Census just released data showing that two-thirds of counties in the United States actually had more deaths than births last year, and that's a real problem for businesses going forward.
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  Basu: Bruce Willis recently announced that he'll be stepping away from acting after being diagnosed with aphasia, a language disorder. Now, I'd already heard that story when I clicked on an article from "The Washington Post." The title was "This is not a story about Bruce Willis," and it's not, mostly. It's about a man named Eric Buarque, a landscaper who looks almost exactly like the famous actor. And he's made a side-career out of being his double.
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  Geraldino: Buarque won me over with how much he clearly respects and admires the actor. He's more than a decade younger than the star. Buarque, he used to get stopped all the time by strangers who'd say "Hey, you look like Bruce Willis!"
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  Basu: [CHUCKLES] But it turns out, looking like a carbon copy of an actor is not a guarantee that you'll get a Hollywood career playing their double. You have to read the story to hear the twists and turns that it took for Buarque to eventually make it, and in total he stood in for Bruce Willis in 13 movies and 20 commercials.
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  Geraldino: Check out the story and, obviously, the pictures. This guy has that bald head, the sharp chin, you'd think it was Bruce Willis if I didn't tell you. That's on the Apple News app, along with all the stories we talked about today.
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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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