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Making sense of a week of dangerous extreme weather · Apple News Today

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  Shumita Basu, Narrating: Good morning! It's Friday, July 14. I'm Shumita Basu. This is “Apple News Today.” On today's show Taking stock of this week in extreme weather. How a UPS labor dispute could blow a $7 billion hole in the U.S. economy, and Tom Hanks with a love letter to the people who make movies.
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  But first, let's take a quick look at some major stories in the news.
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  The Biden administration is forgiving $39 billion in student debt. More than 800,000 borrowers will qualify. This move is meant to fix issues with what are called income- driven repayment plans. Those are supposed to cancel debt for some borrowers who've payments for 20 or 25 years. Now the Education Department says many payments weren't tracked correctly. This comes after the Supreme Court struck down President Biden's broader student-loan forgiveness plan, which would've helped around 37 million people.
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  The World Health Organization says that a popular artificial sweetener is a "possible carcinogen." Aspartame is in everything from diet sodas to yogurt to cough drops. It passed many safety checks around the world over the years. But there have been questions about potential cancer risk. The FDA and the food industry are pushing back on the new WHO move. And it may take a lot of aspartame to have serious effects. A separate WHO panel says that its number for how much aspartame is acceptable to consume isn't changing: roughly the equivalent of 36 cans of diet soda a day.
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  In other FDA news, yesterday the agency approved the first over-the-counter birth control pill in America. The brand name is Opill. This brings the U.S. up to speed with much of the world, where over-the-counter birth-control pills have been available for years.
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  In Washington, Republicans in the House are attaching amendments about abortion and transgender health to a critical defense bill. That could hold up the $886 billion package. Typically, politicians, especially Republicans, are eager to spend money on defense, it supports a lot of jobs, and backing troops is politically popular. But yesterday's vote is a lot like the story we talked about earlier this week, about the Republican senator blocking military promotions in a protest of abortion policy. Lawmakers have found another routine bill that they can turn into a social-issue battleground. It's still several steps, and likely several revisions, away from becoming law.
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  And in legal news, special counsel Jack Smith argues that there's no reason to postpone former president Donald Trump's classified-documents trial until after the 2024 election. Trump's attorneys have argued, among other things, that it won't be possible to seat a fair jury while Trump runs for president. He has pleaded not guilty to charges that he mishandled classified material and obstructed the investigation. It's one of multiple trials and investigations into his conduct.
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  We've been closely watching extreme weather events all week, from the flooding in Vermont to the extreme heat in multiple parts of America. But the issue goes well beyond this week's news. This is a global, generational story. Earth is hotter than it's been in thousands of years. Tens of millions of Americans have been under heat alerts lately, in multiple states. In Phoenix, emergency rooms are treating burn patients. The pavement is hot enough to singe people's skin.
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  Ocean temperatures are also on the rise, with devastating consequences. There are areas, like the Florida Keys, where daily average temperature has topped 90 degrees, that's as hot as bathwater. This is a grave threat to coral reefs. Dive-center worker Max Ebel told the local “ABC” station about the damage he sees first-hand underwater.
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  Max Ebel: You can see that a lot of the marine life has sort of left for deeper waters. I mean, you can tell that it's really taking its toll down here.
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  And we'll feel the impact on land. Hotter waters add fuel to hurricanes, making them wetter and more intense.
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  As Sarah Kaplan, climate reporter for the “Washington Post” writes. "it's as if every alarm bell on Earth were ringing." And scientists say there's no question that these extreme events are caused by climate change and will continue to intensify as the planet warms.
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  It's not often that a print reporter describes what it's like to talk to experts who are speechless. But one researcher who studies polar ice melt struggles to find the words to describe what he's feeling. He settles for shaking his head, and saying, "For as long as we can stand it, we're in for this kind of climate, and worse, until we address the problem."
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  Our warming planet plays a role in a major labor story unfolding in America, the prospect of a massive UPS strike. “NBC” business reporter JJ McCorvey told us about how the extreme temperatures drivers deal with, have been a major issue in talks between the carrier and the Teamsters union.
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  JJ McCarvey: Lots of UPS delivery drivers have fallen ill from heat related issues.
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  Workers say the backs of their trucks turn into saunas. Federal investigators have documented heat indexes at 126 degrees. UPS and the Union have a tentative deal to require air conditioning for new vehicles and retrofit old ones to help them cool down.
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  Despite that agreement on AC, talks have broken down. Pay for the many part-time UPS workers is a big sticking point. If they don't reach a deal, a strike could happen at the end of the month. With 340,000 union employees, it would be the largest strike at a single employer in American history. And this one would have more far-reaching impact than say, the Hollywood strikes we've been talking about. Practically all industries, from small businesses to giant corporations, rely on those brown vans to ship their stuff. UPS is so massive, FedEx and the Postal Service will likely struggle to pick up the slack.
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  JJ McCorvey: Some businesses just might not be able to reach some consumers, or won't be able to ship certain kinds of products or will have longer delivery times, which you know, then means, you might not be able to find certain products at stores or you might end up paying more for products, more for delivery.
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  A new analysis shows that even if a strike only lasts 10 days, economic damage could top $7 billion.9
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  I am so excited for you to listen to this week's episode of "Apple News In Conversation." I sat down with Mr. Tom Hanks. Yes, the actor Tom Hanks. Now also, the writer Tom Hanks. He just published his very first novel this year. It's called, "The Making of Another Major Motion Picture Masterpiece." It's fiction, but it's based on his lifetime of experience on movie sets.
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  Tom Hanks: You'd be amazed when you're making a movie how the day shooting cannot go on save for one thing. Now there's a generator that powers the lights and all the electricity on the base camp. If that generator goes down, you don't shoot that day. If there's a prop that does not work or that is missing, that means that scene is delayed that much time.
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  Now, I should say I spoke with Tom Hanks before Hollywood actors went on strike but in some ways, the timing of this interview is perfect. And that's because his book is like a love letter to the people who make movies, especially the ones behind the scenes.
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  Hanks: I was once making a movie in an actual location in which a payphone kept ringing during one of the shots, and every time it rang, we lost everything that we were doing and we couldn't do anything until, until the prop guy, who had a pair of wire cutters, just reached over and snapped the wires off on the payphone that was on the wall. And so, you know what that guy did that day? He solved a problem and we kept the movie going.
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  So as you get ready to watch any of the big Hollywood blockbusters of the summer - "Mission Impossible," "Barbie," "Oppenheimer" - and maybe you're thinking about the strikes going on behind the scenes, check out this interview. You'll hear how Tom Hanks says movies actually get made.
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  If you're listening in the Apple News app right now, that episode is queued up to play for you next. So enjoy you weekend, and I'll be back with the news on Monday.
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