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Why thousands of Russians are fleeing their country · Apple News Today

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  Duarte Geraldino, Narrating: Good morning! It's Tuesday, March 22nd. 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: Today, Senators are going to start questioning President Biden's Supreme Court nominee. Yesterday, Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson delivered her opening statements to the Senate Judiciary Committee.
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  Ketanji Brown Jackson: When I was born here in Washington, my parents were public school teachers, and to express both pride in their heritage and hope for the future, they gave me an African name, Ketanji Onyika, which they were told means "lovely one."
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  Judge Jackson told senators if she's confirmed, she would defend the Constitution and seek to live up to U.S. ideals.
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  Ketanji Brown Jackson: I stand on the shoulders of so many who have come before me, including Judge Constance Baker Motley, who was the first African American woman to be appointed to the federal bench and with whom I share a birthday. And like Judge Motley, I have dedicated my career to ensuring that the words engraved on the front of the Supreme Court building, "Equal Justice Under Law," are a reality and not just an ideal.
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  Basu: Judge Jackson is an appeals court judge in Washington, D.C. and a two-time Harvard honors grad. She has experience as a public defender and, at one point, she clerked for Justice Stephen Breyer, who she would be replacing when he retires at the end of this term. She also received the highest rating a judge can get from the American Bar Association.
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  Geraldino: The "L.A. Times" recaps how many Democrats celebrated Judge Jackson yesterday. Senator Cory Booker called it, quote, "a day of joy."
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  Cory Booker: Judge Jackson's nomination breaks an artificially confining mold of our past and opens up a more promising, potential-filled future for us all, as Americans.
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  And Senator Alex Padilla acknowledged how she'll be breaking new ground as the first Black woman on the highest court.
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  Alex Padilla: Now, the men who wrote our founding documents could never have imagined that you would one day be here.
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  So, that's a day one wrap. It was mostly niceties, but today things could be quite different. The Senate Judiciary Committee is going to be questioning her. Over at "The Wall Street Journal," Supreme Court reporter Jess Bravin writes about the opposition she's likely to face this week from Republicans. Now, most are going to be asking her questions about things you expect to hear, questions about her judicial philosophy and past opinions. But, as Bravin told us, a few outlier Republican senators recently have captured the headlines.
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  Jess Bravin: Some Republicans were very harsh on her, suggesting she's a friend of child predators and criminals and terrorists.
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  Basu: Let's look at these claims. First, the question of defending terrorists. "Vox" lays out the facts. Judge Jackson represented four Guantanamo Bay detainees as a public defender. But remember, under the law, everyone, no matter what your alleged crime is, is entitled to a lawyer. Plus, in her cases, none of her defendants were ever convicted. Even those who were eventually charged had those charges dropped. And all were eventually released.
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  Geraldino: Then there's the argument being made by Republican Senator Josh Hawley that Judge Jackson let sex offenders get off easily. As "The Washington Post" explains, Hawley is taking comments Judge Jackson made when she served as a member of the U.S. Sentencing Commission out of context. The commission is a bipartisan agency, whose stated goal is to, quote, "reduce sentencing disparities and promote transparency in sentencing." Still, Bravin says, expect to hear this come up this week.
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  Bravin: So, they're going to say, well, you are soft on crime. And this is, in fact, a theme that Senator Mitch McConnell suggested last week that Republicans are going to push against her.
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  Basu: It's worth noting Judge Jackson has been endorsed by several law enforcement agencies which have said part of the reason they support her is that Jackson has family members who are in law enforcement, which gives her an understanding and appreciation for their work.
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  Geraldino: If history is any indication of where this process is going to end up, let's look at the past. The Senate has confirmed Judge Jackson for judicial roles three times. If she's confirmed again this time around, her appointment to the court would be historic, yes, but it won't change the makeup. There'll still be 6 justices on the court nominated by Republican presidents and three nominated by Democratic presidents.
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  Basu: You have probably heard about the millions of people who have fled Ukraine, but there's another group of emigrants that's not getting as much attention, people leaving Russia. Many say they're leaving their homes because the Russia they once knew, the one that they helped build, is becoming unrecognizable.
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  Geraldino: "Bloomberg Businessweek" is reporting an estimated 200,000 Russians have already left their country. They fled in the first few days of the war. They're traveling to countries like Armenia, Georgia, Israel, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Turkey, places that allow Russians in without a visa. In their rush to get out, they're leaving behind their homes, savings, cars.
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  Basu: Masha Gessen writes about this exodus for "The New Yorker." Some of the people leaving fear political persecution. Gessen writes about one man named Grigory. He has protested against Putin plenty of times in the past. He's even been detained. But recently, he found out that his name is on a list of people targeted for political persecution. So, to protect himself and his family, he decided to leave. He packed up his car, and he went to say goodbye to his parents. But in a sign of how quickly things are changing in Russia, when he got to his parents' home, he found them preparing to have their house searched.
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  Geraldino: Gessen writes that others are leaving because they fear getting drafted, forced to enlist, or they're just morally opposed to the war and feel like they can't stay. These Russians say the Russia they've long known is disappearing.
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  Basu: This isn't the first time Russia has seen an exodus like this. "Bloomberg Businessweek" looks at the years after the Soviet Union collapsed, when 1.2 million people left Russia for opportunities elsewhere, contributing to a significant brain drain.
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  Geraldino: And if there was ever any doubt that that was, in fact, a brain drain, consider the people who left. They were mostly academics and professionals who went on to transform fields of science and education in the countries to which they fled. In the more than 20 years since Putin first took power, close to 2,000,000 people left Russia.
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  Basu: The author of this "Bloomberg" piece has a personal perspective on this. In 2014, he and his family left their home in Russia. He has a name to describe what he and millions of others did: the emigration of disappointment.
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  There are a few moments in history when scientists made huge leaps. The COVID pandemic is proving to be one of them.
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  Liz Szabo: When the pandemic began, scientists around the world dropped everything to study COVID.
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  That's Liz Szabo. She's a senior correspondent at "Kaiser Health News."
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  Szabo: That led some to worry that research into cancer, heart disease and other important conditions would suffer.
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  But actually, the opposite is turning out to be true.
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  Szabo: The surprise has been that the billions of dollars invested in COVID could pay dividends, not just for COVID patients, but for people suffering from cancer, influenza, chronic fatigue and rare genetic diseases. That's because the mRNA technology used to create COVID vaccines is now being used to create vaccines against a number of infectious diseases.
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  Geraldino: You've probably heard about how scientific breakthroughs during the pandemic may change the way we approach other medical conditions. This reporting from "Kaiser Health News" goes into a lot of detail that you may not have known before. For example, with mRNA technology, researchers are hoping they can use this technology to create vaccines for the flu, Zika, even HIV. Now, if you're a parent, you likely know about RSV. Every year, millions of kids are hospitalized because of this respiratory infection. mRna may lead to a new RSV vaccine.
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  Basu: And then there's the technology that's been developed for testing and diagnostics. One doctor in this "Kaiser Health News" article says he never imagined you could do a PCR test outside of a lab, that it could be done just about anywhere, including by you and me in our homes.
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  Geraldino: And let's not forget research into Long COVID. You know how some patients continue to experience symptoms for months, possibly even years after getting infected? Well, it turns out that research is benefiting research into another chronic condition that, up until now, had mostly been dismissed by the medical community.
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  Szabo: But now, many top researchers say that Long COVID and chronic fatigue are more or less the same disease. Advocates for people with chronic disease now hope that the intense focus on Long COVID will help people with both diseases.
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  One more important discovery we need to mention. Scientists learned that roughly 15 to 20% of patients over 70 who die from COVID have something called interferon-targeting antibodies. Basically, rogue antibodies that attack your immune system instead of protecting it. The head of immunology at the University of Pennsylvania calls that discovery a, quote, "paradigm shift" in his field.
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  Basu: All of this means huge strides for science. Szabo says it's kind of similar to the breakthroughs we got from the Space Race in the '50s and '60s. During those decades, competitive scientific spirit was in hyperdrive and it led all sorts of developments. I'm talking about the invention of CT scanners and MRI machines, wireless headphones, even the computer mouse. Szabo says the same kind of breakthroughs also came from all the resources devoted to AIDS research.
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  Szabo: So, scientists studying HIV in the 1980s, '90s and later decades learned things that led to the development of better drugs for hepatitis and CMV, also known as Cytomegalovirus. And research into HIV/AIDS also paved the way for successful immunotherapies in cancer. And it also sped the development of vaccines that are now being used for COVID.
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  Geraldino: It's another one of those days where there's a lot going on. Here are a few other stories we're following closely on the Apple News app.
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  Basu: President Biden confirmed that Russia has used hypersonic missiles in Ukraine. These are missiles that travel faster than five times the speed of sound. He also urged U.S. businesses to increase their cybersecurity, bracing for potential cyber-attacks from Russia.
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  Geraldino: As of early this morning, "Reuters" is reporting, a rescue team is searching the area where a Boeing jetliner crashed in southern China yesterday. Investigators are looking into why the crash happened, and the state-run airline has grounded its entire fleet of Boeing 737-800s.
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  Basu: And dangerous storms are in the forecast for parts of the U.S. over the next few days. Multiple tornadoes have already touched down in Texas and Oklahoma, where "USA Today" is reporting tens of thousands of people were without power this morning.
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  Geraldino: That's all in the Apple News app. And when you're in there, keep listening to hear narrated articles from our News+ partners.
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  Basu: We'll talk with you again tomorrow.
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