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How soldiers accused of violent crimes avoid trial · Apple News Today

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  Gideon Resnick, Narrating: Good morning! It's Tuesday, April 11th. I'm Gideon Resnick in for Shumita Basu. This is "Apple News Today." On today's show, how the Army discharges soldiers accused of violent crimes instead of prosecuting them, why medical leave doesn't protect you from being fired, and ChatGPT is coming for your fortune cookies.
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  But first, let's take a quick look at several stories that we're watching today.
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  The Biden administration ended the national emergency for COVID-19 yesterday. It was enacted by the Trump administration in 2020. And over the last few years, this order has given medical providers and patients access to free COVID treatments. And it's boosted payments for hospitals taking care of COVID patients. The White House planned to extend the order and a separate public health emergency declaration until May 11th. The administration voiced opposition to a bill ending the national emergency but ultimately signed it after it cleared the Senate last month. The public health emergency remains in place and is set to expire in May, along with Title 42. That's the Trump-era border policy.
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  Next, let's check in on Kentucky, where yet another community is reckoning with the aftermath of a mass shooting. Five people were killed and eight were injured in an attack at a bank in Louisville yesterday morning. According to the authorities there, police shot and killed the 25-year-old gunman at the scene. He worked at Old National Bank for nearly two years but had no previous interactions with law enforcement. Here's the city's interim police chief.
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  Interim Police Chief: I want to acknowledge, with heartfelt condolences, prayers to the families of those who lost their life today: Tommy Elliot, 63 years of age; Jim Tutt, 64 years of age; Josh Barrick, 40 years of age; and Juliana Farmer.
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  Fifty-seven-year-old Deana Eckert died from her injuries Monday night. All of the victims were employees of Old National Bank.
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  Now let's turn to an update on abortion access in the United States. Hundreds of drug makers have signed an open letter condemning the decision by a Texas district court judge to halt the FDA's approval of mifepristone. The CEO of Pfizer and dozens of other leaders in biotech and pharmaceuticals signed this public letter. They say the judge in Texas has "no scientific training" and they support the FDA's authority to, quote, "approve and regulate safe, effective medicines for every American." Now the Biden administration has also appealed the decision in Texas and requested an emergency stay of the injunction. A federal appeals court is expected to weigh in this week. And, as we've mentioned to you before, the decision may ultimately fall to the Supreme Court.
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  Lastly, Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee announced that they are gonna hold hearings to investigate Justice Clarence Thomas and his failure to disclose gifts. This comes in direct response to the major "ProPublica" investigation we told you about last week. It found Justice Thomas accepted over 20 years' worth of luxury travel from a billionaire Republican megadonor. Democrats on the committee argue that lawmakers "need to restore confidence in the Supreme Court's ethical standards." Some Democrats, like Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, have actually gone further in their response to the news about Thomas. Here she is on "CNN's" "State of the Union."
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  Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez: It is the House's responsibility to pursue that investigation in the form of impeachment.
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  Thomas did address the gifts in a statement released on Friday. He said, based on "guidance from my colleagues and others in the judiciary," he believed "this sort of personal hospitality from close personal friends, who did not have business before the Court, was not reportable."
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  Let's turn now to a new investigation from "The Texas Tribune," the "Military Times" and "ProPublica." It found hundreds of members of the Army who have been accused of everything from sexual assault to domestic violence and child abuse have all avoided legal consequences in exchange for being discharged from the military.
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  Vianna Davila: It's called an administrative separation in lieu of court marshal.
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  That's "ProPublica" reporter Vianna Davila.
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  Davila: If they request it and the commander approves it, then the soldier is discharged, usually with an "other than honorable discharge," instead of going to trial. What we found in looking at about 10 years of Army court martial data is that the Army is increasingly using these administrative separations in lieu of court martial in violent cases.
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  Soldiers who pursue administrative separation have to acknowledge that they committed an offense that's punishable under military law. They do not need to admit guilt for a particular crime. And they avoid things like having to register as a sex offender or being prohibited from owning firearms after a domestic abuse conviction.
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  Davila: So that just raises questions for us about, okay, is this the right way to handle these cases? If you are discharged through this means, through an administrative separation in lieu of court martial, there's very, very little public record of what happened. So, you don't have a conviction. And then the public is… it's just harder to know that someone was actually accused of some of these violent crimes.
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  "ProPublica" looked into several cases, including a solider who was accused of physically assaulting his wife and firing a gun when she tried to flee or a case where a solider admitted to having sex with another solider who was drunk and could not consent. Those cases were strong enough for military prosecutors to bring them to trial. But they didn't. Instead, the military cut deals to let the soldiers return to civilian life with no criminal stain on their record. In the case of the man accused of assaulting his wife, he left the military and was later arrested for attacking a different woman and pleaded guilty.
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  Army Colonel Christopher Kennebeck, chief of the criminal law division at the Office of Judge Advocate General, did not dispute the reporting. And he said this process was originally designed for minor offenses or instances when the Army can't meet the burden of proof to win at trial.
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  Davila: They were meant more to deal with military-like offenses, like going AWOL. Context is important because this was happening really during and after the Vietnam War, when there was a draft, so many soldiers in the Army, there were a lot of disciplinary issues.
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  In 1978, the Government Accountability Office released a report calling for an end to the practice. The military said eliminating it would overwhelm its courts.
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  Did you know you could be laid off while you're on parental or medical leave? It's not only legal, it's been happening to several people in this recent wave of layoffs coming from tech, media and other industries.
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  "NPR" spoke to Cat Fan who was recovering from serious abdominal surgery when Meta, Facebook's parent company, announced they would be laying off 13 percent of the company. Fan has three children and had been working in recruiting for Meta for close to five years. She was on pain meds when she learned the news, and she told "NPR" that before she knew it, she was locked out of her laptop.
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  Cat Fan: It just felt like you were dumped and then ghosted very quickly.
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  Another employee from Salesforce posted on LinkedIn about her experience getting laid off while she was on maternity leave. She wrote that she "was washing baby bottles while humming a 'Wiggles' song" when she got the news. She thought she'd be protected because she was on maternity leave and was shocked to learn that she wasn't.
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  "NPR" looked into how this could happen. And apparently, it's not illegal to lay an employee off while they're on leave as long as it's not a retaliatory measure and there's proper documentation for the business decision.
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  And if you are laid off while on leave, you can lose the rest of the leave benefits that come with it as well. For example, Google recently received some criticism when a story was published about how they would not be paying out the remainder of maternity and medical leave for employees that had been laid off. Google responded by pointing to the generous separation package provided to all employees. It includes at least 16 weeks of pay, full pay during a 60+ day notice period, and Google stock.
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  For Cat Fan, she told "NPR" that while she's grateful to have a cushion and health care until July, she's worried about finding a new job in this market, especially in recruiting as many companies have paused on hiring. All of this uncertainty, she says, is making it harder to focus on her recovery.
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  Finally, we're gonna talk about a familiar feeling you have probably had. The timeless and delightful one when you crack open a fortune cookie and read the message inside. So, depending on the message that you get, it can feel like a prophecy, a warning or just a reminder to slow down and smell the roses. So now, like so many other things in life, ChatGPT is coming for fortune cookies.
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  "The Wall Street Journal" has this story. The paper profiles Charles Li, the owner of a fortune-cookie factory called Winfar Foods. Li and his 80-year-old father-in-law actually come up with every single fortune inside those wafers themselves. They spend hours upon hours brainstorming cute and clever phrases that end up in 11,000 fortune cookies across the country. And they're not the only business with this model.
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  According to the "Journal," nearly all the messages we get inside fortune cookies are written by just a small group of people like Li: factory owners, their families and a small team of copywriters. And there's a big debate in the fortune cookie community over artificial intelligence. Whether it should be used to generate a nearly limitless inventory of new messages or whether cookie makers should continue to stick to tradition and do this work by hand.
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  Some, like Li and his dad, say they're ready to slow down and let AI do the work for them. It hasn't all been smooth, though. Some messages have been strange. Like the one that read, "Your fate is written in the stars and encrypted in the clouds." Good to protect your fate like your data, I suppose.
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  Plus, Li says that he's gonna miss the job. It was fun, almost meditative, to brainstorm fortunes. One of his personal favorites: "Yesterday was bad, but don't let it ruin tomorrow. Or do, we're not your therapists!"
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  I challenge ChatGPT to beat that.
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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, stick around.
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  We've got a narrated article coming up next. The "L.A. Times" tells the story of a family who saved a girl from Nazis decades ago and how now that favor is being returned during the war in Ukraine.
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  So sit back, enjoy listening to that, and I'll be back with the news tomorrow.
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