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Inside the urgent search for earthquake survivors · Apple News Today

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  Shumita Basu, Narrating: Good morning! It's Tuesday, February 7th. I'm Shumita Basu. This is "Apple News Today." On today's show President Biden gears up for his State of the Union address, arrests in a plot to take out the power supply of an American city, and Salman Rushdie re-emerges, after last year's near-fatal attack.
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  But first, search and rescue crews in Turkey and Syria are working around the clock to pull survivors out of the wreckage caused by two massive earthquakes on Monday. More than 5,000 people are dead and thousands are injured.
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  We're getting more first-hand accounts of the damage, including dramatic footage of the aftermath. In Turkey, where thousands of buildings are destroyed, one collapse happened on live television. You see a large building come down, clouds of thick gray dust fill the air as people run for cover.
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  [START REUTERS ARCHIVAL CLIP]
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  [CROWD CLAMORING]
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  Other videos show civilians standing in the rubble, huddled in the cold, waiting for help, hoping for news of their missing loved ones. Cultural landmarks have been lost, including a centuries-old castle dating back to the Roman Empire. Turkey's President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has declared a week of mourning.
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  In Syria, videos show packed hospitals with some patients receiving care from make-shift beds on the floor. People there survived years of war that displaced millions. Much of Aleppo was ruined in the conflict. Now it's been hit again, with a natural disaster destroying what waves of intense bombings did not. One resident tells "The Wall Street Journal" that people are afraid to go inside their own homes, fearing collapse. He says: "It feels like doomsday."
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  The region has faced conflict that led to a refugee crisis. It's also under severe economic pressure, where families were already worried about getting enough to eat. And of course, this is a bitterly cold time of year. That means people whose homes are destroyed now face the added danger of extreme cold.
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  But among all the damage, there are some stories of hope. In Syria, you can hear rescuers' excitement when they find a child alive under a pile of rubble.
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  [START ARCHIVAL CLIP]
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  [CLAMORING THEN CHANTING]
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  Teams of rescuers are fanned out across the region trying to find more survivors. There are local volunteers alongside disaster-relief professionals. And other countries are sending in more teams to help. The area is prone to earthquakes, but these ones stand out for their power: magnitudes 7.8 and 7.5. Only three quakes have hit the area that registered above 6 in the last half century. Scientists say aftershocks and seismic activity in the area could continue for months. The region will need a lot of help for a long time. The "Washington Post" has a guide on how to donate in a way where your support gets to the people who need it most. You can read about that in the Apple News app.
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  Turning now to some big domestic news we're watching today. Tonight, President Biden delivers his State of the Union address. It's a stage where presidents lay out their agenda, but he now faces a Congress where Republicans hostile to that agenda are in control of the House. Other challenges include an uncertain economy, the war in Ukraine, and a tense relationship with China following the balloon incident.
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  If you don't watch tonight, I'll have full coverage with the key moments on tomorrow morning's episode.
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  Another major story is unfolding in Baltimore. The FBI has two people under arrest in a plot to attack the city's power grid. Prosecutors say they planned to shoot electrical substations in order to shut down the city. Investigators learned of the plans through a confidential informant. Federal authorities say the suspects were "racially or ethnically motivated." One of them leads a neo-Nazi group. Their attorneys did not comment to "NBC."
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  And lastly, we are on watch for a new record in basketball. L.A. Lakers star LeBron James is just 36 points away from becoming the all-time leading scorer in the NBA. He would pass another Laker, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, who's held the title for decades, with 38,387 points. James reflected on where the record would rank among his accomplishments in a recent "ESPN" interview.
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  Lebron James: I don't know because I have not set out to do that. It wasn't like a goal of mine when I entered the league, making an All-Star team, being rookie of the year, being first team all NBA, first team on defense. Winning a championship for sure. Being an MVP of the league.
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  Whether it happens tonight or during the Lakers' next game on Thursday, good luck scoring a ticket. StubHub says prices for these games are sky-high, as fans hope to get a glimpse of history.
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  Salman Rushdie is speaking out for the first time since he was attacked at a literary event last summer, stabbed by a man about a dozen times. Rushdie was there to talk about the U.S. being a safe haven for writers. It's a topic he's lived with and relied on, because for decades he's had a target on his back, put there by Iran's then Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khomeini, who called for Rushdie's execution in the 80s.
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  Rushdie has spent these months recovering, and he broke his silence to "New Yorker" editor David Remnick. I sat down with Remnick the other day to ask him what it was like to catch up with the prolific novelist about his life and his work, including his new book out this week called "Victory City." But first, I asked Remnick for an update on Rushdie's recovery.
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  David Remnick: Well, as you can imagine, that was my first question when I saw him and, I think he began by saying, "I've been better" in a kind of dry joking way. he was stabbed many, many times, and he's 75 years old. He was stabbed in the liver. He lost vision in his right eye, a major nerve in his hand. So on the other hand, had he been stabbed a little more deeply in the neck, he would've bled right out on, on that stage. So, he feels lucky to be alive, and he's getting better.
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  Basu: Wow. Now, Rushdie was famously forced to lay low for many years when Iran's Ayatollah issued a fatwa an order of execution against him. That was more than 30 years ago, but for the most part, he has made it a point to live openly and fearlessly. So what did he tell you about how this latest attack on him is affecting the way that he thinks about his safety today?
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  Remnick: It can't not affect how he thinks about his safety. And I think part of the reason he gave me an interview, and no one else is because he couldn't go on book tour. I mean, this is a guy who likes to get out and around. I mean, he's a social being. He's not Alexander Soja Nissen living in isolation in Vermont. When he was living in the United States certainly for the last 20 years in New York City, he was really, he was out and about so much that "The New York Times" even wrote a piece about him, dancing at Mumba, going to this restaurant and that, it was a kind of act of joy and defiance at the same time.
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  Basu: So how is he grappling with thinking about writing about the attack?
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  Remnick: I think with enormous difficulty, he says to me that, you know, PTSD is part of the picture of the aftermath of this attack.
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  Basu: I'm sure.
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  Remnick: Writing is hard enough, um, in the first place. Um, even an inferior writer like me can attest writing is hard and it's terribly hard I would imagine in the wake of something like this. But he's at his desk, he's going, I have absolutely no doubt considering the courage and the will and the storytelling genius of Salman Rushdie that something will emerge from this.
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  Basu: It's clear also from your article that you reached out to many younger writers who say that they've been shaped by Rushdie, people like Zadie Smith, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Ayad Akhtar, and they all seem to be reflecting on what his attack means in a broader sense for artists for free speech. What did they tell you?
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  Remnick: Well, I think Salman Rushie, who's now 75, was somebody who was liberating in the first place for these writers. Think of Zadie Smith in London, and, in the London of migrants and, of the immigration and London, and picking up a book like "Midnight's Children," which is really, I think Rushdie's masterpiece and an early novel published in 1981. And that novel became the great novel of India, And so Zadie Smith and all these other writers picked up that book and others like shame and, and the "Satanic Verses" and it really blew the doors open for them imaginatively politically, and in terms of just a sense of freedom and what was possible.
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  Basu: Yeah. And yet, when something like this happens, it feels like it reaches across history. Right, the fatwa order having been many decades ago, and yet this reminder, this visceral and dangerous and nearly fatal reminder to Rushdie, but also to, to all those in his community that the threat lingers, the threat does linger.
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  Remnick: The threat lingers, and the, it makes us think about speech very carefully. And I know that there's a lot of debate about how speech can damage, how speech can harm, but Ayad Akhtar says, you know, I can continue to have that debate, but I can't put it in the same paragraph, or at the same level of importance as the freedom of the imagination and the freedom of the written and spoken word. And, and Rushdie and not only speaks out for that, but he embodies it. And he would wish that his life were less interesting than his books. But he is, in a sense, cursed by having a life as interesting in many ways as his books.
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  Basu: David Remnick, editor of "The New Yorker," thank you so much for your time.
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  Remnick: My pleasure.
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  You can listen to Remnick's interview with Salman Rushdie on the "New Yorker Radio Hour," on the Apple Podcast App. And you can read his profile in the Apple News App. If you're already listening in the News app right now, we've got a narrated article coming up next from "The Times" of London. You'll hear about the Ukrainians defending Snake Island, who became national heroes when they refused to surrender to a Russian warship.
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  There's much more to the story than was reported at the time. And it's a good time to hear it, with reports of new Russian troop movements ahead of an expected offensive against Ukrainian forces. That's playing for you next, and I'll be back with the news tomorrow.
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