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Hawaii residents fear developer land grab following fires · Apple News Today

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  Mark Garrison, Narrating: Good morning! It's Thursday, August 17th. I'm Mark Garrison in for Shumita Basu. This is "Apple News Today."
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  On today's show, a major ruling affecting access to abortion pills, how social media may be fueling gun violence, and the strange patch of cold water in the Pacific that has science puzzled.
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  But first, more on the devastating wildfires in Hawaii. The death toll keeps rising as search teams look through the destroyed homes of Lahaina. And there's also a dire situation for the living. Many survivors now have nowhere to live. This is a place that already had a housing crisis, long before the fires wiped out so many homes. Prices skyrocketed, as tourism and development pushed out local residents.
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  The lack of affordable housing has been especially damaging to the Native Hawaiian community. There are now more Native Hawaiians living on the U.S. mainland than on the islands. Many left because Hawaii was too expensive.
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  Lahaina has long been a place where Native Hawaiian culture has thrived. But people worry about the long-term damage the fires could do. There are already reports of investors trying to buy up land from families whose homes burned down. Governor Josh Green is warning predatory buyers to stay away.
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  Josh Green: So I've actually reached out to our attorney general to explore our options to do a moratorium on any sales of properties that have been damaged or destroyed. Moreover, I would caution people that it's going to be a very long time before any growth or housing can be built, and so you will be pretty poorly informed if you try to steal land from our people and then build here.
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  Residents are trying to give each other the support they need so people won't be pressured to sell at a difficult time. "The Washington Post" spoke to Archie Kalepa, a Native Hawaiian community leader. His family has lived in Lahaina for nine generations.
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  Archie Kalepa: One of the things that we as a community and as a state is gonna be faced with is how do we begin to address the long-term recovery. Rebuilding, keeping people here, and not selling off what losses they had and moving, and we want to make sure that we are able to keep Lahaina Lahaina and Lahaina strong.
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  Local leaders say the history here is too important for it to be turned into more vacation rentals and golf courses. They want state and federal agencies to help them recover and rebuild in a way that prioritizes the local community, not outside developers.
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  If you're looking for ways to help, Honolulu Civil Beat has a list of organizations that are accepting donations. You can see the whole list on the Apple News app.
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  Now, let's take a quick look at some other stories in the news.
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  A U.S. appeals court is backing restrictions on the abortion pill mifepristone, but they won't go into effect yet because the legal battle is not over. The court upheld an earlier ruling from a federal court in Texas that would block telemedicine prescriptions and sending the pills by mail. But the appeals court did not agree with the lower court that the drug should be pulled off the market completely. There have been a lot of twists and turns in this case. "NBC" senior legal correspondent Laura Jarrett reported on what happened.
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  Laura Jarrett: It went back before a conservative appeals court, three judges have issued a decision and it is upholding part of that original Texas ruling but only in part. And the part that it says is okay, is having to do with getting the pill by mail, all the ways that women were able to get it more easily. That's the part that they say cannot happen.
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  The Biden administration says it's appealing to the Supreme Court. And again, mifepristone is still available. But if the Supreme Court upholds this new ruling, patients wouldn't be able to get abortion pills via telemedicine and mail. Instead, they'd need a prescription from a doctor, and three follow-up appointments in-person. But the appeals court's ruling won't go into effect until the Supreme Court reviews it.
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  In other legal news, North Carolina's legislature is overriding the governor's veto of several bills that affect transgender kids. The legislature is dominated by Republicans. The governor is a Democrat. The bills that are now law will block gender-affirming health care for minors and prevent transgender women and girls from competing on women's school sports teams. There are also new restrictions on education about gender identity or sexuality, for K through 4 teachers.
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  And President Biden is hosting a historic meeting with the leaders of Japan and South Korea. There has never been a standalone summit like this before. That's because of longstanding tension between Japan and South Korea. It goes back decades, to Japan's long occupation of the Korean peninsula before and during World War II. But tomorrow, they're all together at Camp David. A key focus will be standing together against rising threats from China and North Korea.
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  Next, we have alarming new reporting on how social media may be accelerating violence. Reporter Alec MacGillis is covering this for "ProPublica" and "The Atlantic." The story begins with Jarell Jackson and Shahjahan McCaskill, both 26 years old. They were killed in 2020 outside of Jarell's mom's house. 24 bullets were fired into the car they sat in. Their families couldn't understand why someone would target them. Eventually, police said they'd been killed as a result of an online clash, between people they'd never met.
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  Alec MacGillis: A bunch of teenagers on one side of this battle thought that these two friends were someone else, and this battle had basically been raging online. It's a long standing turf battle in West Philadelphia that had been greatly exacerbated by online feuding, mostly on Instagram. The two sides riling each other up, threatening each other.
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  Jarell and Shajahan's killings were part of a nationwide resurgence in violence. Homicides rose 30 percent in 2020, and they've been well above pre-pandemic levels ever since. Criminologists point to many factors: disruption from the pandemic, a rise in gun sales, and a decline in police activity after George Floyd's murder. But MacGillis told us, his reporting revealed more and more cases where social media is pouring gas on the fire.
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  MacGillis: I kept hearing from violence interruption workers, the people who were on the ground doing the work of trying to keep people from killing each other. That social media has been playing a huge role, especially among young people.
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  Social media makes it easy for a threat to live online long after it was made, and reach a wider audience, which can stir up violence. It also makes it easier for people with violent intentions to find their targets. Some police departments and anti-violence community groups are starting to have people monitor social media to look for emerging threats. But many struggle to keep pace with the new platforms, which can make it harder to prevent violence.
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  MacGillis spoke to Google, Meta, and Snapchat about inflammatory content on their platforms. They explained their policies, but MacGillis says, it wasn't clear they'd thought deeply about the possible impact on gun violence.
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  MacGillis: Let's just say I was surprised to see that these companies did not seem to be more attentive to this problem. There's a lot of talk these days about how to reign in provocative political language online and language that could lead to political violence. But there seems to be much less attention being given to what to do about this more routine instigation happening in our cities that leads to this routine gun violence.
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  Finally, the mystery of the cold tongue. That what researchers call a section of the Pacific Ocean, west of Ecuador. The rest of the ocean is heating up along with the climate. But this strip of water has gotten cooler. "New Scientist" reports on how this has impact well beyond the cold tongue's location, from the fate of drought in California, to wildfires in Australia, to monsoons in India. Researchers want to know why these waters are so different. One calls it "the most important unanswered question in climate science."
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  There are a several theories as to why the cold tongue is cold. It could be melting Antarctic glaciers. Or stronger winds may be moving cold air to the area. Why the cold tongue is cold matters a lot. Because whether it stays cold, has massive impact on global climate. If it does, that could slow the rate of global warming by 30 percent compared to predictions from existing climate models. But if it warms up like the rest of the ocean, we're in for more trouble, all across the world.
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  "New Scientist" goes deep on the intriguing questions here. You can read the whole piece, along with all the stories we talked about today, in the Apple News app. There's also World Cup coverage, including the latest news on the U.S. women's national team coach reportedly resigning after the early exit from the tournament.
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  And if you're already listening in the News app, stick around for the latest episode of our soccer podcast, "After the Whistle." That's cued up to play for you next, and we'll be back with the news tomorrow.
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