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One journalist’s mission to document Russian war crimes · Apple News Today

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  Shumita Basu, Narrating: Good morning! It's Monday, September 12th. 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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  The situation on the ground in the Ukraine war is changing fast. Strong advances by Ukrainian troops pushed Russian forces far back, forcing them to abandon positions in the Kharkiv area. Locals say some Russian troops just dropped rifles and ran for their lives. Ukraine says Russia has launched revenge attacks on power stations, leading to blackouts. After Russian soldiers leave, investigators can move in to document possible war crimes. There are numerous allegations against Russian forces: rape, torture, executions. Sometimes news outlets get there before authorities.
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  Janine di Giovanni: Journalists, especially war reporters, are first responders on the scene of either mass atrocity, a mass grave, a battle, something where we need to see war crimes. But journalists really aren't trained to think legally, like lawyers, and to keep their notebooks or their evidence in a manner that will be accessible for future war crimes.
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  "Vanity Fair" contributing editor Janine di Giovanni is working to change that so that journalism records atrocities in a way that could hold up in court. She's covered some 18 wars over the years, including three genocides. She's documented countless war crimes, and she's even been called to the Hague to testify. But she said her memory was foggy and her notes were disorganized, so she went back to school and learned how to use international legal standards to document war crimes. She's taught other journalists to do the same as the founder of the Reckoning Project. It combines journalism with an education in how to hold criminals legally accountable.
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  di Giovanni: We set up a war crimes unit where we document war crimes, verify them, and then build them into legal cases.
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  Di Giovanni's team trained 15 researchers and documentarians from Ukraine on what to watch for and how to take notes in places like Bucha, which saw heavy fighting in the early weeks of the war.
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  di Giovanni: I thought the Syrian war was one of the most appalling in terms of what human beings could do to one another. But some of the things I saw in Bucha were horrific beyond belief, and one of them was a mother whose son had disappeared. And when they found him, he had been so brutally tortured before he was killed that even I could not believe the level of cruelty and savagery that had been inflicted upon this man.
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  Di Giovanni told us about another woman who saw her husband taken away and executed.
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  di Giovanni: So, her life now is kind of grappling with how someone you love is taken from you and how quickly your life spins utterly out of your control, the powerlessness, the lack of agency, and this is what war does to people. It's not just soldiers fighting on front lines. It comes down to the human stories, and it basically tears people's lives apart, which will then take decades to repair, to reconstruct, sometimes never.
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  Di Giovanni says by cataloging these stories in the right way she hopes there will be more accountability than we've seen in past wars. For example, in the Bosnian War there were tens of thousands of rape victims, but not even 100 convictions in the International Criminal Tribunal.
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  di Giovanni: So, what we're trying to do now is to gather enough evidence so that we don't have a Bosnia situation where the deep frustration from people never having seen justice for terrible things that happened in their country, that that doesn't happen in Ukraine. And I think it sends a very clear message to dictators around the world that have basically gotten away with what they've done, and it's saying we're not going to let you get away with it, we're watching, we're recording, we're documenting, we're verifying, and one day we will get you.
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  If you traveled abroad recently, you probably got a lot for your money. The U.S. dollar is extremely strong right now. But a powerful currency has a lot of drawbacks, ones that can hurt your retirement savings and low-income people around the world. "Marketplace" takes a look. A strong dollar is especially dangerous in the developing world. It makes it more expensive to import the food and supplies that people need. It's also an issue for the national debt in these countries. Because their currency is volatile, they often have to borrow in dollars. And when the dollar is strong, paying off the debt is more painful. Pakistan, Egypt, and Sri Lanka are all places where the strong dollar played a role in food-supply issues and political unrest. A strong dollar can also hurt the stock prices of U.S. companies, which could affect your pension or 401(k). "CNBC's" Jim Cramer was talking about this over the summer.
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  Jim Cramer: The strong dollar's crushing all sorts of American companies that do lots of business overseas. We normally don't care about foreign exchange, but the dollar's gotten so high versus other currencies that it's now become impossible to ignore.
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  See, big companies here make a lot of money selling stuff overseas. And when they calculate profits, they have to turn those euros and pesos and pounds into dollars. A strong dollar means a smaller number, which can hurt stock prices. Now, the dollar has pulled back a little bit recently, but it's still way stronger than it was a year ago. Wall Street is watching to see if countries get so worried about its strength that they take aggressive steps to weaken it, stuff like selling dollars on the global market. Things could get messy if that happens. Most forecasters think it's unlikely, but these are unusual times, and unusual moves are not off the table.
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  More than 100,000 people are on the organ transplant waiting list in the U.S. On average, 17 die every day. That deadly supply problem is why there's so much research into pig organ transplants. It's in very early stages right now. Maybe you've heard about recent experiments that transplanted pig hearts into people who were legally dead, but we were struck by a story that goes even further: the push to create genetically modified pigs, each customized to provide organs for a single human patient.
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  Amy Dockser Marcus: Personal pigs is a relatively new idea in the sense of trying to figure out a way that the pig could be really a close match for the person.
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  Amy Dockser Marcus covers health and science for "The Wall Street Journal."
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  Marcus: This is being looked at not only in the arena of organ transplantation, but also potentially for providing avenues to study and advance research and drug development into rare diseases.
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  Now, in theory, scientists could use gene editing to create a pig with similar DNA to me and a different pig that's more like you, and our pigs would be there to give up organs if we ever need them. Scientists use pigs because their organs are similar in size and function to human organs, but pigs are similar to people in other ways that raise ethical concerns.
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  Marcus: They have high cognitive abilities, they feel pain, and so there is some debate about, well, what does that mean to sort of use these pigs as our donors?
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  It's not as simple as saying if we can raise pigs for food, we can raise them for research, too. Genetically modifying them to become organ donors raises all kinds of other moral questions. Pigs suffer in different ways if they're repeatedly undergoing transplant surgeries, and the smarter an animal is, the more restrictions there are on research. But scientists think there's enough potential here for human health to make it worth wrestling with the ethical problems.
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  It's a universal phenomenon, talking to babies using that up-and-down-and-all-around way of speaking. It happens across cultures, and it can be beneficial for babies who are absorbing language. But there's this other related force that takes over a lot of adults when they see a baby, the impulse to sing. I mean sing anything. Sing badly. Sing made-up-songs about your baby's toes or toys or things that are probably only endearing to you. Well, now a new piece out in the Atlantic claims, not only is making up songs to sing to your baby a common occurrence, it can have bonding benefits for both caregivers and children. For the adults, it can boost your self-esteem as a parent and help you engage with this little creature who can't quite communicate with you yet. One parent told "The Atlantic" he's never been big on singing, but the moment his son was born it's like his life turned into a living musical. One of my colleagues here at Apple News told me that she definitely relates to that. She has twin toddlers, and she says she catches herself singing all the time.
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  [Unidentified Speaker Brush, brush, brush
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  Brush, brush, brush
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  Brush, brush, brush your teeth]
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  There’s something to it for the babies, too. Studies show that infants respond to the sound of singing differently than speech. Babies who are listening to their mother singing show greater alertness, happiness, or calm, depending on the song, and babies have been shown to relax when they hear a lullaby sung in any language, even if it’s not their own. So, go ahead and enjoy your goofy improvised songs, and remember, it doesn’t have to sound good for it to be a boost for you and your baby.
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  [Speaker Left leg through
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  Right leg through
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  Now we're done
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  Get up, all dressed]
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  You can find all these stories and more in the Apple News app. And when you're in the app, keep listening to hear narrated articles from our News+ partners. I'll talk with you again tomorrow.
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  Unidentified Infant: Buh-bye!