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How blocked train crossings are putting our kids in danger · Apple News Today

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  Shumita Basu, Narrating: Good morning! It's Thursday, May 4th. I'm Shumita Basu. This is "Apple News Today." On today's show, U.S. military experts are skeptical of Russia's claims of a drone attack, the "Godfather of AI" quits his job and warns that the technology could be dangerous, plus new revelations about a mystery that's haunted "Jeopardy!" fans for decades.
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  But first, you've probably had the experience of a drive being interrupted while you wait for a train to pass. It's annoying, but after a few minutes, the train is gone, the gates go up, and you're on your way. But what if the train sat there for hours, or days? That's the reality in a lot of places in America.
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  Recent train derailments are focusing national attention on train safety. But trains can cause major problems even when they stand still while waiting to get into a rail yard or change crews. They make it harder for kids to get to school, and for fire trucks, police cars and ambulances to serve their communities.
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  Topher Sanders is a reporter with "ProPublica," covering this problem alongside "InvestigateTV." He told us about Jeremiah Johnson, a third grader in Hammond, Indiana. He and his mom are blocked all the time on their way to school.
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  Topher Sanders: Maybe two to three times a week, they encounter a stopped train, and when they encounter that train, they have to make a choice that day, whether to scale a gap of the train and jump over it or, as sometimes his mother has explained to us, she decides he's just not gonna go to school that day, and they turn around and go home.
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  Going around the train could mean walking a mile out of the way, too far for a young child. So, they face an awful choice between school and safety. Trains can move without warning. People trying to get through have been killed or severely injured. So, Jeremiah's mom goes through a pretty unsettling checklist in this situation.
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  Sanders: She sits there, and she tries to listen for whether or not she can hear an engine. Can she hear a hum? Can she hear a buzz? Can she hear any indication that the train is kind of alive in that moment?
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  Reporters saw dozens of students, young kids with "Frozen" and "Space Jam" backpacks, squeezing between or crawling under trains to get to school. In Hammond, the town has to pay for fully staffed fire stations on both sides of the tracks. Police officers in danger are forced to wait for backup because their colleagues are blocked. Sanders says that many attempts at changing policy to reduce blocked crossings have failed.
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  Sanders: States have attempted to address the issue of blocked crossings often by limiting the size of the trains. And state after state after state, when those actions get into the state houses, they barely get a hearing, or if they do, they're shut down very, very quickly through lobbying and other efforts that the railroads are quite good at.
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  Norfolk Southern tells "ProPublica" that it's looking for places to move trains where they'll have less impact and working with local officials. Communities say change isn't coming fast enough. And parents face constant stress about their kids getting to class.
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  Sanders: Knowing that you have to confront that multiple times a week to get your little person to school so they can learn arithmetic and English, that feels above and beyond what many parents would want to deal with or should have to deal with.
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  To understand the full scale of this problem, you need to see these images of children trying to get through these trains. You can read the whole story on the Apple News app.
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  Let's check in now on some big stories in the news.
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  The world's first RSV vaccine is now approved. The FDA says the GlaxoSmithKline shot is good to go for people 60 and over. The respiratory virus kills thousands of seniors annually, and last year was unusually bad. Now, doctors will be able to offer protection in time for the fall and winter.
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  In economic news, the Federal Reserve is raising interest rates to a 16-year high. Using classic Fed speak, chair Jay Powell signaled that the central bank might cool it with the rate hikes for a bit. It depends on how inflation, employment and GDP numbers go.
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  Jay Powell: Looking ahead, we'll take a data-dependent approach in determining the extent to which additional policy firming may be appropriate.
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  Overseas, there are some important new developments in the Russia-Ukraine war. Today, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is visiting the Hague. That's the home of the International Criminal Court, which is investigating war-crime allegations against Russia. The visit comes as Zelenskyy strongly denies Russian allegations that Ukraine flew drones to the Kremlin yesterday in an attempt to assassinate Vladimir Putin. A number of experts have accused Russia of staging the drone attack for propaganda purposes. U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken has said, any statement coming from the Kremlin should be taken with a, quote, "very large shaker of salt."
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  A computer scientist many call "the godfather of artificial intelligence" is quitting his job at Google, and he's warning the world about the risks of AI. In decades of work, Geoffrey Hinton and colleagues created key technology that laid the foundation for today's AI systems. He tells the "BBC," AI might not be as intelligent as humans now, but that could change.
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  Geoffrey Hinton: The issue is, now that we've discovered it works better than we expected a few years ago, what do we do to mitigate the long-term risks of things more intelligent than us taking control?
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  Hinton says he worries that authoritarian leaders might use AI in dangerous ways. And as AI systems get better at making realistic text, videos and images, Hinton says he's concerned that people will struggle to distinguish what's real and what's fake.
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  Recently, a group of business leaders and tech experts signed an open letter calling for companies to pause advances to AI systems until the risks could be fully understood. Hinton didn't sign that letter. He doesn't think we should stop development because artificial intelligence will deliver more benefits than problems, he says. But he does want governments to do more to make sure that technology develops in a way that prevents AI from what he calls "going rogue."
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  Google says that it's committed to a "responsible" approach to AI that considers risks. Hinton isn't criticizing his former company, saying Google has been "very responsible." Still, he tells "The New York Times" that part of him regrets his life's work.
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  Finally, a bizarre story that's about "Jeopardy!" and a very, very obscure moment of the game show that many people believed was lost to history.
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  The story is told, of course, by Claire McNear at "The Ringer." We've talked to her before because she absolutely owns the "Jeopardy!" beat. But like anyone who's deep into "Jeopardy!" she's been haunted, I think it's fair to say, by five episodes from 1986. Barbara Lowe won them all, but strangely, she wasn't invited to the Tournament of Champions, and her episodes weren't re-run.
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  There were various theories as to why this happened. But Lowe didn't tell her side of the story, and nobody could see the tapes of her games. So, the mystery grew over the years.
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  Claire McNear: It was particularly frustrating that these episodes with Barbara Lowe had just vanished off the face of the Earth. So, for these kind of devoted "Jeopardy!" fans, they were desperate to actually get a copy of her episodes and find out what actually happened. And nobody had succeeded in doing that until very recently.
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  Late last year, a fan had shocking news. They had hundreds of "Jeopardy!" episodes on old VHS tapes in a closet.
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  [START JEOPARDY! ARCHIVAL CLIP]
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  Alex Trebek: We move to Barbara Lowe. Barbara Lowe would not be a good poker player, ladies and gentlemen.
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  [LOWE AND AUDIENCE LAUGH]
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  Trebek: She was leading with 2800. Does she have the right question? Yes, she does! And if she… [VOICE TRAILS OFF]
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  The video was a big find, but there was still a missing piece. It was up to Claire McNear to track down the woman herself and convince her to finally open up. It wasn't easy.
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  McNear: For a long time, Barbara had no idea that she'd become sort of infamous in "Jeopardy!" lore. Through a lot of conversations with her, she eventually decided to do an interview with me, and for the first time, tell her side of the story.
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  The story is surprisingly twisty, with accusations of lies, fake identities and conflicting accounts. It's a pretty fun read, and you can check out McNear's full article in the Apple News app.
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  And if you're already listening to us in the Apple News app right now, stick around. We've got a narrated article coming up next for you from "Women's Health." It tells the stories of influencers and the unusual kind of pressure they face when their income depends on constantly looking perfect on social media.
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  So, sit back, listen to that, and we'll be back with the news tomorrow.
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