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How Ukrainian kids stay in school during the war · Apple News Today

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  Duarte Geraldino, Narrating: Good morning! It's Thursday, April 7th. I'm Duarte Geraldino.
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  Shumita Basu, Narrating: And 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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  Geraldino: Since Russia invaded, more than half of all children in Ukraine have left their homes. That's the largest and fastest displacement of kids since World War II. And yet, many of them are still attending school. "NPR" reports how, according to the Ukrainian Education Ministry, a majority of kids are still logging on for online classes, sometimes far from home in other countries.
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  Basu: Educators and relief agencies say, even through disasters, education must go on. "NPR" spoke with Yasmine Sherif, the director of the U.N. fund that helps kids who are affected by war continue to study.
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  Yasmine Sherif: Often when you have a humanitarian crisis, you underprioritize education and focus on water and shelter, which is important. However, what we have seen from many countries of crisis, is that they are protracted. They can last 10 years, 20 years, 30 years.
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  [END NPR ARCHIVAL CLIP]
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  Geraldino: For educators, teaching during a war is a challenge. "NPR" spoke with one teacher who talks about what it's like for her classes to be interrupted by air raid sirens, how she does breathing exercises with her students to help them cope. She also does a daily check-in on their mood and mental health.
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  Basu: For kids who've fled to neighboring countries, some are enrolling in local schools. Poland, which has taken in many Ukrainian refugees, is creating special classes for Ukrainian children and teachers. The plan is for them to follow the same curriculum that's taught at home, in their native language.
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  Geraldino: These displaced Ukrainian students, they're part of a much larger problem. The U.N. estimates there are 128 million children worldwide whose learning is now disrupted by war, COVID or environmental disasters. The education fund director is hoping this new attention on Ukraine's children is going to inspire more support for struggling students around the world.
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  Basu: The hottest ticket in sports right now is for the Masters, which starts today. Ticket prices are soaring because people want to see Tiger Woods. He said he's planning to return to the course, a year after he was seriously injured in a car crash. We talked to "Wall Street Journal" sports columnist Jason Gay.
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  Jason Gay: There was serious questions about whether or not he would be able to walk properly again, much less play competitive golf. And his rehabilitation from this, by his own admission, has been slow. He said, not long ago, that his days of sort of being a day-in-day-out, week-in-week-out professional golfer are probably over. And so, for him to come back, and not just come back, but to come back on this major stage like the Augusta National Masters Tournament, is a real surprise and a real shot in the arm for the sport.
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  Geraldino: The Masters is where Woods had some of his biggest moments, including a 2019 win after battling severe back pain. And remember, that victory came at a time when many people were thinking his competitive days were over.
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  Gay: There have been multiple comebacks over the athletic career of Tiger Woods. He's somebody who's struggled with injuries throughout his career, especially in the last half of it.
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  Basu: Woods has also dealt with personal issues over the years.
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  Gay: He's somebody who is not just this world-class athlete who has, you know, an incredible resume of accomplishments, but as we all well know, a bit of a personal saga. You know, he's had major setbacks, tabloid trouble, accidents, you know, there was a DUI in the past.
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  Geraldino: But now, the focus is squarely on what he can do on the course. This is a moment that's much bigger than the Masters, much bigger than the sport itself.
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  Gay: Tiger Woods is not just the most recognizable name in golf. He's one of the most recognizable names in anything, in any sport, in any platform. He is somebody who draws in the casual viewer. He is somebody that bridges generations. People who don't even like him want to watch him play golf. He is somebody who just has this magnetic appeal. It's as if Michael Jordan never left playing basketball and is still out there.
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  Basu: It's a big week for sports, in that it's also Opening Day for Major League Baseball. Our sports editors have prepared a special collection of baseball stories that you can find in the Apple News app.
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  It used to be that, for serious musicians, playing at small, private parties was pretty much hitting rock bottom. It was seen a D-list stunt, a quick cash grab. Think Vanilla Ice at a bat mitzvah. Right? But lately, big-name entertainers are saying yes to private gigs for the ultra-wealthy. Jennifer Lopez was paid $1.25 million to perform for 20 people at a birthday party in Macau. Beyoncé reportedly got millions to play at a wedding of the children of two Indian billionaires. Seal played on a yacht off the coast of Monaco.
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  Geraldino: David Browne wrote about this trend for "Rolling Stone." He says, during the pandemic, more artists were willing to give private parties a try.
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  David Browne: For some artists, they've seen a drop off in touring income over the last two years. And their staff and their road crew and people who are on their payrolls also suffered.
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  It makes sense. These big-name performers get a huge payday for a relatively short gig. And the people who hire them, they get an exclusive experience.
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  Browne: They still wanna see live music, but they don't want to sit in a big crowd and risk their health. [CHUCKLES] So that's become an interesting new twist to it all.
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  Basu: Browne told us, even before the pandemic, other forces in the music industry were pointing entertainers toward this shift. Artists just don't make as much money off record and CD sales as they used to. But there are some musicians who are resisting the pull and saying they can't be bought.
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  Browne: There are still people like Bruce Springsteen and U2, who are kind of on everybody's wish list, especially if you're an older rock fan. And you'd love to have them play one of your private events or do one of these things. And they're certainly two artists who have routinely said no to such requests.
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  Geraldino: This also brings up new questions for artists like, "Do I really want to be photographed on this person's yacht?" Take it from J-Lo, who in 2013 performed for the president of Turkmenistan. The country's government has been accused of human rights violations, and she was criticized for taking that gig. Her camp later said, "If there had been knowledge of human rights issues, J-Lo would not have attended."
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  Basu: For the most part, Browne says artists are not talking about taking these kinds of jobs. There's a lot of secrecy around it, especially as performers are trying to come up with their own ways of vetting who, and how much, they're willing to play for.
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  What's it like to be able to speak dozens of languages? That's the question "Washington Post" reporter Jessica Contrera answers in this story that takes her to some surprising places, from cleaning up carpet stains, to sliding into a brain-scanning machine. And it all started when she met this person.
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  [VAUGHN SMITH SPEAKING MULTIPLE LANGUAGES]
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  Geraldino: Okay, so I was able catch the Spanish and the Mandarin. [SPEAKING MANDARIN]
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  You know, because he's really good. But most of what he said, I couldn't understand. Vaughn Smith is what's called a hyperpolyglot, a master of many, many languages. He can speak 24 languages well enough to have a conversation and has basic command of many more. Living in the DC area, you might think he's an interpreter for an embassy or something. But he cleans carpets for a living.
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  Basu: See? We told you there would be carpet stains involved.
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  Geraldino: [CHUCKLES]
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  Basu: His job made him even more interesting to this reporter, because he's never really cashed in on his talent. He's pretty modest about it, actually. Smith says he only counted how many languages he knows because the reporter asked him to. For him, language learning is about connecting with people. He learned American Sign Language after he met people at a nightclub that was popular with Deaf students. He picked up Japanese through the workers at a restaurant where he cleaned the fish tank.
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  Geraldino: Contrera got in touch with a neuroscientist to learn more. She ends up inviting the reporter and Smith to the lab for brain scans. He has a blast. Now, one of the scientists speaks Catalan, and so he starts chatting her up in that language. She says his accent is really precise.
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  Basu: And when the brain scans come back, there's a surprise for the reporter. She's not very good with languages, in her own words, so she expected the language areas of Smith's brain to be way more active than hers. But it was actually the opposite. The researchers say this is because her brain has to work extra hard to process other languages. But Smith's brain barely breaks a sweat as he switches from Arabic to Icelandic to Indonesian to Navajo and back again.
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  Geraldino: It's not clear how this works. Maybe it's something he was born with, something about the language areas in his brain. Or maybe his brain developed differently as he learned languages when he was young. It could be both. And the brain scans from this story might actually help researchers figure out how hyperpolyglots do what they do.
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  Basu: You should definitely check out this full story, which includes a video of Smith speaking all kinds of languages, even some that you may not have known existed.
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  Geraldino: It's on the Apple News app. You can also find coverage of the confirmation vote for Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson. The Senate is expected to confirm her today as the first Black woman on the Supreme Court.
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  Basu: And when you're in the app, keep listening to hear narrated articles from our News+ partners.
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  Geraldino: We'll talk with you again tomorrow.
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