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Alexey Navalny is dead. What’s next for Russia? · Apple News Today

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  [MUSIC FADES IN]
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  Mark Garrison, Narrating: Good morning. It's Monday, February 19th, President's Day.
• 0:08
  I'm Mark Garrison, in for Shumita Basu. This is "Apple News Today."
• 0:13
  Coming up, what's next after the death of Vladimir Putin's fiercest critic,
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  how AI could interfere with the U.S. election,
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  and the glitch threatening one of NASA's longest-running missions.
• 0:26
  [MUSIC FADES OUT]
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  But first, let's take a quick look at some other stories in the news.
• 0:31
  A member of Israel's war cabinet warns that a major ground offensive will start
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  in Rafah on March 10th, the beginning of Ramadan,
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  if Hamas doesn't release hostages.
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  Some 1.5 million civilians are sheltering there,
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  having fled Israeli attacks elsewhere in Gaza.
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  One of the hardest hit areas is Khan Younis.
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  The U.N. says the hospital there is effectively out of commission.
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  It's the second largest hospital in Gaza.
• 0:57
  Back in Israel, new protests against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu
• 1:00
  have broken out.
• 1:01
  [START BBC ARCHIVAL CLIP]
• 1:02
  [DRUMMING]
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  [CROWD CHANTING IN HEBREW]
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  [END BBC ARCHIVAL CLIP]
• 1:06
  Demonstrators angry with his handling of the war took to the streets
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  to call for him to resign.
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  His administration is also under increasing global pressure.
• 1:14
  Today, the U.N.'s top court is holding hearings on the legality
• 1:17
  of Israel's occupation of Palestinian territory.
• 1:20
  Israel is not scheduled to speak at the hearings,
• 1:22
  providing a written argument instead.
• 1:25
  In the U.S., Donald Trump is promising to appeal the 355-million-dollar judgment
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  against him in the New York civil fraud case.
• 1:33
  It focused on misleading financial statements
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  used to secure loans.
• 1:36
  "Reuters" looks into how his legal team may fight the case from here.
• 1:40
  One path may be to claim that there were no victims of fraud.
• 1:44
  The case was brought under a law that usually aims to protect consumers.
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  New York's attorney general has argued that the law doesn't require victims,
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  and in any case, the bankers who loaned the Trump businesses money were harmed.
• 1:56
  Elsewhere over the weekend, Russian forces took over Avdiivka
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  in eastern Ukraine.
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  It's one of the most significant Russian advances in a while.
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  Retired U.S. Air Force Colonel Cedric Layton talked to "CNN"
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  about what it means for Russians to control that city.
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  [START CNN ARCHIVAL CLIP]
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  Cedric Leighton: That very fact is a bit of a setback to the Ukrainians,
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  and it's going to be hard for them to recover this area
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  and all of these areas in the Donbas region,
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  as well as on the path to Crimea.
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  If the Ukrainians can't keep Avdiivka or Bakhmut or any of these areas,
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  they risk losing momentum. And war is often about momentum.
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  [END CNN ARCHIVAL CLIP]
• 2:31
  Garrison, Narrating: Russia is taking advantage of perceived weakness in Ukraine's forces,
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  as the country calls on the U.S. and other Western allies
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  to send more aid to replenish its weaponry.
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  Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy called on allies
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  at the Munich Security Conference to do more.
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  [START THE WASHINGTON POST ARCHIVAL CLIP]
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  President Volodymyr Zelensky: Dear friends, unfortunately, keeping Ukraine in the artificial deficit
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  of weapons, particularly in deficit of artillery and long-range capabilities
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  allows Putin to adapt to the current intensity of the war.
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  [END THE WASHINGTON POST ARCHIVAL CLIP]
• 3:04
  [SOMBER MUSIC]
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  [MUSIC FADES OUT]
• 3:13
  Garrison, Narrating: Russian supporters of the late opposition leader
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  Alexei Navalny are paying tribute, and some are paying a price.
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  A human rights group says hundreds of people have been arrested.
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  The Kremlin critic died in an Arctic Circle prison.
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  Navalny's death is widely blamed on Vladimir Putin,
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  despite Kremlin denials.
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  "TIME" magazine senior correspondent Simon Shuster exchanged letters
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  with Navalny while he was in prison.
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  Simon Shuster: He felt very certain that all decisions related to his health,
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  his well-being, even the kind of socks he was given
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  to live through the wintertime in prison,
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  all of these decisions were made in the Kremlin
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  because he is such a prominent threat to Putin.
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  And the more important decisions related to his life
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  or death would certainly be made by Putin at the very top.
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  Garrison, Narrating: Shuster talked to us about why Navalny was such a threat to Putin's power.
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  Shuster: He could inspire people to risk themselves, risk prison time
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  in standing up to the regime.
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  He was one of the very few figures, if not the only one,
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  who could really call up a demonstration,
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  could really bring people out into the streets.
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  He was the main threat to Putin's rule.
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  So Putin had very good reason to be afraid of Navalny, yes.
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  Garrison, Narrating: Next month, Putin is up for reelection, and there is no expectation he'll lose.
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  Activists will try to carry on Navalny's movement.
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  Some, Shuster says, may write Navalny's name on the ballot as a protest.
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  But he sees a tough road ahead for Russians who oppose Putin.
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  Shuster: It's somehow difficult to imagine the opposition movement
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  in Russia without him.
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  I think in any case he will be remembered as a very courageous figure
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  in his decision to return to Russia immediately
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  after recovering from an assassination attempt
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  by the Russian regime, to return into the hands of the very regime
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  that had just tried to kill him,
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  and to tell that regime, I'm not scared of you,
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  even if you imprison me, even if you lock me up
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  north of the Arctic Circle, I'm still going to face you down.
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  I'm still going to try to resist the oppression that you impose
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  not only on Navalny and his movement, but on all of Russian society.
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  I think that is his legacy.
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  And it's very tragic that it ended this way.
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  [TENSE MUSIC]
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  [MUSIC FADES OUT]
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  Garrison, Narrating: AI technology is getting stronger and stronger, driving new concern
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  about how it could be used in this crucial election year.
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  One issue is deepfakes, AI-generated clips that hijack someone's face and voice
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  with the intent to mislead.
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  That's why a group of tech companies, including Amazon, Google and Meta,
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  just signed a new agreement on preventing artificial intelligence technology
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  from interfering with the election.
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  "Wall Street Journal" reporter Bob McMillan looked into
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  the larger issue recently.
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  Bob McMillan: When we were working on this story,
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  I called it the "all of the problems story."
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  And we actually had a hard time figuring out which problem was the most concerning
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  with respect to bad information and the election this year.
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  Garrison, Narrating: Misinformation has been a huge problem for a long time,
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  but new AI tools make it much easier to produce convincing images,
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  audio, and video, and circulate disinformation quickly.
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  We're already seeing it.
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  McMillan: Well, I mean, the most obvious example is what appears to be the first example
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  of fake information in the 2024 election cycle, which is this phone call
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  that went out in New Hampshire right ahead of the primary
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  that sounded like it was Joe Biden talking,
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  but was telling Democrats and independents not to go to the polls.
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  It was fake. It was completely fake.
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  Garrison, Narrating: It's not clear how tech platforms plan to combat misleading AI-generated content.
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  And McMillan says it's also not clear how much impact policing it could have.
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  McMillan: In 2020 and 2016, fake content circulated even without these AI technologies, right?
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  Like, there are a lot of people who genuinely believe in QAnon
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  and that was not dependent on AI in any way.
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  So you could kind of argue that it's not really a game changer.
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  Like we're already so primed to believe garbage
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  that, yeah, okay, we can make more convincing garbage,
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  but is that really going to change everything?
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  [ELECTRONIC MUSIC]
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  [MUSIC FADES OUT]
• 7:36
  Garrison, Narrating: And finally, NASA is working to save one of its most groundbreaking
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  and long-running missions, Voyager 1.
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  When NASA launched it back in 1977, it only had a five-year mission,
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  including getting pictures of Jupiter and Saturn.
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  NASA engineers had so much hope for this spacecraft,
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  they even included a golden record.
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  It was an audio time capsule of sorts with music and sounds from our planet.
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  There were also recorded greetings for whoever might find it.
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  [START NASA ARCHIVAL CLIP]
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  Unidentified Speaker 1: Hello from the children of planet Earth.
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  [END NASA ARCHIVAL CLIP]
• 8:08
  Garrison, Narrating: There were messages in 55 languages, like this one in Arabic.
• 8:12
  [START NASA ARCHIVAL CLIP]
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  Unidentified Speaker 2: [SPEAKING ARABIC]
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  [END NASA ARCHIVAL CLIP]
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  1, Narrating: It says, "Greetings to our friends in the stars."
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  "We wish that we will meet you someday."
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  Garrison, Narrating: Popular Mechanics reports on how Voyager 1 has been trucking along
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  for nearly half a century.
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  It got those images of Jupiter and Saturn and kept going,
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  sending back discoveries for decades.
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  No human-made object ever traveled so far away from Earth.
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  The problem is, a few months back, in November,
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  NASA started having trouble communicating with Voyager 1.
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  It's still in touch, but the spacecraft has been sending back gibberish.
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  So NASA knows it's still functioning, somewhat, but it's not able to send back
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  usable data.
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  Fixing a decades-old system from 15 billion miles away is tough,
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  especially when it's outlived so many of the engineers who made it.
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  Still, NASA says it's not giving up.
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  And no matter what happens, Voyager 1 accomplished its mission
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  and much, much more.
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  [MUSIC FADES IN]
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  You can find all these stories and more in the Apple News app.
• 9:21
  And if you're already listening in the News app right now,
• 9:23
  we've got a Narrated Article coming up next.
• 9:26
  Esquire went on the road with the civil rights activist Al Sharpton
• 9:30
  and looked at his decades-long career.
• 9:32
  If you're listening in the Podcasts app,
• 9:34
  follow Apple News+ Narrated to find that story.
• 9:37
  And I'll be back with the news tomorrow.
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  [MUSIC FADES OUT]