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As Hurricane Fiona intensifies, Puerto Ricans remember Maria · Apple News Today

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  Shumita Basu, Narrating: Good morning! It's Tuesday, September 20th. 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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  Hurricane Fiona is picking up in intensity. It started as a Category 1 storm when it first hit Puerto Rico, but this morning, forecasters upped it to a Category 3, with winds whipping at over 100 miles per hour.
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  We've been turning to the "Miami Herald" for updates on what's happening in Puerto Rico, where millions of people still don't have power or running water. At least three deaths have been reported in Puerto Rico, and one in the Dominican Republic.
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  Lots of comparisons are being made to Hurricane Maria, which hit Puerto Rico in 2017. Even though Fiona is less powerful than Maria, the storm is moving slowly and flooding appears to be more severe this time. Even yesterday, the storm continued to pummel the island with heavy rains. CNN spoke to one resident in Salinas, on the southern side of Puerto Rico…
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  Unidentified Speaker: A lot of people, more than Maria, lost their houses now, lost everything in their houses because of the flooding. Maria was tough winds, but this one with all the rain it just destroyed everything on the houses. It's unbelievable.
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  The "Miami Herald" spoke to a FEMA official who said both the agency and the island are in a better position now, than they were five years ago, to recover after a major storm. Meanwhile, we're watching as Fiona gets stronger and heads toward the Turks and Caicos and the southern Bahamas today. You can check in on the latest throughout the day on the Apple News app.
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  An update on a story we talked about last week: Adnan Syed is free after a judge in Baltimore vacated his murder conviction. He was released on Monday and ordered to serve home detention, while the state has 30 days to decide whether they'll seek a new trial or drop the case.
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  In 2000, Syed was sentenced to life in prison for the murder of his ex-girlfriend, 17-year-old Hae Min Lee. But he always maintained his innocence. Syed's childhood friend, lawyer Rabia Chaudry, spent years investigating this case and advocating for his release. She eventually teamed up with the journalists behind the hit podcast "Serial," which popularized the case for a global audience. Ahead of the decision on Monday, Chaudry spoke with MSNBC's Mehdi Hasan about the legal argument for Syed's release…
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  Rabia Chaudry: But I think the real big linchpin which made them say "This conviction cannot stand" is the fact that they found evidence that was hidden by the former prosecutor in 1999 that should have been disclosed to the defense, and that's called a Brady violation.
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  Mehdi Hasan: Yeah.
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  Chaudry: And when a Brady violation is discovered, a defendant deserves a new trial.
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  Hae Min Lee's brother, Young Lee, addressed the courtroom on Monday. He told them, tearfully, that he felt betrayed by the decision. Their family thought the case was settled. He said "This is not a podcast for me, this is real life." The family says they continue to have questions in its pursuit of justice.
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  St. Louis has a policing problem. The police department says it doesn't have enough patrols to put in parts of the city that have high rates of violent crime, and at the same time, many of its officers are moonlighting as private police for wealthy, predominantly white neighborhoods.
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  Jeremy Kohler: These officers are used in these neighborhoods basically to supplement the police, and so what you have is an unequal system of policing in St. Louis where the wealthy neighborhoods have a lot more protection than the neighborhoods that actually have most of the crime.
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  That's "ProPublica's" Jeremy Kohler. He told us affluent neighborhoods have raised millions of dollars to pay for these private cops. And even though these are technically off-duty officers, they have the same authority that they have on-duty. They can make arrests, investigate crimes, even stop pedestrians or cars. They also wear their city uniforms, which creates confusion about who they're working for.
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  Kohler: You know, neighborhoods that can afford this really want this because they're getting, you know, real police officers patrolling their streets.
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  One of these private security companies raised pay to exceed overtime rates paid by the city. Kohler explained that they're outbidding the police department for its own employees. The same company sometimes offers cash rewards as an incentive for private officers to track down a car or a person of interest. Kohler says for public servants, these kinds of monetary rewards are generally off limits.
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  Kohler: You can't walk up to a member of the forestry division, for example, and say, like, "Please cut down this tree and I'll give you $500, it's obstructing my view." You can't do the same thing to a police officer. You can't order a police officer to arrest someone. But when police officers are working for a private employer, they do get these types of directives.
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  Other cities have seen neighborhood groups hiring off-duty officers for extra protection. But experts in policing told "ProPublica" they'd never seen a system like the one in St. Louis, that it's an extreme example of a pattern we're seeing all across the country. One criminal law professor said public policing has its problems, but it's supposed to protect people equally, not based on wealth or power. Privatization of policing is a retreat from that promise.
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  There's a shift happening all over the world, and I'm sure you've noticed it in your own circles: more kids are wearing glasses. Near-sightedness is becoming more common, and scientists can't quite agree on the reason why. But a new article in "The Atlantic" gets into some fascinating solutions, ones that go beyond glasses.
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  But first, let's talk about what's happening with peoples' eyes. There is something about modern life that's making more people near-sighted, and if current trends continue, one study estimates half of the world's population will be myopic by 2050. It's been difficult to prove that staring at screens, or staring at anything close-up for too long, is for sure the problem, although scientists agree less time on screens and more time outside is probably for the best.
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  Now, when you think back to biology class, remember that the eye is a complicated and impressive organ. Babies are born far-sighted, and then their eyes start to grow. Now, a healthy eye stops growing when it's round in shape. A nearsighted eye is one that keeps growing until it's more like an olive. A little oblong.
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  Vision-wise, you can correct for this with glasses, but Sarah Zhang at "The Atlantic" visits a clinic at UC Berkeley that does what they call "myopia control" treatments. Basically, they have ways to slow the growth of the eye before it gets too oblong, using eye drops or contact lenses. But it has to happen while you're still young, in your teens into your early 20s. Similar treatments are on the market in places like China and Canada, and many more are in trials here in the U.S. And, in case you're wondering, yeah, it's pricey. It can cost thousands of dollars to start treatment, and another thousand a year.
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  Zhang brings up a good analogy. She says, it's kinda like braces, both cost-wise and problem-wise. See, cavemen had incredibly straight teeth, but now that our jaws have become weaker and smaller, our teeth are crowded and crooked, so we came up with braces as a way to fix it. Today's research into myopia treatments is something like that, a modern solution to a mysterious, modern problem.
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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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