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What’s next for the U.S. after a crushing World Cup loss · Apple News Today

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  Shumita Basu, Narrating: Good morning! It’s Monday, August 7th. I’m Shumita Basu. This is “Apple News Today.” On today’s show… Simone Biles has a victorious return to competition, beyond the film “Oppenheimer,” the lasting health impact for families who lived near the atomic bomb test, and visiting every country on Earth, without taking a single flight.
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  But first, the U.S. women are out of the World Cup. Sunday’s loss was the earliest the team has been knocked out in its history. The game was scoreless, sending it to a penalty shootout. There was a tense moment at the end, where U.S. goalkeeper, Alyssa Naeher, appeared to deflect a penalty shot, but officials reviewed the footage and found the ball had in fact made it just millimeters over the goal line, giving Sweden the win. Here’s what it sounded like when the U.S. players, and the stadium crowd, found out they had lost.
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  [START ARCHIVAL FOX SOCCER CLIP]
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  [CHEERING]
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  Unidentified speaker: Wow! Sweden wins.
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  [CHEERING FADES]
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  [END ARCHIVAL FOX SOCCER CLIP]
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  That sent the American team home, with a lot to think about after the historically disappointing result.
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  Michelle Akers: The heartbreak is… and the agony is like [SIGHS]. Like, how do you work through that?
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  That’s American soccer legend Michelle Akers. She scored the first goal in the history of the U.S. Women’s National Team. Akers spoke with “After the Whistle” hosts, Brendan Hunt and Rebecca Lowe, about how it feels to fall short.
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  Michelle Akers: In 1995, we lost to Norway and we played for third place. And it was just a gut punch and gut wrenching and like, it's unfathomable and you're completely lost for the next six months because you've put so much into it. And that is this team, it's shown all World Cup that our mentality is not there at the level that it needs to be. When we aren't scoring goals, it's a reflection of our overall team mentality. And that’s kind of how I've been looking at it. And at the same time, so many freaking players did awesome. And so much to be proud of.
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  [END AFTER THE WHISTLE CLIP]
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  Akers says in the long run, this could be good for the U.S., just like that loss to Norway was a motivator for her squad back in the 90s.
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  Michelle Akers: I loved playing that team, and I have the ultimate respect for those players because they made us better every single game. And they beat us because we didn't have mentality. Then we had to go away from that and go, what do we need to do to win? And then we reconfigured and rebuilt ourselves to step into the 1996 Olympics, and we won gold. They can do the same thing. This is absolutely a gift, painful as it is so let's see where, where we go from here. I mean we have a lot to be proud of, but, and there's nothing wrong with saying we weren't good enough and we have to do better.
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  [END AFTER THE WHISTLE CLIP]
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  If you’re listening in the Apple News app, you can hear that full episode of “After the Whistle” right after this show.
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  Now, let’s take a look at some other stories in the news. Record-breaking flooding in Alaska has led to evacuations. In the capital of Juneau, the rushing water has destroyed buildings. Some of the worst flooding over the weekend appears to be receding. But residents are still warned to stay clear of the Mendenhall River.
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  Moving to the entertainment business, “Barbie” is now a billion-dollar film. Warner Brothers says the movie’s global box office numbers have blown away even the most optimistic predictions. The latest numbers put director Greta Gerwig into the record books. “Barbie” is the first film directed solely by a woman to break the billion-dollar mark.
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  And Simone Biles has landed the most difficult vault in women’s gymnastic history. She returned to competition over the weekend in Chicago. She won the all-around, balance beam, and the floor titles. And she had the highest score on the vault, where she landed the Yurchenko double pike, cementing her place as the only woman to ever perform the move in competition. Biles pulled out in the middle of the last Olympics in Tokyo. She said she was worried her mental health wasn’t at a place where she could compete safely. Her return has people wondering if she’ll make a run at the Paris Olympics next year.
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  The hit film “Oppenheimer” shows the first test of the atomic bomb, code-named Trinity, in New Mexico in 1945. It was just weeks later that the U.S. dropped bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan. But the film doesn’t address the impact of the test on people in New Mexico. Now, those people are hoping that the hype around the film can help raise awareness of their stories.
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  In the film, you hear that the Trinity test site was chosen because it was in an isolated area. But almost half a million people lived within 150 miles. And because of the secrecy of the war mission, no one was told to evacuate. The blast sent a mushroom cloud 10 miles into the sky. Witnesses say radioactive ash fell for days on food supplies and drinking water.
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  “Washington Post” reporter Karin Brulliard spoke with people who say the community was misled about the test.
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  Karin Brulliard: They had no context for what happened. And the government actually came up with a cover story and said it was an ammunition magazine explosion, nothing to worry about. And that was, you know, published by the "AP" and, and that was, that was the story until the bombings in Japan when the truth came out.
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  The National Cancer Institute later concluded that by 2034, the Trinity Test could contribute to as many as 1,000 cases of cancer.
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  Brulliard: I talked to people who have family trees, you know, mapped out on pieces of paper, naming all the people back to their great-great grandparents who've had cancers. And they believe strongly that this is a result of the test.
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  Brulliard told us about one woman whose father grew up on a ranch 27 miles from the Trinity site. He was 14 the day the bomb detonated. She says more than two dozen relatives have had cancer
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  Karin Brulliard: So, she herself has had breast cancer and her father who, just years after the test walked around the site of the test, the gate was open, you know, picked up some of the debris, also had cancer, as if many of her other relatives.
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  Brulliard: So, she herself has had breast cancer and her father who, just years after the test walked around the site of the test, the gate was open, you know, picked up some of the debris, also had cancer, as have many of her other relatives.
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  In 1990, a program was established to compensate people in Nevada who were exposed to radiation from nuclear testing in the 1950s. But people in New Mexico, near the earlier test, have never been eligible.
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  There is some movement in Congress, though. Recently, the Senate passed an amendment that would add people in New Mexico and other states where testing happened. But at this point, it’s not clear whether it’ll become law.
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  Many of the people who spoke to Brulliard said they were conflicted about actually watching the “Oppenheimer” movie. Some wished they’d been acknowledged, somehow. But one of them hopes that people watch the movie and do their own research to learn about these families’ stories.
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  Finally, an unconventional travel story that started ten years ago, with one guy from Denmark taking on a wild challenge. He decided he wanted to visit every country in the world… without flying.
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  Thor Pedersen now says, he’s returned home triumphantly. Along the way, he kept count of all the different modes of transportation he took. Ships, trains, buses, taxis, even boats and rickshaws. He gave himself a few rules. He budgeted around 20 bucks a day, and tried to spend at least 24 hours in each country before moving on. And as you can guess, things got pretty tricky during the pandemic. When COVID hit, he was in Hong Kong. He talked to “CNN” about getting stuck there for two years.
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  [START CNN ARCHIVAL CLIP]
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  Thor Pedersen: I look back at Hong Kong today and I’d have to say that was simultaneously perhaps the best time of my life and the worst time of my life.
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  [END CNN ARCHIVAL CLIP]
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  That was the point he thought about giving up. But he decided to stick with it, as soon as he could leave. Pedersen’s 203rd, and final country, was the Maldives. He sailed back to Denmark, where he was greeted by a cheering crowd. Now, he’s working on a book, and a documentary, called “The Impossible Journey.”
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  You can find all these stories and more in the Apple News app. If you’re listening in the News app right now, “After the Whistle” is cued up to play for you next. And we’ll be back with the news tomorrow.
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