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The Arctic blast pummeling the U.S. · Apple News Today

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  Shumita Basu, Narrating: Good morning! It's Thursday, December 22. I'm Shumita Basu. This is "Apple News Today." On today's show, assessing the White House's plan for homelessness, the Taliban bans Afghan women and girls from education and how the push for more holiday representation has led to a rise in Hanukkah movies.
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  But first, the winter storm that the National Weather Service calls a "once in a generation" event. Around 200 million people in America are under some kind of extreme weather alert, with freezing temperatures, wind, snow and heavy rain expected in different areas. And the timing couldn't be worse. More than 100 million people are expected to travel for the holidays starting tomorrow.
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  The storm will disrupt road, rail and air travel. Thousands of flights are cancelled, and more could be on the chopping block. Several major airlines are waiving fees for passengers who are willing to change their plans ahead of time.
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  Forecasters say the storm could strengthen into what's called a "bomb cyclone" before the weekend. That means a drop in pressure that can be as intense as a tropical storm, so it's kind of like a winter hurricane. Some areas could see wind chill at minus 40 degrees or worse. And strong winds could lead to power outages, threatening heat and water supplies. The extreme cold is expected to stay through the weekend. We'll have updated coverage throughout the holiday on the Apple News app.
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  With the extreme cold sweeping the country, there's one group who's especially at risk: People who are unhoused. On any given night in America, hundreds of thousands of people struggle to find a safe place to sleep. For them, the brutal cold can be a matter of life and death.
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  Earlier this week, President Biden released a plan to reduce homelessness in the U.S. by 25% over the next two years. It includes measures to address racial inequality, encourage construction on affordable housing and prevent people losing their homes in the first place. We called up "Atlantic" reporter Jerusalem Demsas who writes about the housing affordability crisis.
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  Jerusalem Demsas: The problem with this plan is that it cannot actually tackle the fundamental issue by itself. It's a good way to say like, you know, they're here are opportunities for moving people who are currently on the streets back into permanent supportive housing. And that's an important part of any homelessness strategy. But again, the core problem with homelessness is not just there are a bunch of people who need housing right now, it's that there are a bunch of people falling into homelessness every day.
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  Demsas recently wrote about what she calls the core problem: a shortage of affordable housing.
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  Demsas: The obvious answer to homelessness is ensuring that low-income Americans have housing security, such that a financial emergency, a personal emergency, a medical emergency, a global pandemic for instance, doesn't mean that you end up on the street.
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  Homelessness rates tend to be higher in coastal cities that have booming labor markets. The influx of workers drives real-estate demand, making housing more expensive for everyone, unless new homes are built. You'll hear politicians talk about the lack of affordable housing, but Demsas says look at the policies they back. Many local elected officials are under pressure from homeowners who want them to block developments that would change neighborhoods. It's the old NIMBY argument, right? Sure we need it, but not in my backyard. This leads to regulations that limit building height, that restrict density and it all adds up to not enough new housing.
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  Demsas: When you have millions of houses that are missing essentially from the market, what that means is that you have a bunch of people crowding into units, and it means you have a bunch of people higher up on the income ladder now living in homes that would've been otherwise available to lower income people. When you have a scarcity of something, rich people, middle income people usually figure out a way to get by. What ends up happening for lower income people is that there's just not enough left for them at the end of the day.
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  Girls and women in Afghanistan have been banned by the Taliban from pursuing an education. It started this week with a ban on university attendance and later expanded to include girls in elementary schools. And it's not just the students who are impacted, this ban also includes women working in schools. Teachers, one of the few remaining professions open to women under the Taliban.
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  "BBC" correspondent Yalda Hakim whose family fled Afghanistan when she was young reports that this move was jarring, but not exactly surprising.
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  Yalda Hakim: Every single policy that we've seen over the past year or so has been directed at women, has been about restricting women, has been about pushing them out of the public eye and this is the latest move.
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  Social media videos show men walking out of classrooms in solidarity. People have been protesting this ban in the face of warnings from the Taliban about dissent.
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  This policy sets women and girls in Afghanistan back by decades. When the Taliban last had control in the 90s, women and girls couldn't study, work or leave home without a male relative. Some women who violated those rules were publicly executed.
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  When the Taliban regained control in 2021, after the withdrawal of U.S. troops, its leadership said things would be different. But for many women and girls, Afghanistan today now looks a lot like it did in the 90s. "The Wall Street Journal" explains that there are younger leaders inside the Taliban who've publicly opposed this ban on education. But right now, hard-liners have control. They're saying the ban is temporary, that's also what they said in the 90s and they never changed course.
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  Let's finish today with a little something on holiday season TV. Streaming services are packed with holiday movies right now. It's mostly Christmas movies. We are in the middle of Hanukkah right now, which doesn't get a whole lotta representation in pop culture. That is famously the reason why Adam Sandler sang this song on Saturday Night Live almost 30 years ago.
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  But this year, when you do your holiday movie scrolling, you'll see a few Hanukkah plots in the mix.
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  Trailer Narrator: It's a new romance with an old world twist.
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  Unidentified Speaker: Ah-huh. So the matchmaker was right.
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  Trailer Narrator: "Hanukkah on Rye" on Hallmark.
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  This one's got all the cliches of a Hallmark movie, but Hanukah is at the center. And the twist is that the love interests run rival Jewish delis, which is an excellent plot.
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  "MarketWatch" looks at how more and more Hanukah movies have appeared on networks and streaming services this year. There is fierce competition for viewers, so some executives are trying to branch out and aim for a more diverse audience. New leadership at studios seem to help as well. As one entertainment insider puts it, the idea that "everyone celebrates Christmas is finally ebbing away, and so are the TV execs who believe that." There's also a growing number of movies with more diverse casting, including more people of color and LGBTQ+ storylines.
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  "New York" magazine's "Vulture" went ahead and counted, there are 153 new holiday movies this year. And it did something pretty funny by breaking them out into very specific, very descriptive categories. There's the small-business-gets-saved holiday movies, lying-to-get-what-you-want holiday movies. It's a really fun read, whether you love holiday movies, or just love to hate them.
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  You can find that along with all the other stories we talked about in the Apple News app. And if you're already listening in the News app, don't go anywhere. We've got a narrated article coming up next. "Vox" writes about the very serious science behind humor. and how studying what makes us laugh can help explain who we are. So sit back, enjoy listening to that, and I'll be back with the news tomorrow.
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