[INTRO MUSIC]
Yasmeen Khan, Narrating: Good morning! It’s Tuesday, March 12th.
I’m Yasmeen Khan, in for Shumita Basu.
This is "Apple News Today."
On today’s show:
Many parents and children separated at the border are still not back together;
The work of a famous author gets published against his wishes;
And why there is still so much progress to be made on equal pay around the world.
[MUSIC FADES]
But first, let’s take a quick look at some other stories in the news.
Starting in Haiti,
where Prime Minister Ariel Henry is preparing to resign.
Armed gangs have threatened to start a civil war if he does not.
And in recent weeks,
they’ve tightened their grip on the capital of Port-au-Prince,
attacking the airport, main seaport, and other public buildings.
Haiti has not had a president since 2021,
and its National Assembly has been empty since lawmakers' terms expired last year.
Officials in the U.S. have pressed Henry to hold elections,
but a senior official with the State Department
told The "Washington Post" last week
that Henry was showing a, quote, “unwillingness to cede real power.”
Now, Henry says he will step down
after the creation of a transitional council
to select a new interim leader.
And the U.S. announced yesterday
that it will double its defense spending
on a multinational security force in Haiti,
led by Kenya.
Now, to a developing story in air travel.
At least 50 people were injured on a Boeing 787 aircraft
traveling from Sydney to Auckland,
when it suddenly "dropped" altitude mid-flight.
A passenger on the flight described the moment for the "BBC:"
[START BBC ARCHIVAL CLIP]
Brian Jokat: It woke me up instantly and I looked up towards the ceiling,
my head was back
and my person sitting next to me was glued to the ceiling.
And then I thought I was dreaming for a second.
I thought, am I having the nightmare or something?
And then he fell from the ceiling straight down on his face,
three meters down to the floor.
[END BBC ARCHIVAL CLIP]
Khan, Narrating: The flight, operated by LATAM Airlines, had more than 270 people on board.
At least one person is in serious condition .
There’s an investigation underway,
and Boeing says it’s working to gather more information.
Since the aircraft was made in the U.S.,
the head of the FAA says they’ll be monitoring the situation closely as well.
And in related news,
the Justice Department recently announced
that it’s opened a separate investigation into Boeing
that's related to an incident from January
when a panel on the side of a Max 9 jet blew out in the middle of a flight.
And in Washington,
President Biden has laid out his proposal for federal spending
for the next fiscal year.
The proposed 7.3 trillion-dollar budget
includes lower consumer costs for health care, childcare and housing.
Plus, new taxes on the wealthy and major corporations
to pay for those proposals.
Dr. Shalanda Young, from the Office of Management and Budget,
spoke with "NPR" about Biden’s plan ahead of its release:
[START NPR ARCHIVAL CLIP]
Dr. Shalanda Young: This president has made very clear
that he will not support extending tax cuts
for those that make over $400,000.
The top one and two percent should pay their fair share,
in that way, that will pay for tax cuts for those that make under $400,000.
[END NPR ARCHIVAL CLIP]
Khan, Narrating: Biden’s plan would cut 3 trillion dollars from the national debt
over the next decade.
With Republicans in control of the House, the odds of it passing are low.
[PENSIVE MUSIC]
So, this budget proposal is more like Biden’s economic pitch to voters,
on why he should be re-elected in November and what he'd want to do if that happened.
It’s been several years
since approximately 5,000 migrant children were separated from their parents
under the Trump administration,
and still today, as many as 2,000 are still not reunited.
[MUSIC FADES]
"New York Magazine" takes a close look at the slow, and often painstaking work,
of finding kids still in the U.S., and then tracking down their parents,
who were deported to their home countries.
Piper French wrote the story:
Piper French: The more you delve into this process, the more you realize
just how much work it is to undo something that was done so quickly and carelessly.
Khan, Narrating: One big problem, French says, has been record keeping:
French: I mean, there's a few different aspects
with regards to record keeping that made this really complicated.
One was that there are a bunch of different agencies involved
in separation and detention,
and they didn't communicate with each other.
They didn't have online systems that shared information.
Khan, Narrating: So, the Biden administration created something called
the "Family Reunification Task Force" in 2021
to set up some kind of system for finding families.
To be clear, the government was compelled to reunify families by the courts.
French says the success of this task force
rests with individual lawyers and advocates,
people who are willing to work for weeks, or months, to reunify a family,
often based on flimsy information.
Advocates here in the U.S.
sometimes have to team up with people on the ground in Central and South America
to find parents.
French: For years, they were getting names.
Sometimes it was only a name.
They would try to track down a birth certificate.
And then, based on whatever information was available on the birth certificate,
they just start calling and then start driving.
and drive hundreds of miles in some cases,
going to often pretty remote villages,
places where they didn't know anyone.
And they would have to sort of do this like, diplomatic work of
getting in touch with the community leader and explaining their intentions.
Khan, Narrating: Under a court settlement,
the government is allowing eligible parents
to reunite with their children in the U.S,
with permission to stay for three years
under something called “humanitarian parole.”
In her reporting, French heard from lawyers and advocates
that the intensive search of finding kids, and eventually tracking down parents,
was not even the hardest part of their job.
Sometimes it was watching the actual reunion,
because so many years have passed since families were together.
French: Reunifications are supposed to be this joyful thing, right?
And in some cases, they really are.
The Amadors, who I profile in the piece,
I watched a video of their reunification, and it's totally beautiful and happy,
and they're all just hugging each other and won't let each other go.
But that's just not always the case,
because the trauma of the separation is very present.
[INVESTIGATIVE MUSIC]
Khan, Narrating: She says in some cases, children do not recognize their parents.
And others are angry,
believing it was their parents’ choice to leave them.
Today,
a new novel by the late writer and Nobel laureate Gabriel García Márquez
will be published in English.
The book, called “Until August,” is highly anticipated.
It’s also highly controversial.
[MUSIC FADES]
"NPR" has the story.
Towards the end of his life,
García Márquez was attempting to finish writing what would be his final novel
about a married, middle-aged woman and her secret sex life.
He suffered at the time with debilitating dementia
and was struggling to make the novel work.
He apparently attempted multiple versions before he finally gave up
and declared that he never wanted the book to be published.
In fact, he instructed his sons to destroy it.
Shortly after, in 2014, he died.
Now, 10 years later,
his sons have gone against their father’s wishes
and published the book.
[START NPR ARCHIVAL CLIP]
Rodrigo: We concluded that the book, though unfinished,
made a lot of sense and was very moving.
[END NPR ARCHIVAL CLIP]
Khan, Narrating: That’s one of his sons, Rodrigo, speaking with "NPR" last week.
Rodrigo described how Alzheimer’s robbed his father
of the ability to assess the quality of his work,
or even recognize it.
Often, he would sit down to read one of his own books
and couldn't make a sense of it.
And it wasn't ‘til he reached the last page and saw his picture in the back cover
that he realized, "Oh, this is one of my books,"
and then he'd start to read it again.
Khan, Narrating: Friends of García Márquez in the publishing community
have been divided over whether his sons made the right decision.
Fellow Nobel laureate Salman Rushdie
raised concerns about the implications of publishing new work from an author
without their consent.
Salman Rushdie: I'm really worried that something has been authorized
which should not have been authorized.
Khan, Narrating: The book’s editor, Cristóbal Pera, argued
that the strong female protagonist from "Until August"
makes it a good addition to his late friend's catalogue,
which includes book like "One Hundred Years of Solitude"
and "Love in the Time of Cholera."
Garcia Marquez’s son, Rodrigo, says he and his brother understand
that people may feel uncomfortable with their choice.
But they believe they made the right decision.
We are speaking for our father
because he gave us permission to speak for him.
Is there some betrayal? Yes, of course.
This is not the last wish of an aging writer.
Khan, Narrating: But he says he hopes this final book will delight readers so much
[INSPIRING MUSIC]
that their father will forgive them, even if they made the wrong call.
Finally, today is Equal Pay Day,
one of the more sobering days on the calendar,
because it’s a reminder of how much longer women must work
to earn what men do.
And places around the world still have a ways to go
[MUSIC FADES]
to close the pay gap,
according to a recently released global study.
The World Bank found that not a single country
offers women the same opportunities as men in the workforce,
and that the gender gap is even wider than previously thought.
So is the legal protection gap.
For the first time,
this report measured the impacts of workplace childcare
and safety policies on men and women.
And researchers found, on average,
that women had far fewer legal protections in the workplace than men.
The report also found
that many countries have done the work to pass laws
that would address the pay gap.
But most of them, around two thirds,
are falling short on implementing those laws.
Tea Trumbic of the World Bank explained in a recent interview
why it’s important to track this.
She spoke with the German media outlet "DW News."
[START YOUTUBE ARCHIVAL CLIP]
Tea Trumbic: One of the things that we're trying to really emphasize is that
it's important to write strong laws that legislate towards gender equality,
but it's also important to invest in institutions
and systems that implement those laws.
And then to also understand, are those outcomes being achieved,
that the law is intended to achieve.
[END YOUTUBE ARCHIVAL CLIP]
Khan, Narrating: Globally, women earned just 77 cents on the dollar compared to men.
Many will argue
there’s a moral imperative to making equal pay
for equal work a reality.
But there are also real financial incentives to do so.
[OUTRO MUSIC]
According to the report,
closing the gap could raise the global GDP by more than 20 percent.
You can find all these stories and more in the Apple News app.
And if you’re already listening in the News app right now, stick around.
We have a narrated version of the "New York Magazine" article
on family separations that we talked about.
If you’re listening in the Podcasts app,
follow Apple News+ Narrated to find that story.
And I’ll be back with the news tomorrow.
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