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Shumita Basu, Narrating: Good morning! It's Tuesday, May 10th. 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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Before the draft leak revealed a Supreme Court ready to overturn Roe, there was a big change underway in where the lines get drawn around exceptions for abortion. This is the kind of thing that's easy to miss if you don't follow it closely. You can hear it in this debate among GOP Congressional candidates in Iowa last week.
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Moderator: Let's start with the three of you, please. In your mind, should all abortions be illegal in this country? Hand up, if you say: yes.
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Every candidate raised their hands. They agreed all abortion should be illegal, even in cases of rape and incest. Those types of exceptions used to have bipartisan support. Every Republican president, from Reagan through Trump, agreed that a woman shouldn't have to carry a rapist's child to term. And polls show that about 75% of Americans agree.
"The Atlantic" looks at how the Republican Party gradually turned against exceptions for rape and incest. If Roe is overturned, several states have laws that kick in immediately banning abortion. And many of them have no exception for these types of abusive circumstances.
To get a sense of how the argument has evolved, listen to Republican, Rebecca Kleefisch. She's running for governor in Wisconsin and she was asked if she would allow abortions for rape and incest victims.
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Rebecca Kleefisch: No, because I don't think it's the baby's fault how the baby is conceived.
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There have long been anti-abortion activists with that viewpoint. But it wasn't mainstream among elected Republicans. With the expected reversal of Roe V. Wade, the "Guardian" points out, in many states, restrictions on reproductive rights will be more extreme than they were before Roe, almost 50 years ago.
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It's been a rough ride in the stock market in recent days. "The Wall Street Journal" summary of Monday's trading used the phrase: "the most punishing market sell-off in years."
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Now, standard personal finance advice is: don't panic, don't do anything rash with your 401k. But it is definitely unsettling to peek at your balance and see it shrink, so we've got a little distraction for you. Stocks may be rough, but one asset class is doing just fine, and that's fine art. An Andy Warhol silkscreen of Marilyn Monroe just sold for a record $195 million. It's the most expensive American artwork ever sold at auction.
The past record for an American work was held by Jean-Michel Basquiat. He and Warhol knew each other well, they were good friends, they even collaborated on canvas a bit. Some of their work poked fun at capitalism and consumer culture. So, you can imagine the late artists getting a little kick out of the latest news, landing in the record books right next to each other, as the most expensive American artists in history.
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Have you ever really looked at a sunbeam, I mean a literal ray of sun coming in through your window, all swirly and pretty? When I look at a sunbeam, I think about all of the particles that are floating around in there. Silent, invisible bits of stuff that we breathe in every day. Some of that dust is totally natural. But some definitely isn't, like the tiny plastic particles that we've introduced into the environment.
Laura Parker: And the question that has come up for scientists is: 'So, what is happening with those very, very small fibers?'
Laura Parker, is a senior reporter with "National Geographic." And this story of hers caught my eye. It's about what scientists have learned from studying microplastics over the years, these are particles that are too small for the eye to see.
Parker: We know, for instance, that fish and other animals consume microplastics and in many cases they just excrete them. But if you're dealing with fibers that are very, very small, that can be inhaled or ingested, what happens inside the body after that occurs?
You might think that if you avoid eating certain types of shellfish you're not in danger of ingesting microplastics. But get this, Parker told us about a team of scientists who did this study, microplastics in food versus in the air. And they found, let's say you live in a typical home, and you sit down to eat a dinner of mussels, you'll ingest more plastic just by breathing the air than you will by eating your seafood.
Parker: They are everywhere. They're in soil, they're in Arctic ice. They are in salt. Microplastics are in beer, microplastics are in ordinary drinking water. Microplastics are in the dust and it's everywhere: in your clothes, in your carpeting, in your curtains. When you scratch your sleeve, you're letting unseen microplastics into the air.
This is what scientists suspected all along. As these plastic particles get smaller, it becomes easier for them to get lodged inside the human body. Earlier this year, scientists found evidence that plastic particles can make their way deep into people's lungs, even into the bloodstream.
So, the million dollar question is: are these microplastics causing any harm? And the answer, Parker says, is we still don't really know. Until we do more studies to understand the risks better, she says, the fewer plastics you use, the less exposure you'll have.
Parker: Try to cut back on the kind of single-use plastics that are in our everyday lives. Single-use plastics make up about 40% of the plastic that's manufactured today, we see them and they do harm animals. They do eat them, and some of these fragmented pieces of plastic that are large will damage internal organs. You'll see a bird will have his stomach full of plastic and is no longer, he will basically starve to death. So, the animal harm has been well established and we can help the world by cutting back on the amount of plastic that we need to use in our daily lives.
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Before I let you go today, let's end on a celebratory note. Pulitzer Prizes were announced yesterday, honoring the best journalism and commentary. The prize for Public Service went to "The Washington Post," for its coverage of the January 6th attack on the Capitol. More than a hundred journalists contributed to in-depth stories on what happened before, during, and after the insurrection. National Editor, Matea Gold, talked about it on the "Post Reports" podcast.
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Matea Gold: This is really an opportunity for "The Post" to fulfill what is a core of our mission, which is to tell definitive stories about the events that shape our country and our politics.
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The Breaking News Reporting award went to the "Miami Herald's" coverage of the Surfside condo collapse that killed 98 people last June. Investigative Reporter, Sarah Blaskey, was on "NPR" a few days after the collapse.
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Sarah Blaskey: It is something I could never have imagined seeing. An entire building looks like it was cut in half, like a giant knife came down and sheared off apartments, exposing their insides, kind of like a twisted dollhouse.
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Some of the other winners include "Los Angeles Times" Foreign Correspondent and Photojournalist, Marcus Yam, whose photos of the fall of Afghanistan to the Taliban won the Pulitzer for Breaking News Photography. There's also Jennifer Senior's beautifully written story in "The Atlantic," about the family of a 9/11 victim and a two decade search for meaning. It won the Feature Writing prize. We've rounded up all of this award-winning work in one place on the Apple News app, along with all the stories we talked about today. We'll talk with you again tomorrow.
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