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Shumita Basu, Narrating: Good morning! It's Wednesday, June 1st. 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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In the days since the elementary school shooting in Uvalde. Many Republicans have brought back a familiar idea: giving teachers guns. Some of the people who've been saying we should arm educators include Texas's attorney general, Oklahoma's secretary of education, and former President Trump. He brought it up during his speech at the NRA event in Houston last week.
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Donald Trump: And that's why, as part of a comprehensive school safety plan, it's time to finally allow highly trained teachers to safely and discreetly concealed carry. Let them concealed carry.
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"Vox" looked into the research and found there's little evidence that arming school staff makes schools safer. A small number of states already allow districts to train and arm their teachers. Texas, for example, has a program that allows educators to carry handguns after going through 80 hours of training. There are now over 250 of these so-called "school marshals" across the state of Texas. But a recent study reviewing nearly two decades of U.S. school security measures, including arming teachers, found no evidence of reduced gun violence.
Also, most teachers don't actually want to be armed. A survey of thousands of teachers found 95% were opposed to teachers carrying guns in classrooms. Karla Hernandez-Mats, who's the president of a local teachers union in Florida, told WPLG teachers already take on enough.
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Karla Hernandez-Mats: We're teachers, we're counselors, we're nurses. I mean, we're talking about mental health. We're doing so many things. And to add this additional pressure of having to protect and act as law enforcement, I think that it's just not the solution.
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The other point in this "Vox" piece is that studies show more guns lead to more violence. Compared to other countries, the U.S. is in a league of its own when it comes to gun ownership. And just the presence of guns, whether it's in schools or in homes, increases the likelihood of gun violence. Experts say when it comes to keeping kids at school safe, efforts that focus only on arming staff and policing have not proven effective so far. What's also needed, they say, is emphasizing "school connectedness" for young people, making sure they feel engaged and accountable to their community. Investing in their emotional well-being may be a better approach to prevent future school shootings from happening.
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There are two common reactions to the courtroom battle involving Johnny Depp and Amber Heard. One is that it's a tabloid mess and it's best to not pay too much attention. Another is that it's a fascinating case involving famous people, a trial worth obsessing over on social media. But maybe both of those takes are missing something important. Alanna Vagianos covers gender-based violence for "HuffPost."
Alanna Vagianos: This case is much bigger than Amber Heard and Johnny Depp, and the implications go way beyond what some people may just believe is this media circus of a celebrity trial.
She worries that the trial could become a playbook for abusers to use courts to silence victims. Depp is suing Heard for defamation. He claims that she damaged his career when she wrote a "Washington Post" op-ed that discussed her experience of domestic violence. It did not name him. She's also countersuing him for defamation.
Every moment of this trial is being dissected on social media, meme-ified with added captions and music and opinions and a lot of scorn for Amber Heard. I keep coming across posts by make-up artists who are talking about how Heard claims to have covered up bruises on her face. Vagianos told us there's even anti-Heard swag being sold on Etsy. It just seems like a lot of people are trying to capitalize on this moment. But, Vagianos warned, it's important not to lose sight of the legal details at the core of this case.
Vagianos: Victims of gender-based violence go through this all the time. Defamation suits are quite literally used to silence survivors of gender-based violence. And if we chalk this up as just another form of entertainment, then we as a culture are accepting the fact that this violence is normal and that we don't take it seriously.
A sociologist tells "HuffPost" that this could be a slippery slope, where speaking out about abuse is costly. There are concerns that if Depp wins, the verdict could have a chilling effect on abuse victims. They might be scared to speak out if they're afraid of a defamation suit. Vagianos says it's easy to miss the broader implications in a case that's full of tabloid details and social media drama. But for her, this case is way more, something that could impact abuse victims for a generation.
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Imagine if your local hospital had to close because the doctors had been kidnapped or feared behind held hostage. That's the reality in Haiti right now, where gangsters are targeting doctors, who are now afraid to go to work. We spoke to Jacqueline Charles of the "Miami Herald," who has covered Haiti for a long time. Kidnappings in the country have surged to the point where people have to plan their lives around the fear of becoming the next hostage.
Jacqueline Charles: I spoke to one person recently who was telling me that, you know, his wife leaves on Monday and she doesn't come back home until Friday. And the reason being is because she just can't take that risk going back and forth every day between her house and between, you know, the hospital.
Data shows kidnappings up nearly 60% from last year. And it's not just doctors. Lawyers and teachers are also targets. Charles explained what's behind the rise in hostage-taking.
Charles: Haiti has an escalating gang problem. What we've seen that in the last year, following the assassination of the country's president last July, the political instability that has deepened, the paralysis that's all around, the social unrest that's happening. Gangs have stepped into this vacuum. They've expanded their reach, especially in the capital of Port-au-Prince.
Doctors in Haiti now face terrible choices. Keep working and risk being kidnapped or stop working and risk patients suffering.
Charles: Doctors take the Hippocratic Oath, "do no harm." So when you close your doors to patients and you say, "We're not going to accept patients until this physician is released," are you doing harm? Are you staying true to this oath that you took as a physician? But, you know, it's at the point today where even people who are troubled by this are saying, "Look, we are human. We live in this society. These just unabated kidnappings, it has consequences." And the other consequence of this is that a lot of physicians and nurses, they've left. They're leaving the country in waves.
Haiti's healthcare system was already strained before the latest wave of kidnappings. As one doctor said, "we can't continue like this."
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Last thing today, we want to make sure you don't miss a story that's got a lot of people excited right now. It's about new discoveries in Egypt, including mummies dating back 2,500 years.
<v "The Washington Post" reports on what was recently unearthed at the necropolis of Saqqara. There were hundreds of sarcophagi, those are painted coffins, and they had unusually well-preserved mummies inside. Egypt's antiquities chief says one of the coffins had something they've never uncovered before>a complete and sealed papyrus scroll with ancient writing. It was quickly moved to a museum for study and preservation.
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This comes after a string of big discoveries in recent years, including mummies with golden tongues, which were believed to help them speak in the afterlife.
"The Post" has some really cool photos and video. You can see it for yourself, and find all the stories that we talked about today in the Apple News app. And when you're in the app, keep listening to hear narrated articles from our News+ partners. We'll talk with you again tomorrow.
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