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Shumita Basu, Narrating: Good morning! It's Thursday, November 3rd. I'm Shumita Basu. This is "Apple News Today." On today's show, a truce in a long and deadly conflict, the Parkland shooter gets sentenced to life without parole and how a pair of Black radio hosts outfoxed Kanye West and his "White Lives Matter" shirt.
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But first, with days to go before the midterm elections, President Biden is taking on two major forces over high gas prices: the world's most powerful oil supplier and the world's biggest oil companies. We'll get to Saudi Arabia in just a moment. First, listen to what Biden said earlier this week after ExxonMobil, Chevron and other energy companies posted blockbuster earnings.
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President Joe Biden: Their profits are a windfall of war, a windfall from the brutal conflict that's ravaging Ukraine and hurting tens of millions of people around the globe. You know, in a time of war, any company receiving historic windfall profits like this has a responsibly to act beyond the narrow self-interest of its executives and shareholders.
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He called on energy companies to lower prices for consumers or expect much higher taxes in the future. "Bloomberg" explains how it's practically impossible to deliver on this threat. Democrats have proposed windfall taxes for more than a decade. But unless there's a surprise Democratic wave at the polls next week, there's no hope it'll pass the Senate anytime soon.
Biden's beef with Saudi Arabia is where things get more complicated. "The Wall Street Journal" recently had a team of reporters dig into the latest developments in this complex and important relationship. It's sort of like a rocky marriage, but instead of staying together for the kids, they stay together for the oil. Through 15 presidents and seven kings, this bond lasted. But some analysts think that the U.S. and Saudi Arabia are as close to divorce as they've ever been. As one veteran U.S. diplomat puts it, "There's almost no trust and absolutely no mutual respect."
<v The "Journal" explains the conflicting views here. The Biden administration sees the Saudi's recent decision to cut oil production as a move that slides the Kingdom closer to Russia. It felt like a stab in the back by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman ahead of the midterm elections, right when Democrats want lower gas prices. The Saudis frame it as protecting a core national interest>stable oil prices.
<v Now in the past, face-to-face meetings have sometimes helped to smooth out turbulent moments. Nixon visited the Kingdom after the Saudi-led oil embargo. George W. Bush hosted a previous crown prince after several Saudis led the 9/11 attacks. A Mideast analyst explains it to the "Journal" this way>"When you're dealing with a country that's basically run by five people, it has to be on a personal level." But that Biden fist-bump with the Crown Prince in July doesn't seem to have smoothed things over.
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The Parkland school shooter will spend the rest of his life behind bars. Yesterday, a Florida judge gave Nikolas Cruz 34 consecutive life sentences, one for each of the 17 people he killed and 17 people he injured in the 2018 shooting.
"NBC News" reports how, over the past two days, victims and families spoke directly to Cruz. Sam Fuentes was shot in the leg and struck in the face with shrapnel during the massacre. She watched Cruz kill two of her friends.
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Sam Fuentes: You have no power anymore. You have no future. You have nothing. I'll get to walk out of this courthouse without cuffs and go home. You will not. The people that you killed will have a legacy much more important than you. And the people who you nearly killed will live their lives, though with much difficulty, with a compassion and a dignity in ways you will only dream.
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Stacey Lippel, a teacher at Parkland who was shot in the arm, told Cruz about the horror and the guilt that she lives with because of his actions.
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Stacey Lippel: Horror at the memories of what you left behind in your wake and the guilt that I am left with because I wish I could've done more to save my co-workers and my students who you killed.
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Prosecutors in this case wanted the death penalty and a majority of the jury supported it. But Florida law requires a unanimous vote, so the sentence was life without parole.
Some families expressed their anger at this. Ilan Alhadeff, the father of teenage victim Alyssa Alhadeff, told the court that he deserved the death sentence.
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Ilan Alhadeff: Do I see this as accountability? Absolutely not. Do we now have closure? Let me be clear, absolutely not.
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There's a truce in a two-year war that displaced millions of people. Ethiopia and the Tigray People's Liberation Front have agreed to stop fighting. Talks were led by Nigeria's former president Olusegun Obasanjo, who praised it as an African solution to an African problem.
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Olusegun Obasanjo: Today is the beginning of a new dawn for Ethiopia, for the horn of Africa, and indeed for Africa as a whole.
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The long-running conflict was brutal, with accusations of atrocities and ethnic cleansing on both sides. The Tigray region in Ethiopia's north has been cut off from food and medicine as a result of the war, leaving civilians sick and starving. Getting supplies into the area is a top priority now that the truce is in place.
It's hard to know the total death toll because there was so little access for humanitarian groups and independent journalists. Some estimates put deaths in the hundreds of thousands between the fighting and the blockade.
There's a lot of optimism about this deal, but also wariness. An earlier truce broke down in August, and violence intensified. There are also concerns that Eritrea was not part of the peace talks. Its troops fought alongside Ethiopian government forces. Eritrean fighters have been blamed for some of the worst abuses of the conflict.
The White House says the U.S. is committed to supporting the process and lasting peace in Ethiopia.
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Remember when Kanye West wore a shirt that said "White Lives Matter"? He said he was gonna sell them. An interesting follow-up story caught our eye, from Capital B, which is a newsroom that centers Black voices. It points out that West will have trouble doing that because the trademark to the phrase "White Lives Matter" is owned by two Black radio hosts in Arizona.
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Ramses Ja: Welcome to another episode of "Civic Cipher." I'm your host, Ramses Ja.
Q Ward: He is your host, Ramses Ja. I am Q Ward.
Ja: That's right.
Ward: You are listening to…
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Their show is about racial justice. It came out of the protests in the wake of George Floyd's murder. Back in September, a longtime listener reached out with a strange offer: they had the trademark to the phrase "White Lives Matter." And they were willing to give it to the radio hosts. The idea was, putting it in the hands of people who could prevent others from using that phrase to cause pain, and maybe even do something positive with it. So that means that West, or anyone, can't sell "White Lives Matter" merch without risking a lawsuit. A phrase that hate groups have used is now in the hands of Black people fighting racism. One of the hosts told Capital B, "I'd rather live in a world where profits of potential t-shirt sales could offset the pain they cause."
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You can find all these stories and more in the Apple News app. And if you're already listening in the News app, we've got a narrated article coming up next. It's from "Popular Science," on a startup in Colorado that's using high-flying balloons to track wildfires. So take a listen to that, and I'll be back with the news tomorrow.
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