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Shumita Basu, Narrating: Good morning! It's Thursday, January 12th. I'm Shumita Basu, this is "Apple News Today." On today's show, what to do when a shooting suspect is only six years old, embedding with foreign fighters defending Ukraine from Russian attacks, and how to see a rare green comet passing Earth.
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But first, a few quick updates on some developing stories we covered in the show yesterday. There are new revelations in the investigation of President Biden's handling of classified documents. The White House says a second set of documents from his time as vice president were found in the garage of his Delaware home. Biden previously said his legal team is cooperating with government investigators, after a small number of classified papers were found at a think tank he founded after serving as vice president.
California's severe weather isn't letting up, with around 5 million people under flood watches as of yesterday. More rain is coming, with the northern part of the state forecast to get the worst of it. Meanwhile, a search for a 5-year-old boy swept away in San Luis Obispo County is intensifying. National Guard troops joined the rescue effort yesterday, with more coming today.
And air travel is working to get back to normal following an FAA system outage that grounded flights and forced more than 1,000 cancellations. The agency says there appears to have been a damaged file in its computer system, and there is not evidence of a cyberattack. It's the latest problem to upend flights in America, weeks after scheduling problems at Southwest Airlines led the carrier to cancel thousands of flights during the busy holiday travel period. You can read more on these stories on the Apple News app.
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We are now asking ourselves, how are you supposed to prosecute a shooting where the suspect is a six-year-old? It's a question on the table after a first grader in Newport News, Virginia, shot his teacher, Abigail Zwerner. She was hit in the hand and chest, but survived and was able to get all the students out of the classroom without injuries. The police chief says there was no fight, the student opened fire while she was teaching. Local authorities said there's no real playbook for this kind of incident.
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Person at Press Conference: In no way do I believe that we were fully prepared for a six-year-old student to bring a school... bring a gun to school, a weapon to school, and shoot his teacher.
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"NPR" reports on how authorities are trying to figure out who to hold accountable under these circumstances. The child's mother legally owned the gun, but Virginia law makes it a misdemeanor to store firearms recklessly around children. Very young children are generally protected from prosecution under a legal doctrine that's called "the infancy defense." A juvenile law professor explained it this way to "NPR." "It would be hard to convince a court that a six-year-old is competent to stand trial. Judges generally don't see someone at this age as having the intellectual capacity to form the intent for a crime like this."
Technically, there is no minimum age for criminal defendants in Virginia. But juvenile detention facilities there have a minimum age of eleven. Another possibility is that authorities could ask the court to order social services help for the child, including counseling. In this case, the suspect and most of the witnesses are so young that police are working with child psychologists and Child Protective Services to conduct their investigation. They say they're waiting to wrap the investigation before deciding whether or how to pursue charges.
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There's a lot happening in the war in Ukraine right now, so it's a good moment to recap some big developments and highlight some strong on the ground reporting.
Russia is replacing its top military officer in charge of troops attacking Ukraine. Russia has repeatedly shuffled who's in charge of the invasion as it ran into problems. This latest move is a signal that Putin is frustrated with how things are going and wants to see things change.
And U.S. aid to Ukraine is growing. This week came news that Ukrainian troops will travel to America for training on its Patriot missile system. Ukraine's military has wanted to get its hands on this technology for a long time to counter relentless Russian air attacks on civilian and military targets.
The U.S. government is providing money and weapons but not troops. That hasn't stopped volunteers from America and other countries from joining Ukrainians to fight on the ground. "New Yorker" writer Luke Mogelson embedded with foreign fighters. His account is one of the most detailed pieces of journalism of what the fighting looks like firsthand. He explained to us how many of the foreign volunteers are combat veterans, but they've never fought in a war like this one.
Luke Mogelson: The combat in Ukraine is unlike anything that most Western soldiers, no matter how experienced, have undergone, whether in Iraq or Afghanistan or Syria, because they're facing an adversary with industrial-scale artillery and air power tanks, rockets. And in the previous conflicts that most of the foreign fighters participated in, they were on the side of overwhelming firepower. Here in Ukraine, it's somewhat the reverse.
Some of the people Mogelson embedded with said they joined this fight because the cause was so different from past wars.
Mogelson: For many of the foreign volunteers, the war in Ukraine was unequivocally a just war, and very morally and ethically clear that they were on the right side. And I think that that contrasted somewhat with the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan in which they had participated, which were more complicated, and perhaps even ethically dubious.
His piece is detailed and vivid, and you get to hear the perspectives of these people who felt so strongly that they volunteered to face the Russian army head on. It's really worth reading. We've got it for you on the Apple News app.
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Starting tonight, you may have a very limited chance to experience something that was last seen by Stone Age Neanderthals. A green comet is approaching Earth. The last time this one zoomed by us was 50,000 years ago.
So, first question you might have, why is it green? It turns out, a lot of comets glow green. It's because of this molecule called dicarbon that's common in comets, and it emits this spooky green light when the sunlight hits it.
NASA says you're gonna want a telescope or binoculars to see the green comet, although if we get some nice clear nights over the next two weeks, it might be bright enough that you could see it with the naked eye. But if this is your thing, make sure you catch it this time. It may be at least 50,000 years before this comet pays us another visit.
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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 right now, stick around. We've got a narrated article coming up next from "The New Yorker" about the ways that we think. Some people think visually, others in words. This story explores how our mental processes are more mysterious than we may realize. So sit back, enjoy listening to that, and I'll be back with the news tomorrow.
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