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Shumita Basu, Narrating: Good morning! It’s Friday, November 3rd. I’m Shumita Basu. This is “Apple News Today.” On today’s show… American diplomats try to walk a fine line in the Israel-Hamas conflict, how facial recognition technology could upend privacy as we know it, and some alternatives to tossing your old Halloween pumpkins in the trash.
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But first, the latest on the war. The Israeli military says it has troops surrounding Gaza City. Civilian casualties are steadily growing and the trickle of humanitarian aid that’s gotten in is falling short. A group of independent United Nations experts wants an immediate ceasefire, saying Palestinians are at, quote “grave risk of genocide.” Israel’s mission to the U.N. in Geneva calls those comments “deplorable.” And the U.N. Secretary-General’s office is making it clear that an official determination of genocide can only be made by an appropriate U.N. legal body.
Hundreds of people in Gaza with foreign passports have managed to get to Egypt. Dozens of Palestinian Americans are among those who have left through the Rafah Crossing.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken is in Israel today. He’s also visiting Jordan tomorrow. Before taking off, Blinken said he would focus on getting more American citizens out of Gaza, hostage-release efforts, and achieving a lasting peace that includes an independent state for Palestinians. He also says that Israel needs to be careful to limit civilian casualties.
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Antony Blinken: As democracies, the United States, Israel, other democracies, have a responsibility to do everything possible to protect civilians who may be caught in harm’s way.
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Blinken is expected to push for “humanitarian pauses” in Israel’s assault to help get more aid in and more foreign nationals out. The U.S. has not endorsed global calls for a full ceasefire.
That careful language, “pause” but not “ceasefire” is just one example of how the U.S. is trying to strike a balance between historic support for Israel, and widespread global criticism of the Gaza invasion.
Nahal Toosi, Narrating: The initial U.S. approach to all of this was to hug Israel tight, offer unreserved, unconditional support.
Basu: "Politico" senior foreign-affairs correspondent Nahal Toosi told us how that stance is becoming trickier as the war continues.
Toosi: As the days have gone on and the number of Palestinian civilians being killed has risen dramatically, the U.S. has increasingly shifted toward calling for more restraint on the part of Israel. And it's been trying to, kind of, walk a very fine line.
Toosi says many allies think America should go further, since the U.S. can have much more influence over Israel than most other countries.
"Politico" reports, the Biden administration is increasingly preparing for the possibility that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's days leading Israel could be numbered. He was a divisive figure in the country before the war. And many blame Netanyahu for intelligence failures that led to a lack of preparation for the attack by Hamas. When it comes to U.S. relations, Netanyahu was a solid Trump supporter and has had a poor relationship with Biden in recent years.
Publicly, the Biden administration and Israel say they’re focused on the present. But behind the scenes, "Politico" says Biden aides are preparing for a hypothetical future that might include working with other leaders who could take over from Netanyahu as Prime Minister, someone who might be more open toward establishing a Palestinian state. Toosi says, it seems like U.S. officials would rather work with someone else.
Toosi: Somebody who understands that, like, you cannot pretend the Palestinians do not exist. You cannot keep building settlements and pushing them out of their land and just expecting them to vanish, which is kind of the way Netanyahu has been operating.
Still, despite the growing criticism of Netanyahu in Israel, Toosi says he may find a way to stay in office.
Toosi: There have been many, many political obituaries written about Benjamin Netanyahu in the past, and he has managed to come back and survive like a phoenix. So, I would never completely write the guy off.
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Let’s take a quick look at some other stories in the news, starting with the ongoing Congressional response to the war.
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The Republican-controlled House passed a bill to send around $14 billion to Israel, paid for with cuts to the IRS. As we’ve mentioned before, this bill is considered dead on arrival, because the White House and Senate Democrats want to deliver help for Ukraine and other funding at the same time.
Disgraced cryptocurrency entrepreneur Sam Bankman-Fried is guilty of all charges, in a case involving billions of dollars stolen from customers of the FTX exchange. “NBC” legal analyst Angela Cenedella said the testimony of his top associates was critical.
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Angela Cenedella: It was lost the moment the prosecution turned the three lieutenants who were closest to him, especially Caroline Ellison, his former CEO. So, it all started there and that’s the reason why I think Sam Bankman-Friend even stood up on the defense stand at all. He had no choice. Everyone said it was him who masterminded the entire operation. He gets up on the stand and says it wasn’t really me, I’m pretending to be a naive person who didn’t know what was happening. But all of the evidence proved otherwise.
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And in Maine, President Biden and Jill Biden are visiting Lewiston today, the site of last week’s mass shooting. Eighteen people were killed there. The suspect later took his own life. The Bidens will meet with victims’ families and first responders.
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There are websites and apps out there, where you can upload your picture, and it’ll spit out every photo it can find of you on the internet, stretching back decades, even if you’re just in the background of someone else’s photo.
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And there’s a lot you can learn from someone’s photo history corralled into one place.
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Kashmir Hill: It's a way of figuring out somebody's social media profiles, their name, who they know, where they've been, maybe where they live. It’s this trail that lets you know anything about a person based on where their photo has appeared online.
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That’s Kashmir Hill, a "New York Times" tech and privacy reporter, and my guest this week on Apple News "In Conversation." We spoke about how accurate facial recognition software has gotten over the last few years, and how it’s being used. Her new book, “Your Face Belongs to Us” looks at the troubling privacy implications of the technology.
See, in the past, big tech companies like Google and Facebook chose not to broadly release facial recognition tools they developed. They were concerned about who might use them, and how. But things changed in 2017, when a secretive startup called Clearview AI came on the scene. It used images from the web to build a database and facial recognition system which it sold to law enforcement.
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Hill: What Clearview AI did was not a technological breakthrough. It was really ethical arbitrage. They were willing to do what other companies won't. And I think that we're going to see that more and more in technology because there is so much information to be scraped from the internet. And now we have these powerful AI models where you can do a lot building on that information.
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So far in the U.S., there’s very little regulation around how facial recognition can be used. Only a few states require companies to get consent before adding someone’s likeness to their database.
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Hill: I think we’re at the point now where we need to acknowledge this technology is very powerful, it is very accurate, and we need to grapple with that as a society. How widely do we want this deployed? How ubiquitous should it be? And who should have access to it? And should we as individuals have the right to not be put in these databases or get out of them if we have already been put inside them, which most of us have been.
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If you’re listening in the Apple News app, the rest of my conversation with Kashmir Hill about what this technology is capable of and what the future of privacy might look like will play after this show.
Finally, this weekend feels like the unofficial deadline to get rid of your Halloween decor. Nothing is less festive than a droopy, decomposing pumpkin. But before you throw it in a trash bag, think again. There’s a better way for the planet to get rid of your pumpkins.
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“USA Today” points out that if you trash your pumpkin, it’ll release methane, a powerful greenhouse gas, as it rots in a landfill. So, consider these alternatives. A pumpkin is, of course, edible! That is, as long as you haven’t carved it up and allowed it to be exposed to the elements. It can be good in anything from pie to pizza to pasta. Roasted seeds are pretty tasty too. And if you’re not a pumpkin fan, it is safe and even nutritious to feed cooked pumpkin to your dog or cat. Although, “USA Today” warns against giving them the skin, leaves, stem, or raw seeds. Also, if you’re feeling crafty, the National Wildlife Federation has a way to turn your used pumpkin into a bird feeder that you can fill with seeds.
And as for a pumpkin that’s been carved up and sitting outside, you can compost it and save it from a landfill. Check with your community for options on how to do this. Some cities make a whole event out of it, holding pumpkin-smash parties to make composting a little more fun, speedy, and cathartic.
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You can get more pumpkin tips in the full article on the Apple News app. And if you are listening in the News app right now, stick around. As I mentioned, the episode of Apple News "In Conversation" with author Kashmir Hill is cued up to play for you next. It’s also available in the Podcasts app.
Don’t forget, clocks change this weekend. Enjoy your extra hour on Sunday, and I’ll be back with the news on Monday.
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