[INTRO MUSIC BEGINS]
Mark Garrison, Narrating: Good morning. It's Monday, January 8th.
I'm Mark Garrison. This is Apple News Today.
On today's show,
a possible budget deal in Congress could avoid a government shutdown,
the end of online cookies may change the ads you see online,
and how tonight's college football championship
is the end of an era.
[MUSIC FADES OUT]
But first, we're learning more information about the Alaska Airlines flight
that was forced to make an emergency landing on Friday.
Officials now have a crucial piece of evidence in the investigation
of that Boeing 737 MAX 9 jet.
A heavy four-foot-long panel came off in midair.
A Portland school teacher found the piece in his backyard.
The FAA temporarily grounded Boeing 737 MAX 9 jets
for immediate inspection.
Passenger Emma Vu told "Reuters" about how the incident woke her up.
[START REUTERS ARCHIVAL CLIP]
Emma Vu: I'm sleeping and I just feel the plane drop
and it wasn't like any other turbulence just because the masks had came down too.
So that's when I knew like, oh gosh, this is something way different.
And, yeah, I started freaking out.
[END REUTERS ARCHIVAL CLIP]
Garrison, Narrating: She says she was relieved that it happened so soon after takeoff
so the pilot could quickly get the plane back on the ground.
[START REUTERS ARCHIVAL CLIP]
Vu: But, yeah, I'm so grateful we weren't higher in the air,
like, that more things didn't fly out, that no one flew out.
I think that's incredible that we're all safe.
[END REUTERS ARCHIVAL CLIP]
Garrison, Narrating: It could have been worse, but fortunately, there was no one sitting
in the two seats right next to the gaping hole.
And the flight attendants made sure everyone was safe,
including unaccompanied children and several babies.
This Boeing plane has a troubled history.
The MAX 9 is a bigger version of the 737 MAX 8,
which had two fatal crashes in 2018 and 2019,
killing more than 300 people.
That plane was grounded worldwide for almost two years.
Boeing and Spirit AeroSystems, the company responsible
for installing the panel, are working to figure out what went wrong.
Federal safety investigators
are looking through the plane's maintenance and repair logs.
Also, they're looking into why a warning light on the plane
had previously gone off because of possible pressurization problems.
One challenge is that information on the cockpit voice recorder
[DRAMATIC MUSIC FADES IN]
was overwritten, so some key evidence may be missing.
Now, let's take a quick look at some other major stories in the news.
Congressional leaders have a bipartisan budget deal
that could avoid a government shutdown.
[MUSIC FADES OUT]
It's a roughly $1.6 trillion federal spending agreement,
but it's not fully done.
The House and Senate will have to write the actual bills that fund the government
in under two weeks to avoid a shutdown.
That's not a guarantee, given that Congress has struggled
to pass other major spending bills on time.
Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin is facing intense criticism
for failing to notify the White House and his top deputy
that he was hospitalized at a time when U.S. troops
are facing threats around the world.
Austin was admitted to the hospital on New Year's Day for complications
from an earlier elective surgery.
Key officials were not notified for days.
Austin has said he's getting better and that he could have done a better job
of sharing critical information about his health.
The Supreme Court will decide whether former President, Donald Trump,
can appear on primary election ballots.
This move comes after Colorado's top court found that his actions around January 6th
were engaging in insurrection, so he could be barred
from the ballot under the 14th Amendment.
There are similar cases in other states.
The U.S. Supreme Court will hear arguments early next month.
In entertainment news, at the Golden Globes last night,
Barbie won a new award for cinematic and box office achievement.
Margot Robbie accepted the trophy with the team.
[START ARCHIVAL CLIP]
[CROWD CHEERING]
Margot Robbie: Thank you.
We would like to dedicate this to every single person
on the planet who dressed up and went to the greatest place on earth,
the movie theaters.
[END ARCHIVAL CLIP]
Garrison, Narrating: Also, Oppenheimer won for Best Dramatic Film,
while Poor Things took home the award for Best Musical or Comedy.
On the TV side, Succession was the best drama series,
and The Bear was the winning musical or comedy.
[UPBEAT MUSIC FADES IN]
You can see the whole list of winners and check out the red carpet looks
on the Apple News app.
Chances are pretty good that you've had an internet browsing experience
like "Wall Street Journal" tech reporter Miles Krupa.
[START WALL STREET JOURNAL ARCHIVAL CLIP]
Miles Krupa: So I think a lot of us have become accustomed to,
if we're looking at a shoe on Neiman Marcus's website,
that an advertisement for that shoe will probably follow us
around the internet and we'll be like,
well, I decided not to buy that shoe for a reason, right?
[END WALL STREET JOURNAL ARCHIVAL CLIP]
Garrison, Narrating: Those product ads follow us around because of what are called cookies.
They track your online activity.
Advertisers can tap into them so they can show you ads for stuff
they think you're likely to buy.
But things are about to change.
This month, Google kicked off a test that'll shut down these cookies
for some users of its Chrome browser,
and it plans to kill them off for good by the end of this year.
Krupa told us how this move is causing huge panic among some advertisers.
Krupa: I think cookies were a really easy and widely-used standard
and an easy way for advertisers to build these profiles
on people and with fairly-detailed information.
You know, they could give advertisers pretty high-fidelity info
into what consumers were doing online.
You know, it drove a lot of value in the advertising industry.
Garrison, Narrating: He says that eliminating cookies is one of the biggest changes
in the history of the $600 billion a year online ad business,
where Google is a giant player.
Advertisers really don't like the move.
Krupa: Their main gripe is that even after four years
of planning for this,
Google's solutions don't really come close to even replicating
the value they got from cookies,
and they believe Google has done it in a way that has made it very difficult
for people to prepare for when cookies eventually, by the end of the year,
go away in Chrome.
Garrison, Narrating: The end of third-party cookies is seen as a win for consumer advocates.
They've long argued that they're an invasion of privacy.
Krupa says over time, we may get a break from all those targeted ads.
But make no mistake, there will still be plenty of ads online.
[HAPPY MUSIC FADES IN]
Marketers will just have to find different ways to pitch us more stuff.
Tonight, the Michigan Wolverines take on the Washington Huskies
for college football's championship.
Nicole Auerbach is a college football senior writer for "The Athletic."
She told us what she'll be watching for.
Nicole Auerbach: The Huskies play the most entertaining style of offense in the country.
I can tell you that I didn't expect that Michael Penix Jr.,
a transfer from Indiana who had injury issues,
was going to become, I think, the best player in college football.
But he is electrifying.
The deep ball he throws is, I think, the most beautiful deep ball
that there is in college football.
Garrison, Narrating: This will be the last year where only four teams get into the playoffs.
Next year, the field will expand to 12.
That could help the sport avoid the disputed end to this season.
A lot of fans didn't agree with who officials chose for the playoffs
and especially who got left out.
Auerbach: Well, there was a great deal of controversy around the selection
of the four-team field, and it's because of Florida State.
They were unbeaten, and they're in one of the five power conferences.
We've never seen the selection committee leave out a team with a resume like that.
And they put it solely on the injury to quarterback Jordan Travis.
They said this was not the same team.
Garrison, Narrating: College football teams are also reshuffling into different conferences.
After this year, Washington is leaving the Pac-12 conference
to join Michigan in the Big Ten.
Auerbach: The Big Ten is going to start the 2024 season
with the defending national champion. Either way.
And that's huge considering how much the SEC has dominated this sport.
And so many national champions, in the last couple of decades,
have come from the Southeast.
Garrison, Narrating: As for who wins tonight, here's Auerbach's take.
Auerbach: So, I went to Michigan.
I'm going to say that out here because I'm going to be accused
of being a homer here, but I'm going to take the Wolverines.
They were my preseason pick to win it all because I felt like they had the pieces
to get over the hump.
[OUTRO MUSIC FADES IN]
And Michigan is finally going to win national title
for the first time in 25 years.
Garrison, Narrating: You can find more pregame coverage in the Apple News app,
along with all the stories we talked about.
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."
The writer tells the story of how he tried to piece together his father's murder,
which happened when the writer was just three years old.
If you're listening in the Podcasts app, follow Apple News Plus Narrated
to find that story.
And I'll be back with the news tomorrow.
[MUSIC FADES OUT]