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Mark Garrison, Narrating: Good morning. It's Monday, February 19th, President's Day.
I'm Mark Garrison, in for Shumita Basu. This is "Apple News Today."
Coming up, what's next after the death of Vladimir Putin's fiercest critic,
how AI could interfere with the U.S. election,
and the glitch threatening one of NASA's longest-running missions.
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But first, let's take a quick look at some other stories in the news.
A member of Israel's war cabinet warns that a major ground offensive will start
in Rafah on March 10th, the beginning of Ramadan,
if Hamas doesn't release hostages.
Some 1.5 million civilians are sheltering there,
having fled Israeli attacks elsewhere in Gaza.
One of the hardest hit areas is Khan Younis.
The U.N. says the hospital there is effectively out of commission.
It's the second largest hospital in Gaza.
Back in Israel, new protests against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu
have broken out.
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Demonstrators angry with his handling of the war took to the streets
to call for him to resign.
His administration is also under increasing global pressure.
Today, the U.N.'s top court is holding hearings on the legality
of Israel's occupation of Palestinian territory.
Israel is not scheduled to speak at the hearings,
providing a written argument instead.
In the U.S., Donald Trump is promising to appeal the 355-million-dollar judgment
against him in the New York civil fraud case.
It focused on misleading financial statements
used to secure loans.
"Reuters" looks into how his legal team may fight the case from here.
One path may be to claim that there were no victims of fraud.
The case was brought under a law that usually aims to protect consumers.
New York's attorney general has argued that the law doesn't require victims,
and in any case, the bankers who loaned the Trump businesses money were harmed.
Elsewhere over the weekend, Russian forces took over Avdiivka
in eastern Ukraine.
It's one of the most significant Russian advances in a while.
Retired U.S. Air Force Colonel Cedric Layton talked to "CNN"
about what it means for Russians to control that city.
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Cedric Leighton: That very fact is a bit of a setback to the Ukrainians,
and it's going to be hard for them to recover this area
and all of these areas in the Donbas region,
as well as on the path to Crimea.
If the Ukrainians can't keep Avdiivka or Bakhmut or any of these areas,
they risk losing momentum. And war is often about momentum.
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Garrison, Narrating: Russia is taking advantage of perceived weakness in Ukraine's forces,
as the country calls on the U.S. and other Western allies
to send more aid to replenish its weaponry.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy called on allies
at the Munich Security Conference to do more.
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President Volodymyr Zelensky: Dear friends, unfortunately, keeping Ukraine in the artificial deficit
of weapons, particularly in deficit of artillery and long-range capabilities
allows Putin to adapt to the current intensity of the war.
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Garrison, Narrating: Russian supporters of the late opposition leader
Alexei Navalny are paying tribute, and some are paying a price.
A human rights group says hundreds of people have been arrested.
The Kremlin critic died in an Arctic Circle prison.
Navalny's death is widely blamed on Vladimir Putin,
despite Kremlin denials.
"TIME" magazine senior correspondent Simon Shuster exchanged letters
with Navalny while he was in prison.
Simon Shuster: He felt very certain that all decisions related to his health,
his well-being, even the kind of socks he was given
to live through the wintertime in prison,
all of these decisions were made in the Kremlin
because he is such a prominent threat to Putin.
And the more important decisions related to his life
or death would certainly be made by Putin at the very top.
Garrison, Narrating: Shuster talked to us about why Navalny was such a threat to Putin's power.
Shuster: He could inspire people to risk themselves, risk prison time
in standing up to the regime.
He was one of the very few figures, if not the only one,
who could really call up a demonstration,
could really bring people out into the streets.
He was the main threat to Putin's rule.
So Putin had very good reason to be afraid of Navalny, yes.
Garrison, Narrating: Next month, Putin is up for reelection, and there is no expectation he'll lose.
Activists will try to carry on Navalny's movement.
Some, Shuster says, may write Navalny's name on the ballot as a protest.
But he sees a tough road ahead for Russians who oppose Putin.
Shuster: It's somehow difficult to imagine the opposition movement
in Russia without him.
I think in any case he will be remembered as a very courageous figure
in his decision to return to Russia immediately
after recovering from an assassination attempt
by the Russian regime, to return into the hands of the very regime
that had just tried to kill him,
and to tell that regime, I'm not scared of you,
even if you imprison me, even if you lock me up
north of the Arctic Circle, I'm still going to face you down.
I'm still going to try to resist the oppression that you impose
not only on Navalny and his movement, but on all of Russian society.
I think that is his legacy.
And it's very tragic that it ended this way.
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Garrison, Narrating: AI technology is getting stronger and stronger, driving new concern
about how it could be used in this crucial election year.
One issue is deepfakes, AI-generated clips that hijack someone's face and voice
with the intent to mislead.
That's why a group of tech companies, including Amazon, Google and Meta,
just signed a new agreement on preventing artificial intelligence technology
from interfering with the election.
"Wall Street Journal" reporter Bob McMillan looked into
the larger issue recently.
Bob McMillan: When we were working on this story,
I called it the "all of the problems story."
And we actually had a hard time figuring out which problem was the most concerning
with respect to bad information and the election this year.
Garrison, Narrating: Misinformation has been a huge problem for a long time,
but new AI tools make it much easier to produce convincing images,
audio, and video, and circulate disinformation quickly.
We're already seeing it.
McMillan: Well, I mean, the most obvious example is what appears to be the first example
of fake information in the 2024 election cycle, which is this phone call
that went out in New Hampshire right ahead of the primary
that sounded like it was Joe Biden talking,
but was telling Democrats and independents not to go to the polls.
It was fake. It was completely fake.
Garrison, Narrating: It's not clear how tech platforms plan to combat misleading AI-generated content.
And McMillan says it's also not clear how much impact policing it could have.
McMillan: In 2020 and 2016, fake content circulated even without these AI technologies, right?
Like, there are a lot of people who genuinely believe in QAnon
and that was not dependent on AI in any way.
So you could kind of argue that it's not really a game changer.
Like we're already so primed to believe garbage
that, yeah, okay, we can make more convincing garbage,
but is that really going to change everything?
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Garrison, Narrating: And finally, NASA is working to save one of its most groundbreaking
and long-running missions, Voyager 1.
When NASA launched it back in 1977, it only had a five-year mission,
including getting pictures of Jupiter and Saturn.
NASA engineers had so much hope for this spacecraft,
they even included a golden record.
It was an audio time capsule of sorts with music and sounds from our planet.
There were also recorded greetings for whoever might find it.
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Unidentified Speaker 1: Hello from the children of planet Earth.
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Garrison, Narrating: There were messages in 55 languages, like this one in Arabic.
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Unidentified Speaker 2: [SPEAKING ARABIC]
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1, Narrating: It says, "Greetings to our friends in the stars."
"We wish that we will meet you someday."
Garrison, Narrating: Popular Mechanics reports on how Voyager 1 has been trucking along
for nearly half a century.
It got those images of Jupiter and Saturn and kept going,
sending back discoveries for decades.
No human-made object ever traveled so far away from Earth.
The problem is, a few months back, in November,
NASA started having trouble communicating with Voyager 1.
It's still in touch, but the spacecraft has been sending back gibberish.
So NASA knows it's still functioning, somewhat, but it's not able to send back
usable data.
Fixing a decades-old system from 15 billion miles away is tough,
especially when it's outlived so many of the engineers who made it.
Still, NASA says it's not giving up.
And no matter what happens, Voyager 1 accomplished its mission
and much, much more.
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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,
we've got a Narrated Article coming up next.
Esquire went on the road with the civil rights activist Al Sharpton
and looked at his decades-long career.
If you're listening in the Podcasts app,
follow Apple News+ Narrated to find that story.
And I'll be back with the news tomorrow.
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