[INTRO MUSIC BEGINS]
Mark Garrison, Narrating: Good morning! It's Monday, February 26th.
I'm Mark Garrison in for Shumita Basu.
This is Apple News Today.
On today's show, how the Alabama IVF ruling forced a family
to leave the state to continue treatment,
the people who came to the U.S. for a better life
and got trapped at O'Hare Airport,
and an unusual way managers are trying to get more workers
back into offices.
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But first, let's take a quick look at some major stories in the news.
The Biden administration says negotiators have an understanding
on the broad points of a potential temporary ceasefire deal in Gaza
that would include the release of hostages held by Hamas.
But the specifics aren't public.
The death toll in Gaza is close to 30,000 people.
Representatives from the U.S., Israel, Qatar, and Egypt
are expected to continue talks to iron out technical details.
But Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu
says Israel is still preparing a large-scale assault on Rafah.
1.5 million Palestinian civilians are sheltering there.
Netanyahu told "CBS" that a ceasefire deal
may only delay an operation.
[START CBS ARCHIVAL CLIP]
Benjamin Netanyahu: We're not going to give it up if we have a deal,
it will be delayed somewhat, but it will happen.
If we don't have a deal we'll do it anyway.
It has to be done because total victory is our goal
and total victory is within reach, not months away, weeks away,
once we begin the operation.
[END CBS ARCHIVAL CLIP]
Garrison, Narrating: To U.S. politics, where former president Donald Trump
beat Nikki Haley in South Carolina's Republican primary
by a wide margin over the weekend.
[START ARCHIVAL CLIP]
[CROWD CHEERS]
Donald Trump: That is really something.
This was a little sooner than we anticipated.
[CROWD CHEERS, APPLAUSE]
[END ARCHIVAL CLIP]
Garrison, Narrating: Haley said she'll stay in the race through Super Tuesday on March 5th.
[START ARCHIVAL CLIP]
[CROWD CHEERS]
Nikki Haley: I said earlier this week that no matter what happens
in South Carolina that I would continue to run for president.
[CROWD CHEERS]
[END ARCHIVAL CLIP]
Garrison, Narrating: Tomorrow, Democrats and Republicans
head to the polls in Michigan's primary.
Also, Republican National Committee chair Ronna McDaniel
is stepping down.
Trump had criticized her management of the party.
He endorsed a group of new leaders,
including his daughter-in-law, Lara Trump.
In Washington, lawmakers are on the verge
of a partial government shutdown again.
They have just a few days to strike a deal or else services
including food stamps, housing assistance, and more
could be affected.
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President Biden is bringing Congressional leaders
from both parties
to the White House tomorrow to talk about the looming shutdown
and funding for Ukraine.
Fertility doctors across America are frustrated
with the recent Alabama Supreme Court decision that frozen embryos
have the legal rights of children.
They're worried about the impact on patients.
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Several fertility clinics in the state are pausing services
while they look at the new legal risks for patients and clinics.
An Alabama Fertility, which performed around 700 rounds of IVF last year,
they're pausing new treatments because of the ruling.
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Dr. Mamie McLean: We're incredibly worried that IVF as it stands will not continue in Alabama.
[END MSNBC ARCHIVAL CLIP]
Garrison, Narrating: That's Dr. Mamie McLean from the clinic on "MSNBC."
She says patients are worried.
[START MSNBC ARCHIVAL CLIP]
McLean: They feel like they've been left alone by the state of Alabama,
we have patients who plan for months in the lead up to both IVF
and a frozen embryo transfer.
So, these treatments are not… They've been ongoing for quite a while.
And so, the decision to cancel a patient's treatment
is devastating news for them.
[END MSNBC ARCHIVAL CLIP]
Garrison, Narrating: Gabrielle Goidel talked to "CNN" about trying to get pregnant
in the middle of all of this.
The court's ruling came just days before
she was scheduled to have her eggs retrieved.
[START CNN ARCHIVAL CLIP]
Gabrielle Goidel: I'm probably 15 shots in and my body is bruised and hurt,
it's not been great physically. I don't feel the greatest.
I've already been so poked and prodded with the IVF process.
And now I feel like there's somebody else who's coming into my personal life
and it's very invasive.
[END CNN ARCHIVAL CLIP]
Garrison, Narrating: Goidel and her husband frantically called other IVF providers.
They found one that could take her, but it was in Texas.
So she'll continue IVF there, but that adds additional travel costs
to the already expensive process.
She told "CNN," the ruling makes a difficult ordeal even worse.
Goidel had three miscarriages, and the family has already spent
tens of thousands of dollars on IVF.
[START CNN ARCHIVAL CLIP]
Goidel: All we want is to just have the American dream and have a family,
[PENSIVE MUSIC FADES IN]
and I never thought that this would be something
that would be conceived as immoral.
[END CNN ARCHIVAL CLIP]
Garrison, Narrating: Now to a story about families coming to the U.S for a better life
who got stuck in limbo, living at Chicago's O'Hare airport.
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Texas Republican governor Greg Abbott says that he's sent more than 30,000 migrants
to Chicago since 2022.
The state has been sending tens of thousands of people
who cross the southern border to cities led by Democrats
to protest U.S. immigration policies.
Elly Fishman: And that meant that migrants started arriving in the city
without a place to live,
and some of them got stuck at O'Hare Airport.
Garrison, Narrating: Elly Fishman writes in "Rolling Stone" about these families.
She spent the holiday season reporting from O'Hare,
at one of its busiest times.
It was meant to be only a temporary shelter for migrants,
where people could wait for better housing.
But the large number of new arrivals meant many people spent a lot of time
living at the airport.
Fishman profiled a woman called Angi.
[START ROLLING STONE ARCHIVAL CLIP]
Fishman: She had five young children, between the ages of two and eight,
and they were living in a place in the airport
that is not set up to house families.
[END ROLLING STONE ARCHIVAL CLIP]
Garrison, Narrating: They were trying to escape poverty and instability in Venezuela.
It took her family months to make the dangerous journey north,
through the jungle and desert.
After arriving, Angi accepted the offer of a flight to Illinois.
She’d never been on a plane before.
And she’d heard Chicago was welcoming to immigrants.
But the reality was, she had no place to stay.
So she wound up in a vast field of makeshift beds at O’Hare,
with hundreds of other migrants.
One volunteer told Fishman, the conditions are “not humane.”
[START ROLLING STONE ARCHIVAL CLIP]
Fishman: It is a transient place by nature.
No showers, no real private spaces
to reflect or even just take a moment for yourself.
And I just was so struck by what it would mean to try and move
through your day with five kids in a place like that.
You know, the sink that you use for five seconds to wash your hands
on the way to your gate, for Angie is not only a sink,
it's a laundry basin, it's a shower.
[END ROLLING STONE ARCHIVAL CLIP]
Garrison, Narrating: Angi’s asylum case is one of two million pending in the U.S.
Angi and her family eventually found a motel to move into.
Many other people camped out at O’Hare have also been able to move
to other accommodations.
But resources in Chicago are still stretched.
[START ROLLING STONE ARCHIVAL CLIP]
Fishman: It's a massive crisis, and trying to figure out
how to support these families and these individual people
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has been a contentious and heated topic in the city.
[END ROLLING STONE ARCHIVAL CLIP]
Garrison, Narrating: It's Monday, and that might mean you're heading back to the office.
Or not, if you work from home.
Or, maybe you work from home, but you get the sense that your boss
would really rather have you in the office more often?
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That kind of push and pull has been going on between companies
and employees ever since the pandemic lockdowns ended.
Some companies take a hard line:
basically, come to the office or you're fired.
Others have a softer approach, which includes making the workplace
more appealing.
Offering free food, nice coffee, better gyms, laundry services.
"The Wall Street Journal" looks at how a few companies
are trying something different: changing the smell.
Some managers are adding perfume to the air, with scent diffusers,
or even pumping it directly into the ventilation system.
It's taking a page out of spas and luxury hotels,
which have been using custom scents to set the mood for a while.
One commercial real-estate company told "The Journal" how it tested
multiple blends to pick a custom scent.
What the bosses settled on was a little different
than what hotels go for, since they're aiming
for a purely relaxing vibe.
The office mix was designed to be more uplifting,
which management decided, smells like a mix of jasmine,
sandalwood, and pine.
This is very different than the usual conversations
about office smells, which are often negative.
There's the colleague who wears way too much cologne,
or the one who reheats fish in the communal kitchen.
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It's not clear that offices adding a signature scent
will get more employees coming in, but it does sound like an improvement.
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
and it's the Apple News pick for Story of the Month.
Every month, our editors are selecting a News+ article
that they don't want you to miss.
This one, from "The Atlantic," is about Scot Peterson.
He was the armed sheriff's deputy at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School
in Parkland, Florida in 2018.
17 people were killed in a mass shooting.
Peterson was heavily criticized for not confronting the gunman.
"The Atlantic" goes beyond his story to look at the major gaps
in law enforcement training in America, when it comes to mass shootings.
If you're listening in the Podcasts app, you can follow Apple News+ Narrated
to find that story.
And I'll be back with the news tomorrow.
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