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Good morning. It's Friday, February 9th. I'm Yasmeen Khan in for Shumita Basu. This is "Apple News Today." Coming up, the American city that's marketing itself to migrant workers. We'll look at America's obsession with football, and the powerful family story behind a surprise hit song.
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But first, let's take a quick look at some major stories in the news. A special counsel investigating President Biden's handling of classified documents is not recommending criminal charges, though the investigation's report says Biden did willfully keep and share some classified information. It also questioned Biden's memory. The White House pushed back on that last point, which is the judgment of a lawyer, not a doctor.
Biden said his memory is fine, and he forcefully took issue with the report's claim that he couldn't remember the date his son Beau died.
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How in the hell dare he raise that? Frankly, when I was asked the question, I thought to myself, it wasn't any of their damn business. Let me tell you something. Some of you have commented, I wear, since the day he died, every single day, the rosary he got from Our Lady of… Every Memorial Day, we hold a service remembering him, attended by friends and family and the people who loved him. I don't need anyone. I don't need anyone… to remind me when he passed away.
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Former President Trump's campaign has tried to play up questions about Biden's mental state. In the same press conference, Biden mixed up the heads of state of Egypt and Mexico. In Nevada, Trump is the winner of the state's caucus, as expected. Nikki Haley did not compete, so Trump was the only major candidate and will get all the state's delegates. In related news, the U.S. Supreme Court appears likely to keep Trump on the ballot in Colorado.
The high court heard arguments yesterday in a key case. An earlier Colorado court decision removed Trump from the primary ballot because he was ruled an insurrectionist. Many court watchers said the justices seemed ready to rule in Trump's favor. That includes legal analyst Steve Vladeck on CNN.
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Sometimes you walk out of oral argument not knowing what the court's going to do. Maybe the justices are asking hard questions to both sides. Sometimes you walk out knowing how this is going. And this really feels like seven, eight, maybe even all nine justices for a very narrow holding that Colorado by itself can't disqualify a candidate for the presidency.
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Meanwhile, Russian President Vladimir Putin says he thinks a prisoner exchange could lead to the release of jailed Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich. Putin gave no timeline for the swap, though. He spoke in a rare interview with Western media, a conversation with right-wing commentator Tucker Carlson. Much of the interview was taken up by Putin's familiar talking points about Ukraine and the West.
And with no end in sight to the war, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has replaced his top general. This comes as Ukraine says it needs a new strategy and more foreign aid. In the U.S. Senate, a bill to send tens of billions in aid to Ukraine, and also Israel, cleared a key hurdle yesterday. It got enough votes to avoid dying in a filibuster.
As we mentioned yesterday, this bill strips out the immigration measures that many Republicans originally argued for, then eventually turned against.
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Many congressional Republicans are focused on tougher borders and deportations.
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And many big city Democratic mayors are telling migrants to stop coming to their cities. But at least one American town is sending a message to migrants: We want you working here. "The Wall Street Journal" went to Topeka, Kansas for this story. Like a lot of smaller U.S. cities, Topeka has stagnating population growth and has struggled to fill thousands of open jobs.
So for a few years now, the city, along with local businesses, has been funding a campaign to attract workers called Choose Topeka. And last year, the project turned its focus to the southern border and attracting migrant families new to the U.S. Topeka offers financial incentives, like support with relocation and housing costs, and the program has some requirements beyond work authorization. People must buy or rent a home within one year of moving or being hired.
The city printed moving and welcome guides in Spanish to attract attention, and the message really took off last fall when a story ran on Telemundo.
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Nearly 10,000 resumes have come in since that aired, according to the city. The mayor, Democrat Michael Padilla, told the "Journal" it just made sense to focus their efforts on immigrants. The city already has a growing Hispanic population, and the business community has largely welcomed the initiative. Local business development director Israel Sanchez told the local NBC station the program is working.
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Seeing all the people who want to move here, people who are driving or flying from different states just to check out Topeka, see what we have to offer. I think it speaks to the nature of the city. The city that is growing, that is expanding that as a potential.
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In other cities, like New York, Chicago, and Denver, the number of incoming migrants has raised concerns about resources. Padilla told the "Journal" Topeka could not handle even a fraction of what those places are seeing. But he says he's happy that Topeka can help people who are eligible and willing to work.
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This Sunday, the Kansas City Chiefs and the San Francisco 49ers will face off in Super Bowl 58.
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The game is set to be a fitting conclusion to a wildly successful NFL season.
What this is going to be is a, is a heavyweight title fight between the two best teams in the sport.
That's Pablo Torre. He's a frequent contributor to ESPN and the latest guest on our interview show, Apple News In Conversation. Torre spoke with guest host David Greene, who's filling in for Shumita while she's on maternity leave.
The NFL is getting exactly what it wanted, which is to say the biggest name characters all converging, the most obvious storylines getting to be chewed on. It's just a story of Goliath to me.
Some of those big-name characters include Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes and 49ers quarterback Brock Purdy. And then, of course, there's Kansas City Chiefs tight end Travis Kelsey and pop icon Taylor Swift.
It's like we're watching an extremely on-the-nose romantic comedy where the meet-cute is the most popular pop cultural figure meets the most popular sport and they fall in love. And so everybody now, you get dared not to watch or at least pay attention to it.
Polling suggests the NFL could be on the verge of record-setting viewership for the Super Bowl. Audience numbers have been up all season, with NFL games accounting for 93 of the top 100 U.S. broadcasts last year. Only two other events made the top 50, the State of the Union and the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade. The rest were NFL games. Torre talks about how the league has somehow expanded its juggernaut status despite recent controversies around player health and racial inequities.
Plus, he dives even further back into NFL history to the first Super Bowl, which was nothing like what we'll be watching on Sunday.
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The third quarter, right, so the kickoff then, they had to redo it. because the cameras missed it, because it got botched. So literally the game started and they were like, hold on, we gotta do this over. It's just like, this is, it's Bad News Bears stuff.
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If you want to hear the full episode, check out "Apple News In Conversation" in the Podcasts app. And if you're listening in the Apple News app, stick around at the end of this episode, Torre and Greene's conversation will be queued up to play for you next.
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In recent weeks, people worldwide have rallied around a new song that sounds like it boogied its way right out of the next Barbie movie.
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It's by a musician from Washington, D.C. named Kat Janis.
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It's called Dance You Outta My Head, and fans have been sending this track up the charts since it came out last month.
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It's at the top 10 on iTunes and has been used in more than 800,000 TikToks and counting. Besides being catchy, the song has a moving backstory. Janice has an aggressive form of cancer. She's in hospice. When her health got worse, she realized this could be her last song, and she wanted to make sure that her son, Lauren, who's seven, could have the money it makes. She raced to release the single just in time for her 31st birthday in January.
And she told "The Washington Post" she was shocked when it started to take off on the iTunes charts. She apparently screamed so loud that one of her friends ran into the room thinking something was terribly wrong. Just the opposite, though. She told "The Post" she feels good about getting to experience this moment with her son, especially because he was the one who inspired the song. The two would goof off in the car, and sing.
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Janice's family says that's how the singer wants to be remembered,
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as someone who got people off their feet and dancing.
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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, as I mentioned, "Apple News In Conversation" on the Super Bowl is playing for you next. Enjoy listening to that, have a great weekend, and we'll be back with the news on Monday.
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