What counts as a machine gun? Supreme Court hears case.

Good morning! It’s Wednesday, February 28th. I’m Mark Garrison in for Shumita Basu. This is Apple News Today. On the show, The Supreme Court hears a major gun case, Why Egypt isn’t taking in Palestinians from neighboring Gaza, and how Leap Day keeps chaos away.

But first, let’s take a quick look at some other major stories in the news. In Michigan, President Biden won the Democratic primary, as expected. But the protest campaign we talked about yesterday racked up a lot of votes against him. Around 100,000 voters selected “uncommitted.” Local Arab and Muslim activists encouraged people to vote this way as a protest of Biden’s support for Israel’s war in Gaza. They ended up with a lot more votes than their stated goal of 10,000.

We focused on the primary to send this message to Joe Biden that he needed to listen to Michiganders. When we said we need a permanent ceasefire now. And come November, it's going to be Joe Biden and the Democratic Party that are going to be held accountable for handing the White House to someone like Trump.

In the Republican primary, Trump defeated Nikki Haley by a wide margin. In Alabama, legislators are making moves to protect IVF clinics, following the state Supreme Court ruling that frozen embryos are children. Several fertility clinics paused treatments as a result. New legislation introduced yesterday by Republican lawmakers would give would give fertility doctors legal immunity.

Forecasters say, things could get worse, with hot, dry conditions set to continue. The U.S. Supreme Court is hearing arguments today in a gun case that centers on devices that speed up semiautomatic rifles. They’re called bump stocks. When they’re added to a weapon, they allow it to fire much faster, like an automatic rifle.

Machine guns are illegal for civilians. The case is basically about whether adding a bump stock to a legal weapon turns it into an illegal machine gun. The gunman in the 2017 mass shooting in Las Vegas had multiple rifles with bump stocks. He fired over 1,000 rounds in 11 minutes. Sixty people ultimately died. It was the deadliest mass shooting in American history. The next year, the Trump administration banned bump stocks, saying they fell within the definition of machine guns.

There's not going to be any discussion, probably, of what the framers of the Constitution thought back in the 1700s and 1800s about guns. What they're asked to do here is to determine whether a bump stock itself fits the definition of machine gun in federal law. And if it does, then it is prohibited.

Coyle says, the arguments may go into great detail on how rifles, machine guns, and bump stocks actually function.

I can tell you now that there is a fundamental disagreement in the Supreme Court, in the parties. We don't know what the justices think yet, but a fundamental disagreement between the government and the man who was actually challenging this rule over how bump stocks operate. So, it's going to be, I think, pretty fascinating to see how the justices sort through the mechanics of bump stocks.

The case is the latest one on guns the Supreme Court is taking up. Last fall, it heard a case challenging a federal law that bars anyone

subject to a domestic-violence restraining order from possessing a gun. The Court has not yet ruled on that case. The U.N. says a quarter of Gaza’s population is now one step away from famine. The war is making it difficult to get enough food in. Aid workers say a ceasefire is urgently needed to allow more humanitarian supplies in.

Over a million people are taking shelter in Rafah, by the Egyptian border. They went there to escape fighting in other parts of Gaza. But there have been Israeli airstrikes in Rafah. And Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said a major ground invasion could follow if hostages held by Hamas aren’t released. Egypt is not allowing Palestinians to cross its borders in any significant numbers. Officials say they’re concerned Israel wouldn’t let Palestinians come back to Gaza later.

You know, time and again, since Israel's founding in 1948, Palestinians have been forced to flee their homes. And Egyptians, they don't want to be a part of facilitating that happening again now in Gaza.

Most Palestinians in Gaza are descendants of people displaced decades ago in that first major Israeli-Palestinian war. Karin Huster, a medical coordinator for Doctors Without Borders, talked to "NPR" about the fear and uncertainty Palestinians in Rafah are dealing with right now.

I've never heard anybody say, "We want to go to Egypt." They just want to be in a place where they don't get bombarded and where they can sleep and where they can wake up the next day alive. Some people have even told me, you know, I want to go back to my home. And even if it's destroyed, I'll put my tent there and it'll be safer. You know, at least I will die on my home.

Egypt is also keeping tight control of the border in order to avoid being dragged into the conflict. There are concerns that militants could cross and then launch attacks against Israel from Egypt. Egyptian officials told "NPR" they’re building an enclosed area with cement walls that can hold over 100,000 people, in case there’s a breach of the border during an Israeli assault on neighboring Rafah.

Egypt could suspend its decades-old peace treaty with Israel. We’ll finish today with a story about tomorrow. It’s the kind of tomorrow that only comes around every four years… February 29, Leap Day.

Leap Day solves for a problem. Our human calendars don’t quite match up with what’s actually going on in the solar system. A while back, "National Geographic" got astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson to break it down.

It takes, like, 365 and a quarter days to go around the sun. So, we just ignore that quarter day. Just sweep it under the rug for three years.

That quarter-day difference may sound small, but over time, it’s a big deal. Without adding a Leap Day, our calendars would gradually get out sync. Everything from farming schedules to holidays would fall outside the months we expect them. Before the Romans figured all this out, at one point their calendar was some three months off. It was Julius Caesar, or more likely someone on his staff who was good at astronomy and math, who worked in a leap day. But even that wasn’t quite perfect.

Astronomers say our current calendar system is going to fall out of whack again. But no need to stress anytime soon, since it’ll take more than 3,000 years before it makes much of a difference. 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 from "The Atlantic." It’s a profile of Jodie Foster, and how two of her most recent roles are very different from what she’s known for.