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Good morning. It's Friday, January 12th. I'm Mark Garrison in for Shumita Basu. This is "Apple News Today." On today's show, Israel defends itself against an allegation of genocide, why it's getting so hard to find and afford home and auto insurance, and the inside story of how politics became such a big part of the American evangelical movement.
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But first, a U.S.-led military coalition has launched a large-scale series of attacks inside Yemen, a major expansion of the Middle East battlefield as war rages in Gaza. The airstrikes were targeting Houthi militants backed by Iran. For months, the Houthis have been attacking commercial ships in the region, disrupting global trade. Recently, U.S. and allied forces increased their naval presence in the region to try to secure the shipping lanes.
They fired on Houthi attackers at sea, but now the U.S. is taking the fight to their bases in Yemen with a series of attacks on dozens of targets. They hit Houthi air defenses, radar, and missile and drone launching sites. Houthi leaders say that at least five people were killed there, and the U.S. and its allies will, quote, "pay a heavy price" for the attacks.
President Biden says the strikes were needed because of the danger Houthi attacks at sea pose to civilian and military ships and international trade. The waters off the coast of Yemen lead to the Suez Canal, which is vital to moving goods and fuel around the world. Retired U.S. Air Force Colonel Cedric Leighton told "CNN" that such a large attack could provoke a major new response from the Houthi rebels.
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What can happen here is that the Houthis are going to respond first to the U.S. ships and British ships in the Red Sea. Then they could possibly target installations in Saudi Arabia that could very much inflame tensions throughout the southern Arabian Peninsula at this particular point.
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Recent U.S. diplomatic efforts have focused on preventing the war in Gaza from sparking broader regional conflicts. Pentagon correspondent Tom Bowman was on "NPR" reporting on the many places where violence is spreading.
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The administration is saying this is not a widening of the war, but let's face it, even before the airstrikes in Yemen tonight, we were seeing the regional conflict expanding. Iranian-backed militias have continued attacks on U.S. forces in Syria and Iraq, with the Pentagon logging, get this, 120 attacks since October. And a recent assault in Erbil, Iraq, left three service members wounded, one critically injured with a head wound from shrapnel.
And after its attack on Gaza, Israel has exchanged fire with Iranian-backed Hezbollah fighters in Lebanon, and more recently, of course, killed a senior Hamas official in Beirut. The United States, for its part, also killed a senior Iranian-affiliated militia leader in Baghdad, who the U.S. says was behind these attacks on U.S. forces in the country.
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Another question is how the Houthis' ally, Iran, will respond. It's already shown a willingness to be more aggressive. Before the U.S. airstrikes in Yemen, Iran's navy seized an oil tanker in another part of the region.
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That's part of a long-running dispute over the U.S. seizure of Iranian oil a year ago, which a court found was being traded illegally in violation of sanctions. Now let's take a brief look at some other stories in the news. Today, Israel is responding to South Africa's genocide claim against the country at the International Court of Justice.
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Tal Becker, legal advisor for Israel's Ministry of Foreign Affairs, said that South Africa's allegations were wrong.
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The applicant has regrettably put before the court a profoundly distorted factual and legal picture. The entirety of its case hinges on a deliberately curated, decontextualized, and manipulative description of the reality of current hostilities.
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Becker argues that Israel is defending itself against Hamas, not targeting Palestinian civilians, and that South Africa's case fails to properly take into account the Hamas attacks on October 7th. In U.S. legal news, yesterday, there were closing arguments in former President Donald Trump's civil fraud trial in New York. There was a question as to whether Trump would be allowed to speak in court. Eventually, the judge agreed if Trump would stick to the facts of the case.
But at one point, the judge cut him off, telling his attorney to, quote, "Control your client." The attorney general's office argued that Trump "acted with intent" to fraudulently inflate the value of his assets. The judge in the case says he hopes to rule by the end of the month. Trump's attorneys say they will appeal. In California, Hunter Biden pleaded not guilty to nine tax charges.
They're a mix of felonies and misdemeanors, including failing to file and pay taxes, tax evasion, and filing false returns. Earlier, a deal to plead guilty to some charges fell apart. The trial is expected in June. And in Ohio, an update on a story we talked about on the show before. A grand jury declined to indict Brittany Watts. She experienced a pregnancy loss in her bathroom at home and was later accused of abusing a corpse. Watts spoke out after the decision.
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I want to thank my community, Warren. Warren, Ohio. I was born here. I was raised here. I graduated high school here. And I'm going to continue to stay here because I have to continue to fight.
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The case was seen by reproductive rights advocates as a dangerous example of the kinds of prosecutions that could be more common
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after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade. Communities across the United States caught in this week's severe weather, including tornadoes and flooding,
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are now working to recover from significant damage. In Alabama, Crystal Pendleton stood in front of her father's home and told the local "ABC" station about seeing how a tornado destroyed it.
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To drive up to something that is this devastating, to know that my dad has worked his whole life to have what he had. And in one swoop, it's just all gone.
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Climate change is making severe weather more common and more destructive. People fortunate enough to have insurance can get money to rebuild. But coverage is harder to come by these days. Insurance companies have had tens of billions in net underwriting losses after so many disasters. So they're raising premiums, making it harder for families to get coverage. And in some cases, they're not offering insurance.
"The Wall Street Journal" reports on how both home and auto insurance payments are straining people's budgets. In some states, insurance companies have increased their rates by more than 20%. And some homeowners are finding that their insurance companies are choosing not to renew policies, leaving them scrambling for coverage, like thousands of people living in parts of North Carolina that are prone to hurricanes.
The company Nationwide Mutual said it won't renew home insurance policies for them anymore. If an insurance company isn't sure how risky something will be, it either charges higher premiums or refuses to cover it. A recent industry analysis says climate change and the increasingly extreme weather will make it harder for insurance companies to predict future risk.
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That could mean more companies stop providing insurance in some places. As the CEO of Allstate puts it, "There will be insurance deserts." Finally, we're heading into the weekend before Monday's Iowa caucuses, the first real test for the Republican presidential candidates. One bloc that's likely to play a consequential role in Iowa
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and throughout the campaign is evangelical voters. In 2016 polling, nearly two-thirds of Iowa caucus participants identified as born-again or evangelical Christians. The latest episode of our interview show, "Apple News in Conversation," looks at this group. Shumita, who's on maternity leave, spoke with Tim Alberta just before going.
He's a Christian who was raised in the Evangelical Church, and his new book is called "The Kingdom, the Power, and the Glory, American Evangelicals in an Age of Extremism."
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Trump believes that he has effectively transformed the evangelical base of the Republican Party and made it into almost his own image, which is, I think, not an overstatement in many ways.
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You can get a sense of that when you listen to how some evangelical voters talk about him.
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So what is it about Trump that you love so much?
Well, I like Trump as a person.
He's a godly man.
President Trump works for God.
His Christian values that he stands for.
He's working for God, for darn sure.
And God is all about America.
Gotta support the king.
He's using President Trump as one of his tools.
King Jesus first and then King Trump.
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To hear how some evangelicals became Trump loyalists and what the future of this movement could look like, check out this weekend's episode. If you're listening in the Apple News app, we've queued it up to play next. And in the Podcasts app, just search for "Apple News in Conversation" to find it. Have a great weekend, and we'll be back with the news on Monday.
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