Why more donated livers are going to waste

And it's not just popular, it's also a powerful symbol. Anti-government protesters carry them. Politicians wear them as lapel pins. The Tennessee Republican congressman who represents the district where this week's school shooting happened posed with what looks like AR-15s in his family Christmas card. And after the killings, he said he didn't regret the card. "Post" reporter Todd Frankel is part of the team that tracked the rise of the AR-15 in America.

But things changed. The U.S. banned assault weapons in 1994. Ten years later, when that policy expired, gun makers saw an opportunity to boost sales. Ad campaigns began to sell the AR-15 as a way for civilians to own military-grade hardware. The marketing traded on images of U.S. troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, whose weapons were similar to AR-15s. Those images were everywhere in popular culture, especially movies and video games. Frankel told us how effective the militarized sales pitch was.

Today, there are at least 20 million AR-15s in the U.S. Most were made after the 2012 mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary in Connecticut, when a gunman with an AR-15 killed 20 children and six adults. Sales consistently rise after school shootings. The "Post" calls the AR-15 "a barometer of fear and a gauge of political identity" in this country.

It has become a symbol of the gun that needs to be banned right away. And also the symbol of a gun that needs to be protected, that symbolizes constitutional rights. So Americans are very divided on the AR-15. It has come to mean much more than the sum of its parts.

Pope Francis is hospitalized. The 86-year-old has a respiratory infection. The Vatican says he'll need several days of treatment. The Vatican traditionally says very little about the health of popes, but it did say that it wasn't COVID.

Taiwan's president is in the U.S. today, in a visit that's ratcheting up already high tensions between Washington and Beijing. There is a possibility that Tsai Ing-wen will meet with House Speaker Kevin McCarthy at some point during her trip. China says such a meeting would lead to a, quote, "serious confrontation." Beijing considers Taiwan part of China. And China has made aggressive statements and military moves in recent years. The Biden administration is trying to play down the event, pointing out that several previous presidents of Taiwan have been in the U.S. before.

Republican lawmakers in Kentucky have overturned the Democratic governor's veto of a bill banning transgender children from getting gender-affirming healthcare. It also restricts which bathrooms they can use in public schools. Opponents shouted during the session about the bill. Some were even removed by guards.

And more than a thousand business leaders and academics, including Elon Musk and Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak, say artificial intelligence researchers need to slow down. In an open letter, they are asking companies to pause development on more powerful AI systems for at least six months to consider the dangers that AI could pose to humans. The letter says governments may need to take action to make sure there's enough planning and management in place to develop AI safely.

Our latest episode of "In Conversation" is all about artificial intelligence, the big, fast changes in the field and what it means for our future. You can hear that episode in the Podcasts app.

A new joint investigation from "The Washington Post" and "The Markup" looks into how recent changes in how we manage liver distributions are helping people in wealthy states at the expense of poorer ones. The policy change prioritized the sickest patients on waitlists. That meant less focus on how far the organ had to travel. Now, patients in New York have access to livers as far away as Ohio.

But looking at the data, life-saving surgeries declined in many Midwestern and Southern states, as well as in Puerto Rico. By contrast, California and New York had the highest number of liver transplants in more than a decade. The investigation also finds that the median distance livers are being transported has nearly doubled. And we're seeing the highest number of wasted livers in almost ten years. Livers are fragile and can only survive for about 12 hours outside the human body.

The United Network for Organ Sharing, which oversees the national organ transplant system, responded to this reporting, acknowledging that livers are traveling further, but also saying this is a better allocation of resources. It's getting organs to the sickest people. The Biden administration is proposing reforms. Just last week, it called on Congress to double the current funding to address equity issues and help "modernize" the transplant system.

Now, this one change is expected to shave off some serious time in games. When pitch clocks were used in the minor leagues and during spring training, games wrapped up nearly 30 minutes faster on average. If you're a baseball history fan looking for a long read, check out "The Ringer's" story on the enduring discussion about the length of ballgames. It goes all the way back to the mid-19th Century. The concept of a pitch clock is actually a lot older than you might realize. You can read the whole thing in the Apple News app, along with all of the stories that we talked about today. And if you're already listening in the News app right now, stick around.