I gave my brother a New York Times subscription.
We changed articles, and so having read the same article, we can discuss it. - She send you your long subscription so I have access to all the games.
“- The New York Times contributes to our quality time together.”
- It enriches our relationship. - It was such a cool and thoughtful gift. - We're reading the same stuff, we're making the same food, we're on the same page.
- Learn more about giving a New York Times subscription as a gift. At NYTimes.com/gift. (upbeat music) - From the New York Times, it's the headlines. I'm Tracy Mumford.
Today's Wednesday, July 29th, here's what we're covering.
(upbeat music) - At airports across the U.S. in the past few weeks. - Help! Help! Help us!
- I see you here, help us! - The Trump administration has been carrying out a surge of immigration arrests as it opens a new front in its aggressive effort to deport immigrants.
- Miss somebody! - Help! - Help! - Help!
“- Ice officers had already been arresting some people”
with deportation orders at airports using personal information provided by airlines.
But documents obtained by the Times
show that federal agents are now arresting people with expired U.S. visas too. That is a much larger group, potentially hundreds of thousands of people who largely weren't prioritized for deportation under past administrations.
Many of them have permission to work in the U.S. and are waiting for visa extensions or green cards. A broad range of people are being caught up in the new crackdown, including newlyweds who've just married U.S. citizens, a former opair from Ecuador and an Indian engineer
waiting for a new work visa. They've been whisked away from check-in counters and arrival gates by immigration agents in plain clothes. Immigration lawyers told the Times that these kinds of arrests are unprecedented
and that they are now rethinking the advice they give to immigrants whose legal status is in a gray area,
warning them not to travel.
“In response to questions from the Times,”
the Department of Homeland Security did not confirm the expanded airport arrests effort. But it comes as ice is under pressure to hit a White House target of 2,000 arrests a day. A DHS spokesperson said in the statement
that it's working to ensure that, quote, "Aliens in our country illegally can no longer fly unless it is out of our country to self-deport." (gentle music) Today in the Senate, Dr. Anthony Fauci,
the country's former top infectious disease expert, is set to testify involuntarily. He's been subpoenaed by Republican Senator Rand Paul, the chair of the Homeland Security Committee, who has, for years, accused Fauci of funding research
that triggered the COVID pandemic and lying about it. Accusations that lack evidence. - It could have happened if anybody is lying here, Senator, it is you. - Fauci has forcefully denied the allegations before,
as Paul has pushed the so-called "lab leak theory." He's claimed that under Fauci's leadership, a U.S. health agency funded dangerous research on viruses in China that spun out of control. - Because there were not a whole viruses
that became more transmissible in human and you funded it and you met the truth. - And you employed. - What's new this time is that the Senator is coming in with more than 1,100 pages of Fauci's private diary
where he typed daily notes during the pandemic. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. shared the pages with the Senator, saying they were written on a government computer and now they could quote, "See the light of day."
My colleagues have gone through the diary and they say there's no smoking gun in there. The diary shows Fauci wrestling with the crisis of the pandemic in real time as scientists views on what was happening and why were rapidly evolving.
What the pages do show though is Fauci musing about his own importance and fame and writing about celebrities he crossed paths with, like Julia Roberts and Barbara Streisand. Times, health reporter Cheryl Gay stoleberg
has been part of the team going through Fauci's writings ahead of his testimony today. - There's a scientific element to them and a political element. On the science, they don't really add anything new
to the question of where COVID-19 originated. They really confirm what we already knew that Fauci was handling a fast moving situation in which some scientists suspected a lab leak but in the end concluded that wasn't the case.
But on the political front, they inflamed the debate about the lab leak and about Fauci himself. - Now two quick updates on the Trump administration.
Federal health officials have announced they plan to end a program
that has helped keep down the cost of monthly premiums
“for Americans on Medicare under the program”
which went into place two years ago under President Biden. The government has given insurance companies billions of dollars in subsidies to lower health care costs for millions of seniors,
specifically when it comes to their prescription drug plans. In defending the move, Dr. Mehmet Aas, the head of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, said the Biden administration's approach had been a quote unacceptable giveaway
to insurance companies, Oz claimed that once the subsidies are eliminated, premiums for most Medicare recipients will go up by less than $10. But the full impact of the policy change is not yet clear. And when it kicks in for next year,
Medicare beneficiaries couldn't at paying hundreds of dollars more per year for their drug plans. And in the Middle East this morning,
“the U.S. said it launched joint strikes with Saudi Arabia”
on Iranian-backed militias in Iraq. According to the Pentagon, those militias had carried out dozens of attacks on U.S. forces and Saudi energy infrastructure this week
at the direction of Iran's revolutionary guards corps.
Saudi Arabia's role in the strikes is notable because the country has generally avoided being an open combatant in the U.S. war with Iran so far. But it's been increasingly dragged into the conflict, especially after another Iran proxy force,
the Houthi militia in Yemen, recently started firing on Saudi ships in the Red Sea. In the past few years, the fracking boom in the U.S. has made the country the world's largest producer of natural gas.
One consequence of that, though, has been a huge volume of waste water. Salty liquid full of all sorts of hazardous chemicals, heavy metals, even radioactive materials. Much of that water is hauled away from fracking sites
in tanker trucks and then pumped thousands of feet underground where that water is supposed to stay forever. But my colleague, Quingle Bikki, has been covering how in places from Oklahoma to Ohio, the toxic liquid is starting to spread.
- I recently went outside of Marietto, Ohio. - Did you have more questions than any of them? - And a rural hollow with local oil and gas producer, who took me to an old-fashioned oil well, which was flooded with wastewater.
- I don't want you to make much on the ground, but that's what we got. - When he opened the valve, this jet of fluid erupted into a bucket. It was fracking wastewater, he said.
- How much about you on me, don't matter anymore. We'll probably die from anything like that. - Experts, I spoke with, said that the fact that this fluid is making its way up through these oil and gas wells
is compelling evidence that the waste injected thousands of feet underground is not staying or it's supposed to. - Quing says, Ohio has made itself something of a destination for fracking wastewater, allowing companies from other states
to truck it there for disposal. But now, local officials in Marietto are starting to push back. - I met with the city council president who told me that until roughly this time last year,
she had no idea that there were four injection wells right outside the city and that they were permitted together to inject hundreds of thousands of gallons of fracking brine every day within two miles of the city's drinking water source.
- One local water official described the situation as potentially catastrophic and that if radio active materials enter their water system, it would be potentially impossible to remove them. Officials in Marietto have now declared an emergency
in the city and have asked the state to immediately stop all fracking wastewater injection nearby. A fracking indistiraming while argues that injection wells are safe. The president of the Ohio Oil and Gas Association
told the times that when properly built, maintained and regulated, the wells, quote, do not pose a significant threat to drinking water. (upbeat music) (upbeat music)
- And finally, Gunther Von Higgins, the scientist behind the famous body world exhibits featuring real human corpses, has died at 81. - It just brings a real reality of the body
“in how it functions and I think this is really educational.”
- The exhibits which debuted in the mid-90s offered people a chance to see bodies preserved and dissected to show off every tendon and bone.
Over the years, more than 50 million visitors
passed through the touring presentations. And as NPR interviews show,
Some were fascinated, some not so much.
- At that it was creepy and gross.
- To make the exhibits possible,
“Von Higgins developed a process called Plastination”
that removed all the skin fat and liquid from human bodies and replaced it
with a sturdy plastic material.
Von Higgins was drawing on his own medical training and a childhood fascination with how bodies work. As a kid, he spent six months in the hospital due to complications from hemophilia.
“- And this opens the eye especially for the youngsters”
for the people which never had a feeling
for the body as or far. - Von Higgins told the AP he wanted people at the exhibits to understand their own bodies better. Body worlds drew many critics though, including from religious and human rights groups.
In his home country of Germany, especially, some compared his work to Nazi experiments. And there were also accusations that he accepted bodies of executed prisoners from China, though there was no evidence he knew the source.
His team then instituted a strict protocol for accepting donations. And as his exhibits became more popular, thousands of people have volunteered to have their bodies preserved in body worlds.
“Von Higgins himself said that's what he wants to happen”
to his body. He said he wants to be plastinated and put on display at the entrance of one of his exhibits, wearing his trademark black fedora. Those are the headlines.
I'm Tracy Mumford, we'll be back tomorrow.
