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Good morning. It's Thursday, September 11th. I'm Shemitah Basu. This is Apple News today. On today's show, the world's eyes on Europe after Poland shot down Russian drones. Why RFKJR's roadmap for childhood health is disappointing even some of his supporters. And signs of possible life on Mars. But first, to what we know about the death of Charlie Kirk, one of the most influential voices in conservative politics. He was killed yesterday on stage at an event hosted by Utah Valley University. The school was the first stop on a debate tour for his conservative youth organization, Turning Point usa. According to eyewitnesses, Kirk was just moments into a debate with an attendee about mass shootings in America when a shooter fired at him, hitting him in the neck. Kirk was 31 years old, the father of two young children, and married to the podcast host Erica Franzvay. Jason Chaffetz, a former Republican House representative for Utah and a current contributor for Fox News, was at the event with his family. He spoke with the network about what he witnessed.
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As soon as that shot went out, everybody hit the deck. Everybody. A lot of people started screaming, and then everybody started running.
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As you might expect, local investigators had a person in custody, but that person was later released. As of early this morning, their search for the shooter is ongoing. Here's Bo Mason, the commissioner of the Utah Department of Public Safety, speaking at a press conference last night.
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This incident occurred with a large crowd around. There was one shot fired and one victim. While the suspect is at large, we believe this was a targeted attack towards one individual.
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President Trump addressed the news in a video message.
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Charlie inspired millions, and tonight, all who knew him and loved him are united in shock and horror. Charlie was a patriot who devoted his life to the cause of open debate and the country that he loved so much, the United States of America.
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Trump went on to say violence was the tragic consequence of demonizing those with whom you disagree. And he blamed rhetoric from the radical left. Although authorities have not yet confirmed motive, politicians from both parties, including all living former presidents, have condemned the shooting. Barack Obama said, quote, this kind of despicable violence has no place in our democracy. And former Vice President Kamala Harris wrote that she was deeply disturbed by the attack. Soon after news of the shooting, but before Kirk was confirmed dead, House Speaker Mike Johnson called for a moment of silence on the chamber floor to pray for him. But it soon turned into a shouting match with some House Democrats criticizing the fact that school shootings, including one in Colorado yesterday that critically injured at least three high school students, have not gotten the same attention from members of Congress.
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We will join prayer right after this. Okay. The chair lays before the House a communication. The House will be in order.
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Kirk and his organization played a critical role in mobilizing younger voters to right wing causes. He created Turning Point when he was 18 years old and today it has chapters at more than 850 colleges. Kirk became Trump's social media coordinator for the 2016 election and has supported him ever since, backing Trump's false claims that he lost the 2020 election due to voter fraud. Kirk stood by Trump after the January 6 Capitol riot and was among the first to start building support for the president's political comeback. Here he is speaking at the Republican national convention in 2024 under Biden.
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Our young people own nothing and they are miserable. Donald Trump refuses to accept this fake, pathetic, mutilated version of the American dream.
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Kirk's far right politics were infused with his Christian beliefs. He argued against the separation of church and state and was staunchly against abortion. He often spread falsehoods and conspiracies about vaccines, transgender people and demographic change. He was known for his firebrand style of public speaking and engaging people in debate. In fact, the event he was killed at was quite similar to the debate events he held that launched his career.
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He.
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He spoke about the early days of his political activism earlier this year on California Governor Gavin Newsom's podcast.
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I would literally show up to UW Madison with a card table and a big cardboard sign saying debate me. I wanted to try and challenge the predominant view. I always loved debate and disagreement. I loved the kind of spar.
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President Trump ordered all US Flags on public grounds to be lowered to half staff until Sunday night in Kirk's honor. Now to Europe and the fallout after more than a dozen Russian drones entered Polish airspace late on Tuesday, with some flying deep enough to close four airports. This is the first time Russian drones have been downed over NATO territory since the war in Ukraine began. Poland's Prime Minister Donald Tusk called it a large scale provocation. Here's Mark Rutte, NATO's secretary general, reacting to the news yesterday.
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It is absolutely reckless. It is absolutely dangerous. But as I said, the full assessment is ongoing. And to Putin, I mean, my message is clear. Stop the war in Ukraine. Stop the escalating war which he is now basically mounting on innocent civilians and civilian infrastructure. Stop violating allied airspace and know that we stand ready.
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Tusk has requested to invoke Article 4 of the NATO treaty, which calls for an emergency meeting with the 32 member states. Tusk's deputy and Foreign Minister Roddick Sikorsky explained why to CNN we've learned for.
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500 years that when Russia threatens us, we unfortunately have to take it deadly seriously because Russia has been conducting a cruel, illegal aggression against Ukraine and we are a neighbor of Ukraine and Russia has attacked us many times in the past.
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Russia has denied responsibility for the drone attack and said its drones had carried out a major attack in western Ukraine and planned to hit any targets in Poland. Poland's decision to take down the drones was swift and there's been no further escalation since. For now, at least, former U.S. ambassador to Poland Mark Brzezinski told CNN that things could have been much worse.
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Thank goodness no one was hurt or killed in Poland yesterday because Poland is the NATO alliance member and it would have triggered Article 5, in which technically an attack on one is an attack on all. And the response would have been technical, as we don't want this horrific conflict in Ukraine, which has claimed over 1 million casualties, to spread. But that's precisely what these incursions can trigger.
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Many experts dismiss the idea that this wasn't a deliberate attack and say Russia has been testing Ukraine's NATO allies. Drones have approached alliance airspace before affecting countries like Latvia, Romania and Croatia, and Tusk has now shut the Polish Belarusian border in response to Russian military exercises taking place nearby. Meanwhile, in the US Calls for President Trump to move forward with increased sanctions against Russia are growing. On Tuesday, before the drones were shot down, Democratic Senator Richard Blumenthal told NPR's Morning Edition why he was pushing a sanctions bill with his Republican colleague Lindsey Graham, which has 84 co sponsors.
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The time has come for action. The president's been mocked and played by Putin, and I think the president ought to be furious that Putin has stalled and stonewalled in this way.
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Since the start of this year, Russian drone attacks on Ukraine have doubled, according to the BBC, and drones have in recent days struck government buildings in Kyiv. Let's turn now to public health, where Robert F. Kennedy Jr. The health and Human services secretary, unveiled his plan to address chronic childhood disease this week. It includes 128 ideas, but health experts told Stat reporter Sarah Todd the plan does very little to propose regulations or policies to improve children's health.
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The reactions that I got from people who are experts on public policy and public health is basically that this is a call for more research on a lot of issues that we kind already have the answers on, she says.
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Even Kennedy's supporters have been let down by the lack of detail.
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There are a couple of areas that people who, in general, you know, back the Make America Healthy Again movement on specific issues were disappointed by. One was the sense that it goes too easy on pesticides in particular. And then the other is that while Kennedy has talked a lot about ultra processed foods and the harm that they can cause in contributing to chronic disease, this report really takes a light touch when it comes to talking about ultra.
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Processed food, processed foods instead. Todd reports that the plan primarily asks companies to make voluntary commitments to do things like remove artificial food dye from their products. It tasks government agencies with carrying out new studies on chronic disease, including studying previously approved medical interventions. And there are several proposals related to vaccines, which Kennedy has a long history of advocating against. He's asking HHS and the National Institutes of Health to investigate what the administration is calling vaccine injuries. And he says wants to reform a program run by the CDC and FDA that collects and analyzes unverified reports of adverse health conditions that occur after a person receives a vaccination in order to study the possibility that a given health outcome is connected to a vaccine.
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He says that people are finding it very difficult to report vaccine injuries when they call in trying to do so, and that they're going to fix that system.
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Kennedy also wants to reform the childhood vaccine schedule, though Todd reports he's offered little information on what that would involve.
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It's pretty unclear, it's pretty short on details, so, you know, we'll see what happens next. But this report, I would say, does not suggest that there are going to be any major changes to policy that would impact childhood chronic disease.
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In recent days, President Trump has tried to distance himself from some of Kennedy's anti vaccine positions.
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He's cautioned against getting rid of all vaccine requirements for children, which is what Florida is currently trying to do. And he also said on social media that some vaccines, quote, pure and simple work.
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And on the same day that Kennedy revealed this plan to address chronic childhood disease, Trump announced a health initiative of his own, one that could change all of those pharmaceutical ads that you see on tv. You know, the ones where possible side effects are quickly rattled off at the very end. Well, the president is asking U.S. health officials to require pharmaceutical companies to disclose even more side effects in these ads and to more strictly enforce existing policies over misleading ads.
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The concern is that these kinds of advertisements encourage patients to pursue prescriptions that they don't actually need and that this in turn can lead to more wasteful medical spending, unnecessary time for patients within the system, and more disinformation among the general public about what conditions they may or may not have, and what treatments might be effective.
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The US Is one of two countries in the world where pharmaceutical companies can directly market products to consumers on TV, according to Bloomberg. Last year they spent $10.8 billion on ads. Before we let you go, a few other stories we're following. Three former senior FBI officials filed lawsuits against the organization's director, Cash Patel, and Attorney General Pam Bondi on Wednesday, claiming the officials fired them to appease President Trump. The suit alleges that Patel told employees he had to fire them because his ability to keep his own job depended on the removal of agents who worked on cases against the president. They say the firings violated their Fifth Amendment right to due process and the First Amendment's guarantee to free association and free speech. The FBI hasn't commented on the suit, but in his confirmation hearing, Patel pledged to maintain the independence of the bureau. In the battle of the billionaires, Elon Musk briefly lost, then regained his title as the world's richest person. For a moment there, he swapped places with Larry Ellison, the CEO of the software company Oracle. Ellison's wealth ballooned to nearly $400 billion following an earnings report on Tuesday and an announcement from the company that it was making major investments in AI. Bloomberg reports that the rise in his wealth is the largest single day increase ever recorded by its Billionaires Index. Musk has largely held the title for much of the past year, due in part to investments in companies like Tesla and SpaceX and was there ever Life on Mars? NASA thinks it's found the clearest sign yet that there might have been. The Mars rover Perseverance found rocks that had markings nicknamed leopard spots that could hold potential for ancient microscopic life if further analysis can show they were produced by chemical reactions connected to microbes. Perseverance has been touring the sites of Mars since 2021, drilling rocks and grabbing samples, but scientists admit that it's possible these markings were caused by geological reactions, and we won't know for sure until the rocks make it back to Earth to be studied. In the meantime, Perseverance's lonely mission goes on. You can find all these stories and 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. The Sunday Times has a story about the late Queen Elizabeth and the personal opinions that she chose to keep close to her vest, including her previously unknown views on Brexit. If you're listening in the podcast app, follow Apple News narrated to find that story and I'll be back with the news tomorrow.
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Sam.