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Good morning. Thousands are feared dead in Iran as the regime's opposition crackdown continues.
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The protests have led already to the most brutal response Iran has shown since the 1980s.
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President Trump is not giving up on Greenland. As leaders meet at the White House today, a Wall Street Journal reporter tells us what he learned from his recent reporting trip there and how the backlash against AI data centers is uniting people. The political divide. It's Wednesday, January 14th. I'm Shemitah Basu. This is Apple News. Today, The situation in Iran appears to be deteriorating fast as the regime attempts to suppress ongoing protests against its rule. One human rights group puts the death toll at 2,000, a sharp rise in a matter of days. The US has urged any American citizen still in the country to leave. These protests have spread across every province as videos document gunfire in the streets of Tehran. What began as anger over soaring inflation has widened into broader demands for political change and potentially the biggest test of the supreme leader since the 1979 revolution. International news outlets are banned from reporting inside the country, and an Internet blackout has cut off communication, so it's hard for reporters to get a full picture. Elon Musk has begun providing free Internet service using his Starlink satellites, but that's likely only helping a small percentage of the country. One British Iranian told the BBC she was briefly able to get through to a family member who was safe, but reported widespread casualties around them. They said that basically everyone's been killed. And I asked, do they personally know people? And they said, family members, colleagues, neighbors, like, you know, in every household that's happening. President Trump has urged the Iranian people to keep protesting and said that help is on its way. Last night on cbs, he said the US Would take strong action if the regime decides to execute protesters.
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They want to have protests, that's one thing. When they start killing thousands of people, and now you're telling me about hanging, we'll see how that works out for them. It's not going to work out good.
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When asked what he wanted the end game to be, Trump said he, quote, liked to win and listed off various deposed or killed leaders like ISIS's Abu Bakr al Baghdadi and Venezuela's Nicholas Maduro. But as Reuters notes, replicating those missions would not be straightforward. Iran is a massive country. It has an entrenched security state and a much more complex ethnic makeup than Venezuela. The Wall Street Journal reports that Trump has been presented with a range of options, from diplomacy to military strikes, but no decision has been made. Responding to Trump's latest comments, Iran's mission to the UN said the US Was manufacturing a pretext for military intervention. Iran's leaders have weathered protests like this before, but that doesn't mean they can do so indefinitely. Arash Azizi is a contributing writer for the Atlantic and a lecturer at Yale. He told us the two key differ this time around.
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First of all, the regime has never been so diplomatically isolated and so troubled at home. It has lost its allies in the region and beyond. At home, it is just failing to pass basic tests of competence. So the regime is really more distressed than it's ever been. At the same time, people of Iran have been sort of angrier than they've ever been. But this shows itself in the protests having the most sort of insurrectionary character compared to the previous ones.
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But Azizi says that while some have rallied around the exiled former prince and son of the deposed shah Reza Pahavi, there's little sign of united opposition that could quickly assume power under one cause.
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It is united in its demands. It wants the regime to step down. It wants some sort of a democratic institution to replace it. It wants democracy instead of the regime rules. But unfortunately, this has not reflected itself in a united front politically. It needs organization and it needs unity if it is to win.
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So far, Azizi says the national security apparatus has shown little signs of cracking or turning on its 86 year old supreme leader, Ayatollah Khamenei. Protesters would need to overcome a sizable part of the population loyal to the regime themselves, out in force for counter demonstrations in recent days, as well as powerful institutions adept at survival. But even if it's holding firm right now, Azizi said last year's conflict with Israel and the US had fundamentally destabilized the regime, leaving it vulnerable.
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There has been heightened conflicts inside the ruling elites in Iran, and all of this meant that in December, when the protests began, the Iranian regime was panicked, unprepared and really unable to do anything about it, and unable to bring the protest to any sort of a quick end. And that explains where we are today.
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Today, foreign ministers of Denmark and Greenland will meet with Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Vice President J.D. vance at the White House. The meeting comes on the heels of President Trump's continued threats to take over the autonomous territory of Greenland. Now, Trump has been saying this for a long time, as far back as his first term in office. But the administration's recent actions in Venezuela, deposing and capturing President Nicolas Maduro, have added a sense of urgency for leaders in Europe to draw a line in the sand that was Apparent in a press conference yesterday where Greenland's prime minister and Denmark's prime minister said that the region was not for sale. Danish leader Mette Fredriksen said it had not been easy to stand up to unacceptable pressure, but warned the most challenging parts were ahead. Max Colchester is a correspondent with the Wall Street Journal who recently traveled to Greenland for his reporting. He told us what Danish officials are hoping to achieve from today's meeting.
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They want to make sure that they can reassure the Trump administration that it's taking its concerns on security in the area seriously and that they're willing to be amenable to America's requests for greater investment, say, in security and maybe more availability of mineral rights. So that Trump basically backs off.
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Colchester says in a sense, this meeting is a reflection of a growing realization that Trump's fixation on this territory hasn't abated over the last year or so.
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They're viewing this now through a very different light. They are now concerned that actually Trump means what he says and that if Denmark does not cede ownership of Greenland to America, there could be some sort of military confrontation in a worst, worst case scenario. So that's why they're now saying, look, let's talk, let's get around the table and work out what you want and what we can give so that everyone can leave happy.
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So what is it that everyone wants? It appears as though Denmark would like to keep things as is. The U.S. of course, has stated that it wants to control Greenland. The 57,000 or so people who live in the territory have indicated that they would like some form of independence. In polling and recent election results, most.
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People on the island voted for parties that are pushing for some sort of independence in the foreseeable future. And that doesn't mean now, and it certainly doesn't mean becoming independent so that you can come under the hawk of the US government. So when I spoke to people, there was a real sense that, that they still wanted to be independent, but they really didn't want to become independent at the price of becoming dependent on the.
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U.S. one scenario, Colchester said, could involve Greenland becoming independent while providing the US access to military use of the island and minerals for a certain sum of money.
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That seems to be the most obvious way to square that the circle of demands between the Greenlandic and the US government. But obviously that would require the people of Greenland to vote for independence. It would require the government of Denmark to agree to independence. And this presumably would take many years, well past Trump's term in office to happen. So the big question is what happens if Trump wants to expedite this, and that's when the worry of some sort of threat of military force comes into play. Does Trump threaten something to speed this process along?
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Colchester said that threat to Denmark could be reducing military assistance in Ukraine, for example. Trump has recently said one way or the other, the US Would acquire Greenland. The backlash over power hungry data centers in the US Appears to be growing as nearby residents contend with higher bills and drained local resources. President Trump appears to have taken note and yesterday announced his administration would push tech companies to ensure they avoid driving up electricity bills nearby. The same day, Microsoft said it would be willing to pay higher electricity prices to help offset costs and replenish water supplies where it planned to build. According to a Bloomberg News analysis. Some places near these kinds of centers saw over a 200% increase in their costs compared to five years ago.
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What's happening now is these companies are just building all over the country because they need to build wherever they can find enough power and enough water for their data centers.
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Evan Halper is a business reporter at the Washington Post who's been tracking the proliferation of data centers for a few years. He found that there's a huge rush to find areas that can accommodate the construction and a lot of competition among companies. And often these negotiations are happening without the impacted community knowing.
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They'll talk to development officials, they'll talk to community politicians, but they'll make them sign non disclosure agreements. And so people in the community find out that their community leaders have been negotiating in secret with some giant tech company that they don't even know the name of for years leading up to this. And it's leading to quite a significant backlash across the political divide, really from all corners.
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Independent Senator Bernie Sanders has called for a moratorium on data center construction. Former Republican Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene has criticized the administration on it. And Florida's Republican Governor Ron DeSantis has championed an AI Bill of Rights that would empower local governments to stop construction. Halper saw how this debate was playing out in Sand Springs, Oklahoma, near Tulsa. Many residents in the city voted for Trump three times and supported their Republican governor, Kevin Stitt, who's been a backer of firms building data centers in his state.
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The people in the community told me they only found out about this when suddenly a sign went up on this rural property that's surrounded by ranches and there's really no industrial uses nearby. That said there's a proposed rezoning on it and that the city wanted to rezone it from agriculture use to industrial use. And a lot of people who live around there in that community are livid over this. They're saying, you know, this was unincorporated land. We moved out to this part of the county because there's not development here.
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The city manager of Sand Springs has argued that the center would become a huge employer in the area and a dominant part of their tax base, but residents have sued the city to stop the project. Halper said that this kind of resistance from constituents has proved effective recently.
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The amount of projects that were blocked in, I think it was just one quarter of last year was like double of everything the two years leading up to it. Something close to $90 billion of planned data center development was derailed by planning commissions and city officials voting things down because they're just under tremendous pressure from their constituents and the industry is still trying to sort this out.
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And finally, a few other stuff stories were following. At least six federal prosecutors in Minnesota resigned Monday over the administration's handling of the fatal shooting of Renee Nicole Good by an ICE agent. Sources told CBS that the resignations stemmed from concern over a request to look into Good's widow and the way the case was being treated as an assault on a federal officer as opposed to an investigation into excessive use of force. Some of those who resigned oversaw the massive fraud investigation in the state that's come under recent scrutiny. Bill and Hillary Clinton have refused to testify over their relationship with Jeffrey Epstein. The Clintons were subpoenaed by the Republican led House Oversight Committee, but they described the subpoenas as legally invalid and said they had already provided in writing what they knew. The GOP chair of that committee has said he would move to hold them in contempt of Congress. Photos of former President Clinton were among a recent drop of Epstein documents and he socialized with Epstein in the 90s and 2000s, though Clinton has never been accused of related wrongdoing. And the Southern drawl might be in trouble as researchers say young people from the south are losing the accent. The Atlantic spoke with experts who said vowel shifts, the key component of a drawl, began in the late 19th century after the Civil War. But the reasons that it is now starting to fade migration patterns and people moving to the suburbs. Also potentially a factor is the Internet as kids get influenced by the people they speak to online across the country. For those worried about losing their accent, Matthew McConaughey once offered the style magazine Man About Town some tips on talking like a true Texan.
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Your country train is probably a little bit slower than the city twang, so.
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Finish your vows and let it roll off the end.
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They say you're not talking fast enough. They need to take more time to listen to you.
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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. Wired has the story of rival disaster preparedness businesses that trade on fear and anxiety. Fueled by social media conspiracies and an increasingly chaotic world, the industry is projected to generate $300 billion annually by the end of the decade. If you're listening in the podcast app, follow Apple News plus Narrated to find that story. And I'll be back with the news tomorrow.