Up First from NPR - Alabama Supreme Court Fallout, Ukraine War Anniversary, Chinese Data Leaks

Episode Date: February 23, 2024

Lawmakers in Alabama are working on a legislative solution to a recent state Supreme Court decision which ruled that a frozen embryo has the same rights as a child. How do lawmakers want to fix the issue? Tomorrow will mark the two-year anniversary of Russia's invasion of Ukraine. We'll check with NPR's Joanna Kakissis to hear how people in Ukraine feel about the future. And a data leak from a Chinese technology company is giving the world a glimpse into the Chinese cyber spying ecosystem. Want more comprehensive analysis of the most important news of the day, plus a little fun? Subscribe to the Up First newsletter. Today's episode of Up First was edited by Susanna Capelouto, Mark Katkov, Andrew Sussman and HJ Mai. It was produced by Claire Murashima, Ben Abrams and Milton Guevara. We get engineering support from Robert Rodriguez and Phil Edfors, and our technical director is Stacey Abbott.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Lawmakers in Alabama say they're working on a legislative solution following a state Supreme Court decision. It ruled that a frozen embryo has the same rights as a child. So how do lawmakers want to fix the issue? I'm Michelle Martin, that's A. Martinez, and this is Up First from NPR News. Tomorrow will mark the two-year anniversary of Russia's invasion of Ukraine. As the war continues, many are wondering how long this will go on. We'll check with NPR's Joanna Kakisas to hear how people in Ukraine feel about the future. And a data leak from a Chinese technology company is giving the world a glimpse into the Chinese cyber-spying ecosystem.

We'll hear what the leaked documents reveal about China's hacking technology operations, as well as who got hacked. Stay with us. We've got all the news you need to start your day. Now, our change will honor 100 years of the Royal Canadian Air Force and their dedicated service to communities at home and abroad. From the skies to our change, this $2 commemorative circulation coin marks their storied past and promising future. Find the limited edition Royal Canadian Air Force $2 coin today. There's now some legislative movement in Alabama around a proposal to clarify whether a frozen embryo should be considered a child. After the Alabama Supreme Court said that that's the case under Alabama law, at least three

fertility clinics in the state have halted or restricted services this week. With us now is Kyle Gassett with Troy Public Radio. Kyle, you were at the Capitol in Montgomery yesterday, spoke to lawmakers. What did they tell you? Well, A, I spoke with State Senator Tim Nelson, who's an anesthesiologist. Now, he says he's sympathetic to those who are spending time, effort, and money to have children through IVF, and he's proposing a bill or fix, as he calls it, for the situation created by the Supreme Court ruling. Nelson says he understands how the justices arrived at their decision by interpreting the previous law, which, by the way, was passed in 1872. But now it's time for an update.

He even read part of the proposed bill out loud. This just says that a human egg that is fertilized in vitro shall be considered a potential life, but shall not be considered a human life, a human being or a person or unborn child, until the egg is successfully implanted into the woman's uterus. Nelson says that he believes that a number of his colleagues on both sides of the aisle will vote for this bill if it gets to the floor because this ruling has created a real problem for Alabama. Yeah, and it comes from the state Supreme Court from a lawsuit by three couples whose frozen embryos were accidentally destroyed in a clinic in Mobile. Now that clinic has stopped fertility treatment along with others.

Yeah, there are now three fertility centers in the state halting or restricting IVF treatment in Alabama. The Center for Reproductive Medicine in Mobile halted IVF services yesterday. In a statement, they said, the recent Alabama Supreme Court decision has sadly left us with no choice but to pause IVF treatments for patients. Also yesterday, Alabama Fertility, the largest private IVF provider with three clinics across the state, stopped any new IVF treatments due to legal risks. And Wednesday, the University of Alabama at Birmingham Health Center, which is the state's largest hospital, says it's also halting some IVF services. And this decision is getting a lot of pushback from the White House. What did the vice president and president have to say?

Yeah, just yesterday, Vice President Kamala Harris laid the blame for this decision is getting a lot of pushback from the White House. What did the vice president and president have to say? Yeah, just yesterday, Vice President Kamala Harris laid the blame for this decision at the feet of former President Donald Trump, who nominated three Supreme Court justices who overturned Roe v. Wade. She blasted Trump for being proud of the fact that doctors and nurses can be jailed for giving reproductive care and that young women now have fewer rights than their mothers and grandmothers did. President Biden also weighed in, calling the disregard for women's ability to make these decisions for themselves and their families outrageous and unacceptable. Nikki Haley also said that to her, embryos are babies. So this ruling really has made it into the presidential race. Yeah. Now you mentioned there are fewer options for fertility patients in Alabama. So what now? I mean, just wait for the representatives in Montgomery to figure it out?

Yeah, basically. We need to see where the legislation goes. Alabama Democrats have introduced a bill also that makes it clear that an embryo outside a womb would not be considered a human child, but they are in the minority in the state legislature. Now, Melson, the Republican, just hopes his legislation will pass quickly so that Alabama's IVF clinics can continue to operate. That's Kyle Gassett with Troy Public Radio. Kyle, thanks a lot.

Thank you, Abe. Tomorrow marks two years since Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Now the side reveals casualty numbers, but the dead and wounded on both sides are in the hundreds of thousands, according to Western officials. And Russia now has the momentum after occupying a strategic town in eastern Ukraine. As the war enters its third year, how do people in Ukraine feel about the future of their country? NPR's Joanna Kokissis is our correspondent in Kyiv. Joanna, how would you describe the state of the war today? Well, Leigh, until just a couple of weeks ago, this war felt like a stalemate, a frozen conflict,

because the front line hadn't moved significantly for months. But a few days ago, the Ukrainians lost control of an important town in the east called Avdivka. Russian forces overpowered the Ukrainians with a relentless bombing campaign. Avdivka is a symbolic win for the Kremlin ahead of next month's presidential elections in Russia. And Russian troops are now advancing along several points in Ukraine's east. Meanwhile, Ukrainian soldiers are running low on weapons and especially ammunition. Now, where the Ukrainians have made progress is in attacking Russian military targets in Crimea, in occupied southern Ukraine, these attacks have

forced the Russians to move their Black Sea naval fleet, and that has made the Black Sea much safer and opened up Ukrainian sea export routes there. Ukraine says its grain exports are now back to pre-war levels, so they are counting that as a win. Okay, now you've been traveling in the east and near the front lines of the war. What have you seen there? So we recently spent a lot of time in Kharkiv, which is close to the Russian border. Russia strikes Kharkiv nearly every day. It's Ukraine's second largest city. And so the city is trying to keep children safe there. That's why it's building entire schools underground. I toured one of these schools. Workers were just finishing it up, installing wiring and air vents and piping. It's supposed to open next month. Kharkiv has already

opened classrooms and subway stations. These stations double as bomb shelters. I spoke with second graders who attend subway classes. Best friends Maxim and Ksenia told me they always ask their teacher, Lyudmila Demchenko, the same question. Here's the teacher heard through an interpreter. They ask, when will the Russians stop bothering us? The children just want to take a walk in the woods or to swim in a lake. That's impossible now. Demchenko says her students just want to play outside like they used to before the Russian invasion, before they had to worry about missiles killing them.

In the last few years, the U.S. and the European Union have brought millions, actually billions of dollars in military and other kinds of aid to Ukraine. Here in the U.S., the next aid package has been blocked, though, by Republicans in Congress. How has that, Joanna, affected the way Ukraine defends itself? So Ukraine does have its own weapons manufacturing capability, but there's no question it's still heavily reliant on Western support. As I said, some ammunition is running low, particularly artillery shells, for example. Russia, of course, is a far larger country with a far more powerful military, and it's been able to get around many Western sanctions

which were supposed to hinder its military. Later today, the Biden administration is going to announce a new set of sanctions aimed at reducing Russia's warfighting capability, but also to punish Russia for the death last week of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny. All right, that's NPR's Joanna Kakisis in Kiev. Joanna, thank you for your reporting. You're welcome. Cybersecurity researchers have had some sleepless nights over the last several days. They're digging into a major leak of documents from a Chinese technology company that appears to be conducting global hacking operations for the Chinese government.

For more, we've got NPR cybersecurity correspondent Jenna McLaughlin here to help us sort all of this out. Jenna, so what exactly is in the leak and does it seem legit? Yeah, so there are about 500 documents and they're all in Mandarin. There's a lot of nerdy technical details in there. It got leaked to GitHub, which is a coding platform that's popular with programmers. But so far, cybersecurity experts I've spoken to say it does look legitimate. Based on their analysis, it looks like this is a collection of documents stolen from one specific Chinese technology company called Isun. So they're a contractor for Chinese agencies like the Ministry of State

Security and the People's Liberation Army. There's some public information on the company, but this gives us a really rare look into more of their sensitive business. The documents include marketing materials, details about hacking technology and some of their hacking operations, as well as some other targets. And this is all work for the Chinese government. So I got to say, Jenna, I'm not too bold over or shocked that a Chinese company would be hacking for the Chinese government. So what about this makes it interesting and juicy? Yeah, the revelations aren't exactly shocking, but it does give us this rare peek behind the curtain. I spoke to John Holtquist. He leads intelligence analysis for Google's Mandiant.

Here was his answer. I think the most interesting part of this is we're getting a kind of a really deep look at the Chinese cyber espionage contractor ecosystem. But we are all the way into the organization. We're looking at their documentation, their chats, and you're getting a real unfettered access to an intelligence operation you just don't see very often. Plus, he said that in cases where researchers have already analyzed a certain breach in the past, made some educated guesses about who was behind it, these documents can help them kind of fact check their work. Holtquist also said that learning about the prices of these operations is really interesting. He said apparently this company was selling hacked documents from NATO

for only 10,000 US dollars, which is pretty interesting. He said apparently this company was selling hacked documents from NATO for only 10,000 US dollars, which is pretty cheap. Yeah, so who are the targets here? It's not exactly a surprising list again, but it is pretty long. It includes about 14 different government agencies from Western competitors like Australia and the UK to countries that have a closer relationship

with China like Pakistan. It also includes pro-democracy organizations in places like Hong Kong, you know, academic institutions. And there's some details about them bidding for a project to surveil the Uyghur people in Xinjiang. Human rights groups have strongly condemned Chinese government repressions of this Muslim population. In fact, a lot of this tech company's work

appears to be focused on surveilling and harassing dissidents around the world. That includes monitoring and hacking social media platforms like X or what we used to call Twitter. Yeah, the leak, Jenna, the leak. Who is behind the leak? That's the big question. We don't know yet, but there are a few clues here. So the leak itself includes employee chats about low pay, other kinds of complaints. So there's this possibility that it could be a disgruntled employee.

But it could be a really clever intelligence operation or even a competitor within China. All right. NPR cybersecurity correspondent Jenna McLaughlin. Jenna, thanks. Thank you. And we have one more story before we blast off. For the first time in over 50 years, a U.S. spacecraft touched down on the surface of the moon yesterday. What we can confirm, without a doubt, is our equipment is on the surface of the moon, and we are transmitting. So, congratulations IAM team. We'll see how much

more we can get from that. Intuitive Machines, the company behind the robotic probe known as Odysseus, became the first private business to pull off a lunar landing. For more on this achievement, go to npr.org. And that's Up First for Friday, February 23rd. I'm E. Martinez. And I'm Michelle Martin. Today's episode of Up First was edited by Susanna Capilouto, Mark Katkoff, Andrew Sussman, and H.J. Mai. It was produced by Claire Murashima, Ben Abrams, and Milton Guevara. We get engineering support from Robert Rodriguez and Phil Edfors, and our technical director is Stacey Abbott.

Start your day here with us tomorrow. That's because Up First airs on Saturday, too. Ayesha Roscoe and Scott Simon have all the news. It'll be right here in this feed or wherever you get your podcasts.