Inside War-torn Sudan, Corporate Grocery Profits, Memphis Officers On Trial

0:02A rare look inside Sudan where a civil war has left cities in ruins and millions on the brink of famine. They forget about us. It's a forgotten war. Why is one of the world's worst humanitarian crises getting so little attention? I'm Leila Faudil, that's Michelle Martin, and this is Up First from NPR News. Tyree Nichols was killed after a violent encounter with Memphis police officers during a traffic stop last year. Three of those officers are now on trial, accused of violating the 29-year-old black man's civil rights and attempting to cover it up. Also, grocery prices remain high. Are big companies behind it, or is there something else going on?

0:39We have no other choice. We have to buy groceries. They use that to take advantage and keep raising prices. Stay with us. We'll give you the news you need to start your day.

0:55This message comes from NPR sponsor Walmart. Did you know that Walmart is one of Fortune's 100 best companies to work for in 2025? It's no surprise. Walmart is investing$1 billion in training and development to help associates build lasting careers with or without a degree. In fact, 75 % of Walmart management started in hourly roles. With benefits like health care, paid parental leave, and tuition support, Walmart isn't just a place to work. It's a place to grow. Learn more at walmart.com slash spark. Since fighting erupted in Sudan almost 18 months ago, it's been hard to get humanitarian aid, let alone press access into the country, which is one of Africa's largest by land area.

1:42As the ruling Sudanese army and the paramilitary group called the Rapid Support Forces, or RSF, fight for control of the country, millions of people have been displaced inside and outside of Sudan. and the United Nations says the fighting has put millions of people on the brink of famine. But with much of the world's attention focused on conflicts elsewhere, the war in Sudan has struggled to get attention for the humanitarian disaster. And that's been made worse by the fact that it's so hard to get in. But NPR correspondent Emmanuel Akinwotu did manage to get in. He's been in Sudan for the past two weeks, and he's with us now from the wartime capital of Port Sudan.

2:19Good morning, Emmanuel. Good morning, Michelle. So, Emmanuel, you've been covering the conflict, and you managed to report from the outskirts of the capital, Khartoum. This is where fighting first broke out. What did you find there? The scale of destruction is just hard to believe. In places, it was almost apocalyptic. We walked through this once iconic market called Souk Omdaman. It was this vibrant place, as vibrant as Times Square, but now it's a ghost town. The storefronts were shattered and broken. People's personal belongings, like their bags and slippers, were just littered out onto the streets.

2:51There were even chairs covered in bullet holes. set around this small table with a kettle where people used to drink tea. And there are so many areas like this. Emmanuel, was there anybody there? Did you meet anybody? And can you tell us about them? I met this 64-year-old man called Mohamed Keir. He was born in Omduman and he actually worked in the US for over 10 years, even as a security manager at Dulles Airport just outside of DC. He showed me his home built by his father about 100 years ago, but now it's in ruins. I cannot believe it. You cannot imagine it. I'm just trying to start from the beginning.

3:26He told me the RSF looted his home. They took his TV, his air conditioners, his money, before they were forced out of the city by the army in May. There are parts of Umduman that feel more normal, but even there, it's not really normal because of the shelling. Just across the Nau, the RSF control the capital city, Khartoum. And while the army conducts airstrikes there, the RSF are shelling Umduman constantly. Emmanuel, that just sounds horrific. and now this fighting in Sudan has caused what is believed to be the worst ongoing humanitarian crisis in the world. What does that look like on the ground and how are people surviving?

4:01Well, the scale of need is just immense. Half of the population are acutely hungry. Parts of the country are already experiencing famine. It's the worst displacement crisis in the world. People are just not getting the aid that they need, mainly because of a lack of safe routes. But frankly, even if there were safe routes, the amount of aid still isn't enough. There's this common feeling from people that the world just doesn't care and that they have to rely on themselves. One example I got to see are these incredible community kitchens where people are cooking meals for hundreds, sometimes thousands of people.

4:33And it's funded from donations from within Sudan and from the diaspora. Are there any particular people who stuck with you, any stories that's just stuck in your mind? I spoke to one doctor called Jamal Mohammed. He works at Al-Nal Hospital, which has been shelled constantly and often lacks basic supplies. He said one of the worst moments was when he operated on two children. I had to amputate them without anesthesia. He feels the country has been totally abandoned. They forget about us. It's a forgotten war. And he talked about just how overwhelmed hospitals are. That's Emmanuel Akinwotu in Sudan.

5:10Emmanuel, thank you. Thanks, Michelle. You can hear more of Emmanuel's reporting from Sudan in the coming weeks here on NPR.

5:24Are greedy companies to blame for higher prices at the grocery store? Well, many shoppers tell NPR they think so, like Arian Navarro from Houston. I think it's the big corporations. We have no other choice. We have to buy groceries. They use that to take advantage and keep raising prices. NPR's Alina Selyuk took on the task of figuring out if the data backs up this opinion. And she's with us now to tell us more about it. Good morning. Good morning. What a project. Where did you begin? It was hard. So I thought I'd start with three facts nobody seems to dispute. One, many consumer brands and supermarkets have been reporting record profits.

6:04Two, companies almost always pass on their costs to shoppers. And three, those costs rose a lot during the pandemic. I will call out one of those costs, higher wages for workers, which actually many economists have argued is the key driver of grocery inflation. But so you put it all together, and the obvious question to me was, how much are profits outpacing rising costs? Tell us what you found out. Turns out there are just very many ways to calculate this. I started out crunching corporate reports of a dozen giants, including Walmart, Kroger, Pepsi, Kraft Heinz, Procter & Gamble. And what I tracked was the portion of money companies keep after paying just the cost of making or stocking those products, just those direct costs.

6:48Accountants call this the gross profit margin. OK, what did you find out? For almost all the companies I analyzed from pre-pandemic to last year, the gross profit margin either grew less than 1 % or it actually declined. That's interesting. So not taking an exorbitant cut here. Not the smoking gun I think a lot of people thought you were going to find. No. So I started asking the smartest economists I knew, and they said that these individual reports don't really fully explain what's going on. I've got to look industry-wide using government data. Okay. So what did you find out there? Turns out there are so many data sets to analyze, but most of them painted a similar picture, which is something new.

7:28I'm going to try to describe some charts that I should say folks can check out, all the charts, all the data on NPR.org. But so food manufacturers got much more profitable during the pandemic. Then those profit margins dropped, and now they've settled close to pre-pandemic levels. Grocery stores are a different story. They're a lot less profitable to begin with, and their profitability climbed more slowly than other types of stores. But they've also been slower to give up those gains. So the grocery industry has kept a slightly bigger share of sales over time. So grocers are keeping a bigger cut.

8:10Yes, but it doesn't automatically mean greedflation. So it could be that stores are selling more things that are more profitable. That's one of the factors. Like store brand items, for example, they're super popular, they're cheap on the shelf, and they are more profitable for the retailer. It could also be that stores are charging more because shoppers didn't really push back on higher prices until this year. So on that original question, are greedy companies to blame for higher grocery prices? It's a very unsatisfying answer of it's messy, it's complicated, it's nuanced. And the good news is things are changing.

8:52The grocery inflation is now the lowest in years. That was a project. It was. That is NPR's Alina Selyuk. Alina, thank you. Thank you.

9:09A jury in Memphis heard opening statements yesterday in the federal trial of three former police officers involved in the deadly arrest of a black man last year. The three officers, who are also black, are charged with violating the civil rights of 29-year-old Tyree Nichols, who died after a traffic stop turned horribly violent. They are also accused of conspiring to cover up their roles in the incident. Surveillance and body camera footage captured officers restraining, kicking, and punching Nichols. He died in the hospital three days later. Katie Reardon from member station WKNO was in the courtroom for opening statements, and she's with us now to tell us more.

9:46Good morning, Katie. Good morning. So let's start with the prosecution. What is their case? Assistant U.S. Attorney Elizabeth Rogers told jurors to prepare themselves for evidence that's hard to watch and listen to, that they'll see Tyree Nichols beaten to death on camera from multiple angles. She's referring to that publicly released footage that you mentioned. Rogers says the video will show that Nichols tried to calm officers down after they pulled him over and that he struggled with their inconsistent commands before he's pepper sprayed and flees on foot. We also know that two other former officers who've pleaded guilty to federal chargers will be called on to testify.

10:22And on Wednesday, Rogers said they'll talk about a so-called run tax. That was the first time this term has surfaced in this case. She described it as a kind of understood punishment that this group of officers would inflict on people who ran from them. Prosecutors also want to convince jurors that the officers failed to tend to Nichols' serious medical needs after the beating and that they didn't tell arriving EMTs about his injuries, which the prosecution says could have helped save him. So as you said, very disturbing thing. This is going to be obviously very challenging for people to sit through, including you, I would think.

10:56So let's turn to the defense now. What did we find out about their strategy? The defense attorneys haven't been speaking publicly, so this was jurors and really our first peek at their version of events. Each of the defendants, Tadarius Bean, Justin Smith, and Demetrius Haley, have their own attorneys. So we heard three opening statements. They had some common themes saying these officers work in a dangerous city and have dangerous jobs. The officers were part of a special police unit called Scorpion that was stationed in areas with high crime rates in Memphis. one attorney described nickels as a quote high risk suspect because he failed to stop for the officer's blue lights for some time after driving erratically after he eventually did stop the defense says nickels heightened the situation by fleeing lawyers also talked about how the officer's police training allows for escalated force in certain situations and they told jurors that the officers radioed for paramedics to check out nickels right away we also learned that smith's attorney says his client will take the stand to tell his side of the story.

11:58Interesting. So we are going to hear, we're likely to hear from at least one of the officers. What comes next? Well, the prosecution has already called their first witness. She's a nurse practitioner who tended to nickels at the hospital and testified about the severity of his injuries. And of note, outside of these court proceedings, the Department of Justice is currently conducting a civil investigation to determine if issues like an excessive use of force are systemic within the Memphis Police Department. That is Katie Reardon with member station WKNO in Memphis. Katie, thanks so much for sharing this reporting.

12:31Thanks for having me.

12:37And that's up first for Thursday, September 12th. I'm Michelle Martin. And I'm Leila Faldil. For your next listen, try Consider This from NPR. In their latest episode, they take a deep dive into Tuesday's presidential debate in Philadelphia. With the race to the White House neck and neck, will Vice President Kamala Harris' dominant performance make a difference? Listen to Consider This wherever you get your podcasts. Today's episode of Up First was edited by Rebecca Rossman, Susanna Capilouto, Emily Kopp, Mohammed Elbardisi, and Alice Wolfley. It was produced by Imant Ma 'ani, Ziyad Butch, Nia Dumas, Chris Thomas, and Lindsay Totti.

13:10We get engineering support from Carly Strange, and our technical director is Zach Coleman. We hope you'll join us again tomorrow.

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