--:-- Yasmin Khan: Good morning. It's Monday, April 8th. I'm Yasmin Khan, in for Shamita Basu. This is Apple News Today.
--:-- Yasmin Khan: On today's show, we reflect on the six months of war between Israel and Hamas. Legal cannabis shops have too much cash on hand and too few banks will take it. And how South Carolina took down Caitlin Clark. But first, today is the day when people from northern Mexico to southeastern Canada will get the rare chance to experience a total solar eclipse.
--:-- Yasmin Khan: That's when our view of the sun is completely blocked by the moon. Now, to be clear, total solar eclipses happen every 18 months or so, but they're sometimes in far-flung places, like the middle of the ocean, where no one sees them. But today, a host of cities are right in the path of the total eclipse, giving tens of millions of people the chance to witness it.
--:-- Yasmin Khan: Catherine Garcia is the director of operations for New York State. Buffalo and Rochester are cities that will experience the total eclipse, and they're expecting an influx of visitors.
--:-- Catherine Garcia: We are prepared for problems in areas around transportation or cell service or goodness gracious, what's going to happen if there are not enough bathrooms on the thruway.
--:-- Yasmin Khan: From Dallas to Indianapolis to Cleveland, there will be watch parties in public parks and people's backyards. Hotels are full and restaurants have special menus with eclipse-themed foods like the chocolate totality ice cream sandwich that's at a restaurant in Little Rock.
--:-- Yasmin Khan: In total, it's all projected to add a whopping $6 billion to the U.S. economy, putting this cosmic event in line with Taylor Swift's ERAs tour. The University of Vermont in Burlington is even canceling classes today in favor of seminars, live performances, and yes, gazing up at the sky.
--:-- Yasmin Khan: Physics lecturer John Perry told a local ABC affiliate that telescopes will, of course, be fitted with special solar lenses.
--:-- John Perry: We want the students to get out there and do active learning if they can and really talk to people and see what's going on.
--:-- Yasmin Khan: And what if you don't live in the path of totality, as it's called? You'll get a partial eclipse. I used a tool from The Washington Post to see that where I am in Brooklyn, the sun will be about 90 percent obscured.
--:-- Yasmin Khan: And whether you're looking up at a partial eclipse or a total one, never, ever look at the sun directly without eclipse glasses. NASA also warns not to look at the eclipse through a camera lens iPhone binoculars or telescope even while wearing eclipse glasses.
--:-- Yasmin Khan: Now to the Middle East. Yesterday marked six months since Hamas fighters raided southern Israel, killing about 1,200 people and taking hundreds hostage.
--:-- Yasmin Khan: In response, Israel vowed to, quote, crush and destroy Hamas and to bring all the hostages home. In the months since, at least 33,000 Palestinians have been killed. Much of Gaza has been turned to rubble, and more than 100 Israeli hostages still remain in captivity.
--:-- Yasmin Khan: NPR's Daniel Estrin is based in Tel Aviv. He told NPR that six months in, Israelis and Palestinians still see the war very differently.
--:-- Daniel Estrin: I was driving in Tel Aviv as our producer in Gaza sent over some sound that he recorded of a mother wailing over her child who was killed. And while I was driving, I saw an Israeli driving on his motorcycle with a bumper sticker on it that said, go IDF, go Israeli army.
--:-- Daniel Estrin: And I think that just encapsulates the two worlds that Israelis and Palestinians live in now. He says in Israel, the war is not being reported on in the same ways it is outside the country, and that Israelis will never forget or forgive the events of October 7th.
--:-- Daniel Estrin: Israelis speak about it also as a second Holocaust because of the atrocities committed. Israelis hiding at home in their closets, burned alive, shot and killed in a field at a music festival, corpses decapitated, mutilated, hostages captured.
--:-- Daniel Estrin: And it, I think, explains how Israelis have responded since. Israel's nonstop bombardment has left Gaza decimated and its own troops exhausted. Just yesterday, Israel announced it was withdrawing forces from the city of Khan Yunis in southern Gaza in order to recuperate.
--:-- Yasmin Khan: The military said its operations in the enclave were still far from over. Meanwhile, many of the thousands of people killed in Gaza are women and children. There are countless stories of whole families being wiped out, children left with no parents, victims losing limbs, and suffering burns.
--:-- Yasmin Khan: Here's Amber Alayan, one of the deputy program managers for Doctors Without Borders, on how dire conditions have become in hospitals.
--:-- Amber Alayan: No health care system in the world can cope with the volume of injuries and the types of injuries and the medical conditions that we're seeing on a day-to-day basis in Gaza. The wounds that these patients suffering are beginning to literally rot. They smell now.
--:-- Amber Alayan: The microbiology system, the lab system to Gaza, has been totally taken out. It's completely non-functional. We can even figure out what we're treating in terms of the infections. People are starving with Oxfam reporting that 300 people trapped in the North have lived for weeks now on an average of 245 calories a day.
--:-- Yasmin Khan: A case before the United Nations highest court accuses Israel of committing genocide, an allegation the country strongly denies. Just before the weekend, President Biden warned Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that if Israel doesn't do more to minimize civilian harm, it could risk losing U.S. support.
--:-- Yasmin Khan: And yesterday, Israel and Hamas sent delegations to Cairo again to restart ceasefire negotiations.
--:-- Yasmin Khan: The legal cannabis industry in the United States is drowning in cash. Weed shops across the country, which are licensed by individual states, are making huge profits. But many banks still refuse to do business with them, as long as the drug remains classified as a Schedule I substance at the federal level.
--:-- Yasmin Khan: Major credit card companies, including Visa and MasterCard, also don't process marijuana-related transactions. You'd think that we're talking about people operating illicit businesses that are all in cash because they're trying to hide from the law, whereas actually these guys are trying to run a fully above the board business and aren't able to because the banking system refuses to work with them.
--:-- Alexander Saidi: That's Alexander Saidi, who covers banking for The Wall Street Journal. He wrote about this problem and the hardships that come when you're sitting on hundreds of thousands of bills that you can't deposit.
--:-- Alexander Saidi: According to Treasury data reviewed by The Wall Street Journal, banks closed down nearly 8,000 accounts related to marijuana businesses last year. That's what happened to Tahir Johnson.
--:-- Tahir Johnson: He won a license to open a dispensary in New Jersey. And he, while in the fundraising process, got a sudden account closure notice from Bank of America.
--:-- Tahir Johnson: And not only did they close the corporate account he had opened for fundraising purposes, they also closed a personal account he had at the bank without explaining why.
--:-- Yasmin Khan: So this guy just got debanked for, you know, doing something that the state government licensed him to do. Johnson found a different remote bank, and when he has to deposit cash, he does so with an armored truck at his own expense.
--:-- Yasmin Khan: Lawmakers in the House have passed a bipartisan bill seven times in the last five years that would make it easier for marijuana stores to work with banks. The Senate has never voted on it but is expected to this year Oregon Senator Jeff Merkley is the bill author.
--:-- Jeff Merkley: He told the Journal that he decided to champion the issue after traveling with the CEO of one cannabis company who was trying to pay his taxes.
--:-- Jeff Merkley: He and other business owners had to pass through multiple police checks in order to hand deliver millions of dollars in cash at the state capitol.
--:-- Yasmin Khan: Finally, the South Carolina Gamecocks are national champions after defeating Iowa 87-75 in the women's NCAA final on Sunday.
--:-- Yasmin Khan: This is the moment the team clinched their third national championship and capped an undefeated season. Perfection with a touch of sweet redemption. Undefeated South Carolina has won its third national championship.
--:-- Yasmin Khan: The woman at the center of the victory is South Carolina coach Dawn Staley. A former WNBA player, Staley is credited for taking the Gamecocks from a mediocre team to the best collegiate team in the nation.
--:-- Yasmin Khan: She's also the first black coach to win three Division I titles. On the other side of the court, it was the final college career game for Hawkeyes star Caitlin Clark, who broke Division I scoring records for both women and men.
--:-- Yasmin Khan: She now heads to the WNBA draft. Coach Staley tipped her hat to Clark during the trophy ceremony.
--:-- Dawn Staley: I want to personally thank Kaitlyn Clark for lifting up our sport. She carried a heavy load for our sport. And it just is not going to stop here on the collegiate tour.
--:-- Dawn Staley: But when she is the number one pick in the WNBA draft, she's going to lift that league up as well. So, Kaitlin Clark, if you're out there, you are one of the goats of our games. We appreciate you.
--:-- Yasmin Khan: For some perspective on that, Iowa's game against UConn in the women's semifinal was the most watched basketball game on ESPN, collegiate or pro, ever.
--:-- Yasmin Khan: Tonight, it's the men's final. The UConn Huskies take on the Purdue Boilermakers for the championship title.
--:-- Yasmin Khan: 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.
--:-- Yasmin Khan: The Los Angeles Times goes inside allegations against reality TV producer Andy Cohen. The producer behind the hit franchise The Real Housewives faces a slew of accusations and lawsuits from former cast members.
--:-- Yasmin Khan: If you're listening in the podcast's app, follow Apple News Plus Narrated to find that story.
--:-- Yasmin Khan: And I'll be back with the news tomorrow.
