--:-- Mark Garrison: Good morning. It's Tuesday, May 7th. I'm Mark Garrison in for Shamita Basu. This is Apple News Today.
--:-- Mark Garrison: On the show, how student reporters bring us the story of campus protests, an obscure election law at the heart of Trump's trial in New York, and the winners of this year's Pulitzer Prizes. But first, let's take a brief look at some other stories in the news, starting in Gaza.
--:-- Mark Garrison: For hundreds of thousands of Palestinian civilians taking refuge in Rafah, it's not clear whether the situation is on the verge of an Israeli ground invasion or close to a temporary ceasefire. Israel's rejecting the latest terms for a ceasefire, but still sending a delegation to Cairo to keep negotiating, all while moving tanks into Rafah and continuing airstrikes.
--:-- Mark Garrison: Israel calls its latest moves in Rafa a limited military operation, but it has long threatened a full-scale invasion. Israel also took control of the Palestinian side of the Rafa border crossing. That's a vital access point for humanitarian aid. Crossing officials say nothing is being allowed through.
--:-- Mark Garrison: This came after some movement in ceasefire talks yesterday. Hamas accepted a deal proposed by Egyptian and Qatari mediators, but Israel rejected the terms. Security correspondent Frank Gardner reported on BBC on the contents of that potential deal.
--:-- Frank Gardner: It's a two-phase deal that would consist of the first phase as a 42-day truce, a period of no fighting, during which there would be an exchange of prisoners, 33 hostages let out of Gaza, primarily women, the elderly and the sick, in return for a much, much larger number of Palestinian prisoners to be let out of Israeli jails.
--:-- Frank Gardner: A large number of Palestinian displaced people who are currently sheltering in the south would be allowed to return to their homes in the north of Gaza. And there would be a phased dismantling of Israel's military operation in central Gaza and a gradual withdrawal of its forces.
--:-- Frank Gardner: Further discussions could take many days or weeks.
--:-- Mark Garrison: In Russia, a U.S. soldier is under arrest, charged with theft. The Pentagon hasn't said much about the case other than that the American government is providing consular support. The soldier was on leave. The State Department advises Americans not to visit Russia in part because of the risk of detention.
--:-- Mark Garrison: A number of Americans are being held in Russia including two that the State Department classifies as wrongly detained. Boeing is under scrutiny again. The FAA is now investigating the 787 Dreamliner after Boeing said it might not have completed some required inspections.
--:-- Mark Garrison: The regulator is also looking into whether company employees may have falsified records. Boeing says that it shared information with the FAA promptly, and there's not an immediate safety of flight issue.
--:-- Mark Garrison: Let's turn now to the ongoing New York criminal trial against former President Donald Trump. The case has often been referred to as the hush money case, and yes, a big part of it is about determining whether Trump falsified business records when his team paid the adult film star Stormy Daniels to buy her silence about an alleged sexual encounter.
--:-- Mark Garrison: But Washington Post reporter David Nakamura says prosecutors are arguing that this case is about much more than financial record-keeping.
--:-- David Nakamura: They said to the judge was, look, ultimately this is a conspiracy case. This is a conspiracy to affect the 2016 election by doctoring these financial records, and that elevates this to a much more serious case of business record fraud.
--:-- David Nakamura: Prosecutors are using an obscure New York election law. Election statute 17152, a New York state election law, which makes it a misdemeanor to conspire with someone else to falsely promote or prevent an election through illegal means.
--:-- David Nakamura: Prosecutors are using this to elevate Trump's charges from misdemeanor to felony. His defense has argued that paying Daniels for her silence had nothing to do with the election. It was about protecting Trump's family.
--:-- David Nakamura: And they say charging him with a felony this way is a legal reach. I think most legal observers, though, said so far the prosecution has unveiled a lot of evidence.
--:-- David Nakamura: The president was very much aware of these payments. You know, they were seriously trying to do damage control in 2016, right ahead of the election about this alleged affair by Stormy Daniels.
--:-- Mark Garrison: The Post found this election statute has rarely been used, finding only a handful of cases in low-profile local elections. In one, charges were dropped. In another, the defendant was later exonerated.
--:-- Mark Garrison: If prosecutors are successful and Trump is convicted, he could face up to four years in prison. Over the last few weeks ongoing student protests against Israel war in Gaza have attracted global attention, drawing press to college campuses across America.
--:-- Mark Garrison: But in many cases, student journalists on the ground have provided some of the most valuable coverage. Students at Columbia use their access to the private school's campus and on-the-ground sources to cover the police response to the student takeover of a campus building.
--:-- [Sound of police presence]
--:-- Student Journalist: I just want to report a massive NYPD presence here on 1-14. I see at least one bus with a lot of lights here, maybe two. I can't tell from this vantage point.
--:-- Student Journalist: After all, the NYPD is keeping us quite far away from anything going on. They were broadcasting around the clock on WKCR, Columbia's radio station, the night police moved in and cleared protesters from Hamilton Hall.
--:-- Student Journalist: Police in riot gear raided the building and made dozens of arrests that night. The NYPD restricted most members of the media from Columbia's campus, So much of what the public knows comes from student reporters.
--:-- Isabella Ramirez: They didn't care that anybody there was press, or at least the police didn't care. And so that was incredibly shocking to us. It was super confusing, and we didn't know what to do.
--:-- Isabella Ramirez: They threatened us with arrest. They said, like, you either need to leave or we will arrest you. And that was just unacceptable, of course, in my view.
--:-- Isabella Ramirez: And that was so strange because in the first police action, only two weeks earlier, that had not been the case at all.
--:-- Mark Garrison: New York Magazine's new cover story is a collaboration with Ramirez and her colleagues at the Columbia Daily Spectator. Journalists at the paper are calling on university administrators to protect the freedom of the press, especially for Columbia students.
--:-- Mark Garrison: Student journalists have also talked about the advantage they have in covering a story on their campus and about the challenge of covering their peers, all while trying to study for final exams.
--:-- Fatima Azeem: A sense of responsibility is really what's on all of our minds on the editorial board. There's definitely more pro-Palestine sentiment on our campus, more people that are in favor of a ceasefire than those who are not.
--:-- Fatima Azeem: We want to make sure that we are featuring both of these voices, but of course, to scale, to be able to accurately reflect what the student sentiment is right now.
--:-- Mark Garrison: A few days ago the Pulitzer Prize Board recognized the work of student journalists on campuses across the country The people behind one of the highest honors in journalism singled out reporters at Columbia home of the awards.
--:-- Mark Garrison: The board said students nationwide were quote tireless in the face of great personal and academic risk. Now to the winners of this year's Pulitzer Prizes, where a standout was ProPublica.
--:-- Mark Garrison: It won the prize for public service for its reporting on financial entanglements of the Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. One of the reporters involved, Brett Murphy, joined us in August to talk about the investigation.
--:-- Brett Murphy: So we're talking about at least 38 destination vacations, 26 private jet flights, an additional eight by helicopter, a dozen VIP passes to professional and college sporting events, two stays at luxury resorts in Florida and Jamaica, and then there was one standing invitation to an Uber-exclusive golf club on the Atlantic coast.
--:-- Mark Garrison: Other prizes went to Reuters and The New York Times for covering the conflict in Gaza. And Nathan Thrall won for general nonfiction for his book about a family living under Israeli occupation in the West Bank and a father who lost his five-year-old son.
--:-- Nathan Thrall: What I want people to think about is to think about what is this deeply unjust system that is in place now and will remain in place when the Gaza war is over.
--:-- Nathan Thrall: If we want to see a stop to this bloodshed, we need to revisit that. And we need to radically change our attitude toward this place and start to move toward a clear moral call for civil and equal rights for Palestinians.
--:-- Mark Garrison: You can read many of these prize-winning stories in the Apple News app. And if you're already listening in the News app, we've got a narrated article coming up next from Vox.
--:-- Mark Garrison: These days, Americans are spending less time with friends and family than at almost any other point in history. Vox looks at why it can be a challenge for loved ones to live near each other, the benefits of communal living, and the communities trying to bring people closer.
--:-- Mark Garrison: If you're listening in the Podcasts app, follow Apple News Plus Narrated to find that story, and I'll be back with the news tomorrow.
