--:-- Shamita Basu: Good morning. It's Monday, May 17th. I'm Shamita Basu. And I'm Duarte Giraldino. This is Apple News Today. Each morning, hear about some of the most fascinating stories in the news and how the world's best journalists are covering them.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: The UN is calling for a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas. Violence continued this weekend with Palestinian civilians making up a disproportionate number of lives lost in the past week.
--:-- Shamita Basu: On Sunday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told CBS Israel's military operation will continue. We'll do whatever it takes to restore order and quiet and the security of our people and deterrence. We're trying to degrade Hamas' terrorist abilities and to degrade their will to do this again. So it'll take some time. I hope it won't take long, but it's not immediate.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: This is the worst violence of its kind in years, but the political response to that violence is playing out differently in America than it might have just a few years ago.
--:-- Shamita Basu: As political reports, that difference highlights how the U.S. relationship with Israel may be changing. Over the weekend, President Biden spoke to Netanyahu. He told him he supports Israel's right to self-defense but is concerned about civilian deaths and the targeting of a Gaza building that housed the Associated Press and Al Jazeera.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: This high-level message of support for Israel has been the standard response from Washington for decades. But Politico says a growing number of Democrats are challenging that status quo.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Bernie Sanders wrote that Palestinian lives matter in a New York Times essay. Even staunch allies of Israel, like Senator Bob Menendez, have strongly criticized civilian deaths in Israel's recent airstrikes. Politico is also pointing to a new generation of progressive Democrats who have been far more outspoken against what they see as Israel's disproportionate response to Hamas rocket attacks.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is urging the Biden administration to take a stronger stance. She called Israel an apartheid state.
--:-- Shamita Basu: This different response from congressional Democrats comes as changes have been happening inside Israel. Zach Beecham writes in Vox that Israel government has moved to the right during more than a decade with Netanyahu as prime minister. Beecham argues that the Israeli government has stoked underlying tension by continuing to marginalize the Arab minority.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: This Fox article argues Netanyahu's courting of far-right parties to maintain power is aggravating divisions. Beecham says as a result of that shift, Israel's social system may be unraveling.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Corey Dodd was looking for short-term health insurance to fill the gap between his time in the Peace Corps and graduate school. He bought what he thought were the best, most economical policies. Months later, he found himself with more than $33,000 in hospital bills that he thought his insurance would cover.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: Corey is just one of the millions of people in the U.S. who have short-term insurance policies that a recent ProPublica investigation shows may be exposing them to huge financial risks. These policies are attractive because they're relatively inexpensive. Corey paid about $100 a month for his plans.
--:-- Shamita Basu: But after an emergency appendectomy, he discovered the fine print in his policy. His insurer offered to cover less than $2,000 of his bill.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: When Obama signed the Affordable Care Act into law, short-term policies were limited to three months. But when Trump took office, he allowed them to cover you for almost a year. Insurers saw a big money-making opportunity.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Because these plans aren't bound by ACA rules, they can come with major restrictions. And the companies that issue them can search medical histories for pre-existing conditions. They can also keep a larger portion of the premiums you pay, so these plans are much more profitable.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: In March the COVID stimulus bill extended the enrollment period for ACA compliant plans and offered several other incentives to help people move away from these short term plans But some health policy experts worry that people don't understand the coverage gaps in these types of plans They call these policies junk insurance
--:-- Shamita Basu: Now there is some good news for Corey. After ProPublica started digging into his story, his insurance ended up covering most of his bill. But a lot of other people in his situation, they aren't lucky enough to have investigative journalists reviewing their medical bills.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: Carlette Duffy thought something was up when she had her house appraised twice at way less than what she felt her home was worth. She's black, and she suspected race was playing a role.
--:-- Shamita Basu: To test her theory, she requested another appraisal and deliberately changed one factor in her application. The Indianapolis star spoke with Carlette for this story. She says there was a big red flag in the appraisal report saying her house was worth a little over $100,000. It said comparable homes in the area were of superior construction quality, phrasing that she found suspicious.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: For her third appraisal, Carlette didn't disclose her race. She only communicated via email. She removed any family photos, books, art, anything that might give away her race. And when the new appraiser visited her home, Carlette had a white family friend stand in as her brother.
--:-- Shamita Basu: In that final appraisal, her home was valued at $259,000, more than double the first two valuations. Carlette tells the star she felt vindicated, but also really angry. That I had to go through all of that just to say that I was right and that this was happening, that this was real. And it just is so upsetting because you have the data that says this is what happens.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: The story points to one study by a Brookings Institution researcher. It found houses in Black neighborhoods were underpriced by 23 percent. That amounts to roughly $160 billion in lost equity for homeowners.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Carlette is taking action. She filed complaints with the Department of Housing and Urban Development She wants the agency to investigate the appraisals One of the appraisers denies race was factored into its calculations The Indianapolis Star couldn't reach the others for comment
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: Imagine writing your name. I mean, literally, picture it. Holding a pen in your hand, pressing it to paper, and one by one spelling out the characters.
--:-- Shamita Basu: There is now a device that can decode the brain signals you just silently created and translate those thoughts to written text. And for people who can't move or speak, this could create a whole new way of communication.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: This science story comes from NPR. A team of researchers has been testing this system, which they developed. and it relies on electrodes that are surgically implanted near the part of the brain that controls movement.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Those electrodes send signals to a computer. One man who was paralyzed in an accident agreed to test the technology in a new way.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: Right. In the past, these scientists have tried asking people to use their thoughts to point and click at letters on a screen, but that was pretty slow. They wanted to see if it would be faster to ask people to imagine writing letters out by hand.
--:-- Shamita Basu: What they found was not only was it faster, people were able to type it 90 characters per minute, but it was also 95 percent accurate.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: Dr. Jamie Henderson is one of the researchers, and he says the man in this experiment got the system working fairly quickly. He was very happy when he was able to write out messages in response to some of the questions that we asked him. He was pretty excited about this.
--:-- Shamita Basu: This was just a single-person study. Widespread use of this technology is still a long way off. But when you think about linking computers to a human brain, this is a huge leap forward.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: You can find all these stories and more in the Apple News app. And while you're there, check out some of our audio stories. We'll talk with you again tomorrow.
