--:-- Shamita Basu: Good morning. It's Tuesday, May 17th. I'm Shamita Basu. 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.
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--:-- Shamita Basu: The attack in Buffalo was the 198th American mass shooting in 2022. That means this year the country is averaging about 10 mass shootings a week. We wanted to highlight a Washington Post story that's not about the suspect or the investigation. It's about the victims and how their families want them to be remembered.
--:-- Shamita Basu: One of the people killed in Saturday's attack was 86-year-old Ruth Whitfield. She'd spent the day taking care of her husband at a nursing home. Her children said she was the rock for the family.
--:-- Shamita Basu: I felt the need to let you know my mom was my best friend. We went fishing together. We went camping together. And you know, black people don't usually camp, but we did. And I'm going to miss that. He took away my mother and my best friend. How dare you? How dare you? This needs to be fixed. A-S-A-P. Amen.
--:-- Shamita Basu: 77-year-old Pearl Young was also killed. Her son told the Post that she was an active member of her church. She volunteered for the church food pantry, handed out boxes of food at a park in town. She had eight grandchildren.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Aaron Salter Jr. was the security guard on duty that day at the grocery store. The retired police officer fired on the gunman, but the shooter was wearing a bulletproof vest. Buffalo's police commissioner called Salter a hero.
--:-- Shamita Basu: After Catherine Massey lost a family member to gun violence last year, she wrote a letter to the Buffalo News advocating for better gun control measures. Massey was shot and killed on Saturday. Her niece told WGRZ-TV that she was someone that the community relied on, and her loss is painful.
--:-- Shamita Basu: I hope that as a nation as a community just people at home they teach their kids to love instead of hate because that not what she represents And that not what I teach my kids and that not how our family do things We love everybody, you know? And for her to go like this, it was really sad.
--:-- Shamita Basu: There's more about the victims and the lives that they led in the full Washington Post story, which you can read in the Apple News app.
--:-- Anna Conkling: Russia is now in control of the Ukrainian city of Mariupol, following months of bombing. Across Ukraine, people have been killed and communities have been damaged. Now, scientists are warning of the long-term environmental impact of this conflict.
--:-- Anna Conkling: The air pollution and the destruction of natural resources and the pollution of water, all of these things aren't going anywhere. That's what I've found in my research.
--:-- Anna Conkling: The ministry has found that pollutants released into the atmosphere could pose lasting health risks. The explosive devices that have gone off and the aircraft bombs and the missiles, they all contain toxic fumes, carbon, nitrous oxide.
--:-- Anna Conkling: Attacks that hit oil depots and gas pipelines can start fires that send dangerous chemicals into the air. So when a fire breaks out, typically people would have to flee the area. They would have to go out of the direct zone to other towns, but they can't do that because their towns are under Russian occupation or there's missiles dropping all of the time.
--:-- Anna Conkling: So they have to just kind of sit in these areas and breathe in all of these chemicals from these explosions. The government estimates that 1.4 million people in Ukraine don't have access to safe drinking water.
--:-- Anna Conkling: And that's in part because of incidents like the one I told you about after a Russian missile attack near a river. It hit a truck that was carrying mineral fertilizers in it. And those mineral fertilizers got into the water and it carried downstream.
--:-- Anna Conkling: And so this pollutant contaminated the water for people that were living downstream The Wall Street Journal reports in recent days more people have returned to Ukraine than have left the country They going back for all kinds of reasons to be reunited with family to help their country, to return home as Russian troops leave parts of the country.
--:-- Shamita Basu: But as this environmental impact reporting shows, their homeland is changed and the effects will be felt for generations.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The NBA conference finals are here. Tonight, it's Miami against Boston. Tomorrow night, Golden State takes on Dallas.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Now, after the games, winners and losers usually face the press. And lately, the players have been letting it fly with the foul language.
--:-- Howard Beck: NBA officials understand that NBA players, like any athletes, are going to curse that this is a sport with a lot of passion involved in it. And they certainly want their players to speak with an authenticity and an emotion when appropriate.
--:-- Howard Beck: But where the NBA draws the line is they don't want them using certain profanities in a public setting. So the NBA is turning to an old method, the swear jar.
--:-- Howard Beck: So far, the league has fined players $95,000 for foul language this season. A league official tells SI going after players who swear in press conferences, it's about decorum and upholding standards.
--:-- Howard Beck: Officials say they've noticed an uptick in aggressive language and behavior since the pandemic began. And it might have something to do with all that time spent with no spectators in the stands.
--:-- Howard Beck: There were no fans sitting there if a player got upset and threw his mouthpiece into the stands or threw the ball into the stands, and they weren't there to hear players chirping at each other or at the referees.
--:-- Howard Beck: So with no fans in the building, the way the league saw it was that their standards of decorum in many aspects of the game had just kind of eroded a little bit. And this season, as they started the year with fans back in arenas, they thought it was the right time to kind of emphasize these decorum rules once again.
--:-- Howard Beck: I spoke to an English professor who studies profanity. As you might expect, he calls BS on the league's policy. He says swearing is a natural element of language and centuries of policing efforts have failed
--:-- Howard Beck: And now a common refrain here would be but think about the children Well a brain scientist says that studies show exposure to swearing has no measurable negative impact on adults or on kids
--:-- Howard Beck: The league did not tell the union in advance that it was going to have the crackdown. There is nothing explicitly in the labor agreement that prohibits players from cursing publicly.
--:-- Shamita Basu: In 2015, Navy pilots were flying off the coast of Florida when they saw something that seemed unexplainable. It's a little hard to make out, but they're saying there's a whole fleet of drones that are somehow flying against super strong winds. And they can't believe what they're seeing.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Today, Congress holds its first public hearing on UFOs in more than half a century. This hearing comes after a report that was released last year by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence that reviewed dozens of cases of mysterious flying objects.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Now, the report didn't reach a solid conclusion. Officials are not saying it's aliens, but they're not saying it's not aliens.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Now, some recommended reading for you before you tune into this congressional hearing. You can give at least a little bit of credit to the guy from Blink-182, frontman Tom DeLonge. has been talking about UFOs and the need to study them for years.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And he's poured a decent amount of his rock star income into research. He founded a group that brings together scientists and former intelligence officials to see what's out there.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Esquire profiled DeLong last year, and we pulled that article for you to check out. You can find that story and more in the Apple News app.
--:-- Shamita Basu: There's also full coverage of today's primaries. And when you're in the app, keep listening to hear narrated articles from our News Plus partners.
--:-- Shamita Basu: We'll talk with you again tomorrow.
