--:-- Shamita Basu: Good morning. It's Friday, August 6th. 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: Students across the country are getting ready to go back to school. The CDC wants them to wear masks inside the classroom. Federal health officials are concerned. Not only is the Delta variant highly transmissible, but children under 12 still aren't eligible to get the vaccine.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And with all this going on, governors across the country are signing bills banning mask requirements in schools. In Florida, Governor Ron DeSantis is threatening to withhold funds from school districts that require students to wear face coverings.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: The Washington Post is reporting at least four districts in the state are pushing back against the governor by implementing mask mandates anyway. One of those districts is Broward County Public Schools. It's the sixth largest school district in the U.S. And this week, the county announced it's keeping its mask mandate in place, despite what the governor is saying.
--:-- Shamita Basu: In another district, Leon County, the superintendent sent a letter to the governor urging him to give schools the flexibility to make their own decisions. She said in the past 10 days, four school-aged children in Leon County were admitted to local hospitals, and two teachers were in intensive care.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: This is a really pressing issue in Florida. Recently, there's been a huge spike in COVID-19 cases. Right now, Florida accounts for one in every five confirmed coronavirus infections in the U.S. And on Wednesday, the state reported more than 12,400 hospitalizations. That's a new record.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And Florida isn't the only place where state leadership is clashing with federal guidance. Republican governors Greg Abbott of Texas and Kim Reynolds of Iowa are both banning mask requirements in their states. And Missouri Governor Mike Parson is against mask mandates in schools.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: This week, President Biden criticized these governors, saying they're working against public health guidance. This year, the Biden administration created a task force to help reunite families who were separated at the U.S. southern border.
--:-- Shamita Basu: It identified nearly 4,000 children who the United States government took away from their parents because of the Trump administration's zero tolerance policy on immigration. So far more than 40 families have been reunited. More are expected this year.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: Photos and videos of these emotional reunions often go viral. In these moments they sort of pull at your heartstrings. But after cameras stop rolling, many of these families are getting crushed by a wave of financial difficulties.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And as of right now, the government says there's not a lot it can do to help. BuzzFeed News has some reporting about the problems this task force is facing. We spoke with Adolfo Flores, who brings us this story.
--:-- Adolfo Flores: So one of the families I spoke with was a mother named Lisi, who was reunited with her two sons. And she talked about how being back in the U.S. with her kids was this mixed bag of emotions, because she obviously was very happy to be with them. She hadn't seen them in nearly four years.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: But she says her inability to provide for them is another type of trauma. You know, they ask her for candy, for a hamburger. They have school coming up and she received a list of school supplies that she needs to get. And she can't do that because she doesn't have a work permit.
--:-- Adolfo Flores: Lisi and her sons have been living with her daughter, who's older, and son-in-law. On top of asking her to pay for school supplies, her adult children have asked Lisi to start contributing to rent, which she says she can't do without a job.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Even though the work authorization process has been expedited for this group of reunited parents, Flores told us Lisi is still likely going to be waiting for months. In that time, they have no income.
--:-- Adolfo Flores: And, you know, people like Lisi, they don't want to do anything bad to jeopardize their ability to stay in the U.S. by working under the table. Documents reviewed by BuzzFeed show about a third of the families that were part of the first group of reunifications experienced homelessness shortly after being reunited.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: The Family Reunification Task Force, they want the Department of Health and Human Services to offer families English classes, money and medical assistance, much like they offer refugees when they're resettled here. But it's actually not clear how they would fund it.
--:-- Adolfo Flores: The way that the refugee resettlement is funded is very different from this. Nonprofits have jumped in to fill the gaps for some families, but advocates say these families would be better off if they got assistance from the very beginning, instead of trying to fix problems after they've already started to struggle.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And it's not just financial stress. Many of these families are still dealing with trauma associated with the separations. One father said his daughter was convinced that he abandoned her when they were separated and she still won't talk to him.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: In the early 90s, Martine Rothblatt found out her nine-year-old daughter, Genesis, had a rare and terminal medical condition. Her heart and lungs were narrowed. There were no approved treatments except for a lung transplant, which is almost never done in children.
--:-- Martine Rothblatt: So I set out to find a solution. And this sent me down a winding path into a field of science research that sounds a lot more like science fiction. It involves growing organs in pigs.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: Rothblatt was in a unique position to take on this challenge. She used to be an aerospace attorney and she co-founded Sirius Satellite Radio. So she'd become really wealthy by this point.
--:-- Martine Rothblatt: I founded a biotech company so that I could license a drug that I hoped to develop and save my daughter's life. And that drug was a success. It led to a life-saving treatment for her daughter's condition that's since been approved by the FDA.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: More than 100,000 people rely on this drug around the world. The company that Rothblatt founded, United Therapeutics, is now worth about $8 billion.
--:-- Martine Rothblatt: But the story doesn't end there. It was never a permanent cure. There's a decent chance that eventually her daughter's lungs will begin to give out and she'll need to get a transplant.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: What she's trying to do now is solve the organ transplant shortage. Peoria reports fewer than 1% of patients who need lung transplants get them. Hundreds of thousands of people. They die every year of end-stage lung failure.
--:-- Martine Rothblatt: This is why Rothblatt and her team have been trying to create manufacturing techniques that don't involve human donors. They're just trying to genetically modify the pig organs so that they're close enough that the human body will accept them.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: Pig organs are already roughly the same size as human organs. And what this team is trying to do is make it so that these pig organs are compatible in humans. If you put an organ from another animal into the human body, the immune system will begin to attack that organ.
--:-- Martine Rothblatt: So if you can figure out what it is in the pig organs that is triggering an immune response, and you can genetically modify that, then the human body has a much better chance of accepting it.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: When it comes to transplants, lungs are particularly challenging. They're more prone to rejection than other organs. So Rothblatt's team is starting with kidneys.
--:-- Martine Rothblatt: Last year on an earnings call Rothblatt said her company was aiming to begin FDA human clinical trials with pig kidneys as early as 2022. But as Piore tells us it's not clear if the company is going to meet that goal.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: They're being quiet about where they are with that. They would not confirm whether they'll make that deadline. But, you know, a bunch of the analysts who cover them were pretty optimistic.
--:-- Martine Rothblatt: Meanwhile, Genesis, Rothblatt's daughter, just turned 36 years old. Her lungs still might fail at some point. She works as a project leader at her mother's company, the one that saved her life.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Have you noticed that runners at the Tokyo Olympics seem to be breaking all sorts of records? Sure, they're the best in the world, but their performances are making them the best in history.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: Well, it turns out the track under their feet might be partly responsible for their phenomenal success. NPR explains modern tracks have become highly engineered surfaces. They're designed to absorb the force of a runner's step and then return some of that energy back to the runner.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And this gives runners a tiny, almost imperceptible bounce. The track for Tokyo was created by the Italian company Mondo. It built its first Olympic track for the Montreal Games in 1976, and it's been trying to make its running services better ever since.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: The company says the track for this year's Olympics is the most technologically advanced in the world. NPR explains it has a special top layer that provides a strong grip, and then below the surface are these air chambers that are shaped like springy honeycombs.
--:-- Shamita Basu: NPR spoke with several athletes who say the difference is noticeable. It feels like a faster track. And just look at the 400-meter hurdles. Gold medalists in the men's and women's events broke world records this year. Even the silver medalists got faster times than previous records.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: But a few athletes told NPR it's not only the track. The athletes, they deserve a lot of credit, too.
--:-- Shamita Basu: You can find all these stories and more in the Apple News app. Plus, check out our weekend interview show, In Conversation. This week, I sit down with special correspondent for Vanity Fair, Gabe Sherman. He recently investigated the relationship between Jeffrey Epstein and his biggest client, the billionaire Leslie Wexner.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: It's the old cliche, follow the money, and Wexner's money was at the root of what Epstein was able to do.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Enjoy that week and listen. We'll be back with the news on Monday.
