--:-- Shamita Basu: Good morning. It's Monday, September 23rd. I'm Shamita Basu. This is Apple News Today.
--:-- Shamita Basu: On today's show, a deal to avoid a government shutdown, at least before the election. Inside, a scandal over profiting off human remains. And staffers desert a North Carolina Republican candidate for governor after reporting on offensive online comments. But first, major new escalation in the conflict between Israel and Hezbollah in Lebanon.
--:-- Shamita Basu: It was a weekend of strikes and responses. Hezbollah fired rockets across the border into Israel. Israel's military launched some of its most widespread airstrikes. It's warning civilians in southern Lebanon to evacuate areas where Israel says Hezbollah is storing weapons.
--:-- Shamita Basu: There's little sign of either side backing down. Israel says it'll continue attacks until it's safe for Israeli families who have fled the border areas to return, and hasn't ruled out a possible ground invasion of Lebanon.
--:-- Shamita Basu: As for Hezbollah, it says it'll keep fighting until there's a ceasefire in Gaza. This is all in the wake of the exploding pagers and walkie-talkies, devices commonly used by Hezbollah. The explosions are widely seen as an attack by Israel, though it hasn't confirmed or denied responsibility.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Former U.S. Defense Secretary and CIA Director Leon Panetta talked to CBS about the implications of an attack that apparently showed Israel's ability to intercept and plant explosives inside devices bound for Hezbollah.
--:-- Leon Panetta: This has gone right into the supply chain. And when you have terror going into the supply chain, it makes people ask the question, what the hell is next?
--:-- Leon Panetta: Panetta said he's worried about how this could lead to wider conflict. This is a tactic that has repercussions, and we really don't know what those repercussions are going to be.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The Washington Post spoke to current and former Israeli and Western security officials about the Pager explosions. They say it's part of a complex, decade-long effort by Israel to set up what it calls red-button capability, getting inside an enemy's organization in a way that an attack can be ready to launch for months, even years, before being activated.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Moving on to U.S. politics. Leaders in Congress say they have a deal that should prevent the government from shutting down in a few days. It's a bill that would keep the federal government open through most of December.
--:-- Shamita Basu: That means a shutdown threat isn't gone, but it's likely not going to be an issue again until after the election. House Speaker Mike Johnson says the House will vote on the StopGap funding bill sometime this week.
--:-- Mike Johnson: He told his colleagues to support the bill, arguing that a shutdown so close to the election would be a, quote, act of political malpractice.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries says Democrats are reviewing the proposal, and it looks like Congress is now on a bipartisan path to avoid a shutdown.
--:-- Hakeem Jeffries: Johnson calls the deal bare bones. It does not include a mandate for states to make people give proof of citizenship to register to vote.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Johnson tried to tie that requirement to extending funding in response to the most conservative House Republicans and former President Trump. But it failed to get the votes, and that's what really kicked off the bipartisan negotiations that led to the deal.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Like most temporary spending bills, this measure would keep federal agencies running more or less at their current levels. However, the bill does carve out extra funding for the Secret Service, which has asked for more money in the wake of two assassination attempts on Trump.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The agency would get over $230 million dollars.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Let's turn to reporting from NBC about a Texas medical school that built a lucrative business around using so-called unclaimed bodies for medical research.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The school received hundreds of bodies of people who had died and who county death investigators said had been unclaimed by family members and would sell them for research and training to clients like the U.S. military and medical device makers.
--:-- Shamita Basu: But NBC reporters learned most of the bodies they collected were not given with consent. In fact, several families learned through NBC's reporting that their loved ones' bodies were sold without their knowledge, leaving families traumatized and angry.
--:-- Shamita Basu: That's what happened to Victor Honey's family. He served in the Army for nearly 10 years, and he was entitled to a burial in a veteran cemetery with honors. But when he died he was unhoused and estranged from his family.
--:-- Shamita Basu: So Honey's body was deemed unclaimed and it went to the University of North Texas Health Science Center.
--:-- Shamita Basu: For county medical examiners cremating or burying unclaimed bodies costs a lot of money. So giving unclaimed bodies to the school was seen by officials as a pragmatic workaround.
--:-- Shamita Basu: This practice is legal in Texas and most of the country, though many states and programs have moved away from it in recent years.
--:-- Shamita Basu: NBC reporter Mike Hixenbaugh told us Honey's body was one of around 2,300 that the school took in over the course of five years.
--:-- Mike Hixenbaugh: They had way more bodies than they needed to train only their medical students. And so what the University of North Texas Health Science Center had done was essentially become a body broker.
--:-- Mike Hixenbaugh: They would essentially lease out these bodies or body parts to groups all across Texas and across the country. And this had turned into a significant stream of revenue for the medical program.
--:-- Shamita Basu: NBC learned the University of North Texas made about $2.5 million a year in sales of unclaimed bodies.
--:-- Shamita Basu: In the U.S., unclaimed bodies tend to be people who were disproportionately Black, unhoused, and often struggling with mental health or drug addiction, or their families are tough to reach.
--:-- Shamita Basu: But in their reporting, Hicksenbaugh and his colleagues found that death investigators in the Dallas area repeatedly failed to find and contact families like Honeys who were reachable.
--:-- Shamita Basu: In some cases, when we grabbed a name and started searching, we were able to locate and get on the phone with family that afternoon.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And some of the people we spoke to, one of their first reactions was, if you all could find us, why didn't they? Why didn't the medical examiner? Why didn't the medical school find us?
--:-- Shamita Basu: After Hickson-Baw and his colleagues shared their reporting with the University of North Texas Health Science Center, The school announced it was suspending the body donation program.
--:-- Shamita Basu: It fired the officials in charge, and the school says they're hiring a firm to investigate the program.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Before we let you go, a few other stories being featured in the Apple News app.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Four people are dead and more than a dozen others injured following a shooting in Birmingham, Alabama, Saturday night.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Police believe that multiple shooters were carrying out a planned hit on one person, but many people got caught in the crossfire at a time when lots of people were out in bars and clubs.
--:-- Shamita Basu: On CBS eyewitness Jerry Bosworth stressed how many shots the attackers were able to fire so quickly.
--:-- Jerry Bosworth: It sounded like three rounds at once and we heard dot, dot, dot, dot. And then we saw a bunch of cops.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Investigators found more than 100 shell casings at the scene. They believe the shooters illegally modified their weapons to function like machine guns.
--:-- Shamita Basu: There were no suspects immediately taken into custody.
--:-- Shamita Basu: In political news, several top staffers from the gubernatorial campaign of North Carolina Republican Mark Robinson have stepped down.
--:-- Shamita Basu: This follows CNN's reporting of offensive comments Robinson made on a pornography site's message board over a decade ago.
--:-- Shamita Basu: CNN matched various biographical details and digital data to attribute the comments to Robinson.
--:-- Shamita Basu: He calls the reporting, quote, tabloid lies.
--:-- Shamita Basu: At Tufts University, there's an investigation underway into how several players on the men's lacrosse team were diagnosed with an unusual and dangerous medical condition after a workout.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Several were hospitalized. It happened last week after a session with an alum who's a graduate of Navy SEAL training.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The condition is known as rhabdo, where damaged muscle tissue can lead to organ failure, even death.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Athletes in hot environments are at particular risk.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And finally, with WNBA playoffs now underway, the Washington Post looks at one of the most enjoyable side characters, the New York Liberty mascot, Ellie the Elephant.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The costume character breaks ground because, as the Post puts it, most mascots are dudes, or at the very least, dude-coded.
--:-- Shamita Basu: But Ellie has her own feminine style, which has earned her a lot of fans, as well as coverage from Vogue.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The team's chief brand officer says it all makes sense.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The players can wear braids and lashes and makeup so their mascot can look glamorous too.
--:-- Shamita Basu: You can find all these stories and more in the Apple News app.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And if you're already listening in the News app right now, we've got a narrated article coming up next.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Saturday Night Live is back this week for its 50th season.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And The New Yorker recently spent time with Bowen Yang, the first Chinese-American to join the cast in 2019, when he quickly became a breakout star.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Yang talks about his road to 30 Rock and his role in the upcoming movie adaptation of the Broadway hit Wicked.
--:-- Shamita Basu: If you're listening in the podcast app, follow Apple News Plus Narrated to find that story.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And I'll be back with the news tomorrow.
