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--:-- Shamita Basu: Good morning. It's Friday, August 27th. I'm Shamita Basu. And I'm Duarte Giraldino. This is Apple News Today.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: Each morning, hear about some of the most fascinating stories in the news and how the world's best journalists are covering them.
--:-- Shamita Basu: U.S. troops at the Kabul airport are bracing for more possible attacks as they work to evacuate Americans and Afghan allies. At least 13 U.S. service members and dozens of Afghan citizens were killed in yesterday's attacks there. The troops were the first Americans killed in action in the country in 18 months.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: President Biden addressed the nation yesterday and gave a warning. To those who carried out this attack, as well as anyone who wishes America harm, know this. We will not forgive. We will not forget. We will hunt you down and make you pay.
--:-- Shamita Basu: An affiliate of the Islamic State known as ISIS-K is claiming responsibility. You should know this organization is an enemy of both the U.S. and the Taliban.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: American commanders think ISIS-K might try to strike the airport again, possibly with truck bombs or rockets. Despite this threat, President Biden says evacuations from Afghanistan will continue. These ISIS terrorists will not win. We will rescue the Americans in there. We will get our Afghan allies. And our mission will go on.
--:-- Shamita Basu: For days, crowds have been gathering at the airport, hoping to board a flight out of the country rather than live under the Taliban. In the last few days, Western countries have evacuated around 100,000 people. The U.S. military says about 1,000 Americans are still in Afghanistan. President Biden's deadline for withdrawing troops is Tuesday. U.S. officials say the reality is thousands of Afghan allies may not make it out of the country by then.
--:-- Shamita Basu: People who live in Flint, Michigan, they know what it's like to be neglected by the government in a time of need. Back in 2014, after the city switched water sources, residents started feeling the effects of lead exposure. And a generation of people in this majority black city may never be the same again.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: When the pandemic started making people sick in Flint last year a lot of folks started worrying history was going to repeat itself. For particularly Flint Black community the pandemic hit really hard. The numbers were pretty startling. Black folks were dying at a rate of 73 times that of white folks.
--:-- Shamita Basu: That's reporter Edwin Rios. He recently wrote an article for Mother Jones about how Flint handled the pandemic. He found after that initial racial divide and how residents were being affected, The risk to black and white residents was more or less equal by October.
--:-- Edwin Rios: I asked Rios why that gap closed. They managed to really take on an age-old kind of approach in tackling health disparities. And that is to understand that the social conditions that people live in, where they live, where they work, that affects their rate of exposure and their access to resources.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And so what people on the ground ended up doing, they formed a task force that brought together community leaders, city, county officials, epidemiologists, and they basically listened to the community and was just figuring out, okay, how do we bridge this divide?
--:-- Edwin Rios: They put testing sites in places where the community was most affected, where black folks were most affected. And it went beyond just simple public health approaches. They have a big philanthropic community in Flint that mobilized to provide targeted grants to black and brown businesses to keep them afloat, particularly when PPP loans weren't necessarily heading their way.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And so kind of a combination of all these different actions helped bring those numbers down.
--:-- Edwin Rios: So much of your piece is speaking to people in Flint who definitely draw what they see as a clear line between the way that their community responded to the water crisis and the way that they responded to the pandemic. Can you say more about that?
--:-- Shamita Basu: That's exactly right. During the water crisis, they saw a moment when government failed them and they couldn't trust government entities to save them. And so they really had to rely on each other and rely on the community groups, the philanthropic organizations that are homegrown to Flynn, Genesee County, that area.
--:-- Edwin Rios: So during the water crisis for instance there were churches that acted as first responders that provided food and distributed water bottles to community members. And fast forward to the pandemic, there are now churches who act as testing sites and vaccine clinics and still some that distribute food and water during a pandemic.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And so that void in trust, they saw that void in trust as an opportunity to approach this pandemic in a kind of community oriented way. And that was successful for them.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Edwin Rios reporting for Mother Jones. Thank you so much, Edwin.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: The U.S. financial system has this chicken and egg problem. It's hard to borrow money if you don't have a strong credit history, but you can't build a strong credit history without borrowing money and paying it off. And that can make it harder for would-be homeowners to get mortgages.
--:-- Shamita Basu: But there is a major new development in the world of home finance that may help. USA Today is reporting, starting next month, mortgage giant Fannie Mae will consider rent payments as part of mortgage applications.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: The idea is, if you can show you consistently pay your rent every month, you're probably able to handle mortgage payments. Fannie Mae says about one in six rejected mortgage applicants could have been approved if rent histories had been included.
--:-- Shamita Basu: So this could be a game changer for people who have a solid job now, but their credit score suffered when they hit some hard times years back. Soon they'll have the option to prove that they're reliable renters.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: This change could also make home ownership more diverse. Right now, Black people are more likely to cite an insufficient credit score or history as their biggest obstacle to getting a mortgage.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Here's how all of this is going to work. If Fannie Mae calculates that a strong history of rent payments could help you get approved, it'll let you know. Then you have the option to let Fannie Mae check your bank statements.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: If those records show a history of on-time rental payments, your mortgage can be approved even if you don't have the best credit score. Credit scores are tied to how you use your credit card and make car payments. But consumer advocates say whether you pay your rent on time is a way more accurate sign that you can handle a mortgage.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Fannie Mae's new policy takes effect on September 18th.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Giant Burmese pythons are doing a number on the Florida Everblades. These snakes are invasive. They are multiplying and swallowing local wildlife whole. The state has several programs to control these predators.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: Some plans involve drones and genetic engineering. But a key weapon against these deadly snakes is low-tech. bounty hunters.
--:-- Shamita Basu: A reporter from Field and Stream went along with the men and women who catch these snakes. And you know what pythons look like, right? One of them that they recently caught was nearly 19 feet long.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: And you know, the pay is not that great considering this is pretty dangerous work. Some say that they're doing it because they care about balance in the ecosystem. Some are doing it for the thrill. Some turn the skins into handbags and wallets.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And a handful say that they like to eat what they kill. One says she makes a mean python stir fry, and she also cracks snake eggs into her cookie batter.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: This is a tough job. Hunters, they work in the dark. Just finding these reptiles is challenging. Big as they are, they rarely actually swallow people, but they do bite and they can choke you to death.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Different hunters have their own techniques for bagging targets. One has a move where she grabs one of these giant snakes in a spot just below the head. But if she hesitates or misses, she's getting those fish-hooked teeth in her arm.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: Recently, Florida expanded its snake hunting program. It's not clear how all of these Burmese pythons ended up in South Florida. Many believe that pet owners dumped them in the wild when they got too big.
--:-- Shamita Basu: A single female python can lay dozens of eggs at a time, which means that these bounty hunters have plenty of work to do.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The pictures of these massive snakes and the colorful characters tracking them, they're just wild. You can see them and read the whole story in the Apple News app.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: Also, check out our weekend interview show. In conversation? This week, I sit down with Jason Parham. He's a senior writer at Wired. He's out with an oral history of one of the biggest forces in social media, Black Twitter.
--:-- Shamita Basu: I think a lot of the idioms, a lot of the language used on Black Twitter, a lot of the ways we speak and communicate, we're driving and moving the culture in a lot of ways. I think people don't recognize.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: Enjoy that weekend listen. We'll be back with the news on Monday.
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