--:-- Shamita Basu: Good morning. It's Thursday, June 2nd. 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.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Another deadly mass shooting, this time in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Four people were killed by a gunman carrying a rifle and a handgun at a medical facility yesterday. The shooter is also dead, apparently from a self-inflicted gunshot, according to Tulsa Police.
--:-- Shamita Basu: In the days immediately after a mass shooting, we often have more questions than we do have answers. In Uvalde, Texas, one of those questions is, what should happen to Robb Elementary school? People in the community have different answers.
--:-- Roland Gutierrez: I've asked the federal government for funds to demolish the existing school and rebuild it. Children are too afraid to walk back into the building. I've talked to so many little children who don't want to go back into that building. They're just traumatized. They're just destroyed.
--:-- Shamita Basu: But there are others who think that Robb Elementary is an important symbol of the community's culture. The town is predominantly Mexican-American. The school opened during a time when Mexican-Americans were segregated from white residents. And we're not talking about that long ago. This was in the 1960s.
--:-- Shamita Basu: This isn't the first time a community has struggled with what should happen to a school building after a mass shooting. In Parkland, Florida, where 17 students were killed in a 2018 shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, that school building is closed but still standing.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Classes currently take place in a new building, one that has enhanced safety features, that was allocated about $25 million from the state. Then there's the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, where a shooter killed 26 people, most of them kids, in 2012.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The town wasn't sure what to do with the school building, so they put it to a vote. Ultimately, residents voted to tear down that building the following year. And more than 20 years after the shooting at Columbine High School, that building still stands today, and kids go to school there.
--:-- Shamita Basu: A few years ago, there was a proposal to tear it down and build a new school, but the town ultimately dropped those plans. For residents, that discussion was emotional and painful. Some survivors and their families said the building holds important memories. For them, it's a place they go to pay their respects to the lives that were lost.
--:-- Shamita Basu: One of Silicon Valley's most successful and controversial leaders is stepping down. Sheryl Sandberg announced she's leaving her role as chief operating officer of Meta, Facebook's parent company. She'll continue to serve on the board.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The Wall Street Journal describes Sandberg as the person who helped transform it from a company that started in Mark Zuckerberg's dorm room to one worth more than $500 billion. She built its advertising business and shaped its internal operations.
--:-- Shamita Basu: She was often referred to as the adult in the room. Sandberg is also the author of Lean In, a book that she wrote nearly a decade ago about how to succeed as a woman business leader. That book launched a TED Talk and really a whole movement.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Don't leave before you leave. Stay in. Keep your foot on the gas pedal until the very day you need to leave to take a break for a child and then make your decisions. Lean In also launched Sandberg to a new level of prominence.
--:-- Shamita Basu: But as Facebook and Mark Zuckerberg have faced more scrutiny in recent years, so has Sandberg. The company has been under fire for allowing misinformation to run rampant, particularly in the lead-up to the 2016 election.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Sandberg ran the company's policy division at the time, and she testified before Congress about election interference. In 2018, The Wall Street Journal reported that Zuckerberg and Sandberg had a falling out of sorts over Cambridge Analytica.
--:-- Shamita Basu: That's the political research firm that improperly got access to Facebook's user data. Facebook was ultimately fined in the U.K. for violating privacy law.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Here's Sandberg speaking on PBS NewsHour in 2018. Well, we made big mistakes and we know that. And I think it really is that we were very focused on social experiences and pretty idealistic, that we believed in a world where people could share and experience things together.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And we just weren't thinking enough about the bad use cases. And that's on us. The journal describes her role after 2018 as largely identifying and preventing future security blowups, a job that some called complex, expensive and thankless.
--:-- Shamita Basu: As for why Sandberg is leaving now, she reportedly told people in private she just burned out. She tired of being blamed for Facebook missteps. Publicly though, she says she's planning to focus on her foundation and women's issues.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Operation Fly Formula is what the White House is calling their recent efforts to solve the baby formula shortage. Yesterday, President Biden announced the United States would be flying in new shipments of formula from Europe.
--:-- Shamita Basu: He's also invoked the Defense Production Act to speed up domestic production. And he met with formula manufacturers to talk about how to get shelves stocked as soon as possible.
--:-- Shamita Basu: To understand just how dire this crisis is, the Dallas Morning News recently followed one mother around for a day as she searched for formula. Sarah Brooke is a retired and disabled Army veteran. She's also a new mom to a six-month-old.
--:-- Shamita Basu: On this particular day, she spent seven hours going store to store, searching across 122 miles. I'm stressed. My formula's not even the hardest one to find, so I feel bad for other moms.
--:-- Shamita Basu: In a lot of the stores she walked into, it's the same story. Empty shelves. Two weeks ago, and I went to 15 different stores, and I got four bottles. And one bottle will last him a day to a day and a half.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Part of what makes Brooke's situation so challenging is that her newborn son has dietary issues. And we found out he had a dairy protein allergy, so we switched formulas.
--:-- Shamita Basu: We had to switch to Nutramagen, which was working great. And then the formula shortage happened and we can't find it anywhere. So I switched him onto a soy-based one. So he had a horrible reaction to that and went to the hospital again, spent three days admitted, and then we just got home last week.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Another complication, Brooke is enrolled in a federal aid program to cover the cost of formula. So she's limited to a handful of formula brands. But these days, if she finds a close enough formula, she's willing to pay out of pocket.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The Dallas Morning News described Brooke's journey as just grueling. Finally, at her 10th stop, she finds something that her son can eat on the bottom shelf of a grocery store. So at least he's good now for a week.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Tens of thousands of parents are in similar situations, driving from store to store, seriously worrying about how to feed their child their next meal. Some are rationing formula. Others are trying to make it at home, something that doctors and experts do not recommend.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The national formula supply is expected to normalize sometime in the next few months.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The NBA Finals get underway tonight. It's a face between basketball legends from the Golden State Warriors and some of the league's youngest and most promising superstars on the Boston Celtics.
--:-- Eric Malinowski: I'm Apple News editor Eric Malinowski, a longtime basketball reporter. My book, Beta Ball, chronicled the transformation of the Golden State Warriors from a punchline into an NBA powerhouse.
--:-- Eric Malinowski: He told us the fact that the Warriors have even made it this far may be a surprise to some fans. Most people watching the NBA thought that perhaps this dynasty was over.
--:-- Eric Malinowski: The Warriors had a couple of really bad seasons. They had the worst record in the NBA two years ago. They've had a lot of injuries to their major superstars like Steph Curry and Klay Thompson.
--:-- Eric Malinowski: But this year, they've turned all of that around. Klay Thompson came back midseason. Steph Curry seems like he's in his prime. The team is now headed to the NBA Finals for the sixth time in eight seasons.
--:-- Eric Malinowski: The last team to do that was the Chicago Bulls back in the 90s, with Michael Jordan on their roster. This is a team that knows how to get to the mountaintop.
--:-- Eric Malinowski: It has been, yes, a few years since they've been able to do it. But this is a team that is certainly peaking at the right time.
--:-- Eric Malinowski: On the other side, you have the Boston Celtics. They've got some of the league's best young talent. They have Jason Tatum, Jalen Brown. They have Robert Williams, memorably nicknamed Time Lord.
--:-- Eric Malinowski: They have guys like Derek White and Peyton Pritchard and Al Horford. This is a team that has played some really, really tough playoff matchups.
--:-- Eric Malinowski: They just took the Miami Heat, who were the number one seed in the Eastern Conference. They just took them to seven games, played a game seven in Miami and won that game.
--:-- Eric Malinowski: So this is a team that is coming in battle-tested. If the Celtics win, it would be the 18th championship in the team's history, making them the most decorated franchise in the history of the sport.
--:-- Eric Malinowski: Now, I didn't want to give any predictions, but I wouldn't be surprised if the finals go the distance. These are two teams that are going to be pretty much going at max strength.
--:-- Eric Malinowski: And, whether the Warriors experience or the Celtics youth movement wins out, hopefully for NBA fans, it's going to be a long and interesting ride these next couple of weeks.
--:-- Shamita Basu: If you want to read more before tonight's tip-off, our sports editors recommend a piece from The Ringer that answers three big questions ahead of the finals, like, could this be the first time Steph Curry wins finals MVP?
--:-- Shamita Basu: You can find that and all the stories that we talked about today on the Apple News app. 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.
