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--:-- Yasmin Khan: Good morning. It's Thursday, June 6. I'm Yasmin Khan, and for Shumita Basu, this is Apple News Today.
--:-- Shumita Basu: Coming up, what went wrong with America's expensive aid pier for Gaza? The danger of zombie mortgages. And the NBA Finals begin tonight. But first, let's take a quick look at some big stories in the news.
--:-- Yasmin Khan: President Biden is in France today, marking the 80th anniversary of the D-Day landings that led to the end of World War II. He'll be abroad for several days meeting with allies, including Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.
--:-- Shumita Basu: In Gaza, at least 40 people are dead following an Israeli airstrike on a U.N. school that was housing displaced people. Palestinian health officials say most of those killed were women and children. The Israeli military says that Hamas fighters were using the school.
--:-- Yasmin Khan: In the U.S., the Georgia election interference case against former President Donald Trump is indefinitely on hold. An appeals court is allowing Trump to challenge a ruling, letting Fulton County DA Fannie Willis stay on the case.
--:-- Shumita Basu: It's another sign this case is unlikely to go to trial before the election. Trump and other co-defendants have pleaded not guilty to a plot to overturn Trump's loss in Georgia.
--:-- Yasmin Khan: In Washington, Senate Republicans have voted to block a Democratic bill to create a federal right to contraception. The bill fell short of the 60 votes it would need to move forward.
--:-- Shumita Basu: That was expected, as the move was largely about getting Republicans on the record on that issue ahead of the election.
--:-- Yasmin Khan: And in environmental news, the U.N. Secretary General says the planet is on a, quote, highway to climate hell. He spoke as new data shows that the 12 months through May all had unprecedented heat.
--:-- Shumita Basu: Here in the U.S., tens of millions of people will be under heat alerts and warnings into the weekend, stretching from California into Texas.
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--:-- Yasmin Khan: There are growing questions about the U.S.-built pier off the coast of Gaza, starting with why it cost hundreds of millions of dollars, only to break apart, barely delivering any aid to Palestinians. And now there the question of whether it can be fixed.
--:-- Dan Lamothe: It's supposed to go this way. This plan was a big deal when President Biden announced it in his State of the Union speech.
--:-- Yasmin Khan: I'm directing the U.S. military to lead an emergency mission to establish a temporary pier in the Mediterranean on the coast of Gaza that can receive large shipments carrying food, water, medicine, and temporary shelters.
--:-- Dan Lamothe: Around the time, international efforts to send aid by truck were barely getting through border crossings, which Israel controls. Aid agencies struggled to understand confusing rules on what was allowed, and Israel turned away many trucks.
--:-- Yasmin Khan: Dropping aid by air was expensive, slow, and several civilians were killed when packages fell on them. So Biden's plan for a pier was meant to be a promising new access point.
--:-- Dan Lamothe: But as The Washington Post's Dan Lamothe explains, the plan had some clear flaws from the jump. One is it seemed like such a difficult project to get going and make work.
--:-- Yasmin Khan: Hundreds of U.S. military personnel were involved. In obviously a very dangerous area when there are other ways to potentially do this.
--:-- Dan Lamothe: And after barely more than a few days, it broke. Rough waters tore a section away. Deliveries are suspended while repairs are happening.
--:-- Yasmin Khan: Now, some are asking whether or not it makes sense for the Biden administration to continue. You're putting a big, vulnerable object in a dangerous area.
--:-- Dan Lamothe: How would that work? How would you protect it? How would you protect the Americans on it? If you had any kind of big attack, you then run the risk of drawing the United States in more directly as well.
--:-- Yasmin Khan: So those concerns, I think, all remain. Biden is pressing to salvage the mission. As imperfect as this has been, most of the people that I talked to for this most recent piece still think they can do this.
--:-- Dan Lamothe: They just don't think it's going to be easy. The Pentagon says the repaired section could be reattached as early as the end of this week.
--:-- Yasmin Khan: But I think that still leaves the question of the practicality of it. What do you do if it breaks up a second time?
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--:-- Yasmin Khan: Meanwhile, two U.N. agencies are warning that a million people in Gaza could experience the highest level of starvation by the middle of next month.
--:-- Karen McDonough: I got an eviction notice on my house. It was the Friday of 4th of July weekend, so I couldn't get any legal help.
--:-- Yasmin Khan: So for those three days, 72 hours, I didn't sleep and I just started packing everything.
--:-- Karen McDonough: Yeah, I was crying for three days straight. I just packed.
--:-- Yasmin Khan: The news came out of nowhere. Just didn't make any sense. I'm a mother and I'm a nurse and I'm being evicted from my house that I've been making monthly payments on.
--:-- Karen McDonough: Back in 2008, after the housing crash, I did what millions of other homeowners did. I got a modification of my mortgage.
--:-- Yasmin Khan: And she says at the time, the mortgage company told her that a second mortgage on her house was forgiven, and she could just forget about that one.
--:-- Karen McDonough: She says no more statements came for over a decade. But it was a zombie mortgage, not really gone.
--:-- Yasmin Khan: It got passed from company to company, eventually sold in a batch of other mortgages. Investors will buy up bundles of old mortgages like this, sometimes for pennies on the dollar.
--:-- Karen McDonough: They often tack on fees. Then they contact homeowners to get them to pay, sometimes using hard-nosed tactics like threats of foreclosure.
--:-- Yasmin Khan: NPR's investigation found thousands of homes facing foreclosure from old second mortgages across multiple states.
--:-- Christy Kelly: They can take everything from you. And it is just so wrong that this is happening.
--:-- Yasmin Khan: In some cases, it can be legal for investors to foreclose on someone with a so-called zombie mortgage.
--:-- Christy Kelly: Lawyers like Kelly say homeowners can fight back with legal tactics. Often they can prove that the companies didn't file proper paperwork.
--:-- Yasmin Khan: She's seen a lot of bad record keeping on these types of cases. There's no protections. You know, there's no database of like all the loans that are canceled or forgiven so you can go and verify it.
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--:-- Yasmin Khan: As for Karen McDonough in Massachusetts, her original mortgage company has no record of telling her that her loan was forgiven.
--:-- Karen McDonough: I'm still fighting to keep a zombie mortgage from taking it away.
--:-- Yasmin Khan: And lastly, the NBA Finals begin tonight. It's the Boston Celtics versus the Dallas Mavericks.
--:-- Shaker Saman: The Celtics have been the best team in the NBA all season. They won 64 games.
--:-- Yasmin Khan: They, throughout the playoffs, have just absolutely dominated every single team they faced on the road to the NBA Finals.
--:-- Shaker Saman: In Jason Tatum, they have one of the brightest young stars in the NBA. In Jalen Brown, they have someone who's only like a half step below him.
--:-- Yasmin Khan: They have incredible depth. And really notably, one of their starters, their center, Christoph Sporzingas, is coming back from injury.
--:-- Shaker Saman: It's like adding a star at the trade deadline, right? It's a real game changer that should give the Celtics really the upper hand in every single game, so long as he's healthy.
--:-- Yasmin Khan: And so for the Mavericks, they have this dynamic combination of Luka Doncic and Kyrie Irving.
--:-- Shaker Saman: How could they pull this off? I mean, the answer is they have two guys who could, you know, have terrible nights and then see one basket go in and hit 15 straight.
--:-- Yasmin Khan: This level of talent in terms of scoring is not common. And in Luka Doncic, you have a guy who every single time he steps on the floor is without question the best player playing basketball that night.
--:-- Shaker Saman: Okay. So based on what you've seen from these players and these teams, what does your gut tell you? Who do you think is going to win?
--:-- Yasmin Khan: Everything on paper says the Boston Celtics are the best team in basketball this year.
--:-- Shaker Saman: The problem is we haven't seen them tested in these playoffs.
--:-- Yasmin Khan: If Kristaps Porzingis is healthy and they can add a seven-footer who can shoot 36% from three and really challenge Dallas's young centers who will never have had to play in a game this big and a spotlight this bright with them as the key determining factor.
--:-- Shaker Saman: I think Boston probably wins the series. I do think Dallas can push it to six or seven games because Luka Doncic is just that good.
--:-- Yasmin Khan: Shaka Saman, Apple News Sports Editor, thank you so much for your time.
--:-- Shaker Saman: Thanks for having me.
--:-- Yasmin Khan: You can find all these stories and more in the Apple News app. And if you're already listening in the News app right now, stick around. We've got a narrated article coming up next. Vanity Fair takes us into the world of counterfeit weight loss medications and looks at what this means for patients contending with high prices and shortages.
--:-- Yasmin Khan: If you're listening in the podcast's app, follow Apple News Plus narrated to find that story.
--:-- Yasmin Khan: And I'll be back with the news tomorrow.
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--:-- Yasmin Khan: Thanks for listening to Apple News Today.
