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Shumita Basu, Narrating: Good morning! It's Friday, November 10th. I'm Shumita Basu. This is Apple News Today. On today's show: Growing violence in the West Bank, explaining the Michigan football sign-stealing accusations, and the end of a long and twisted Airbnb saga.
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But first, Israel has agreed to daily pauses in its attacks to allow more civilians in Gaza to evacuate and more humanitarian aid to reach people. This is the kind of move the Biden administration has been pushing for weeks, but it still falls short of the ceasefire that many other countries are calling for.
Let's move now from Gaza to the West Bank, where violence against Palestinians by Israeli settlers and troops has spiked since October 7th. Israel's military says it's conducting raids on militants. The International Crisis Group estimates more than 130 Palestinians have been killed in the West Bank since the start of the war.
"NPR" sent teams of journalists there recently, where they reported from farming villages. It's harvest season for olive trees, and some Palestinian farmers say they've been blocked from their land since the war began. Last week, a farmer named Bilal Saleh was killed working in the groves. "NPR"'s Steve Inskeep went to speak with his family, to try to piece together what happened.
Their village sits on one side of the valley, and an Israeli settlement is on the other. His brother-in-law, Hazem Saleh, says, as the family was picking their olives from the trees, a group of armed settlers approached them. So, the family decided to leave. But, he told Inskeep, Bilal turned back because he forgot his cell phone.
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Hazem Saleh: At that time, we heard two bullets, or three bullets.
Steve Inskeep: Two or three gunshots?
Saleh: Um, what I heard, two.
Inskeep: You heard two?
Saleh: Yes.
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His brother-in-law says they found Bilal bleeding with wounds to the arm and chest. They carried him back to his wife and children, and he died with them by his side.
The Israeli military arrested an off-duty soldier who has since been released from custody. The military didn't explain to "NPR" why it released him. Bilal's widow said all along that this is what she expected would happen.
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Bilal Saleh's Widow: The law that they have for themselves is stronger than our existence.
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Many Palestinians in the West Bank feel the justice system, largely under effective Israeli control, is tilted against them. A report last year from an Israeli human-rights group found failures in oversight, that only 1% of Israeli soldiers accused of killing or harming Palestinians were ever indicted.
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Now, a quick look at some other stories in the news.
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Republicans are more hopeful about their chances of retaking control of the Senate, now that West Virginia Democrat Joe Manchin says he won't seek another term.
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Joe Manchin: I have made one of the toughest decisions of my life. And decided that I will not be running for re-election to United States Senate. But what I will be doing is traveling the country and speaking out to see if there is an interest in creating a movement to mobilize the middle and bring Americans together.
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Some political analysts see that last bit as a hint that Manchin may consider an independent run for president in 2024.
In personal-finance news, the IRS is changing tax brackets, in a way that could lower what you owe on next year's earnings. Income levels for brackets are going up next year to account for inflation. The standard deduction will also be bigger. But again, that applies to 2024 income, not what you'll owe in the upcoming tax season. You can read details on the Apple News app.
And a team of U.S. surgeons has performed the world's first transplant of a whole eye. If it's ultimately successful, it could transform how vision is treated. The patient was severely injured by an electric shock and received the new eye in a partial face transplant. It's early and the patient hasn't regained sight yet. But initial results show that there seems to be communication between the transplanted eye and his brain.
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Now, to the big scandal in college football, involving one of its top teams, undefeated Michigan. It's accused of going beyond the rules to decode the hand signals rival teams use to call plays. Michigan is aggressively fighting allegations that it broke the rules around sign-stealing, by having a spy network working to crack teams' codes and get an illegal advantage. "Sports Illustrated" reporter Pat Forde told us about it.
Pat Forde: This basically goes back to Connor Stalions, a former analyst, low-level staffer at the University of Michigan, who was discovered sending out associates to opposing teams that Michigan was going to play to buy tickets to sit in the stands and to videotape and record the play signals that they used to send in plays to the players on the field.
Stalions has since resigned and said that university staffers were not aware of what he was doing. Michigan head coach Jim Harbaugh has said he didn't know about the scheme. College-sports officials are investigating.
Now depending on what they find, Harbaugh could be suspended and Michigan's whole program punished. The tricky thing about this one is, sign-stealing, as shady as it sounds, can be legal. If coaches figure out what plays the other team is calling while they're playing them, or by watching on television, that's fine. But certain advanced surveillance moves, like filming future opponents, can cross the line.
Now, if you ask any college coach, they'll tell you that, to some degree, sign-stealing is happening all the time. Everyone's trying to pick apart how their opponents operate. And this is an argument Michigan is pushing. Just this week, it handed over documents to league officials that it claims shows evidence of other teams trying to decipher Michigan's signals. As Forde explains, a sort of "see, everyone's doing it" argument.
Forde: And so, if you're going to penalize us for this, you need to penalize the rest of the league that was trying to spy on us. Or don't penalize any of us, which would really be what Michigan would prefer.
Forde says the outcome of this scandal could have major implications for college football.
Forde: This season, you know, as far as Michigan goes in this and they might have the best team in the country, they're going to be playing under a cloud of suspicion, a cloud of acrimony and it also, I think I'm not sure relationships were great for Michigan with the rest of the Big Ten, but going forward, they're fractured.
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In California, a bizarre tenant dispute that attracted national attention is finally over, sort of. Now you might remember seeing this viral story from "The Los Angeles Times" about a luxury Airbnb rental with a guest who checked in as usual and then just refused to check out. She stayed there, without paying rent, for almost 600 days.
It was a long and messy personal and legal battle between the guest Elizabeth Hirschhorn and the homeowner Sascha Jovanovic. It's way more than I could attempt to explain here, and the whole twisty story is pretty entertaining to read, so if you haven't already you should check it out for yourself on Apple News app. Or just wait for the inevitable, straight-to-streaming documentary that somebody's gotta be working on about this.
Now the recent update is, last week, seemingly out of nowhere, Hirschhorn left. Jovanovic says he still doesn't know what happened; if she moved out permanently or plans to come back. It may not be over. Lawyers for both sides are still exchanging messages, and Hirschhorn wouldn't comment to the "LA Times." After this experience, Jovanovic seems to be done with the whole Airbnb thing. He's not planning to list the rental again, and he's already changed the locks.
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If you're listening in the News app right now, stick around for a Narrated Article that is so LA, even though it's by "New York Magazine." It's about the ultra-fancy, ultra-hyped California grocery store Erewhon.
If you're listening in the Podcasts app, follow Apple News+ Narrated to find that story.
Enjoy your weekend, and I'll be back with the news on Monday.
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