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- [00:05]
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Good morning. After a US Chopper is downed, President Trump strikes at Iran. What to know about the retaliation and the dramatic rescue aided by drones.
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It was just pretty amazing, having followed this task force for several years to see this happen and to see how unmanned vessels really can play a huge role in search and rescue efforts.
- [00:23]
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Election betting is booming. Reuters explains who wins and loses from an industry with few regulations and the new ingredients coming to your Sunscreen. It's Wednesday, June 10th. I'm Gideon Reznick in for Shamita Vasu. This is Apple News. Today. It was another day of aggression that threatened a tenuous ceasefire between the US And Iran. Tensions rose after an American Apache helicopter was downed in the Strait of Hormuz on Monday evening. President Trump blamed Iran. And after the incident, the US Launched strikes against Iranian air defenses and radar, among other sites near the Strait. Iranian officials told the Wall Street Journal that the helicopter was not deliberately targeted.
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We started hearing about a very intense situation in the Strait of Hormuz. When we woke up, there was a statement from US Central Command saying a helicopter had crashed.
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Shelby Holliday is a national security correspondent for the Wall Street Journal.
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The crew members were saved. It was a very intense search and rescue near the Strait of Hormuz.
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The rescue mission marked the second time that there was a dramatic recovery since the war began after a US Fighter jet was downed in April and its pilot was recovered from behind enemy lines.
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But we were scrambling to find details. It wasn't clear if the helicopter had been shot down or brought down or if there was some sort of mechanical issue.
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Perhaps even more remarkable is how these soldiers were rescued. Holliday says a US task force that's been in the Middle east since 2021 has used unmanned boats and sensors to expand the Navy's eyes and ears. That task force was crucial in finding the rescued soldiers alive.
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It was the first of its kind for an unmanned surface vessel, which is also known as a drone boat. There were a lot of platforms looking for these downed soldiers, but it was the drone boat that went out, found them, and then also rescued them. Our understanding is that the two crew members climbed aboard this unmanned vessel, the vessel took it to safer waters, and then they were lifted up to a helicopter and whisked away to land for medical care and safety.
- [02:27]
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Other Apaches had been used earlier this year in a short lived operation to help guide commercial ships through the Strait of Hormuz.
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These Apache helicopters have been doing patrol missions over the Strait of Hormuz and they've been doing precision strikes. It was flying in an area where Iran does send a great deal of drones across the strait. And it's very possible that Iran accidentally hit this aircraft.
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While U.S. military officials characterize the strikes as a proportional response, the flare up highlighted how difficult it might be to get a lasting resolution that reopens the Strait of Hormuz.
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It does feel like the Strait of Hormuz is at a stalemate. It does feel like both sides, even though there's a ceasefire, they are both maintaining a great deal of pressure on each other, and they're both jockeying for control. And that's why we see so many helicopters and boats and drones and ISR platforms always constantly hovering around the strait. And until either side makes some sort of concession, it's very hard to see negotiations progressing.
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Dozens of families who were separated during the first Trump administration have been deported or detained over the past year. Now those families are facing a new round of separations, despite a legal settlement that said they should be protected. These findings are according to a new investigation by the Associated Press. Reporter Gerance Burke told us what they learned.
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Some of the parents have been locked in immigration detention facilities for months. Others have been deported back to their home countries after being taken from their families once again. And in some cases, we found immigration officials who've been conducting interior arrests in the last couple years deported some of these separated families despite discovering that they were legally off limits for removal.
- [04:17]
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Back in 2018, the ACLU filed a lawsuit, which became a class action suit to stop the first Trump administration from separating parents and kids at the US Mexico border. A federal judge approved the request, saying the policy caused, quote, lasting, excruciating harm. And the Biden administration later approved a settlement for families involved in that class action suit. The agreement provided legal protections, services and pathways to residency and asylum for roughly 12,000 families.
- [04:46]
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And what we found is that actually the government has re separated dozens of children from their families. Despite the landmark legal settlement that was in place and meant to reunify these families.
- [04:59]
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These separations look different than in the first Trump term. Then, children were often forcibly taken from their parents at the border. And now, if parents are arrested or deported within the United States, they're being made to choose whether or not to leave their children behind. Burke told us about one of those families, Mirsi Alva Lopez and her son Ederson, who were first separated in 2018. When Ederson was three years old, he
- [05:23]
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was pulled from his mother's arms and kept apart from her in a government facility for months.
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Lopez told the AP that Ederson didn't recognize her by the time they were reunited. She said that when she hugged her son, he backed away. The family ended up in Florida, where Lopez got a work permit. Ederson went to school, learned English, and made friends. He also went to therapy to process the trauma of the separation.
- [05:53]
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And then in June of last year, just after Ederson had finished his therapy sessions, his mother was stopped by federal agents as she and co workers were on their way to a landscaping job, and she was transferred to two Florida jails, then to ICE custody in Louisiana, and then quickly to a plane full of deportees heading back to Guatemala City.
- [06:19]
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After about a week, Ederson and his sister flew to Guatemala to be with their mom. Lopez told the AP she never imagined their family would go through this twice.
- [06:28]
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For Ederson, it's been really challenging to just take in all of these changes in his short life. He repeated fourth grade. The school officials there said that he had to go back across because his Spanish was not where they wanted it to be for him. It was difficult because his friendships weren't as close as they had been when he lived in West Palm Beach. He was really missing his life in Florida.
- [06:58]
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The family was recently allowed to return to Florida after a federal judge ruled the government acted illegally, but their future is uncertain. Lopez was granted two weeks of humanitarian parole. The government declined to comment specifically on Lopez's case, but a spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security told the Associated Press that the agency complies with all court orders. Government attorneys have argued that there are no legal restrictions when it comes to orders for removal. This year is expected to be the biggest yet for gambling on US Elections, with thousands of races happening across the federal, state and local level. And it will test the safeguards of prediction markets like polymarket and Kalshi, where the definition of insider trading is quite murky and regulations are still being developed.
- [07:50]
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We're seeing betting on all sorts and all manners of parts of the political process.
- [07:57]
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Douglas Gillison is a financial regulations correspondent for Reuters.
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The primary races, the number of votes, turnout, who's going to control Congress, pretty much anything you can imagine that can be known can be bet on in the political process.
- [08:13]
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And every candidate has confidants, from campaign workers and fundraisers to friends and family.
- [08:19]
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There's a lot of insider information that people could be using, and our reporting shows that it's going to be a challenge to make sure that people aren't doing that inappropriately or illegally.
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Congress has implemented some guardrails. The Senate has banned members and staff from betting on prediction markets, but it's currently allowed in the House, though one key Republican member is working on legislation to ban current and former lawmakers as well as candidates from betting on politics and elections. Meanwhile, states are battling the federal government over who should have the power to dictate the rules for these platforms. So Gillison says right now, while so much is up in the air, a lot of the responsibility to police the platforms is falling to the companies themselves. Kalshee, for example, recently identified a number of high profile suspicious trades. It suspended three congressional candidates for betting on their own races. And regulators are now investigating former Congressman George Santos for potential insider trading. That was after Kalshee flagged suspicious activity on what the company believes to be his account.
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Santos allegedly had bet on him whether or not he would show up at Trump's State of the Union and then not showed up.
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Santos lawyer told Gillison they have no comment on the case. And Kalshee says it's also planning to require certain users to disclose where they work in order to make trades.
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And they also preemptively identify campaign workers, politicians, to the best that they can so that they can stop those people, people from trading if it looks like they're going to be trading on themselves.
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In some cases, users have driven change, like some on Polymarket who flagged suspicious bets around the capture of former Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro. Those turned out to be from a soldier who was involved in the operation who was allegedly betting on the outcome and has since been indicted. After this incident, polymarket announced an automated system to track suspicious trades.
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So the people who are in charge of stopping all this say they have the tools and they're ready and we'll see how it plays out. But it is a very big field
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to keep track of the relationship between the federal government and these companies has changed since Trump began his second term in office. The Biden administration had sought to clamp down on Polymarket and Kalshi and some of these eyebrow raising wagers, but the sector has flourished under Trump. Now the President's son, Don Jr. Is a special advisor to those two companies. But with fewer guardrails for these prediction markets, Gillison said, there may be more questions down the road.
- [10:42]
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The stakes here are high, right? If you find out that somebody who is now in power was supported by an operation that was cashing in on the race to take office, or that the political process itself is inhabited by people who are behaving in a cynical fashion and trying to enrich themselves, then it could undermine confidence in the political system and we already are at a point where that's pretty shaky.
- [11:14]
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And to a few other stories we're following. Congress just voted to fund the Department of Homeland Security for the remainder of Trump's term. The Republican led House narrowly passed a bill to direct about $70 billion towards DHS funding ICE and Border Patrol. The bill's passage ends a month long fight over government funding which was first triggered by the killing of two American citizens by federal immigration agents in Minneapolis. Democrats in Congress had objected to funding DHS without new ICE restrictions. This bill that just passed did not include any of them and was approved in a process that only required Republican votes. For the first time in roughly two decades, one of your most critical summertime companions is getting a makeover. The FDA approved a new ingredient for sunscreen yesterday called Bemotrizenol. It's been a staple of sunscreen formulas in Asian and European countries for years. But it's taken longer to get approval here in the states because U.S. officials regulate sunscreen like over the counter drugs, whereas in Europe they're treated more like cosmetics. This new ingredient offers a number of benefits. It filters out two types of UV rays, the kind that contribute to aging and the kind that cause sunburns. It lasts longer and supposedly irritates less. Manufacturers are expected to start using it as soon as this summer. And finally, as Nick's fever takes over New York City, it is taking over Wall street as well. Investors are making billions on the Knicks because they are one of the rare professional sports franchises that is part of a publicly traded that's Madison Square Garden Sports. Now, betting on a team that has famously failed to win a title for over half a century is risky. But over the last year, as the team has gained momentum, shares of MSG Sports went up over 100%. In fact, the price hit an all time high after the knicks won Game 1 of the NBA Finals. But the Wall Street Journal reports that even though shareholders now have more cash to spend, it's not necessarily helping them land tickets to the games. Even the cheapest nosebleed seats are going for thousands of dollars. You can find all these stories and more in the Apple News app. And if you're already listening to the news app right now, we've got a narrated article coming up next. Vox reports on how joining a club like an acapella group, sewing circle or book club can be an antidote to the chronic loneliness and isolation affecting a large part of the nation's population. If you're listening to the podcast app, you can follow Apple News narrative to find that story, and I'll be back with the news tomorrow.