Keeping Iran From Engaging, FAFSA Fiasco, Death Penalty
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Israelis strike pummel Lebanon, killing hundreds as the Lebanese group Hezbollah hits back, including launching a missile that reached Tel Aviv but was intercepted. Will this open warfare envelop the region and draw in Hezbollah's key backer, Iran? I'm E. Martinez with Leila Fadl, and this is Up First from NPR News.

College is expensive and a lot of Americans need help like federal student loans to pay. But there were a lot of problems in the last cycle with the form to get that financial aid. A new investigation is detailing what went wrong with FAFSA, how did it affect students. And in Missouri, the state executed a man even though the office that worked to convict him says they made a mistake. Why did a potentially innocent person have to be killed? And what does that say about the death penalty in the U.S.? Stay with us. We'll give you the news you need to start your day.

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Hezbollah earlier this morning fired a ballistic missile at Tel Aviv. It was intercepted. This comes after a wave of Israeli strikes in Lebanon this week, killing upwards of 550 people in a single day, the deadliest in Lebanon in decades. Among the dead, dozens of women and children, including four teachers and two U.N. refugee agency workers. One, a mom named Dina Darwish, who was killed with her little boy, Jad.

Meanwhile, Western nations say they're trying to prevent this open warfare between Hezbollah and Israel from drawing in Iran, a key backer of Hezbollah. So far, Iran is sitting on the sidelines. NPR's international affairs correspondent Jackie Northam joins us now to discuss. Hi, Jackie. Morning, Leila. Morning. So give us a quick sense of the relationship between Hezbollah and Iran and why it's so important to this conflict.

Iran has long supported Hezbollah financially, strategically, and certainly provides much of its weaponry, its missiles and the like. But Hezbollah is also an important element of an Iranian strategy that it wants to fight its adversaries beyond its borders. And it does this by using proxies such as Hezbollah and Hamas in Gaza, whose operations have been severely damaged by Israel.

And now Hezbollah is under unprecedented and devastating attack by Israel. And I spoke with Ali Veyaz, an Iranian specialist at the International Crisis Group about this and what it means for Iran. Hezbollah is the tip of the spear of Iran's regional network. And Hezbollah's weakening basically means that Iran would become much more vulnerable. And that means that in fact Hezbollah, Tehran's most powerful proxy, is supposed to protect Iran

But now the tables are turned and it risks actually dragging Iran into the conflict it doesn't want. So if Iran's two major regional partners are under attack and Hezbollah is the tip of Iran's regional network, does this mean that Iran will get involved?

Well, analysts I spoke to said there's very little chance that Iran will enter into the fray unless Israel launched a serious attack on Iranian assets in the country, say a military or a nuclear installation. Alex Vatankai, the head of the Iran program at the Middle East Institute, told me that Iran's biggest fear about getting involved in a regional war is the U.S. Mr.

If there's one thing the Islamic Republic hates more than anything else is the idea of having to fight the Americans because they don't underestimate the might of the United States military. So, Leila, it's likely Iran will just keep pumping more weapons to Hezbollah and perhaps send in more militias from Syria or Iraq. Now, Iran's new reformist president said at the UN that Israel is trying to provoke a regional war with these attacks on Lebanon. What do experts say about his accusation?

President Massoud Pazeskian said Israel was trying to, quote, trap Iran into a broader conflict by attacking its most powerful proxy.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has called Iran an existential threat to Israel in the past, but some analysts I spoke to said it was more like Israel was calling Iran's bluff. You know, Israel has been on a remarkable role militarily in Gaza and now in Lebanon, although major questions have been raised about that is violated, you know, international law and failing to protect civilians in the prosecution of its wars. And Hezbollah is

was seen as a formidable fighting force so far in this conflict. It's been back-footed by Israel against all expectations. And, you know, now we have Iran's president taking a softer tone at the UN, even re-upping Iran's offer to enter into nuclear talks again, perhaps because of this crisis. NPR's Jackie Northam. Thank you, Jackie. Thanks so much.

Millions of students rely on a form called the FAFSA to access federal financial aid, but the FAFSA is in turmoil. And now the public is getting an inside look into why. Federal investigators testified before lawmakers yesterday about what went wrong during the last cycle of FAFSA applications and what needs to be fixed for the next one. Corey Turner listened to their testimony and he joins us now. Good morning, Corey.

Good morning, Layla. So you've been reporting on federal investigations into the problems with FAFSA. What did investigators say they found when they testified yesterday? Yeah, House lawmakers heard from two investigators with the nonpartisan U.S. Government Accountability Office, and their report detailed 55 defects, essentially technological glitches in the form that caused a lot of confusion for students and families. I'm just going to tick a few of them.

For a while, students born in the year 2000 were mysteriously blocked from completing the form. Students whose parent or spouse does not have a social security number were often forced by an error to go through a manual identity verification process that involves emailing documents directly to the department, which was really burdensome.

Also, students' parents' signatures sometimes just disappear when they return to the form. This is a problem GAO says still exists. I think it's also worth highlighting, Leila, GAO told lawmakers the education department wasn't forthcoming during this investigation either.

Here's GAO's Melissa Emery-Aris. It was extremely challenging. It took us five months to receive documents that we had requested in March. Five months to receive documents. This all sounds like a mess. How did it impact students and their families?

I mean, at the very least, it was incredibly frustrating. GAO found during the early FAFSA rollout, nearly three quarters of all phone calls, Layla, that came into the department's call center weren't even answered because the center was so understaffed. Wow.

But it also goes way beyond frustrating. This overhaul was meant to make the FAFSA more accessible. But according to GAO, about 9% fewer high school seniors and other first-time applicants submitted a FAFSA, with the largest declines among lower-income students. Here's Congresswoman Frederica Wilson, a Florida Democrat.

I'm most upset that the delays and ongoing setbacks with FAFSA have meant that some of our want-to-be-somebody students have just decided not to go to college at all.

They have just given up. And this kind of concern from lawmakers in the hearing yesterday was bipartisan. You know, and as we're talking, it's September, almost October, which is the traditional start of the FAFSA cycle. But for the second year in a row, the Education Department has delayed the form's launch. So, Corey, our

Are students and families going to face the same problems? Oh, that is the question. Well, the Ed Department released a report on Monday trying to reassure folks that they have learned from these mistakes. The Ed Secretary has said he's put all hands on deck, including hiring 700 more call center workers. They're also not releasing the form in October, Layla, to give them more time to do beta testing, which is why the department says they're going to try to release it by December.

But I will say this last rollout was such a mess. I don't know what to tell students and families, except maybe the old be prepared for the worst, but hope for the best. Well, there you go. NPR education correspondent Corey Turner. Thank you, Corey. You're welcome. Thank you.

The state of Missouri has executed a man whom prosecutors had come to believe was innocent. Marcellus Williams was put to death last night by lethal injection at around 6 p.m. Central Time following several last-ditch legal efforts to save his life. St. Louis Public Radio's Rachel Lippman has been following the case. So, Rachel, the story about Marcellus Williams has brought a lot of attention to the use of the death penalty. First, though, if you could give us some background about this case. Sure.

Marcellus Williams was convicted of the 1998 murder of a former newspaper reporter. There was never any forensic evidence, things like DNA, fingerprints or hair that connected him to the scene. Police were able to find some belongings of the victim in Williams's car, and he pawned a laptop that belonged to her husband. The conviction was based largely on the testimony of a former girlfriend and a jailhouse informant. OK, so tell us then about the concerns that prosecutors wound up raising.

Democrat Wesley Bell, who's currently the St. Louis County prosecutor and the presumptive next congressman from Missouri's 1st District, used a 2021 state law giving prosecutors a pathway to challenge what they think are wrongful convictions.

Many of the concerns he raised had also been brought up in previous legal proceedings. These were things like the racial makeup of the jury, the unreliability of the two main witnesses, and whether Williams' trial counsel had been ineffective. But Bell also said that he had new DNA evidence that would clearly show Williams could not be the killer. Yeah.

In a lot of cases, DNA evidence is used to exonerate someone who's convicted of murder. So how did the results of DNA testing complicate efforts to free Marcellus Williams? The tests on the DNA that they pulled from the murder weapon came back consistent with two former employees of the county prosecutor's office, an investigator and the attorney who took the case to trial. Both of them later admitted that they had touched the weapon without wearing gloves.

That meant possible contamination of any DNA evidence that could exclude Williams as the killer, but it did also rule out that unknown killer, which was central to the claims of innocence. And that meant Bell's office had to pivot and focus on concerns about constitutional error.

All of those claims had been rejected at the state and federal level. Bell's office and attorneys for Williams tried to argue they had new evidence showing a juror had been struck specifically because of his race, but state and federal courts disagreed. They then also tried to argue that past prosecutors had deliberately destroyed the DNA evidence by touching the weapon without gloves.

But it's important to remember that the trial took place in 2001, and the understanding of DNA and the sensitivity of tools to test for DNA were very different back then. Courts ruled that it was a reasonable policy in place at the time. So as we mentioned, Marcellus Williams is gone now. What were the reactions to last night's execution?

The executive director of the Midwest Innocence Project said in a statement that Williams' death was a grotesque exercise of state power and that the world would be a lesser place without him in it. Republican Governor Mike Parson said it represented finality in a case that had languished for decades. Rachel Lipman is a justice reporter with St. Louis Public Radio. Rachel, thank you for bringing us a story. You're welcome. ♪

We've got another story we're following this morning. The Justice Department is accusing Visa of illegally monopolizing the debit card market. It joins similar antitrust cases the Biden administration has filed against Google, Apple and Live Nation. Yeah, the government is accusing Visa of driving up prices for both businesses and consumers. NPR's Scott Horsley says the company handles more than 60 percent of all debit card transactions.

Visa is a financial go-between. When you buy a cup of coffee and swipe or tap your debit card, Visa tells your bank to send the money to the coffee shop's bank, and along the way, Visa itself pockets a little bit of money for processing that transaction. All this happens in a matter of seconds. It's mostly invisible, but it's

Big business. Retailers are welcoming the lawsuit. Here's Stephanie Martz with the National Retail Federation. Regardless of whether you use an expensive card from a big bank, regardless of whether you use cash, you're paying for these cards in the form of higher prices. We all are. As for Visa, the company says it's proud of the payments network it's built and will defend itself against the lawsuit.

And that's Up First for Wednesday, September 25th. I'm Leila Faldin. And I'm Ian Martinez. How about listening to Consider This from NPR. In the 2020 presidential election, younger voters turned out in higher numbers than they had in about 20 years. How might they affect the 2024 presidential election? And how is the youth vote shaping up in the battleground state of Georgia? Listen to Consider This from NPR. And today's episode of Up First was edited by Vincent Nee, Nicole Cohen, Cheryl Corley, H.J. Mai, and Ali.

Schweitzer. It was produced by Iman Maani, Nia Dumas, and Manzi Khurana. We get engineering support from Robert Rodriguez, and our technical director is Zach Coleman. Join us again tomorrow. Who's claiming power this election? What's happening in battleground states? And why do we still have the Electoral College? All this month, the ThruLine podcast is asking big questions about our democracy and going back in time to answer them.

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