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Syrians feel forgotten. These are their earthquake stories. · Apple News Today

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  Shumita Basu, Narrating: Good morning! It's Tuesday, February 14th. I'm Shumita Basu. This is "Apple News Today." On today's show, why retired football players say the NFL's disability plan is failing them, a Valentine's Day lesson on how opposites actually do attract when it comes to love and money, and why that can be good, and how Captain America put a damper on steamy scenes on the big screen.
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  But first, why hasn't help arrived sooner? That is the question that so many people are asking in Syria and Turkey. Earthquake aid has been slow to arrive, leaving many people out in the cold in dangerous conditions. More than 37,000 people have died. "NPR's" Ruth Sherlock was on the ground in hard-hit areas that few reporters have been to. She started by telling us about what she saw in the town of Jindires in Syria.
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  Ruth Sherlock: This feeling of places being forgotten is especially true inside northern Syria. We met one man, Mohammed Juma, and he was by what used to be his home, and he'd lost his wife and his two children, a six-month-old baby, an 18-month-old boy, under the rubble. And we were told that they were alive. They were alive for quite some time, but he and the neighbors just couldn't reach them. These ceilings, entire ceilings collapsed on top of them. And without equipment, they couldn't reach them. And these are the kinds of stories that we're hearing all over from northern Syria.
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  Basu: You spoke to one survivor named Zakaria Tabakh. Can you tell us a little bit about what he told you?
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  Sherlock: He'd told us that the night of the earthquake, he'd cuddled his little boy in. He had a two-year-old boy, Abdelhadi. And the little boy is struggling to sleep, so he cuddled him in until he fell asleep in his arms, he lay him down in his bed, and then he went back to his bedroom with his wife. They went to sleep. The next thing he knows, he's woken up. The ceiling has collapsed. His wife is under the rubble, and she's not alive. He runs to his children's room. He grabs Abdulwahab, who's his five-year-old boy, who's alive there. But his son Abdelhadi is in his bed but not breathing because of the debris on top of him. He also discovered he'd lost his father. And so, at this most difficult moment of his life, when he has to bury, he and his little boy have to bury his two-year-old son, his wife, and his father, almost nobody was there at the burial at the funeral because he said everybody else in this town has a similar story. Everybody is so caught up trying to deal with their own tragedy that nobody can go and support each other at these types of burials.
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  Basu: Can you try and describe for an international audience just the scale of destruction that these countries have seen?
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  Sherlock: All I can tell you is it's like Armageddon. One of the first things I did when I landed on Monday in Turkey, we rushed straight to the city of Antakya on the southern border. You drive in, the hospital was tilted on its side, semi-collapsed, abandoned, completely unusable. When you get to the city center, rescuers told us it's very unlikely that anybody survived because these buildings, they just pancaked on top of each other. The floors collapsed in on themselves. That's the whole of the city center. I know Antakya very well. I used to spend weeks on end there talking to Syrian opposition rebels. It's right on the border with Syria. There's thousands of refugees, Syrian refugees living there. And it was unrecognizable.
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  Basu: Wow. And I should say that aid workers you spoke to in Syria told you that the Syrian regime right now is blocking aid to its own people. What's happening as far as you can tell?
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  Sherlock: What these Syrian aid organizations in the northeast of Syria, which again, is another part of Syria not controlled by the government, what they're alleging is that they tried to bring a convoy of aid from northeast Syria, through a checkpoint into Aleppo province, the part of it that's government-held, and they were told at the checkpoint, I think it was three trucks of aid and two ambulances, "You are only allowed to pass if you give up half of this convoy to the Syrian government." That means to Syrian government officials. They were not told what they would do with that aid. Not all Syrians are equal in the eyes of the regime. It has this long history of funneling help to its own supporters. There's a long history of maybe taking aid for bribes, maybe passing it to supporters. We don't know that that's what the government chose to do with this particular convoy, but it is one of many examples that make the distribution of aid in government-held areas very controversial.
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  Basu: "NPR's" Ruth Sherlock, thank you so much for speaking with everyone you've spoken to there and sharing with us.
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  Sherlock: Thank you.
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  Two of the most memorable moments from the NFL season that just ended were disturbing injuries. Buffalo Bills safety Damar Hamlin collapsing on the field with a cardiac arrest, and Miami Dolphins's quarterback Tua Tagovailoa unconscious on the ground in one of multiple diagnosed concussions for him last season. They're a reminder of the damage that football can do to players. NFL careers last just a few years on average, but many retired players feel severe physical and mental pain for the rest of their lives.
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  Will Hobson: You're talking about guys who go play in the league for three or four years and then might be left with symptoms that prevent them from gainful employment for the remaining 40 years of their lives.
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  "Washington Post" reporter Will Hobson spoke to us about his big investigative story looking into the disability plan for former players. It's run by the league and the players union, and retired players say it's failing them, denying them money they deserve to make up for long-term disabilities that many NFL veterans have to live with.
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  Hobson found a number of instances where players were denied disability claims for reasons they say are suspicious. Over the last 15 years, eight players have successfully sued the league's plan. The court fights revealed cases where the plan ignored medical evidence or denied claims on technicalities.
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  In Darryl Ashmore's case, the former offensive lineman wanted to be evaluated by doctors close to his home in South Florida. He said his arthritis and herniated discs made traveling difficult. The NFL plan scheduled his appointments in Atlanta and later canceled them after his lawyer complained. Later, Ashmore's claim was denied for supposedly missing those canceled appointments.
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  Hobson: Several years later, a judge finally forced the NFL plan to pay him and said, "This is ridiculous. You can't deny somebody a disability claim for not showing up to an appointment that didn't exist. You all knew you'd canceled it."
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  Former players say the system is stacked against them in other ways. The doctors that evaluate them are paid by the disability plan, so they could feel pressure to judge players' health in a way that leads to denied claims, saving the plan money.
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  The union and the league take issue with much of "The Post's" reporting. They say the plan has paid out significant money to former players, and the cases where there have been disputes are a handful out of thousands of claims.
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  Meanwhile, there are more legal fights brewing. Last week, a day after "The Post" published this investigation, 10 more retired players sued the league's benefits plan, its board of trustees, and NFL commissioner Roger Goodell. One of the players suing, Willis McGahee, talked about why he's out for justice. "Once we stop playing," he said, "We're all used up. We deserve to be taken care of."
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  When it comes to financial planning and relationships, the old saying is true: opposites really do attract.
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  Listener 1: I'm a saver. She's a spender. Finances has been the greatest challenge in our relationship.
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  Listener 2: I am the spender. I definitely learned this from my mom. She was the spender. My dad was very much a saver and he was holding it down.
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  Listener 3: I am in a marriage with a wonderful wife who does not spend money at all. I am the exact opposite.
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  These are just some of the voice mails we got from you listeners when we asked for your "opposites attract" story a couple weeks ago. Now, I wanted to play some of these on Valentine's Day because despite all the arguments you might be having about money with your partner, there's actually something sweet going on here. "Wall Street Journal" personal finance reporter Julia Carpenter recently wrote about how, over time, couples with conflicting approaches to money become more and more alike. I know, isn't that romantic? Now, what's funny is, we didn't say that when we asked for your stories, but that's what a lot of you told us has happened in your relationships.
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  Listener 4: I've been with my wife for about five years now, and I think she and myself would identify her as the spender and me as the saver. However, over the last five years, I think she has started to turn me into a spender.
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  Listener 2: My partner was raised in an affluent family, and he definitely had a lot of security growing up, and he saves so well. And so, I have injected a lot of joy in the small things and enjoying little purchases into his life, and he has injected a lot of saving consciousness for me.
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  Listener 5: I would say our philosophy has been one where I live in the present financially and Anne has always lived in the future, thankfully, because now, fast forward those 37 years later, and we are living in the future that my wife planned so diligently for.
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  If you are in a financial opposites-attract relationship, here are some tips I learned from Carpenter when I spoke to her for our recent episode of "Apple News In Conversation." First, get into the habit of talking about money with your partner. And I mean a lot. Talk about how much debt you're comfortable with, how lavish you want your vacations to be, and what your spending and saving goals look like. As Julia puts it: dream together. If you don't state your goals out loud, you're not giving yourselves the chance to plan for them.
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  And remember, there is no right or wrong. Conventional wisdom might have you believe that the "saver" mentality is always right and the "spender" is wrong, but it's just not true. They both have a lot to learn from each other. No matter how far apart you might start off, different values around money can actually make your relationship stronger in the long run.
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  You can listen to that whole episode about money and relationships by looking up "Apple News In Conversation" on 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 from "TIME" that sticks with the romance theme. It looks at why some major Hollywood movies aren't as sexy as they used to be, and how superhero movies played a big role in studios cutting out love scenes. So sit back, enjoy listening to that, and I'll be back with the news tomorrow.
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