NPR News Now - NPR News: 01-25-2026 2PM EST

Episode Date: January 25, 2026

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40 years ago, the space shuttle challenger exploded shortly after liftoff. The nation was shocked, but the night before, engineers had pleaded for a launch delay. He said the challenger's going to blow up. Everyone's going to die. An NPR investigation into why last-minute warnings about the launch were dismissed. Listen now on the NPR app to the Sunday story from the Up First podcast. Live from NPR News in Washington, I'm Windsor Johnston. Minnesota and federal law enforcement officials are clashing over the fatal shooting of Alex Prettie by immigration agents in Minneapolis on Saturday.

The incident has reignited tensions over jurisdiction and transparency in use of force cases. Peter Cox with Minnesota Public Radio reports. After federal immigration agents shot and killed 37-year-old Alex Jeffrey Prettie, state investigators say they were blocked from the scene by federal law enforcement. even after returning with a signed judicial warrant. Minnesota Governor Tim Walls says the state will do its own investigation. We need to have a fair investigation, understanding what's happening and held accountable. We continue to hear, and we heard it from the vice president, that these folks can do whatever they want.

They can have full immunity, and what I'm telling you is they will not. There will be justice to Minnesotans. The state is suing to prevent the destruction of evidence, and a judge granted a temporary order to preserve it. For NPR News, I'm Peter Cox in St. Paul. A powerful winter storm is hammering much of the country at this hour. Winter storm mornings have been posted from New Mexico up to Maine's border with Canada. Forecasters say some areas will get several feet of snow, but the big danger is ice. More than 800,000 utility customers are without power in the midst of the storm.

Blake Farmer from Member Station, WPLN in Nashville, reports. It's honestly not safe to walk outside right now, and not just because the ground is a sheet of ice. Holy cow. That's a 150-year-old oak smashing through the woods, whacking a power line and crushing some Adirondack chairs. Standing outside, you can hear a towering hardwood topple every few minutes. It's going to be a long day. Snow turned to freezing rain overnight, and it hasn't stopped. Ice storms are particularly dangerous in the south.

For one, the trees aren't used to the weight, but also, majority of houses are heated with electricity. It could take days to restore power, and we're looking at temperatures below freezing for the next week. For NPR News, I'm Blake Farmer in Nashville. President Trump is threatening to slap a 100% tariff on Canadian goods if it goes ahead with the trade deal with China. Treasury Secretary Scott Besson tells ABC News that the new duties are not a certainty. There's possibility of 100% tariffs if they do a free trade deal. So it's not now. It's this is if they go further than what's already happened. Well, if they go further, if we see that the Canadians are allowing the Chinese to dump goods.

Trump also suggested that Beijing would try to use Canada to avoid paying U.S. tariffs. Canada says it's resolved several important trade issues with China, but there was no pursuit of a free trade agreement. This is NPR News in Washington. Trilateral peace talks between Russia, Ukraine, and the U.S. have wrapped up in the United Arab Emirates. No major breakthroughs were announced, but U.S. envoy Steve Wyckhoff and Jared Kushner, President Trump's son-in-law, took part in the discussions. Ukraine's president, Volodymyr Zelensky, called the talks constructive, but said no agreement was

reached on oversight of the Zaporizia nuclear plant, which still is under Russian control. American rock climber Alex Honnold shot to fame in the documentary film. film Free Solo. It showed him doing one of the hardest climbs in Yosemite National Park without using ropes. This weekend, Honnold Free climbed a very different goal. Taipei 101, Taiwan's iconic skyscraper. NPR's Emily Fang has the details. A large crowd cheered as Honnold scaled more than 1,600-foot-high, blue glass and steel skyscraper with nothing more than his hands and some chalk, no rope and no safety net. He said he'd been thinking of climbing Taipei 101 for years. If you look at a building like Tape 101, you're just like, dude, it's so big. It's so much bigger than everything around it.

The view is insane. At 101 stories tall, Taipei 101 is one of the tallest buildings in Asia and built in a high-risk earthquake zone, which it compensates for with an internal steel damper that sways whenever there's a quake to counteract it and stop the building from breaking in half. In total, the climb to Conald about an hour and a half. Emily Fang and Pier News. This is NPR.