NPR News Now - NPR News: 01-27-2025 9PM EST

Episode Date: January 28, 2025

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What's in store for the music, TV and film industries for 2025? We don't know, but we're making some fun, bold predictions for the new year. Listen now to the Pop Culture Happy Hour podcast from NPR. Live from NPR News in Washington, I'm Jack Spear. Mexico says it has received more than 4,000 migrants from the U.S. since President Donald Trump took office last Monday. As Nina Kavinsky of Member Station WKJZ reports, Mexico's president says the majority are from

Mexico but some are from other countries. It wasn't immediately clear if those 4,000 people are all deportees or if some are migrants who were turned away at the border. Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum had said last year that she hoped to reach an agreement with then-President-Elect Trump to only take Mexican citizens. Something very important is that this is not new for Mexico. Sheinbaum pointed out that Mexico has, in the past,

accepted non-Mexican migrants. That can happen in cases where strained diplomatic relations between the third country and the US make it hard to repatriate those people directly back to their country of origin. For NPR News, I'm Nina Kravinsky in Hermosillo, Mexico. Tennessee lawmakers convened today for a special session on immigration disaster relief and school vouchers, but Mariana Bacallao of Member Station WPLN reports protesters on the steps of the state capitol were demanding gun reform

after Nashville's second school shooting as many years. Hundreds of protesters gathered outside the state capitol decrying the legislature's lack of action after a shooting at Antioch High School in Nashville last week. Are they going to be doing anything about the guns? No because they'd rather attack our immigrant and refugee neighbors. Tennessee's governor has called the special session to focus in part on helping with President Trump's mass deportation efforts. Less than two years ago, a deadly shooting at a private Christian school in Nashville inspired its own special session on gun safety.

The Republican supermajority didn't pass gun reform then, and protesters say they don't expect them to this time either. For NPR News, I'm Maryana Bacallao in Nashville. A new AI assistant from a Chinese startup is suddenly more popular than chat GPT, and that's worrying tech investors. NPR's Maria Aspen reports the tech heavy NasdaQ closed down more than 600 points today. The Chinese startup DeepSeek was little known before last week when it released its free AI assistant. Now its app is the most popular download on the U.S. Apple Store. AI experts say that DeepSeek performs almost as well as ChatGPT and other established AI models, and the company says it's much cheaper technology.

That's worrying investors who are concerned about how much the tech industry has been spending on artificial intelligence. Meta, Microsoft, Google, and other big tech companies have been pouring billions into AI and promising their investors that it will pay off eventually. DeepSeek is making them wonder whether all this spending was necessary in the first place. Maria Aspin, NPR News, New York. The S&P 500 fell 88 points. This is NPR. Thousands of Afghans who worked for or fought alongside Americans and hoped to come to the US are now in limbo. That's after President Donald Trump ordered the suspension of the country's refugee program. NPR's Deha Hadid reports from Mumbai the suspensions being condemned by former

service members who've been advocating for the resettlement of Afghans. Resettlement advocates say Afghans who allied with the United States before the Taliban seized power in Afghanistan in August 2021 faced the risk of death for their actions. There's about 50,000 Afghans waiting to have their asylum applications processed. Many of them have been waiting in neighbouring Pakistan, but they aren't welcome there. The Pakistani government has been deporting hundreds of thousands of Afghans, arguing it cannot shoulder the burden of hosting so many people. Five Afghans who are expecting to fly to the United States

with their families told NPR they feel abandoned and betrayed. Diya Hadid, NPR News, Mumbai. US public health officials say they're being told to stop working with the World Health Organization immediately. It follows the Trump administration's earlier announcement it plans to pull out of the group, a process that will require an act of Congress. A memo to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, viewed by the Associated Press, tells senior leaders to stop any collaborations with the WHO and await further guidance. Experts said it could set back work on investigating and trying to stop outbreaks of MPOCs in Africa and other communicable diseases.

Critical futures prices took a drop today, oiled on $1.49 a barrel to settle at 73.17 a barrel in New York. I'm Jack Spear, NPR News in Washington. This message comes from WISE, the app for doing things in other currencies. Sending or spending money abroad, hidden fees may be taking a cut. With WISE, you can convert between up to 40 currencies

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