NPR News Now - NPR News: 01-29-2025 8AM EST

Episode Date: January 29, 2025

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It's a new year, and according to Pew, 79% of resolutions are about one thing, health. But there are so many fads around how to keep ourselves healthy. On It's Been A Minute, I'm helping you understand why some of today's biggest wellness trends are, well, trending. Like why is there protein in everything? Join me as we uncover what's healthy and what's not on the It's Been A Minute podcast from NPR. Live from NPR News in Washington, I'm Kristen Wright.

Federal workers are being offered what the administration is calling deferred resignations if they agree to leave their jobs by September 30th. NPR's Andrea Shue has details of the plan. The offer came in an email with the subject line fork in the road. It started by summing up the major changes that the Trump administration is bringing to the federal workforce, including an end to telework and a downsizing of agencies. Then it laid out a choice for federal workers. Those who want to resign can offer their resignation before February 6th,

be put on administrative leave, and keep their full pay and benefits through the end of September. Those who want to stay were told quote, we cannot give you full assurance regarding the certainty of your position. The email was sent to most of the civilian workforce. Some exceptions include post office employees and people doing immigration enforcement and national security. Andrea Hsu, NPR News Washington. The Trump administration's plan to pause trillions of dollars in federal payments for grants, loans, and a wide range of other programs is on hold. A federal judge temporarily blocked the move yesterday in a lawsuit filed by nonprofit

organizations that say they won't be able to provide vital services. The Office of Management and Budget says it's reviewing spending to see if it's in line with President Trump's executive orders. White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller explained it this way to CNN. The American people voted for dramatic change implemented by Donald Trump. So it is essential for him to get control of government, to establish a whole of government process for Donald Trump's political appointees to review discretionary grants of spending.

There's a court hearing Monday. In a separate case, Democratic state attorneys general claim the policy is unconstitutional and an overreach of power. Chat GPT maker OpenAI says it believes Chinese artificial intelligence company DeepSeek improperly used its data. As NPR's Bobbi Allen reports, the little-known startup sent a shockwave through the AI industry with its cheaply made yet powerful chatbot. OpenAI says DeepSeek dazzled the world with its chatbot only after secretly relying on

the proprietary technology that powers ChatGPT. The company says it is investigating what it believes is evidence that China based deep seek trained its AI model on the outputs of chat GPT. Deepseek's claim that it built a chat GPT like bot with a fraction of the cost rattled stock markets and raise questions about whether Silicon Valley was falling behind China in the AI race. But the White House's AIs are David Sacks said on Fox News that it is possible that DeepSeek stole OpenAI's intellectual property. OpenAI itself is facing numerous copyright infringement

lawsuits over scraping nearly the entire internet to develop chat GPT. Bobbi Allen, NPR News. This is NPR. A company that hopes to produce a new supersonic commercial airliner to succeed the Concorde has broken the sound barrier in a test flight over the Mojave Desert. NPR's Scott Newman has more. There we are. XB1 is supersonic, faster than the speed of sound. A company known as Boom Technologies nudged its XB-1 demonstrator to Mach 1.1, just over

the speed of sound. That's about 850 miles per hour. The Denver-based company says the XB-1 is the world's first independently developed supersonic jet. Boom is already developing an 80-passenger supersonic airliner known as Overture. This test flight is meant to provide crucial data to that project. Both the United and American Airlines have shown interest in purchasing Overture, which the company aims to have flying commercially by 2030.

The plane could cut transcontinental and transoceanic airline travel times in half. Scott Newman, NPR News. The Federal Reserve is expected to hold interest rates steady this afternoon when policymakers wrap up their first meeting of the new year. Even though inflation has cooled considerably, prices are still climbing faster than the central bank would like. Inflation was running at an annual rate of 2.9 percent last month. WNBA star Brittany Greiner is signing with the Atlanta Dream.

Greiner announced the move on Instagram in a video alongside some of her new teammates. She spent her 11-year career with the Phoenix Mercury. She missed the 2022 season when she was detained in Russia for 10 months. She was freed in a prisoner swap. I'm Kristin Wright and this is NPR News.