NPR News Now - NPR News: 02-01-2025 2PM EST

Episode Date: February 1, 2025

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Noor Rahm Live from NPR News in Washington, I'm Noor Rahm. Hamas Militants released three men today who had been held as hostages in Gaza since October of 2023. Among them was an American Israeli. Here's how it sounded where people had gathered in Hostages Square in Tel Aviv to watch when Keith Siegel was released. His wife had been released in the first round of hostage releases in 2023.

In exchange, Israel released 183 Palestinians who had been detained in Israel. President Trump said today that he ordered precision strikes on ISIS positions in Somalia. He posted on Truth Social that the strikes killed many terrorists and destroyed their caves. He said no civilians were harmed. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth confirmed the strikes and said they further degrade the ability of ISIS to plot and conduct terrorist attacks on U.S. citizens. Congressional Democrats are warning a purge of FBI agents and prosecutors who worked on cases involving President Trump and the Capitol riot will make the nation less safe. NPR's Carrie Johnson reports dozens of prosecutors already have been fired and more dismissals could come soon.

Senator Richard Durbin, a Democrat from Illinois, said the personnel moves are a brazen assault on the rule of law. The interim U.S. attorney in Washington, who once advocated bogus theories about election fraud, fired more than two dozen prosecutors who worked on Capitol riot cases. Those lawyers had been on probationary status, so they lack full civil service protection. Senior Justice Department officials had already dismissed a bunch of other lawyers who worked with special counsel Jack Smith to build cases against Trump. Now comes word the administration's making a sweeping list of FBI personnel who worked on January 6 cases. That list is due next week and it could lead to more firings.

Kari Johnson, NPR News, Washington. In Los Angeles, the two fires that ravaged parts of the city last month have now been totally contained. Steve Utterman reports. The Palisades and Eaton fires broke out on January 7th, growing rapidly as wind gusts of nearly 100 miles an hour spread flames with frightening speed. One of the hardest hit areas was Pacific Palisades. When he returned the next day, Alexander Gospodinov described what he saw. It's like war zone. It's a disaster.

It looks like the end of the world. Also hit hard was Altadena. Between the two fires, more than 37,000 acres had been burned, more than 16,000 structures destroyed, many of those residences, 29 deaths have been reported, estimates put the economic loss at more than $250 billion. For NPR News, I'm Steve Futterman in Los Angeles.

This is NPR News. The investigation continues into the crash of a medical transport plane shortly after taking off in Philadelphia last night. All six people aboard were killed. It went down in a busy neighborhood and exploded. The mayor said today that one person on the ground was also killed and 19 others injured. The crash came two days after an American Airlines jet and an Army helicopter collided in Washington, killing all 67 people

on the two aircraft. Chat GPT maker OpenAI has released a free version of one of its most advanced chatbots, a response to the Chinese chatbot DeepSeq. NPR's Bobby Ellen reports. The latest OpenAI release is called O3 Mini. It's a so-called reasoning model, meaning it can answer complicated problems and work through complex tasks. It's now publicly available for free without a subscription.

This isn't happening out of nowhere. OpenAI and the rest of the tech world was recently taken aback by DeepSeek, a China-based AI chatbot that can perform sophisticated tasks at a fraction of the cost. With this latest service, OpenAI is hoping to prove that it will not be outpaced by a Chinese competitor. But DeepSeek's technical breakthroughs are still reverberating throughout Silicon Valley and have U.S. tech executives on edge. Bobbi Allen and PR News. The Democratic National Committee elected a new leader today. It's Ken Martin, the party leader in Minnesota. He'll replace Jamie Harrison, who declined to run again after President Trump

won last year, the first Republican to win the popular vote in two decades. Martin's job is to guide the Democratic Party through a second Trump term with an eye to the midterm elections in 2026. I'm Noor Rahm, NPR News.