NPR News Now - NPR News: 02-01-2025 7AM EST

Episode Date: February 1, 2025

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This is Tanya Mosley, co-host of Fresh Air, and I just talked to Pamela Anderson about her big career comeback after years in the tabloids and not being taken seriously. She's entered a new era on stage and screen. Suzanne Summers had a great line. She said, You can't play a dumb blonde and be a dumb blonde. Find this interview with Pamela Anderson wherever you listen to Fresh Air. Live from NPR News in Washington, I'm Giles Snyder. Cheers went up in Hostage Square in Tel Aviv as American hostage Keith Segal was

released by Hamas and Gaza and transferred to Red Cross officials. Segal was the third hostage and the first American released as part of the ceasefire deal between Hamas and Israel. Israel now releasing more than 180 Palestinian prisoners. Negotiations on the second phase of the ceasefire are expected to begin next week. Venezuela has released six American prisoners after a U.S. envoy met with President Nicolas Maduro. John Dottos reports a release was unexpected given the rocky relationship between the two

countries. President Donald Trump has described Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro as a dictator who stole Venezuela's most recent election. Still, Trump is trying to convince Maduro to accept deportation flights of Venezuelan gang members arrested in the U.S. That's why Trump's special envoy, Richard Grinnell, traveled to Caracas, where he shook hands with Maduro. Details of their meeting remain unclear, but during his flight back to the U.S., Grinnell

announced that six American prisoners had been freed. In a post on X, he said, quote, We are wheels up and heading home with these six American citizens. He added that they spoke to President Trump and that, quote, they couldn't stop thanking him. For NPR News, I'm John Otis. Sam Chavez lives with her family in the Philadelphia neighborhood where a medical transport jet crashed last night in a fireball engulfing several homes and cars in flames. We need to get out of the situation. Like this is insane and we didn't even know what actually happened.

The plane was carrying six people and was returning to Mexico after a child on board was treated in Philadelphia for a life-threatening condition. The air ambulance company based in Mexico says it cannot confirm any survivors on the plane. It remains unclear if there were any fatalities on the ground. Another plane crash two days earlier near DC's Reagan National Airport has heightened concerns about air traffic controller staffing. Matt Blitz of Member Station WAMU reports.

A preliminary FAA report confirmed staffing levels at Reagan National Airport's air traffic control tower on Wednesday were below what they should have been. That's been the case for years, with staffing nearly a third below targeted levels per a 2023 workforce plan. Now Virginia Senator Mark Warner is warning that President Trump's push to shrink the federal workforce could further deplete staffing levels. Speaking to NPR's member station WAMU, Warner worried about some taking the White House's delayed resignation offer. If a few thousand air traffic controllers say, we're done with this, too much stress, too much hassle, I don't know how we'd operate airspace in America. He also expressed concerns about overcrowding, noting Reagan National Airport has the busiest

runway in the country. For NPR News, I'm Matt Blitz in Washington. This is NPR News. President Trump says he's ready to impose steep tariffs on Canada, Mexico and China. He's expected to sign an order today placing a 25% tariff on goods from Canada and Mexico and 10% on imports from China. The three are the US's top trading partners, but Trump said yesterday there was little they could do to forestall the tariffs. They're aimed at pushing the three to take stronger action on immigration

and to halt the flow of the chemicals used to make fentanyl. It was a rocky week for the tech industry as a Chinese startup shook the AI arms race. As NPR's Maria Aspin reports, the tech-heavy Nasdaq fell more than 325 points from the previous week. American tech companies have been spending billions of dollars on artificial intelligence and promising investors that a payoff will come eventually. But this week, a new competitor threatened to burst Silicon Valley's AI bubble. A chatbot from the Chinese startup DeepSeek became the most downloaded free app in the US Apple Store, dethroning ChatGPT.

Experts say DeepSeek's chatbot holds its own against more established models, and DeepSeek claims it was made with much less money and computing power. That's made investors wonder if big tech companies are spending too much on AI. Maria Aspin, NPR News, New York. Former German President Urs Kohler has died. The president's office says Kohler died today after a short illness. He was 81. Despite being a relative unknown, Kohler was elected to the largely ceremonial post in

2004. I'm Jai Hill Snyder, NPR News. Want to know what it's like to play behind the tiny desk? If you've got the talent, we've got the desk. I'm Trial Snyder, NPR News.