NPR News Now - NPR News: 02-12-2025 3PM EST

Episode Date: February 12, 2025

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At the Super Bowl halftime show, Kendrick Lamar indeed performed his smash diss track Not Like Us and brought out Samuel L. Jackson, Serena Williams, and SZA. We're recapping the Super Bowl, including why we saw so many celebrities in commercials this year. Listen to the Pop Culture Happy Hour podcast from NPR. Live from NPR News, I'm Lakshmi Singh. The Trump administration confirms three detainees have been released from detention in Belarus. White House Press Secretary Caroline Levitt offered details this afternoon. We can confirm the safe release of one American and two individuals from Belarus, one of whom

worked for Radio Liberty. Out of respect for the privacy of these individuals, their request, we have no further details to announce on their identities, but we can confirm that one American was released today. The State Department's Christopher Smith, the top official in the Bureau of European and Eurasian Affairs, described the mission to secure the detainees. This was a special operation where we just crossed into the Belarusian frontier, went into Minsk to meet with Belarusian counterparts who brought these three detainees to us. They handed them over to our custody.

They were handed over to us and we brought them back out through Lithuania. Special thanks to Lithuania for their support. Smith speaking to CNN. News of the detainees released from Belarus, a close Russian ally, comes a day after an American teacher held captive by Russia, Mark Fogel, returned to the US. Dozens of probationary employees at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau

received termination notices last night. NPR's Laura Wamsley has details. Dozens of CFPB staffers who had been in their roles for less than a year or two learned by email Tuesday night that their jobs were being terminated, according to multiple people who until recently worked at the agency. One of the staffers who received notice is Taylor Sonny, who started working as a compliance examiner at CFPB last March.

He says his letter said he was being terminated because his, quote, ability, knowledge, and skills do not fit the agency's current needs, despite, Sonny says, his having just been promoted and receiving a glowing performance review. Meanwhile, President Trump has reportedly nominated Jonathan McKernan as director of the CFPB. McKernan resigned this week from the board of the FDIC. Laurel Wamsley, NPR News, Washington. Mexico says it is not yet ready to impose retaliatory tariffs on the U.S. NPR's Ada Peralta reports Mexican President Claudia Sheenbaum is trying a diplomatic route first.

Sheenbaum says instead of beginning a trade war by announcing retaliatory measures, she wants U.S. and Mexican officials to talk. Indeed, she said Mexican Foreign Minister Juan Ramon de la Fuente is set to speak to Secretary of State Marco Rubio. The Mexican government is betting the increased tariffs on aluminum and steel announced by President Trump will never take effect. The government has called them unjust, in part because Mexico runs a trade deficit with the U.S. Sheenbaum says Mexico is ready to talk and negotiate. We're ready for coordination and collaboration, she said, but without interference or subordination. Ada Peralta, NPR News, Mexico City.

The Dow is down more than 200 points or roughly half a percent. This is NPR News. Most countries have missed a key United Nations deadline to submit plans to fight climate change. NPR's Julia Simon reports only a few nations made it on time. As part of the 2015 Paris climate agreement, nearly 200 countries agreed to submit targets for reducing their climate pollution by 2035. The hope is that all these cuts combined will limit the world's

warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius or 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit. Earlier this week was the deadline for countries to submit these targets. Only a dozen countries met the deadline. One of those countries was the U.S. The U.S. submitted a climate target right before Biden left office. Trump then pulled the U.S. out of the Paris Agreement. The hard deadline is in September. Climate experts say they'll be especially looking to see how ambitious China and the European Union are with their cuts to climate pollution. Julia Simon, NPR News. Julia Simon Inflation rose last month. The government reports a consumer price index increase to 3 percent in January from a year earlier. Compared to December, prices last month accelerated by a faster than projected half a percent.

Fed Chair Jerome Powell had said that there was no hurry to continue cutting interest rates, but President Donald Trump said on Truth Social that he thinks the Fed should cut interest rates. The Dow has fallen more than 200 points, roughly half a percent. It is at 44,390. The S&P is down 12 points, and the NASDAQ has risen 27 points. I'm Lakshmi Singh, NPR News in Washington.