NPR News Now - NPR News: 02-14-2025 2AM EST

Episode Date: February 14, 2025

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Bella DiPaolo is glad if you're happily married, but she is perfectly happy being single. I would love to have someone who took care of my car or someone who cleaned up the dishes after dinner, but then I'd want them to leave. From yourself to your dog to your spouse are significant others. That's on the TED Radio Hour from NPR. Live from NPR News in Washington, I'm Shae Stevens. President Trump says he and India's prime minister Narendra Modi have agreed to hold trade talks. At a White House meeting Thursday, Trump announced plans to narrow the U.S. oil and gas trade deficit with India.

We agreed to work together to help build one of the greatest trade routes in all of history. It will run from India to Israel to Italy and onward to the United States connecting our partners by ports, railways and undersea cables. Trump says the U.S. will also boost military sales and provide fighter jets to India. At least 70 employees at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau was fired Thursday, and NPR's Laura Wamsley reports that more possible layoffs are expected at the Consumer Watchdog Agency.

According to several current staffers, between 70 and 100 staff were terminated at CFPB on Thursday evening. Earlier this week, dozens of other employees at the bureau were fired. The most recent firings targeted term staff who have contracts for a set length of time. Two letters shared with NPR said the employees' jobs were being terminated due to President Trump's executive order that outlines Elon Musk's plan to downsize the government.

CFPB staff are hearing talk that wider cuts will happen soon. Republicans have long criticized the Bureau as being too heavy-handed in its regulation. Consumer advocates warn that a gutted CFPB will mean Americans are left vulnerable to financial abuse and fraud. Laurel Wamsley, NPR News, Washington. Meanwhile, the Department of Veterans Affairs has fired more than a thousand workers. A post on the VA's website says the cuts affect non-union employees who've been at the agency for less than a year. It also says most of the VA's workers are mission critical and exempt from the dismissals. New York City Mayor Eric Adams says he wants to

give federal immigration officers access to inmates on Rikers Island, his city's main jail. For Member Station WNYC, Arun Venugopal has more. The city has come under pressure from the Trump administration to enhance cooperation with federal immigration agents, something New York's sanctuary laws largely prevent. Elora Mukherjee, the director of the Immigrants' Rights Clinic at Columbia Law School, said it's unclear whether Mayor Eric Adams has the authority to overturn laws passed by the city council and noted that most of the thousands of inmates on Rikers Island haven't been convicted of whatever's gotten them there, only charged. But Adams says the

cooperation would focus on violent criminals and gangs and help keep the city safe. For NPR News, I'm Arun Vanagopal in New York. The acting U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York has resigned in protest of the Justice Department's order to drop criminal charges against New York City's mayor. Two lawyers at DOJ have also quit after being asked to take over that case. You're listening to NPR. The Hamas Group says it will release three Israeli hostages this weekend in keeping with the terms of a temporary ceasefire agreement.

The Palestinian militant group had threatened to postpone the next phase of hostage releases after claiming that Israel had violated the terms of the truce. Israel made a counter-threat to resume its war in Gaza if the captas were not set free by a certain time on Saturday. A Brazilian neuroscientist says her team has amassed the largest collection of whale and dolphin brains in all of Latin America. Ari Daniel has that story. When Camila Souza received word of a deceased baby humpback whale off the coast of southeastern Brazil, she raced to extract its brain.

It was the first extraction of a whale brain here in Brazil. Back at the Orca Institute, where she worked, she lifts the brain out of a large plastic container. It's twice the size of a human brain. So this brain is huge. I need the two hands to hold this brain. Wow. Sosa and her team map brains like this one to gain insights into cetacean behavior and

adaptations. And, she says, these brains might serve as models for human diseases like Alzheimer's. For NPR News, I'm Ari Daniel. TikTok is once again available for download via Apple and Google app stores in the U.S. For NPR News, the Thru Line podcast, the myth linking autism and vaccines was decades in the making and was a major moment for vaccine hesitancy in America, tapping into fears involving the pharmaceutical industry and the federal government. No matter how many studies you do showing that this is not a problem, it's very hard to unring the bell. Listen to Thru Line from NPR, wherever