NPR News Now - NPR News: 02-18-2025 1PM EST

Episode Date: February 18, 2025

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Public media counts on your support to ensure that the reporting and programs you depend on thrive. Make a recurring donation today to get special access to more than 20 NPR podcasts, perks like sponsor-free listening, bonus episodes, early access, and more. So start supporting what you love today at plus.npr.org. Live from NPR News, I'm Lakshmi Singh. Canadian officials say their federal investigators, together with a U.S. team, are at the scene of yesterday's plane crash at Toronto Pearson International Airport. A Delta flight from Minneapolis made a crash landing before it flipped upside down on a snowy tarmac. All 80 people got out, at least 19 sustained injuries. Two people remain hospitalized.

Authorities say none of the injuries is life-threatening. At a briefing today, airport president and CEO Deborah Flynn said two major runways are closed. That is affecting the volume of traffic that we're having. So passengers should be looking and working with their airlines, checking our website for information on delays and potential cancellations as well for the next several days.

Flynn says the investigation has just begun and declined to say if the crash was the result of weather conditions on the tarmac. The crash was the latest in a series of aviation incidents and just weeks ago, 67 people were killed in a mid-air collision outside Washington, D.C., between an American Airlines regional jet and a military helicopter. Elon Musk is not the leader of President Trump's federal cost-cutting entity, the Department

of Government Efficiency, that according to a court filing from the White House filed last night. Here's NPR's Stephen Fowler. Stephen Fowler, NPR News Anchor Who is in charge of the Doge effort that's slashing its way through government contracts and directing agencies to fire employees? Legally, the White House says it's not Elon Musk. In a court filing this week, Musk is described as a quote, senior advisor to the president and is neither an employee or the administrator in charge of the United States

Doge Service Office. That revelation comes in a lawsuit that alleges Musk's role in the federal government is illegal and has enough power it should require Senate confirmation. That filing does not answer who's actually in charge. Stephen Fowler, NPR News, Atlanta. In Gaza, Hamas says it will hand over the bodies of four Israeli hostages on Thursday and six living hostages on Saturday. Israel had asked Hamas to speed up the hostage releases. And Piers Daniel Estrin has the latest from Tel Aviv.

Hamas says on Thursday it will give Israel the bodies of four hostages, including those of the Bebas family. Shiri Bebas and her two young children, aged four and nearly one when they were captured, have long been feared dead. On Saturday, Hamas says it will release all six living hostages it had committed to freeing by the end of February, including two hostages held in Gaza for about a decade. Next week, Hamas is expected to give Israel four more hostages bodies. After that, 59 hostages will remain in Gaza, nearly half of them confirmed dead.

In return, Israel says it's allowing mobile homes into Gaza for those whose homes were destroyed, plus heavy machinery to retrieve bodies buried under rubble. Daniel Estrin, NPR News, Tel Aviv. This is NPR News. Descendants of Holocaust survivors are commemorating the closure of internment camps in Cyprus 76 years ago. The Associated Press reports official records show that after World War II, more than 50,000 survivors were held in harsh conditions at about a dozen camps on British-controlled

Cyprus. They'd been en route to what was then Palestine, but diverted because of Britain's blockade. More than 2,000 babies were born in the Cypriot internment camps. Today's ceremony, in honor of the many people interned in the camps, also pays tribute to the Cypriot people who stood by them in solidarity. In South Korea, lawyers have summed up their arguments in the impeachment trial of South Korean President, Yoon Sung-yeol. NPR's Anthony Kinn reports from Seoul the trial is related to Yoon's brief imposition of martial law last December.

The Constitutional Court is expected to deliver a verdict next month, voting either to remove Yoon from office or reinstate him. But Kim Jin-han, a lawyer for parliament, argued that if he's reinstated, Yoon could declare martial law again or attack democratic institutions. Kim added that Yoon declared martial law without any real emergency, which he says was basically an act of dictatorship. Yoon said he was forced to declare martial law because opposition lawmakers, some of whom he said are communist sympathizers, were paralyzing the government.

Yoon's supporters suspect the court is biased against Yoon. Scores of them were arrested last month after attacking another court which issued his arrest warrant. Anthony Kuhn, NPR News, Seoul. The Dow is down 51 points at 44,494. I'm Lakshmi Singh, NPR News.