NPR News Now - NPR News: 02-18-2025 6PM EST

Episode Date: February 18, 2025

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Live from NPR News in Washington, I'm Jack Spear. Russia and the US have agreed to start working towards ending the war in Ukraine, though without input from the country where the fighting is actually taking place. During a meeting in Saudi Arabia, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the two sides have agreed to pursue goals, including restoring their respective embassies and creating a high-level team to support Ukrainian peace talks. Questioned today about the lack of Ukrainian participation at the discussions, President Trump largely skirted the fact it was Russia's invasion that started the war.

I hear that, you know, they're upset about not having a seat. Well, they've had a seat for three years and a long time before that. This could have been settled very easily. Just a half-baked have been settled very easily. Just a half-baked negotiator could have settled this years ago. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, meanwhile, reacted angrily, saying he has canceled a planned visit to Saudi Arabia after not being part of the discussions. Federal health workers are taking stock of how the Trump administration's layoffs hit their agencies. Hundreds of termination letters hit mailboxes of staff over the weekend at Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and elsewhere, NPR's Will Stone reports. CDC employees were told last week that about 1,300 workers would be cut.

So far, the number of people who lost their job is about half of that, according to two current CDC staffers who spoke to NPR. Both say it's not yet clear whether that's the end of the dismissals. The Food and Drug Administration and the National Institutes of Health also lost workers. Among the staff who were caught up in the first wave of layoffs, PhD-trained scientists tasked with helping local and state officials respond to outbreaks. There were FDA employees who ensure medical devices are safe. At NIH, offices involved in reviewing and administering grants to researchers outside the agency were also hit hard. The agencies affected did not respond

to NPR's request for comment. Will Stone, NPR News. At least two deaths are being attributed to severe flooding in southern West Virginia over the weekend. Curtis Tate of West Virginia Public Broadcasting has more. West Virginia Governor Patrick Morrissey thanked those who provided assistance in mountain communities hit hard by the weekend's floods. Local citizens were helping donating water. People from across the state were helping out and people from as far away as Texas. Morrissey requested a major disaster declaration from President Donald Trump on Monday. West Virginia's congressional delegation has also sent a letter to Trump and the Federal Emergency Management Agency requesting disaster assistance for 13 counties.

FEMA personnel are already on the ground in West Virginia, and Trump approved a disaster declaration Sunday for neighboring Kentucky. For NPR News, I'm Curtis Tate in Charleston, West Virginia. Meanwhile, much of the nation's midsection and the east continues to be held in Antarctic weather system's icy grip. Bismarck, North Dakota saw the mercury fall to minus 39 degrees today, shattering the old record for this day set back in 1910. On Wall Street, the Dow was up 10 points. You're listening to NPR.

Researchers are interested in what makes humans unique, so they recently were investigating a genetic variant that's only found in Homo sapiens. And here's No Greenfield Voice reports that's putting this variant into lab mice altered the animal's vocalizations. Some of the sounds made by mice are ultrasonic calls. If you bring those sounds into the range that humans can hear, it sounds like bird song. That singing became subtly more varied and complex when researchers genetically altered mice to give them a particular gene variant that's found only in modern humans. Bob Darnell is with Rockefeller University. This is a human language gene that changed and switched early in the development of homo sapiens. The findings are described in the journal Nature Communications.

Researchers say this is just one of what is likely to be many genes involved in the evolution of human speech. Nell Greenfield-Boyce, NPR News. Attention March 2nd birthday babies, if that is your special day, Field Boys NPR News. register for a free copy at seusspledge.com or you can gift your free copy to children in underserved communities. A total of 20,000 copies are available on a first-come, first-serve basis. Crude Oil futures prices closed higher today. Oil up a dollar and ten cents a barrel in New York. I'm Jack Spear, NPR News in Washington.