NPR News Now - NPR News: 02-22-2025 5AM EST

Episode Date: February 22, 2025

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Live from NPR News in Washington, I'm Louise Schiavone. Hamas early today released two Israeli hostages. They are among a total of six expected to be freed in exchange for more than 600 Palestinian prisoners and detainees in Israeli jails. It's the largest number of Palestinian prisoners to be released at once since the beginning of the January ceasefire. Ahead of the exchange, the family of hostage Shiri Bebas says the remains of a body returned to Israel on Friday are hers.

This is after Israeli forensic officials said remains handed over by Hamas earlier in the week were not hers. President Trump has fired Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman General Charles Q. Brown and also will be replacing Chief of Naval Operations Lisa Franketti. NPR's Tom Bowman has more. This is highly unusual that early into an administration you would remove the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and also the Chief of Naval Operations. Clearly the Trump administration and Secretary Haig have long said the military is woke,

it's all about DEI, and it's clearly important to note that this is the second black chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff after Colin Powell, and Lisa Franchetti is the first woman to run the Navy. NPR's Tom Bowman, several hundred employees at FEMA were fired this past week, part of the Trump administration's layoff of federal employees. Disaster experts say this could hurt. NPR's Lauren Summers reports.

FEMA has fired more than 200 employees, according to the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees FEMA. That includes new employees who took their jobs over the last year and also longtime employees who recently took promotions. Disaster experts say that could hamper FEMA's ability to help communities hit by hurricanes, floods, and wildfires. The agency deploys hundreds of staff when a disaster hits to sign up victims for financial assistance. Government reports show the agency is already thousands of people short of its hiring goals,

and in major disasters has to rely on other federal agencies for staffing. Lauren Summer, NPR News. President Trump's now top national security advisor says Ukraine's president will sign a critical minerals agreement with the US and PR's Franco Ordonez reports. National security advisor Mike Waltz spoke confidently to a friendly audience at the conservative political conference CPAC and said the US will reach a deal over Ukraine's rare earth mineral deposits. Here's the bottom line. President Zelensky is going to sign that deal and you will see that in the very short term and that is good for Ukraine. What better could you have for

Ukraine than to be in an economic partnership with the United States number one? Walt went on to say that the agreement is a way to provide more security for Ukraine, as well as a way to recoup the billions of dollars that the U.S. taxpayer has invested in the war. Franco Ordonez, NPR News, The White House. This is NPR. Luigi Mangione appeared in court for the first time yesterday since his arraignment on state

murder and terror charges. Mangione is accused of gunning down the CEO of UnitedHealthcare outside a New York City hotel last December. He's pleaded not guilty to murder charges. Supporters of Mangione's statements against the health insurance industry showed up for his brief appearance. Another hearing has been set for June. New York Yankees players may look a little hairier this season.

That's because of changes to the team's famously strict beard policy, which has been in place for 49 years. And PR Chandelier's Duster explains the reason for the rule change. New York Yankees managing general partner, Hal Steinbrenner announced the team will no longer prohibit facial hair such as beards. He said he came to the conclusion after speaking with current and former players,

and that he worried the old policy was keeping them from recruiting star players. He added that there will be parameters for the new policy and that he told players it's going to be a well-groomed clean look. Chandelis Duster, NPR News. All new Apple iCloud users in the United Kingdom will have no access to Apple's advanced data protection encryption feature.

The system is an opt-in feature that protects iCloud files, photos, notes, and other data with end-to-end encryption when they're stored in the cloud. Eventually, it will be disabled for all users in the UK. This amid reports, demands from the UK government security officials for backdoor access to the data. I'm Louise Schiavone, NPR News, Washington.