NPR News Now - NPR News: 02-27-2025 10PM EST

Episode Date: February 28, 2025

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Live from NPR News in Washington, I'm Jack Spear. Meeting with British Prime Minister Keir Starmer at the White House today, President Trump said the talks to end Russia's war against Ukraine are very well advanced. Trump also saying he's confident Russian leader Vladimir Putin won't restart fighting if a truce is reached between the two sides. Starmer and Trump emerged from a meeting saying both intend to work towards peace. I think we're going to have a very successful peace and I think it's going to be a long-lasting peace and I think it's going to happen hopefully quickly.

If it doesn't happen quickly, it may not happen at all. Starmor said it's important any peace deal is a lasting one and Putin knows that. Trump also said he's hopeful the deal can be reached where perhaps no tariffs would be levied against Britain. Eight programs for millions of people that are collapsing worldwide. It comes after the U.S. Agency for International Development and the State Department announced this week it was terminating contracts worth nearly $60 billion.

And yours, Gabrielle Emanuel reports. Michaela Hilo is a program manager at the Ethiopian non-profit Organization for Social Services Health and Development. Today he learned US funding for his work with HIV positive children was terminated. This is just a disaster. The termination means his program is laying off all 135 workers and the 1600 children and adolescents they work with are without their HIV medication. He fears that without medicine to keep the virus in check, the kids will fall ill.

We don't even want to open our eyes to see the disaster that's coming ahead. His program is one of roughly 10,000 grants and contracts that were terminated. Others include clean water for refugee camps and food aid for malnourished children. Gabriella Emanuel, NPR News. Immigrants detained by the U.S. in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba,

alleged they experienced beatings and other forms of mistreatment during their two weeks at the U.S. Naval Base earlier this month. NPR's Sergio Martinez Beltran spoke with two of them. Detainees alleged they were not allowed to call an attorney while at Guantanamo Bay, so they held a five-day hunger strike and blocked the cameras inside their cell so they could get the guards' attention. Maifred Duran-Arape says he also kicked on the cell's door as a protest. He says soldiers in riot gear would beat him up. Things got so bad, Duran-Arape says he tried to die by suicide twice.

The Department of Homeland Security tells NPR the agency cannot confirm the veracity of Durán Árape's claims. The HSS detainees have, quote, access to phone utilization to reach lawyers, but did not provide evidence. Sergio Martínez Beltrán, NPR News. some of the investor hype over AI appears to be fading. Despite solid earnings numbers yesterday, shares of chipmaker Nvidia dropped more than 8% today. The Dow fell 193 points. The tech-heavy Nasdaq was down 530 points. You're listening to NPR News in Washington. Despite charges from President Trump,

the EU was created in order to quote, screw the United States. EU leaders say the 27 nation block actually is the world's largest free market and has created an economic windfall for US companies working on the continent. He says it will also fight against Trump's proposal to slap a whole tariff of 25% on EU products headed to the US. A former state lands manager and timber industry lobbyist has been named as the next head of the US Forest Service. MPR's Kirk Sigler reports Tom Schultz will take over the agency that manages forests and wildfire

and has been the focus of job cutting by President Trump and advisor Elon Musk. Tom Schultz has most recently been VP of Government Affairs for an influential Coeur d'Alene, Idaho based timber company, and he'll now be back in the public sector managing close to 200 million acres of federal timberlands. Republicans are pledging to fast track more logging on public land as a means of restarting timber economies and

addressing the wildfire threat. Some of this was already underway during the Biden administration. In his resignation letter, the agency's outgoing chief Randy Moore, a Biden appointee, warned that the agency had no say in the recent job cuts that he said will hamper its ability to manage land and fires. Kirk Sigler in pure news, Boise. Russian chess legend Boris Spassky has died. Spassky held the world title of chess champion from 1969 to 72 until losing to American Bobby

Fischer to famous match in Reykjavik played during the height of the US Cold War with the Soviet Union. Spassky was the oldest living world chess champion. He was 88 years old. I'm Jack Spear, NPR News in Washington.