NPR News Now - NPR News: 03-02-2025 9AM EST

Episode Date: March 2, 2025

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There's been a lot of attention on loneliness lately. 16% of Americans report feeling lonely all or most of the time. The former Surgeon General even declared a loneliness epidemic. On It's Been a Minute, we're launching a new series called All the Lonely People, diving deep into how loneliness shows up in our lives and how our culture shapes it. That's on the It's Been A Minute podcast on NPR. Giles Snyder Live from NPR News in Washington, I'm Giles Snyder. Two days after that Oval Office blowup between President Trump, Vice President JD Vance, and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, European leaders are in London for a summit meeting. At the start of the meeting today, British Prime Minister Keir Starmer spoke to the BBC

saying Europe could either express its outrage or get to work. Because we have to bridge this, we have to find a way we can all work together because in the end, we've had three years of bloody conflict now, we need to get to that lasting peace. Starmer said Britain, France and Ukraine have agreed to work on a ceasefire plan to present to the White House. A federal judge blocking President Trump from firing the head of a federal watchdog agency, NPR's Bobby Allen reports on the permanent injunction the judge issued this weekend.

Judge Amy Berman Jackson ruled that the leader of the Office of the Special Counsel must keep his job despite Trump's attempt to remove him. Hampton Dellinger is a Senate-confirmed official appointed by former former President Biden who leads an office that investigates whistleblower complaints filed by federal workers. Jackson wrote quote, it would be ironic to say the least, anonymical to the ends furthered by the statute, if the special counsel himself could be chilled in his work by fear of arbitrary or partisan removal. The Justice Department filed papers to the court indicating it planned to appeal the decision. It could ultimately be decided by the Supreme Court.

Bobby Allen, NPR News. Israel is stopping all humanitarian aid from getting into Gaza. The move comes after Hamas rejected a new Israeli proposal to free more hostages before holding talks on a permanent end to the war. And here's Daniel Estrinis in Tel Aviv. The first phase of the Israel-Hamas ceasefire is now over. The two sides were meant to negotiate a second phase with talks on a permanent end of the war. Israel has announced a new proposal to extend the ceasefire by seven weeks and for Hamas to release half of its hostages

at the start and then hold talks toward a permanent end of the war. Israel says it's a proposal from U.S. presidential envoy Steve Witkoff. There was no immediate U.S. comment. Hamas says the newest proposal is an attempt to evade the original deal and called for immediate talks for the second stage of the ceasefire. In response to Hamas's position, Israel says it's blocking all further goods and supplies to Gaza. Daniel Estrin, NPR News, Tel Aviv. Private Space Company has put its Blue Ghost lander on the moon. The successful touchdown for Flyer-Fi aerospace came early this morning. Chief lander engineer Will Coogan confirmed the landing at the company's mission control

outside Austin, Texas. We're on the moon. The landing kick starts to a two-week research mission for NASA. Firefly, now the first private company to pull off a fully successful lunar landing. A Houston-based company put a lander on the moon last year, but it tipped over. And from Washington, this is NPR News. People gathered at national parks all over the country this weekend to protest the firing of a thousand National Park employees some 90 miles east of Los Angeles. At Joshua Tree National Park, hundreds joined the protest. Madison Aument of Member Station KVCR reports. Six Rangers were fired last month at Joshua Tree as part of the Trump administration's

push to downsize the federal workforce. At the rally, Nick Graver, who's a biologist at the park, says the cuts could make it harder to protect the rare Joshua Trees. We don't have that many Joshua Trees to lose, and our parks are understaffed, and our public lands are understaffed. We're going to lose huge areas of desert. Graver also worries that there won't be enough rangers to respond to emergencies, especially when temperatures soar in the summer. According to an email obtained by KVCR, the park had

38 open positions which will now not be filled. For NPR News, I'm Madison Aument at Joshua Tree National Park. The official start of Alaska's Iditarod sled dog race has been delayed until tomorrow. It's been moved from Willow to Fairbanks because of lack of snow on the original course. Busher Gabe Dunham is not worried about the change. Down here in Willow, we've been struggling with lack of snow for the last eight weeks and that's been a, you know, having to truck and travel a lot so adding one more trip to Fairbanks isn't gonna hurt us. One of us among this year's 33 Iditarod competitors who participated in this weekend's ceremonial start in downtown Anchorage. The course change to

Fairbanks adds more than 100 miles to the thousand mile race to Nome. I'm Jai Hill Snider, MPR News. Hey it's a Martinez I work on a news show and yeah the news can feel like a lot on any given day. race to gnome. I'm Jai Hill Snyder, NPR News.