NPR News Now - NPR News: 03-05-2025 11AM EST

Episode Date: March 5, 2025

NPR News: 03-05-2025 11AM ESTLearn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Hey, it's Amartinez. I work on a news show. And yeah, the news can feel like a lot on any given day. But you just can't ignore las noticias when important world-changing events are happening. So that is where the Up First podcast comes in. Every single morning in under 15 minutes, we take the news and boil it down to three essential stories so you can keep up without feeling stressed out. Listen to the up-first podcast from NPR. Live from NPR News in Washington, I'm Korva Coleman. The U.S. Supreme Court has declined to overrule a lower court decision ordering the Trump administration to pay some contractors for foreign aid work.

This is linked with Trump's freeze on foreign aid. It affects the U.S. agency for international development and the State Department. President Trump gave his address to a joint session of Congress last night. He told lawmakers he'll accelerate his efforts to dramatically reshape the federal government. Trump also pointed to his work to stop illegal immigration into the U.S. NPR's Hemanette Bustillo reports,

Trump is claiming illegal border crossings into the U.S. have fallen to their lowest level ever. The agency itself, that's Customs and Border Protection, has not reported the numbers for February. However, posts on social media by the president suggest the administration believes it's on track to report about 8,500 arrests at the U.S.-Mexico border in the month of February. This could be the lowest number of crossings since Homeland Security started reporting the data in 2000.

And Piers Himano-Bustiyo reporting. Russia says it welcomes renewed efforts by the White House to end the war in Ukraine. The Kremlin was responding to the president's claim in his congressional address last night. Ukraine is ready to negotiate a peace. And Piers Charles-Mains has more. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Ukraine's willingness to negotiate, if true, was a positive development, but there were nuances hindering talks. According to the spokesman, that includes whether Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky can legally participate,

given a wartime decree Zelensky issued that rules out negotiations with the Kremlin. Moscow has also sought to sideline Zelensky by arguing he is illegitimate in power only thanks to wartime martial law that bans elections. It's a Russian talking point President Trump is occasionally embraced and one more reason why Ukraine and traditional American allies in Europe fear Trump seeks a negotiated peace tilted in Moscow's favor. Charles Maines, NPR News. There's uncertainty over the direction of President Trump's new 25 percent tariffs on Mexico and Canada.

U.S. tariffs on imported oil from Canada are lower. They're at 10 percent. But analysts say as a result, gas prices at the pump are still going to skyrocket. NPR's Camila Dominovski reports that could happen in days. Patrick Dehaan of the AppGasBuddy says the Northeast will be hit the hardest and fastest. The region relies on gasoline and diesel straight from Canada. Here he is in a video. Prices could start going up by a total of 20 to 40 cents a gallon over the next 7 to

10 days. The Midwest, Great Lakes and Rockies will feel it next. Their refineries import Canadian crude oil to turn into gasoline. The U.S. makes more crude oil than it needs, but not the right kind of oil and not in the right place for any easy swap. The West Coast and the South are not expected to feel much impact. Camila Domenoski, NPR News. On Wall Street, the Dow is up 50 points.

This is NPR. A major winter storm is hammering much of the central U.S. and sweeping to the east. There are blizzard conditions from northern Missouri to Michigan's Upper Peninsula. The storm is also bringing damaging winds to the south. At least two people have been killed in Mississippi. A research team says it thinks it has the tools scientists need to possibly detect fossilized microbiome life on Mars, reporter Ari Daniel explains. The machine is about the size of a water bottle, and it was built to detect different elements,

including the chemical signatures of life. Yousef Salam is a Ph.D. student at the University of Bern. It's basically a laser beam hitting the sample, and this laser will vaporize part of the material, creating some atoms. Salam used the instrument on a piece of gypsum he harvested from northern Algeria, gypsum that he knew contained fossilized microbes.

We proved that our instrument is capable to detect signatures of life in the gypsum. Since gypsum is present on Mars as well, perhaps one day the instrument could be used to look for ancient microbes on the red planet too. The study highlights the intimate interconnection between minerals and microbes on our planet, and perhaps beyond.

For NPR News, I'm Ari Daniel. The Vatican says Pope Francis has been taken off mechanical ventilation today. He used this to help his breathing and to sleep overnight. Francis remains hospitalized in stable condition in a Rome hospital. The news comes as the Christian holy season of Lent starts. Today is Ash Wednesday. Christians will use the season to prepare for Easter.

This is NPR.