NPR News Now - NPR News: 03-09-2025 7PM EDT

Episode Date: March 9, 2025

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Hey, it's Amartines. 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 Janene Herbst. Canada's Liberal Party voted overwhelmingly for former central banker Mark Harney to replace Justin Trudeau as the new leader of the party and Prime Minister of Canada. Homeland Security

Secretary Kristi Noem announced new leadership for the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency, or ICE, and Pierce Juliana Kim has more. In a statement, Noem said she's appointing Todd Lyons as the acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, a key role in President Trump's plans to aggressively crack down on immigration. Lyons had previously served as the assistant Director of Field Operation in ICE's Enforcement and Removal Operations, the branch responsible for identifying, arresting and detaining immigrants

without legal status. Gnome also said she's appointing her former aide, Madison Sheehan, as ICE's next Deputy Director. On Sunday, Gnome also told CBS's Face the Nation that she's ramping up polygraph tests for her department's employees, days after she said two workers leaked information about her department's operations. Juliana Kim, NPR News. European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen is 100 days into her second five-year term. The head of the EUS executive branch says this time around involves responding to a fundamental shift in geopolitics.

Terry Schultz has more. EU Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen says the beginning of this term, December 1, feels like a lifetime ago. The world around us is changing at lightning speed. Decade-old certainties are crumbling and we still have a brutal war raging at our borders. One certainty she's referring to is the traditional transatlantic relationship in which the U.S. provided security guarantees for its European allies through NATO and other means. President Trump is scaling back that reassurance dramatically while cutting aid to Ukraine.

Von der Leyen has proposed a plan to invest $860 billion in defense for both the EU and Ukraine. For NPR News, I'm Terry Schultz in Brussels. Firefighters are making progress battling a series of brushfires on Long Island that burned over 400 acres of land and prompted evacuations. But as NPR's Joe Hernandez reports, New York officials say they're still working to ensure the fire doesn't spread as high winds continue. Suffolk County officials say there are no more visible flames, but that the fires are

only partially contained, which occurs when a boundary is established around the perimeter of a fire to stop it from spreading. The blazes began on Saturday, fueled by downed trees and fanned by 35-mile-per per hour winds. More than 90 fire departments and EMS agencies responded, and New York Governor Kathy Hochul declared a state of emergency. Two firefighters were hospitalized with injuries and later released. And here's Joe Hernandez reporting. U.S. futures contracts are trading lower at this hour. You're listening to NPR News. In Pennsylvania, a small plane crashed today near a retirement community in Lancaster.

Pictures and video of the crash site show the single-engine Beechcraft Bonanza came to a stop at a parking lot near that retirement community and caught fire, which spread to other vehicles nearby. The privately owned plane had just taken off from Lancaster Airport and was airborne for about a minute before crashing. A local newspaper reports that ambulances transported an unknown number of injured to local hospitals. The Federal Aviation Administration is investigating the crash.

Average wages in Silicon Valley reached an all-time high in 2025. That's according to a new analysis of economic growth in the region. Elise Manukian of Member Station KQED reports the numbers also reveal some sharp disparities in the tech-heavy region. At $157,000 per capita, incomes in Silicon Valley are more than twice the national average. But these record-breaking gains haven't been distributed equally. The 2025 Silicon Valley Index reported that the top 10 percent of earners hold 71 percent of the region's wealth.

This income gap has grown twice as fast as the rest of the state and the rest of the country. Hispanic and Latino residents of the Valley earn a third of what white residents are making, and a third of Silicon Valley households report struggling to make ends meet, with 37 percent of children at risk for food insecurity. For NPR News, I'm Elise Minuchian. And I'm Janine Herbst, and you're listening to NPR News from Washington.