NPR News Now - NPR News: 03-22-2025 8PM EDT

Episode Date: March 23, 2025

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Support for NPR and the following message come from American Jewish World Service committed to the fight for human rights supporting advocates and grassroots organizations worldwide working towards democracy equity and justice at ajws.org Live from NPR News in Washington I'm Louise Schiavone and a new move to increase deportations, the Trump administration is canceling a program that allowed over 500,000 people to be in the U.S. legally. NPR's Jimena Bastillo has more. The Department of Homeland Security said that it will revoke what was considered a parole

program for half a million people who are Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans, and Venezuelans. This means that people who are currently eligible to work, go to school, and be in the U.S. are set up for a potential deportation in about a month. While President Trump campaigned on increasing deportations, particularly of those without legal status, he has also taken steps to remove authorization for those already in the U.S. The administration has also paused processing asylum and visa applications for those who entered under this program. The move to revoke parole programs has already been challenged in federal court. Ximena Bustillo, NPR News. Lebanese officials tell NPR that seven people have been killed in a barrage of Israeli airstrikes

Saturday on Lebanon. Lebanese state media say more than a dozen towns and villages were hit, including a city on the Mediterranean coast. NPR's Jawad Rizkallah reports from nearby Damascus. One mayor in Lebanon's south tells NPR an Israeli drone hit his village and that residents are panicking. People are evacuating other villages. Lebanon's health ministry says the dead include at least one child. The Israeli military said it was targeting Hezbollah after rockets were fired earlier at Israel. No one was injured there.

Hezbollah denied firing those and says it's committed to a ceasefire that began in November. The Lebanese army published photos of wooden rocket launchers it says it found and dismantled. It's not the type of weapon Hezbollah is known to have used. These are the deadliest attacks since last year's ceasefire. UN peacekeepers say they've since tallied more than 680 attacks violating that truce, the vast majority of them by Israel. Jawad Rasqallah, NPR News, Damascus. After an extensive hospitalization, the Vatican says Pope Francis will be released tomorrow. His doctors say he will need months of additional rest to be able to recover completely. NPR's Emma Bowman has details.

The 88-year-old pontiff has spent over five weeks at Rome's Gemelli Hospital. He was admitted with a case of bronchitis that doctors said had evolved into pneumonia in both of his lungs. Sergio Alfieri, the hospital's head of surgery, told journalists on Saturday that the Pope is in stable condition and that he will continue to receive medical care while at the Vatican. Today we are happy to say that tomorrow he will be at home. The Vatican says Francis will give his blessing shortly afternoon on Sunday to a crowd outside the hospital, his first public appearance since being hospitalized. Emma Bowman, NPR News. This is NPR. At London's Heathrow Airport,

British Airways says it was able to deliver 90 percent of its Saturday schedule after an electrical substation fire shut down flights for almost a full day. In general, airlines operating in the major hubs say they expect disruptions to last for days. After more than 16,000 structures were damaged or destroyed in the Los Angeles wildfires, one organization is taking on a less traditional form of disaster relief, fire-proofing history. Andrea Dominick of member station KCRW has the story. On a recent Sunday afternoon at the Hammer Museum in LA, two dozen volunteers gathered over laptops and cups of coffee for a Wikipedia edit-a-thon. They're writing new entries

about the landmarks and community hubs lost in the wildfires, adding citations, updating information, and uploading photos. We have the potential ourselves to preserve what we lost and make sure that what was destroyed in the fires isn't forgotten. That's Emery DeLessio, a facilitator with WikiLA who's helping train newcomers. So far, more than 40 articles have been created or updated at editathons like this one, and they're already resonating. D'Alessio says those articles have racked up more than 200,000 views since their edits.

For NPR News, I'm Andrea Dominic in Los Angeles. President Trump is in Pennsylvania this evening, where he is attending the NCAA Wrestling Championships. The event at the Wells Fargo Center in Philadelphia was expected to be a big night for Penn State's wrestling team. The president says he supports all the college wrestling teams. I'm Louise Schiavone, NPR News, Washington.