NPR News Now - NPR News: 03-25-2025 1PM EDT

Episode Date: March 25, 2025

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Shortwave thinks of science as an invisible force, showing up in your everyday life, powering the food you eat, the medicine you use, the tech in your pocket. Science is approachable because it's already part of your life. Come explore these connections on the Shortwave podcast from NPR. Live from NPR News, I'm Lakshmi Singh. The White House says President Trump retains confidence in his national security adviser, Mike Walz. NPR's Franco Ordonnese reports the White House is downplaying a revelation that a journalist

was included in a group chat discussing US military strike plans. The national security adviser has been under increasing pressure since raising national security concerns over the incident. According to a report in the Atlantic, Waltz accidentally invited the media outlet's editor-in-chief, Jeffrey Goldberg, into a private group chat of top officials discussing U.S. strikes on the Houthis in Yemen. In a phone interview Tuesday with NBC News, President Trump described the situation as, quote, the only glitch in two months, and it turned out not to be a serious one.

He added, Michael Walz has learned a lesson, and he's a good man. Franco Ordonez, NPR News. In a closed-door session on Capitol Hill, the nation's intelligence chiefs are being grilled by lawmakers about the alleged mishandling of U.S. military strike information. Addressing the group chat controversy on NPR's Here and Now, President Trump's former National Security Adviser, John Bolton, says he's dumbfounded. It's hard to grasp by any of these people at some point, up to and including the vice president of the United States, didn't say, by the way, why are we on Signal instead of doing a civet? It's a secure video telecommunication system capability that most of those people, if not

all of them, have on their desktops. NPR CEO Catherine Mayer is chair of the board of directors for the Signal Foundation, a nonprofit that supports the Signal Messenger app. Venezuela's government says it is working with lawyers in El Salvador to free more than 200 of its citizens sent to a maximum security prison by the United States. Lawyers filed a petition with the Central American country's high court to secure the deportees' release. Here's NPR's Carrie Khan. Venezuela's lawyers say they represent 30 of the men deported from the U.S. and held

in Salvadoran prisons. Lawyers are asking the Supreme Court's Constitutional Chamber to compel the Salvadoran government to justify their imprisonment. In their filing, the lawyers say they effectively represent all detained. The U.S. deported 238 Venezuelans more than a week ago and sent them to El Salvador. The White House says the men are all members of a violent gang and invoked a wartime law to quickly deport many of them. Venezuela's lawyers say none of their clients have criminal records. Venezuela's leader, Nicolas Maduro, has been rallying support defending the deportees, who he says were

kidnapped. Keri Kahn, NPR News, Rio de Janeiro. US stocks are trading higher this hour. The Nasdaq composite, the Nasdaq is up 72 points or nearly half a percent at 18,259. The S&P is risen eight and the Dow is now up eight points. You're listening to NPR News. White House says that it agreed to help restore Russian access to agricultural and fertilizer exports, lower maritime security costs, and better access to ports and payment systems for those transactions. The development comes as a result of talks in Riyadh this week aimed at brokering an end to Russia's war in Ukraine. The White House says it secured an agreement with both Russia and Ukraine on the Black

Sea to ensure safe navigation, eliminate the use of force, and prevent the use of commercial vessels for military purposes. If you pay attention to how you look in virtual meetings, but not how you sound, you might want to think again. NPR's Nell Greenfield-Bois reports on a new study showing that higher quality audio can create better impressions. Cognitive scientists at Yale University made recordings of people speaking in a variety of contexts. Here's one from a job interview scenario. My tenacious and proactive approach resulted in numerous

important contract wins. Then the researchers altered the recordings to create lower quality versions. My tenacious and proactive approach resulted in numerous important contract wins. People who heard the high quality audio were consistently more likely to have favorable impressions of the speaker, seeing them as more intelligent, attractive, and convincing. A report on this research appears in the proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Nell Greenfield-Boyce, NPR News.

NASDAQ's up 72 points, the S&P's up eight, and the Dow is up six points. I'm Lakshmi Singh, NPR News in Washington. Singapore is one of the busiest cities in the world, but biologist Philip Johns is fascinated Washington.