NPR News Now - NPR News: 04-17-2025 7PM EDT

Episode Date: April 17, 2025

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Live from NPR News in Washington, I'm Jack Spear. Secretary of State Marco Rubio has been meeting European officials in Paris to talk about the Trump administration's efforts to end Russia's war in Ukraine. He also spoke by phone with his Russian counterpart, NPR's Michelle Kellerman, as more. According to the State Department, Rubio told Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov the same message he's been communicating to the Ukrainian delegation in Paris. That is that President Trump wants this war to end. Here's State Department Spokesperson Tammy Bruce. And now the civilized world waits to see if Russia is indeed serious.

She says Rubio is in Paris along with Trump's envoy Steve Witkoff who met with Russian President Vladimir Putin last week, just days before a deadly Russian missile strike on Ukraine on Palm Sunday. That strike has added urgency to the Trump administration's peace efforts. Michelle Kellerman, NPR News, the State Department. More than 100 international students from around the country are joining a lawsuit against the U.S. government.

That's after they say their visa statuses were changed without reason. Remember, station WABE in Atlanta, Emily Wu-Pearson reports. In federal court, immigration attorney Charles Cook said about one-third of the students had their visas revoked. Others received notices that they failed to maintain student status. The suit says the administration has removed the students from the system used by the Department of Homeland Security to maintain information mainly regarding international students and their status in the country.

But Cook says all the plaintiffs were following the terms of their visas, had not been convicted of any deportable offenses, and that immigration and customs enforcement did not provide explanations as to why the visas were revoked or changed. For NPR News, I'm Emily Woo-Pearson in Atlanta. A federal judge has ruled Google holds any legal monopoly over online advertising in a case brought by the Justice Department in 17 states, including California and New York. Remember, station KQED, Rachel Miro has more. A federal judge largely agreed with the government's claim that Google's monopoly in ad tech allowed

it to charge higher prices and take a bigger cut of each sale. Now the ad giant could be forced to sell off some of its ad businesses at a time when other antitrust cases might force the same for other parts of the company. Allison Rice is with the nonprofit Accountable Tech. We're just really glad to see that this ruling came down and wanting to see solutions that permanently end Google's monopoly on the exploitation of consumer data. Google lawyers are spinning the ruling as a partial win. We won half of this case and we will appeal the other half, a VP wrote on X. For NPR News, I'm Rachel Myhro. The number of people filing first-time jobless claims declined slightly last week as the

labor market continues to hold up, even mid-worsening fears of a tariff-induced recession. Labor Department says first time unemployment claims fell by 9,000 to 215,000. A mixed close on Wall Street, the Dow fell 527 points, the S&P was up 7. This is NPR. The latest assessment from the International Monetary Fund is surging US tariffs will likely weigh on economic growth. As a result, the IMF's Managing Director forecasting weaker global growth and a rise in inflation. More details on the report are due out next week. IMF head Kristine Lee and Giorgeva says sharp increases in tariffs are also causing global uncertainty to spike. An archaeological dig recently unearthed the capital

of the ancient kingdom of Cabo in West Africa. Ari Daniel has the story. When Cabo fell in the 19th century, it was the last of the African kingdoms before European colonialism. The stories of its reign have been passed down for generations by a group of oral historians known as the Griots.

Nino Galisa is one. It seemed to me like a story, a fiction. He says to him, Cabo was a fiction, a story. Then, in 2024, a team of Spanish and Senegalese archaeologists began to exhume Kansala, the capital, in modern-day Guinea-Bissau. They found physical evidence of the people and places that had been mentioned in the songs of the griots. The researchers asked Elisa if he'd transformed their findings

into music. He sings about what touched him so, that what the griots have described for generations is real. For NPR News, I'm Ari Daniel. One of the most recognizable names in the gameshow world has died, Wink Martindale's death. Confirmed by his publicist, he gained fame on programs including Gambit and Tic-Tac-Doe. Wink Martindale was 91 years old. I'm Jack Spear, NPR News in Washington.