NPR News Now - NPR News: 05-07-2025 7PM EDT

Episode Date: May 7, 2025

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Live from NPR News in Washington, I'm Jack Spear. Pakistan says it will avenge the deaths of those killed by an Indian missile strike. Pakistan calling the strikes an act of war and saying it downed several Indian fighter jets. India, for its part, claims the attack was in retaliation for last month's massacre of Indian tourists. NPR's Diya Hadid has more on concerns the conflict could escalate between the two nuclear armed rivals. Analysts say Pakistan may launch its own military strikes

because India struck places in Pakistan that it hasn't hit in more than 50 years, not since a war in 1971. And a Pakistani security analyst, Abdel-Lakhan, tells me the army may need to show deterrence by striking back into India. The current confrontation is the worst since 2019 when the two countries came close to all-out war. India's indicated though it does not intend to further

escalate the situation. House Republicans have given tentative approval to sell thousands of acres of federal public lands in Nevada and Utah. MPR's Kirk Siegler reports on the controversial provision that was added back into a budget bill late last night. The amendment authorizes the sale of more than 10,000 acres of federal lands. Most of the proposed sale appears to be aimed at building housing outside Las Vegas and Reno, Nevada, and St. George, Utah, which Republican Celeste Malloy represents. Many of the difficulties we face at a local level are of course related to the fact that the county is surrounded by federal land.

Malloy is related to the rancher Cliven Bundy, whose family led armed standoffs over control of federal lands. Democrats say the amendment that still requires a full house vote is part of a broader far right plan for a wholesale transfer of federal public lands. Kirk Ziegler, NPR News. Officials in Los Angeles say they are seeing a drastic reduction in shipments from China, following President Trump's imposition of a 145 percent tariff. It's affecting workers and businesses, as Steve Futterman reports. At the Port of Los Angeles, the nation's largest port, officials are seeing the impact. Gene Sirocco is the port's executive director. The situation's not good. Cargo volume this week for imports is down 35%

compared to last year. People are quite concerned, absolutely. Charlie Camacho this week showed up at the Longshore Union's dispatch hall looking for work. He left empty-handed. Less volume of cargo containers means less work for us. Products that enter the U.S. at the Port of L.A. eventually wind up in stores in every state. The reduction in shipments here may soon be felt by consumers across the nation in both higher prices and in some cases empty shelves.

For NPR News, I'm Steve Futterman at the Port of Los Angeles. Stocks closed higher on Wall Street today after the Federal Reserve took no action on interest rates. The Dow gained 284 points. The Nasdaq rose 48 points today. You're listening to NPR. Search engine company Google says it is planning to partner with a company called Elemental Power on three project sites for advanced nuclear energy.

It comes at a time power-hungry artificial intelligence is increasing demands for electricity. Under the agreement, Google says it would provide capital for the projects, which the companies say will each produce 600 megawatts of power capacity. Google and Elemental say they plan to collaborate with utility and regulated power partners to identify and advance new projects. A new study out has found that 99.999% of the deep seafloor remains unseen by human eyes. As NPR's Nell Greenfield-Boyce explains, it's a region of the globe that is dark, cold, and tough to reach. More than half of the planet's surface is covered by the deep ocean.

Sonar can map the shape of the seafloor, but seeing what's happening there means sending lights and a camera down into the dark. Katie Croft-Bell is with a nonprofit called the Ocean Discovery League. She recently made a database of all the expeditions that send any kind of probe down to see how much of the deep seafloor has actually been seen since the 1950s. It ends up being an area of less than the size of Rhode Island. In the journal Science Advances, she and her colleagues report that most of the explored

areas are with 200 nautical miles of the United States, Japan, and New Zealand, so it's a fairly narrow sample of the global seafloor. Nell Greenfield-Boise, NPR News. Crypto futures prices lost ground today oiled down more than a dollar a barrel to settle at $5807 a barrel in New York. I'm Jack Spear, NPR News in Washington.