NPR News Now - NPR News: 05-12-2025 5PM EDT

Episode Date: May 12, 2025

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Imagine, if you will, a show from NPR that's not like NPR, a show that focuses not on the important but the stupid, which features stories about people smuggling animals in their pants and competent criminals in ridiculous science studies, and call it Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me because the good names were taken. Listen to NPR's Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me. Yes, that is what it is called wherever you get your podcastsar Live from NPR News in Washington, I'm Jack Spear. The U.S. Deputy Secretary of State went to Douglas Airport today to greet a group of

Afrikaners from South Africa, the Trump administration welcoming them as refugees, even as it has paused all refugee arrivals from war zones around the world. Here's NPR's Michelle Kellerman. At an airport hangar, Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Landau met with families of white South Africans, mostly farmers, who the Trump administration claims have faced racial discrimination. We are excited to welcome you here to our country where we think you will bloom. The ranking Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee Jean Shaheen calls it

baffling that the Trump administration is admitting Afrikaners for resettlement while blocking thousands of quote legitimate asylum seekers. She wants the administration to explain why it is prioritizing white South Africans over refugees from Afghanistan, Sudan and Myanmar. Michelle Kellerman, NPR News, the State Department. President Trump says tariffs on imported pharmaceuticals will soon be announced as Jackie Fortier with KFF Health News reports small pharmacy owners are anxious.

Arkansas pharmacist Scott Pace expects the amount he has to pay for generic drugs to go up. That's really a scary proposition on an industry that's already on razor-thin margins. Regardless of the shape the tariffs take, unless insurers raise the amount they reimburse for those drugs, more independent pharmacies could close. Industry officials say tariffs on pharmaceuticals are unlikely to bring back domestic manufacturing of generic drugs. The U.S. has typically imported vast amounts of generics from India, Europe and China.

Jackie Fortier with our partner KFF Health News. An Israeli-American held hostage for more than 19 months in Gaza has been freed by Hamas militants in what the group is calling a gesture of goodwill. The release of 21-year-old soldier Edon Alexander confirmed today by the Israeli military, which says he was turned over to the Red Cross and then Israeli forces. His extended family gathered in Tel Aviv to watch the release. He's believed to be the last living American who was held in Gaza by Hamas. Stocks closed sharply higher today as the US and China agreed to a temporary break from tariffs,

NPR's Scott Horsley reports. The US is slashing tariffs on imports from China from 145% to 30% for the next 90 days. In exchange, China is temporarily cutting its tax on imports from the US to just 10%. The move is a relief for many businesses that rely on Chinese imports. The earlier triple-digit tax had brought much of the cargo traffic between the two countries to a standstill. The remaining tariffs are still significantly higher than Americans were used to paying, however, and because the tariff relief has an expiration date while negotiations

continue, there's still considerable uncertainty over what the trade landscape will look like in three months. Scott Horsley, NPR News, Washington. The Dow shot up more than 1,100 points today. The NASDAQ rose 779 points. This is NPR. Today, the Nasdaq rose 779 points. This is NPR. A prosecutor at the trial of Sean Diddy Combs today said while the public knew Combs as a music and business mogul, in private he was coercing women into sexual encounters and using violence to control them. U.S. Attorney Emily Johnson in opening statements had Combs sex trafficking and racketeering

trial in Manhattan laying out the government's case, one of Combs' lawyers countered by saying the sex was consensual. A new study finds the land in many cities across the U.S. is sinking. It shows mostly that's because of groundwater extraction. More from NPR's Rebecca Herscher. Researchers at Columbia University in Virginia Tech measured the height of the land in the 28 most populous U.S. cities. They found that about 20% of the land area sank between 2015 and 2021. More than 30 million people live in areas affected by sinking land, and Houston is the fastest-sinking major city in the country, they found. The study

was published in the journal Nature Cities. Land sinks for many reasons, some of them natural, but extracting groundwater for agriculture, drinking, and manufacturing is the main driver. Sinking land can lead to more flooding in urban areas, particularly in coastal neighborhoods where sea levels are also rising because of climate change. Rebecca Herscher, NPR News. Well now later tonight the order of this year's NBA draft around 6 p.m. Eastern, a group of execs and others will watch 14 ping-pong balls bounce around inside a machine. The balls numbered 1 through 14.

Each represents a team. The order in which they're drawn will determine who gets the number one pick in next month's NBA draft. I'm Jack Spear, NPR News in Washington.