NPR News Now - NPR News: 06-02-2025 5PM EDT

Episode Date: June 2, 2025

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World news is important, but it can feel far away. Not on the State of the World podcast. With journalists around the world, you'll hear firsthand the effects of US trade actions in Canada and China. And meet a Mexican street sweeper who became a pop star. We don't go around the world, we're already there. Listen to the State of the World podcast from NPR every weekday. Live from NPR every weekday. Live from NPR News in Washington, I'm Jack Spear.

Although they say the man who's been charged with launching a weekend attack in Boulder, Colorado that left 12 people injured have been planning it for a year, targeting what he called a Zionist group. The FBI has identified the suspect as 45-year-old Mohammed Sabi Soliman. Speaking at a news conference, acting U.S. Attorney for the District of Colorado, J. Bishop Gurel describes Sunday's attack. What the charges allege that he did was to throw Molotov cocktails at a group of men and women, some of them in their late 80s, burning them as they peacefully walked on a Sunday to draw attention to Israeli hostages held in Gaza. Administration officials

say Soleimani, an Egyptian citizen, is one of half a million people estimated to have overstayed his tourist visa and, according to DHS, was in the U.S. illegally. The outdoor pedestrian mall in Boulder has reopened following the attack. Emma Benton90 of Member Station KUNC reports. The streets quiet today. Some shop owners are worried about how an event like this could hurt business in the long term. Pedestrians have mixed emotions about safety.

John Taylor, the president of Boulder's Chamber of Commerce, says that while the area is not immune from these kinds of attacks, he will work with officials on being extra vigilant moving forward. Pearl Street is a welcoming environment for all residents and visitors. We will make sure to keep it doubly safe and maintain it as Boulder's living room and a place to come enjoy community. The suspect has been charged with several felonies including murder, though no one has died, as well as a federal hate crime. For NPR News, I'm Emma Vanden Heide in Denver. Representatives from Russia and Ukraine met briefly in Istanbul today, though the

meeting coming after some of the most intense air attacks of the war appears to have produced little in the way of progress. Over the weekend, Ukrainian drone strikes destroyed a number of Russian warplanes. A survey is showing constantly shifting tariffs are a drag on the U.S. manufacturing sector. More from NPR's Scott Horsley. President Trump's tariffs are supposed to help domestic factories, but a survey of factory managers by the Institute for Supply Management tells a different story. The monthly survey once again found factories complaining about the economic uncertainty caused by Trump's on-again-off-again import taxes.

Susan Spence, who oversaw the survey, says factory managers are feeling whipsawed by tariff rates, which have changed more than 30 times since the beginning of the year. The manufacturing economy continues to struggle. It's going to continue to struggle until there is more certainty around what is going to happen with tariffs. The survey shows factory orders, output, and employment all shrank in May, while prices continue to climb. Scott Horsley, NPR News, Washington.

Stocks gained ground on Wall Street, the Dow up 35 points, the NASDAQ rose 128 points. This is NPR. Hurricanes have caused hundreds of billions of dollars in damage in the U.S. over the past decade. That's according to a new insurance report. NPR's Rebecca Herscher says about half the losses were insured. Of the five most expensive hurricanes to ever hit the U.S., three of them have happened in the last eight years. That's according to an analysis by the reinsurance company Munich Re. Property insurance companies were on the hook for about half the bill from those storms, the analysis estimates. Insurance companies

rely on their own insurance to cover such losses in the form of what's called reinsurance. Home insurance prices and the price of reinsurance for companies have both skyrocketed in recent years. This is the first week of Atlantic hurricane season. It runs through the end of November. Rebecca Hersher and PR News. If you're in the right spot, generally further north, you may be able to see the Aurora Borealis, otherwise known as the Northern Lights. That's because of weekend solar storms. It's an outburst of energy that create the colorful displays.

Areas in the U.S. where the Northern Lights could be visible include Alaska, Washington, Montana, the Dakotas, and parts of Michigan, Maine, and some areas of New England, just to name some. The sun is currently at the maximum phase in 11-year activity cycle. Last year, the strongest geomagnetic storm in 20 years hit the U.S., producing displays across the Northern Hemisphere and briefly disrupting some communications.

Critical futures prices moved higher today. Oil gained $1.73 a barrel to settle at $62.52 a barrel in New York. I'm Jack Spear, NPR News in Washington.