NPR News Now - NPR News: 06-15-2025 6PM EDT

Episode Date: June 15, 2025

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JANENE HIRST, NPR NEWS ANCHOR, WASHINGTON, NPR NEWS ANCHOR, WASHINGTON, I'M JANENE HIRST. Israel and Iran have traded another round of intense missile strikes again today for the third day in a row. Iranian state media says Israeli missiles hit two energy facilities in southern Iran. In response, Tehran fired hundreds of ballistic missiles and drones into Israel, causing many casualties and significant damage. President Isaac Herzog visited the site

of an Iranian missile strike near Tel Aviv. We are seeing here the enormous destruction of an Iranian missile, but we are determined. We are determined to change the fate of the region, to lead it towards peace by undermining Iran's capability to threaten us existentially and threaten the region as a whole. The Iranian Health Ministry says at least 224 people have been killed in Israeli strikes

in Iran since the beginning of the fighting last week. This has fears grows that the attacks could spark a region-wide conflict. The latest exchanges come just hours after planned U.S. talks on Iran's nuclear program were called off. Authorities in Minnesota are expected to provide an update soon on the search for a man suspected of killing a Democratic legislative leader and her husband. As Matt Sepick of Minnesota Public Radio reports, investigators say they found a car they believe the suspect drove after the shootings. Residents in a rural area about 50 miles southwest of Minneapolis received phone alerts around mid morning telling them to lock their homes in vehicles. The message says investigators found

a car that they believed Vance Luther Belter had used, but they had not located Belter. The 57-year-old is suspected of fatally shooting former Minnesota House Speaker Melissa Hortman and her husband Mark at their home early Saturday while impersonating a police officer. Belter also allegedly shot and wounded State Senator John Hoffman, who's also a Democrat, and his wife, Yvette. For NPR News, I'm Matt Sepick in Minneapolis. LESLIE KENDRICK At least four people have died. Several more are still missing in West Virginia's northern panhandle, west of Pittsburgh, after a flash flood on Saturday night.

Chris Schultz from West Virginia Public Broadcasting has more. CHRIS SCHULTZ West Virginia Governor Patrick Morrissey declared a state of emergency for Ohio County Sunday morning after the region received three inches of rain or more in just 30 minutes. Rushing floodwaters picked up vehicles and washed out roads, bridges and highways, necessitating swift water rescues. Lou Vargo, Emergency Management Director for Wheeling and Ohio County, says the speed of the flood and the impact to local infrastructure has severely limited emergency response. There was people in trees. We had a trailer on fire that

the road on both sides of that was given out. More heavy rains are forecasted in the area through Sunday evening, renewing concerns for further flooding. For NPR News, I'm Chris Schultz in Morgantown, West Virginia. You're listening to NPR News from Washington. In San Antonio, the death toll from heavy rains that inundated the area last week has now risen to at least 13. The National Weather Service says more than seven inches of rain fell in just a matter

of hours Thursday, causing fast-rising floodwaters to carry away more than a dozen vehicles into a creek that left some people climbing trees to escape the water. Firefighters rescued more than 70 people across the nation's seventh-largest city. The city's public works department says more than a dozen low-water road crossings showed signs of structural damage. Drug deaths are plummeting among younger people around the U.S. NPR's Brian Mann reports the improvement comes after 230,000 people under the age of 35 died from fentanyl and other street drugs over the last decade.

The dramatic drop in fatal overdoses is biggest among 20-somethings, a decline of nearly 50%. Nabarandas Gupta is an addiction researcher at the University of North Carolina. What we're seeing is a massive reduction in overdose risk among Gen Z in particular. Improvements have been slower among teens, but according to federal data, deaths in that age group finally dropped sharply last year. It's welcome news for John Epstein, who lost his 18-year-old son to fentanyl. We're super heartened to finally see the teens dropping. Roughly 15,000 fewer young people died in 2024, compared with the worst year of the

fentanyl crisis in 2021. Brian Mann, NPR News. U.S. futures contracts are trading lower at this hour on rising geopolitical risks. I'm Janene Herbst, NPR News in Washington.