NPR News Now - NPR News: 08-02-2025 9PM EDT

Episode Date: August 3, 2025

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Live from NPR News, I'm Janene Hurst. U.S. Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff is continuing his trip in Israel. He visited a much criticized food distribution site in Gaza yesterday and today in Tel Aviv, he met with the families of some of the remaining hostages who are still being held in Gaza. And here's Emily Fang has more. Previous ceasefire negotiations to bring back 10 of the approximately 20 living hostages stalled late last month. Now Witkoff says in a statement released by an organization representing hostages

families that the goal is to bring back all 50 hostages dead or alive. The issue of the hostages has divided Israeli society with the hostages families accusing Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of delaying a ceasefire that would bring their loved ones back. Vicki Cohen is the mother of Nimrod Cohen, an Israeli soldier kidnapped during the Hamas-led attack on Israel on October 7, 2023. Many families praised Witkoff and President Trump for their help, but Cohen says at the end of the day it is the government of Israel that is responsible for bringing the hostages home.

Emily Fang, NPR News. Two families, including three children who are U.S. citizens, were deported from Louisiana to Honduras earlier this year. Millbridges of member station WRKF reports that now they're suing ICE for allegedly violating their due process rights by deporting them without a trial. The lawsuit filed by the National Immigration Project and others is on behalf of two New Orleans-based Honduran mothers and their three American children, including a five-year-old boy undergoing treatment for kidney cancer. The families were detained in April after the mothers attended a regular ICE check-in.

The suit alleges the mothers were not given access to legal counsel or allowed to choose whether their children would be deported. The lawsuit says one of the mothers wanted her son to stay so he could keep receiving cancer treatment. The Trump administration has said the mothers chose to have their children deported with them. The lawsuit asks for a jury trial and relief from damages. For NPR News, I'm Mel Bridges in Baton Rouge. LESLIE KENDRICK In Montana, a manhunt is underway for a gunman suspected of shooting and killing

four people in a bar yesterday. Montana Public Radio's Shaili Reagar has more. SHALI REAGAR Three patrons and a bartender were pronounced dead at the scene Friday morning at the Owl Bar in Anaconda, an old mining town in the mountains of western Montana. A population of about 10,000 people, the town was put under lockdown as law enforcement began their pursuit of the suspected shooter. Authorities identified him as a local resident and U.S. Army veteran Michael Brown. The Montana Division of Criminal Investigation led a search through the night. Brown's car was found west of town Friday, but he was not with

it. He is still at large. Law enforcement believes he's armed and dangerous. For NPR News, I'm Shaley Rieger in Helena. You're listening to NPR News from Washington. SpaceX delivered a fresh crew to the International Space Station today, making the trip in about 15 hours. The four astronauts from the U.S., Russia, and Japan launched from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida yesterday. They'll spend at least six months on the orbiting lab, swapping places with colleagues up there since March.

SpaceX will then bring those four back as early as Wednesday. The city of Twinsburg, Ohio is seen doubled this weekend as it hosts the world's largest annual gathering of twins. From member station WKSU Kabir Bhatia has more. It began in 1976 as a small parade of twins, part of Twinsburg marking the nation's bicentennial. Every August, it's like a human Noah's Ark in the city near Cleveland that was founded by twins in the early 1800s. Andy Miller has participated every year, often alongside his twin sister. He's now the festival's executive director.

A lot of the twins in their normal day probably don't acknowledge their twinship as much as they do on that weekend. They often say that this is the only place where I don't feel out of place or as an oddity. In five decades, more than 84,000 sets of twins, triplets, and multiples have visited twins days. For NPR News, I'm Kabir Bhatia in Twinsburg, Ohio. On Wall Street, stocks tumbled this week amid signs of a weaker job market and higher tariffs. With all three major indices ending the week in the red, for the week the S&P 500 fell 2.5%.

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