NPR News Now - NPR News: 08-08-2025 6PM EDT

Episode Date: August 8, 2025

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Live from NPR News in Washington, I'm Janine Hurst. Emory University in Atlanta says there's an active shooter situation on campus, and it's warning people to shelter in place. Law enforcement are on the scene. The school is on lockdown. This is a developing situation. President Trump says he'll meet with Russian President Putin soon, and that the two agreed on a date and a site for the face-to-face meeting to talk about a ceasefire to Russia's war in Ukraine. Europe wants to see peace. The European leaders want to see peace. President Putin, I believe, wants to see peace. And he says Ukrainian President Zelensky also wants to see peace, but Trump says both sides will have to relinquish land. There'll be some swapping of territories to the betterment of both. This, as Trump hosted the leaders of Azerbaijan and Armenia at the White House, for the signing of a joint resolution, a framework for a peace deal aimed at ending decades of blood.

conflict between the two countries. The police forces of several federal agencies have mobilized in Washington, D.C. after a former Trump administration staffer was badly beaten last week in an attempted carjacking, after Trump took to social media saying crime in D.C. is out of control. But as M.P.R. Meg Anderson reports crime in the city is actually falling. Motor vehicle theft in the district is at the same level it was at this time last year. That's according to preliminary data released this week from the Metropolitan Police Department. From 2023 to 2024, motor vehicle theft in the city fell by 25%. That decline is in line with a nationwide trend. Crime and violent crime in particular is falling. In Washington, D.C., homicides are down by more than 10% this year and robbery

by almost 30%. Like much of the country, D.C. saw a surge in crime in 2020. That continued in the district until 2023. In 2024, local lawmakers passed a far-reaching bill aimed at improving public safety in the city. Meg Anderson, NPR News. Astronaut Jim Lovell, who flew into space four times, has died. And Piers Russell Lewis has more. Jim Lovell's last two missions during the Apollo program captured the most public attention. Apollo 8 was the first time humans left low Earth orbit and reached the moon. This was the mission that took the famous Earthrise picture showing our blue and white planet soaring over the barren lunar landscape. His last flight, Apollo 13 and 1970, almost ended in disaster when an explosion crippled the spacecraft. In this 2014 NPR interview,

Lovell remembered that flight. The Apollo 13 tells a story. It was a failure in the beginning. The flight controllers and crew worked almost nonstop for days, solving one problem after another to get the spacecraft home. The mission was called NASA's most successful failure. Russell Lewis, NPR News. Lovell was 97 years old. You're listening to NPR News from Washington. UCLA says the Trump administration is proposing a $1 billion settlement, a big battle over federal funding. But school officials say that amount is untenable.

This comes after the Trump administration this week, suspended $584 million in federal grants for UCLA. It follows the Justice Department accusing the school. school, a violating federal civil rights law by creating a, quote, hostile and educational environment for Jewish and Israeli students. Music created with AI is becoming more and more common, but streaming services like Spotify aren't labeling that content, and experts say that could mislead listeners. And here's Isabella Gomez Sarmiento has more. Generative AI is growing across all social media platforms.

TikTok, YouTube, and meta have all started to label AI content. But Spotify, the largest music streaming service in the world, does not. In a statement to NPR, Spotify said it does not police the tools artists use and is working to fight deception and spam on the platform. Hani Farid, a digital forensics professor at the University of California, Berkeley, says not all AI usage is bad, but people have a right to know where the music they're listening to came from. Clear labeling is a very easy win. Detecting and tagging AI-generated content can be challenging.

but Farid says transparency is key. Isabella Gomez-Sarmiento, NPR News. Wall Street, higher by the closing bell, the Dow up 206 points, NASDAQ up 207, S&P 500 up 49. I'm Janine Herbst, NPR News, in Washington.