NPR News Now - NPR News: 08-14-2025 9PM EDT

Episode Date: August 15, 2025

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Support for NPR comes from NPR member stations and Eric and Wendy Schmidt through the Schmidt Family Foundation, working toward a healthy, resilient, secure world for all. On the web at theshmit.org. Live from NPR News, I'm Janine Hurst. As President Trump gets ready to meet with Russian President Putin in Alaska tomorrow, to possibly broker and end to Russia's war in Ukraine, Trump says he'll know in the first few minutes whether Putin is, serious about peace. But he says it's a potential second meeting that would be the most important. We have a meeting with President Putin tomorrow. I think it's going to be a good meeting, but the more important meeting will be the second meeting that we're having. We're going to have a meeting with President Putin, President Zelensky, myself, and maybe we'll bring

some of the European leaders along, maybe not. Trump also warned that tomorrow's meeting may not go well, in which case he says he would immediately return to Washington. Trump suggested last week that a ceasefire deal may include some swapping of territories, something Ukrainian President Zelensky says he's against. More than 100 aid organizations have issued a demand to end what they describe as Israel's weaponization of aid to Gaza. And peers Jane Aref has more. The statement says most organizations have been unable to deliver a single truckload of aid to Gaza since March when Israel introduced new registration rules. Aid groups, described the rules as unlawful, unsafe, and incompatible with humanitarian principles.

Israel issued a statement saying that the refusal of some non-governmental organizations to register raises the possibility of ties between those groups and the militant group Hamas. One U.S.-based group, Anera, says Israel is blocking more than $7 million worth of its aid, including food for 6 million meals, just a few miles from the border. Jayne Raff, NPR News, Amon. Texas House Democrats who've been breaking quorum over Republicans' congressional redistricting plans released more details today about when they'll return to the Capitol in Austin. The Texas newsrooms, Blaise Ganey, has more.

The House Democrats listed two things. One, for Texas' first special session to end, all signs point to that happening Friday morning, and two, California introducing a redistricting plan that would give the Democratic Party more seats in Congress. Their goal is to offset gains the Texas GOP will make with the newly proposed maps. Texas Democratic Party chair Kendall Scudder says he doesn't like the idea of mid-decade gerrymandering, but admits Democrats have to fight back. I think that these blue states aren't moving fast enough. California is one of several states, both Democratic and Republican-led, that are discussing plans to redraw their congressional lines to the benefit of their respective

political parties. I'm Blaise Ganey. U.S.S. futures contracts are trading in mixed territory at this hour. Dow futures are up about four-tenths of a percent. NASDAQ futures down one-tenth of a percent. S&P 500 futures contracts are flat. This is NPR News. A federal judge says the education department violated the law when it threatened to cut federal funding for schools and universities that had DEI programs. Today's ruling follows a motion for a summary judgment from the American Federation of Teachers and the American Sociological Association, which challenged the government's actions in a February lawsuit. The Trump administration argued they were merely reminding schools that discrimination is illegal, but U.S. District Judge Stephanie Gallagher, a Trump appointee, rejected that notion. The Inca Empire didn't have a system of writing, but it did record information.

in a complex system of knotted strings. And here's Nell Greenfield-Boyce reports on a study that suggests literacy in this form of record-keeping may have been widespread. The knotted strings are known as kipoos. Everything from census data to agricultural records got encoded in kipus. Most were made of cotton, but recently researchers at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland came across a 500-year-old kipu that incorporated human hair. That's thought to be a kind of signature of the maker.

And a chemical analysis of the hair showed that the person had the plain vegetarian diet of a common person. There wasn't an abundance of the meat and maize beer enjoyed by the Inca Empire's elite ruling class, which was long assumed to be the only producer of Kipus. Nell Greenfield-Boyce, NPR News. And I'm Janine Hurst, and you're listening to NPR News from Washington. This message comes from Wise, the app for using money around the globe. When you manage your money with Wise, you'll always get the mid-market exchange rate with no hidden fees. Join millions of customers and visit Wise.com. T's and Cs apply.