NPR News Now - NPR News: 08-16-2025 7PM EDT

Episode Date: August 16, 2025

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Live from NPR News, I'm Janine Hurst. The European Union's top diplomat says Russia has no intention of ending its war on Ukraine anytime soon. Terry Schultz reports on the reaction of European leaders to yesterday's summit between President Trump and Putin. After the summit failed to reach any agreements, EU foreign policy chief Kayakhalis says Russian President Vladimir Putin wants to drag out negotiations and hopes he gets away with it. President Trump called a handful of European leaders following the summit. They issued a statement welcoming Trump's meeting Monday with Ukrainian President Zelensky at the White House, pledging continued unwavering support for Ukraine.

But the statement does not address the fact that despite Trump saying before the summit that an immediate ceasefire is the priority, as the Europeans wish, then he posted on social media that instead a full peace deal should be the goal, a position more aligned with Putin. For NPR News, I'm Terry Schia. Shultz in Brussels. Israel is moving ahead with a plan to militarily occupy all of Gaza. And Pira Zaya Betrawi reports on airstrikes and demolitions that have destroyed hundreds of homes in Gaza's city this week alone. An arm of Israel's defense ministry, known as Kogat, says it's preparing to move

Gaza's population to the south and that after more than two months of Israeli blockade on shelter supplies, it will begin allowing tents from UN agencies and aid groups to enter Gaza starting Sunday in line with the government's plan. The UN, however, has said it will not participate in any forced displacement of the population. Already Israeli troops are operating in eastern in southern Gaza City. Israel's military says its 401st Brigade's combat team is operating against Hamas, strongholds in the city. Mahmoud Basel, a spokesman for Gaza's rescue services, tells NPR, Israel's military has destroyed 350 homes in the Zaytun neighborhood of Gaza City this past week, and that tens of thousands of residents are being forcibly displaced.

A. Abatrawi, MPR News. The federal class action suit has been filed against Otter AI, the Popular Transcription Service. And Pierce Bobby Allen reports. Otter AI uses voice recognition technology to do real-time transcriptions of Zoom, Google Meet, and Microsoft Teams meetings. But a new federal lawsuit claims Otter does not ask all participants for permission to record and fails to alert its 25 million users that it is using recorded meetings to train its AI systems. The suit says that's a violation of state and federal privacy and wiretap laws. A spokesperson for Otter did not return a request for comment. The company has said it anonymizes

people's meetings before feeding them to its AI tools. Yet the suit says it has obtained information showing Otter does not remove confidential conversations and does not ensure speakers are anonymous. Bobby Allen and PR News. On Wall Street, stocks ended the week in positive territory, the NASDAQ up a tenths of a percent. This is NPR News. The Canadian government has forced Air Canada and its flight attendants' union, back to work and into arbitration. After more than 10,000 flight attendants walked off the job overnight, over pay and scheduling issues. The airline suspended all operations this morning.

Flight attendant and local union president, Natasha Stay. Air Canada has called us unreasonable for asking for better than poverty wages, just one year after they gave their pilots a 26% increase. The strike has already impacted travel worldwide at the height of the summer travel season. Air Canada is the country's biggest carrier, and it estimates around 130,000 customers are affected as around 700 daily flights were suspended. Federal water managers are projecting or projecting another year of shortages on the Colorado. River. Alex Hager from member station KUNC reports. The first shortage declaration was issued in 2021. It's been in place since then and just got extended into next year. Cynthia Campbell is a water law researcher at Arizona State University. She says policymakers should have been drawing up long-term adaptations to climate

change. Instead, they were waiting for more water to come and turn things around. If they were betting on that, then they're losing because it is continuing to march on. Mother Nature is continuing to march on, and we're continuing to see declines in the system. Some of the cities and towns facing cutbacks are investing hundreds of millions of dollars into systems that will help steal them against future water reductions. For NPR News, I'm Alex Hager in Fort Collins, Colorado. And I'm Janine Hurst, NPR News in Washington.