NPR News Now - NPR News: 08-16-2025 8AM EDT

Episode Date: August 16, 2025

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There's a lot of news happening. You want to understand it better, but let's be honest, you don't want it to be your entire life either. Well, that's sort of like our show, here and now anytime. Every weekday on our podcast, we talk to people all over the country about everything from political analysis to climate resilience, video games. We even talk about dumpster diving on this show. Check out Here and Now Anytime, a daily podcast from NPR and WBUR.

Live from NPR News in New York City, I'm Dua Lai Tauau. Ukraine's president will again visit Washington. He was invited to the White House following President Trump's meeting with Russia's leader Vladimir Putin. Speaking to Fox's Sean Hannity after their summit, Trump said it's now up to Zelensky and European nations to reach a deal to end Russia's full-scale invasion. We have a very good meeting today, but we'll see. I mean, you have to get a deal. We agreed on a lot of points. I want to see people stop dying in Ukraine, and that's what's happening.

Well, losing five, six, seven thousand. They're Russians, mostly Russians, and they're Ukrainian soldiers. There's some people dying in cities and towns where they're trying to blow up missile manufacturers and other things in some cities. I don't know if you know what's going on there, but there are a lot of people dying. Senator Gene Shaheen, a Democrat from New Hampshire and a ranking member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee said in a statement that President Trump appears to have been played yet again by Vladimir Putin. One group affected by Trump's federal takeover of the local police department in Washington, D.C. are teenagers. Trump has described roving mobs of wild youth, but NPR's Greg Meg Anderson, reports many young people say the federal takeover, not crime, makes them feel unsafe. D.C. did see a violent crime spike in 2023, including among juveniles. But violent crime in general is now falling in the district. In some neighborhoods, crime is,

still a big problem, like parts of Ward 8, where 16-year-old Ali lives. NPR is not using his last name because he worried about retaliation. He says the increased police presence feels intimidating. And it also made me think a lot about what real safety mean and whether it comes from, like, trust or from force and fear. He said he would welcome more police in his neighborhood if it felt like they were true community guardians. Meg Anderson and PR News. The first hurricane of the Atlantic season is strengthening quickly. Aaron was upgraded to a major category of force storm with wind gust up to 130 miles per hour. And Piers Amy held reports.

Aaron is not forecast to make direct landfall, but the U.S. Coast Guard has closed some ports in Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands in anticipation of its outer bands. They could also hit St. Martin and St. Bart's this weekend. Rainfall of up to a half foot in parts could lead to flash flooding and landslides. powered by abnormally warm waters. Erin is not nearly done growing, possibly tripling in size by midweek, forecasters say, bringing rough ocean conditions

to the Bahamas, Bermuda, and the U.S. East Coast. Climate change is making powerful storms more common. NOAA has forecast a higher-than-average hurricane season. It goes until the end of November, peaking around the first week of September. This is NPR. A new federal lawsuit filed yesterday,

by a California man, accuses the technology company Otter AI of covertly recording private conversations violating state and federal privacy and wiretap laws. Justin Brewer of San Jacinto is seeking class action status for his case and others who may have had chats that were recorded and shared with Otter without consent. Otter says, which has an annual recurring revenue of $100 million, specializes in generating speech-text transcriptions using artificial intelligence. Ten countries in the Americas have reported measles cases this year, according to the Pan-American Health Organization.

Zemper's Jonathan Lambert reports that's a 34-fold increase over the same period last year. Officials say there have been more than 10,000 confirmed measles cases and 18 deaths. The vast majority of cases are in Canada, Mexico, and the United States. states, but countries throughout Central and South America, including Bolivia, Argentina, and Belize are affected as well. Officials say lower vaccination rates are to blame for the surge of this highly contagious virus. Many regions have fallen below the 95% vaccine coverage threshold recommended to prevent outbreaks. Pan American Health Organization officials are calling on countries to step up their vaccination efforts to quell the surge.

Jonathan Lambert, NPR News. Across the country, electricity prices have jumped more than twice as fast as the overall cost of living. This is NPR News from New York City. I'm Rachel Martin, host of Wildcard from NPR. I've spent years interviewing all kinds of people, and I've realized there are ideas that we all think about, but don't talk about very much. So I made a shortcut, a deck of cards with questions

that anyone can answer, questions that go deep into the experiences that shape us. Listen to the Wildcard podcast only from NPR.