NPR News Now - NPR News: 08-18-2025 12AM EDT

Episode Date: August 18, 2025

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Live from NPR News, I'm Dale Wilman. Ukraine's president is meeting with President Trump on Monday to discuss a possible peace deal with Russia. He'll be joined by other European leaders just days after Trump met with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Alaska. In North Carolina, where many Ukrainian refugees now live, Natalia Bondarenko shared her outrage about the Alaska meeting. The way I see it is this murder, the dictator, Vladimir Putin, should be judged and should be judged. be at this time in jail, not shaking hands with the leader of a free world, not being accepted by the greatest democracy in the world. This is all just insane. A mass shooting early Sunday morning in Brooklyn, New York, left three people dead and nine others wounded. The victims ranged

in age from 19 to 61. As NPR's Amy held reports, police say a dispute broke out at a lounge and they're looking for several possible shooters. It was crowded at the taste of the city lounge after 3 a.m. Sunday in the Crown Heights neighborhood. When multiple people opened fire, authorities say. Police responded quickly and found the victims inside, plus 42 shell casings. New York City Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch

says the shooting is terrible and not typical. We have the lowest number of shooting incidents and shooting victims seven months into the year that we've seen on record in the city. of New York. Something like this is, of course, thank God, an anomaly. Tish says the incident appears to be gang-related, as are around 60% of the city's shootings. Amy Held, NPR News. Healthcare workers in California are gearing up for a week of protests.

They're calling out their employer for what they say are chronic staffing shortages and low wages. From member station KQED, Dana Cronin reports. Workers say years of below average pay have caused high turnover. and that there's not enough staff to properly care for patients. Nikki Sandu works at a Sutter Health facility in Berkeley, California. She says she's been assaulted by frustrated patients as a result of the staffing shortage. Anybody would be frustrated when you're going into an emergency department because you feel like you're having an emergency situation, but you have to wait hours on end.

This comes as the union-backed workers negotiate a new contract with Sutter Health. In a statement, a representative for the nonprofit health system said they are disappointed, in the workers' decision to, quote, prioritize public demonstrations over engaging in constructive dialogue. For NPR News, I'm Dana Cronin in Oakland, California. Hurricane Aaron has been downgraded to a category three storm, but officials say it continues to gain strength and could cause life-threatening surf later this week along the eastern seaboard, particularly North Carolina's outer banks. Emergency officials are ordering the evacuation of Hatteras Island starting Monday because of expected heavy surf and high winds.

This is NPR News. Spain is using another 500 soldiers to help battle wildfires this weekend in that country's northwestern region. There are 12 major fires burning near the city of Orens. Fires in Spain so far this year have burned an area roughly as big as metropolitan London. Europe has been warming twice as fast as the global average since the 1980s, and that it's made that region more vulnerable to wildfires. British actor Terence Stamp, who starred in Billy Budd and Priscilla, Queen of the Desert, has died.

He was 87 years old. MPIR's Bob Mondello has this remembrance. In his 1962 debut, his sailor Billy Budd watched a flogging with eyes so innocent. What was his crime? God only know, Chuck, Dan. Audiences just melted. You mean you don't know what he did? Had he been less of an actor, he might have stayed a heartthrob.

Instead, he challenged himself every time out. as a psychopath in the collector, a seductive stranger in Theorem, an ex-con bent on revenge in the Limey. The roles for which later audiences best remember him are a good indication of his range, a supervillain in Superman 1 and 2, and Bernadette, a middle-aged trans woman in Priscilla, Queen of the Desert. Being a man one day and a woman the next is an easy thing to do.

There wasn't much that actor Terence Stamp couldn't play. Bob Mandela, NPR News. Scotty Sheffler rallied from a four-shot death, to win this weekend's PGA Championship in Owings, Mills, Maryland. Sheffler chipped in from 82 feet on the 17th and finished with a two-shot lead. It's his fifth PGA win this year, and it's the first time for five-plus wins and consecutive years since Tiger Wood. I'm Dale Wilman, NPR News.