NPR News Now - NPR News: 08-19-2025 7AM EDT

Episode Date: August 19, 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 Washington, I'm Corva Coleman. President Trump says he's planning for a meeting between you. Ukrainian President Volodymy Zelensky and Russian President Vladimir Putin. Trump spoke after meeting the Ukrainian leader at the White House yesterday and then meeting with several other European leaders. All are focused on ending Russia's war in Ukraine. British Prime Minister Kier Starmor says up to 30 countries are willing to work with the U.S. to help offer Ukraine security guarantees.

Starmor says any agreement must include Ukraine. Whether it's territory or the exchange of prisoners, or the very serious issue of the return of the children, that that is something where Ukraine must be at the table. President Trump says he also wants to set up a trilateral meeting with the Ukrainian and Russian leaders along with himself. A senior Hamas official has confirmed to NPR it has accepted a ceasefire proposal for Gaza.

The move comes as Israel is gearing up for a major military offensive into Gaza, NPR's Jackie Northam reports from Tel Aviv. came under heavy pressure from Egypt and Qatar to accept a deal and said there would be rounds of negotiations if and when Israel accepts. The terms of the proposal are similar to one recently put forth by President Trump's special envoy Steve Wickoff. It included the redeployment of some Israeli troops and more humanitarian aid going into Gaza. Israel had previously agreed to it, but since then the government has been preparing for an offense of into Gaza city. An anonymous person in Israel familiar with the negotiations, told NPR the government received Hamas' response from mediators

and is studying it and would respond. Jackie Northam, NPR News, Tel Aviv. The strike against Air Canada is over. The union representing 10,000 flight attendants and the carrier, both say they reached a tentative contract agreement overnight. The deal must still be approved by the workers. They walked off the job last weekend, snarling thousands of Air Canada flights. They even define a government order to go back to work. The Texas Health Department says the measles outbreak is over. Texas Public Radio's Gabriela Alcorta Solario has more. The outbreak of measles in West Texas reached 762 cases before the state declared the outbreak over.

It originated in a West Texas county in January, and the cases quickly rose. But now it has been more than 42 days since a new case was reported. Two children died in connection to the outbreak. Both were not vaccinated against measles. 99 people were hospitalized. Texas officials say just because the outbreak is over here, the threat is still very real due to ongoing outbreaks across the country and globally. Monitoring for new cases will continue. I'm Gabriela Alcorta Solorio in San Antonio. You're listening to NPR News from Washington.

Department says it's named Missouri's Attorney General as the new co-depity director of the FBI. Missouri's Andrew Bailey will move into the job to serve alongside current FBI deputy director Dan Bongino, who is a former Secret Service Officer and podcast host. There's usually only one FBI deputy director at a time who runs the day-to-day operations of the agency. Forecasters say Hurricane Aaron is slowing down in the Atlantic Ocean. Top sustained winds are 115, miles per hour. Aaron won't hit the East Coast, but it will still kick up life-threatening rip currents and surf along the East Coast. Fish may experience something akin to pleasure, according to scientists, and fish appear to work rather hard to feel it. Ari Daniel explains. The team of researchers wondered whether fish could feel good. So in the lab, they studied butterfly fish

and a rass that cleans parasites off other fish. The butterfly fish preferred being where it had interacted with the rass even when it had no parasites. But when the butterfly fish was injected with naloxone, a drug that blocks opioid receptors, it lost interest in the cleaners, suggesting there may well be pleasure involved with the massage. And that this is mediated by those natural opioids in their brains.

Kyle Maximino is a neuroscientist at the Federal University of the Sest. and southeast para in Brazil. Other researchers may need more convincing, but this could mean rethinking how we treat fish. For NPR News, I'm R.A. Daniel. And you're listening to NPR News from Washington. 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 Wild Card podcast only from NPR.