NPR News Now - NPR News: 08-24-2025 5AM EDT

Episode Date: August 24, 2025

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It's that time of gear again. Planet Money Summer School is back. This semester with help from professors, policy experts, and yes, even a Nobel laureate, we're diving into how government and the economy mix and asking the big questions like, what role should government play in our economy? Does government intervention help or hurt and how big should the government be? That's on Planet Money Summer School from NPR, wherever you get your podcasts. Live from NPR News in Washington, I'm Jail Snyder. Illinois Democratic Governor J.B. Pritzker says President Trump is attempting to manufacture a crisis. He issued a statement after the Washington Post reported this weekend that the Pentagon

has been planning a military deployment to Chicago. Such a deployment would mark an expansion of Trump's use of the military in Washington, D.C. and Los Angeles. Trump says he is cracking down on crime, but Chicago's mayor says crime is down this year. National Transportation Safety Board has launched an investigation into Friday's deadly tour bus crash near Buffalo, New York. Five adults were killed, dozens more injured. NPR's Ava Poo-Catch reports on the investigation so far. The bus was traveling from Niagara Falls to New York City when it departed the travel lanes and rolled over. The cause is still unclear.

NTSB investigator Tom Chapman says the bus was equipped with seatbelts, but some passengers may not have been wearing them. Part of our investigation will be to determine the extent to which seatbelts were being used and the extent to which the lack of seed belt use may have been a factor in some of the passengers being ejected. New York State Police have launched their own investigation and say the bus drivers showed no signs of impairment and the tour bus did not have any mechanical failure. Eva Pugatch and PR News. Fire crews in Northern California have been working this weekend to corral the picket fire in Napa County. It's burned more than 6,000 acres and led to evacuations in rural communities. Cal Fire spokesman Jason Clay says firefighters are making

progress, but he also has a word of caution. There's still going to be more growth on this fire. We just don't want it in directions that we don't have the control lines around. The picket fire and others in California are burning amid a heat wave that has a Pacific Northwest in its grip. Extreme heat warnings and watches remain in effect for parts of the region. The heat wave brought triple-digit temperatures to Portland, Oregon. Delivering products from Europe to the United States, about to get a bit trickier. Many parcel companies and national postal services in Europe are temporarily pausing business shipments to the U.S. As NPR's Camila Dominovsky reports, it's because of a new tariff-related rule. There's a longstanding exception, some call it a loophole, called the de minimis rule. An imported

package worth less than $800 can carry no tariff at all. The Trump administration has already eliminated that rule for goods from China and Hong Kong, and starting this coming Friday, it's going away for goods from all countries. Deutsche Post in Germany, La Post in France, Correos in Spain, and other European postal services say they have unanswered questions and need time to make new systems. So for now, they are pausing U.S.-bound parcels of goods. Letters and gifts worth less than 100 bucks are not affected. Camila Dominovsky, NPR News. And from Washington, you're listening to NPR News. Russia says Ukraine launched drone attacks overnight that targeted several Russian power facilities, leading to a fire at a nuclear plant in the Western Kurska region close to the Ukrainian border.

The attacks came as Ukraine marks its independence day today. Ukraine declared its independence from the former Soviet Union in 1991. A new study, Finds pollution from the production and use of oil and gas in the U.S. has extensive health consequences. M.P.a. Alejandro Burunda has details from the new paper published in the journal Science advances. Fossil fuel production causes pollution in all stages of the process. One, drilling and extraction release noxious gases and sometimes carcinogens. Two, storing gas and oil and transporting it moves pollution around. Three, refining it causes more dangerous pollution. And four, using it, produce the gas. fine particles, nitrogen dioxide, and many other chemicals. Those pollutants are linked to a wide range of poor health outcomes,

from asthma to cancer to preterm birth and even to premature death. The new study adds up the health burden from all four stages. It finds some 90,000 early deaths a year can be linked to oil and gas pollution, and they're concentrated in communities of color. Texas and California feel the most health impacts. Alejandro Burunda, NPR News. The Little League World Series title game is today in South Williamsport, Pennsylvania, Taiwan beat Aruba in Saturday's international semifinal, and we'll play the Las Vegas team, which is looking for Nevada's first championship. Las Vegas beat Connecticut 8 to 2 to advance. I'm Giles Snyder, NPR News.