NPR News Now - NPR News: 08-27-2025 2PM EDT

Episode Date: August 27, 2025

NPR News: 08-27-2025 2PM EDTLearn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Live from NPR News, I'm Lakshmi Singh. Days into the new school year, another mass shooting, this time at Minneapolis's Annunciation Church. Authorities say a shooter fired on Catholic school students and teachers as they were praying during morning mass. He later turned the gun on himself. Now authorities say at least two children are dead and 17 people, most of them children, are injured. Minnesota Public Radio's John Collins as scribes the church as the center of the neighborhood. People in this neighborhood say, you know, it's an upper middle class neighborhood in southwest part of Minneapolis, and, you know, it's relatively quiet. Crime rates are very low. So Annunciation Church was kind of a monument in this neighborhood. It was a location

where festivals happened, where the Boy Scouts met, that sort of thing. So seeing this happen so close to home, I think, of course, has been really shocking. Minnesota Public Radio is John Collins reporting. The chief of police says the shooter was in his early. 20s and was armed with a rifle, a shotgun, and a pistol. Authorities believe all were used in the attack. Lawyers for Kilmar, Obrego Garcia, requesting asylum for him in the U.S. The Department of Homeland Security says it wants to deport him to Uganda, a country where he has no ties. A judge in Maryland is scheduled a hearing next month, which gives Obrego Garcia time to pursue a fresh asylum claim. Here's NPR Scott Newman. Obrga Garcia faces human smuggling charges, and the White

House accuses him of being an MS-13 gang member, which he denies. Ohio State law professor Cesar Quetamac Garcia-Hernandez says those charges, though, could shape Uganda's response. There's no reason why Ugandan officials could not look at the public statements that Trump administration officials have made and decide that he's too dangerous to be left free. Uganda has said it won't accept U.S. migrants with criminal records and experts say it's not clear whether he would be re-deported possibly to his native El Salvador. Scott Newman, NPR News, Washington. Many international postal services are pausing shipments to the U.S., NPR's Bill Chapel, with details. The de minimis rule lets people skip import taxes for small stuff,

but after the U.S. raised its limit to $800, that small stuff became big business. Here's Courtney Griffin of the Consumer Federation of America. And we're talking about 4 million de minimis packages being processed today. Griffin says that number includes unsafe products that aren't closely inspected. Critics say it also hurts U.S. companies. President Trump is ending de minimis for U.S. imports starting this Friday. As a result, many postal and shipping services from Europe to Asia are halting deliveries to the U.S. They say they need to figure out the new customs process, from payments to paperwork. Bill Chappell, NPR News. This is NPR.

Washington holds talks with Israeli officials today on post-war Gaza, even though there's been little movement on securing an Israel-Hamas ceasefire. Israel's continuing to bombard parts of Gaza as anger mounts over strikes on a hospital earlier this week. The claim more than 20 lives. Victims included medics and journalists for major news organizations. In Israel, people staged more protests this week to pressure the government, to agree to a ceasefire and get all remaining hostages held in Gaza home. The Food and Drug Administration has suspended the license for a chicken guinea vaccine.

NPR's Jonathan Lambert tells us the decision leaves the United States with just one vaccine against the mosquito-borne illness that is on the rise worldwide. Chicken gunya disease is very rare in the U.S. but causes severe joint pain in hundreds of thousands of people worldwide each year. 2003, the FDA-approved vaccine, called Ixchik, manufactured by Valneva. In the U.S., it's given mostly to travelers. In May, FDA and the European Union equivalent recommended a pause in the use of the vaccine in older adults after reports of the vaccine causing symptoms of the disease itself. Both agencies reversed the pause in early August, but last week, the FDA pulled the vaccine's license. In response, Valneva said the adverse events are in line with what was reported before approval. Jonathan Lambert, NPR News. The Dow Jones Industrial

Average is up 139 points at 45,557. It's NPR.