NPR News Now - NPR News: 08-31-2025 5AM EDT

Episode Date: August 31, 2025

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Live from NPR News in Washington, I'm Jail Snyder. Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin and the Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi are among more than 20 world leaders attending a regional security summit in China. The gathering of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization is the largest since it was founded by China nearly a quarter of a century ago. The BBC Stephen McDonald is there. Residents of Tianjin are standing by the river, waiting for the roadblocks to clear, as the motorcades of world leaders pass by.

Xi Jinping has already sat down with Narendra Modi from India on the sidelines of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization Summit, and over the next two days, many such meetings will take place. This gathering is technically about shared security and economic cooperation, but it also has great symbolism, with China hosting not only Vladimir Putin, but the presidents of Iran and NATO member Turkey, comparisons with the global standing of the Trump administration,

will be hard to avoid. The president of Indonesia had planned to travel to China this week to attend Wednesday's Victory Day parade, marking the end of World War II. But the trip has been canceled. Protests over lawmakers pay and allowances have been roiling Jakarta and have spread further outside the Indonesian capital after a delivery rider was allegedly hit and killed by an armored police vehicle during clashes. The Trump administration is canceling more than $600 billion for ports around the country, the grants were to support the growing offshore wind power industry. MPR. Lawrence Summer has more. Offshore wind turbines are much bigger than those on land. So ports need special infrastructure to build wind farms on the ocean. Many ports around the country were hoping to

become economic hubs for the industry. The Trump administration is now canceling $679 million in federal grants for 12 port projects. In a statement, the Department of Transportation called the projects wasteful. Trump has been a long-time critic of wind power and ordered a Rhode Island offshore wind farm to stop construction just a week ago. Energy analysts say hampering the wind industry could drive up electricity prices given the country's growing need for power. Lauren Summer and PR News. Boston Mayor Michelle Wu says the city is preparing in case Boston is on the Trump administration's list for a potential immigration crackdown. I imagine every mayor of every major city is having to make some sorts of preparations. Mayor Wu, speaking with WCVB TV, Boston has a law

on the books at limit city police cooperation with federal immigration agents unless a criminal warrant has been issued. In Chicago, Mayor Brandon Johnson signed an executive order this weekend that prevents the police from cooperating with any federal immigration enforcement activity. Johnson is also demanding that President Trump stand down from any plan to deploy national guard troops to Chicago. This is NPR News. Annunciation Catholic Church in Minneapolis held its first mass last night since Wednesday's deadly shooting. The mass was held in the school gym because the church is still a crime scene. Two students were killed in the shooting, 18 wounded nearly all of them children.

At least seven victims were still hospitalized as of Saturday. Two civilian workers have been indicted by a grand jury for their alleged role in a fuel spill in Hawaii's Pearl Harbor that sicken thousands of people over Thanksgiving in 2021. The indictment alleges the two provided the Navy with inaccurate information about this bill. The indictments are the first to result from this bill, although the Navy has issued written reprimands to three retired officers. In the world of publishing, audio is going through a boom in business in 2024, digital audio, brought in $2.4 billion in revenue for the industry. That's a 22% bump over last year. Andrew Limbaugh reporting. These numbers come from the Association of American Publishers,

which just published its annual report looking at the dollars and cents of last year. And this rise in audio is part of a bigger trend. According to the report, over the past five years, revenue for the digital audio format has grown by 78%. Over on the print side of things, there's growth, but smaller with both paper and hardback formats, bringing in about $8 billion in revenue each. That's about 3% more than last year. That said, print is still the bread and butter of publishing, making up nearly three quarters of the revenue of the entire industry. Andrew Limbong and Pierre News. And I'm Joel Snyder. This is NPR News.