NPR News Now - NPR News: 09-25-2025 7PM EDT

Episode Date: September 25, 2025

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Live from NPR News in Washington, I'm Rylan Barton. President Trump says he's had good talks with Arab and Muslim leaders about resolving the war in Gaza and says he won't let Israel annex parts of the West Bank. That was a key issue raised by Arab officials, as NPR's Michelle Kellman reports. Outside the UN Security Council, Saudi Arabia's foreign minister, Prince Faisal bin Farhan al-Saoud, stood alongside some of his colleagues from the region and from Europe to show solidarity for a future Palestinian state. He says they've been telling the Trump administration

that Israeli threats to annex parts of the West Bank would risk Trump's efforts to promote peace in the region. And I feel confident that President Trump understood the position of the Arab and Muslim countries, and I think the President in the U.S. understands very well the risks and dangers of annexation in the West Bank. President Trump now says he won't allow Israel to take part to the West Bank. Kellelman and PR News, the United Nations. Federal officials have identified the man who shot and killed a detainee and injured two others at an ice facility in Dallas yesterday. His 29-year-old Joshua Jan. Authorities say he acted alone and left detailed notes stating he intended to shoot

and terrorize ICE agents. He died of an apparently self-inflicted gunshot wound. The chatbot developed by Elon Musk's artificial intelligence company will now be available to federal agents. The new agreement was announced today. NPR's Jude Jaffe Block reports, this is the latest in a series of deals the Trump administration has brokered with AI companies. Federal workers can now use GROC, the chatbot developed by the company XAI. The cost to each federal agency for 18 months is just 42 cents, an apparent reference to the book The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, in which a supercomputer says 42 is the answer to a question about life and the universe. Last month, the Trump administration announced an agreement for use of Google's Gemini tool through next year for just 47 cents per federal agency, as well as year-long deals with OpenAI and Anthropic to use their AI tools for a dollar per agency. Grok made headlines in July when the chatbot made anti-Semitic and hateful comments. Jude Jaffe Block and PR News.

Former top economic officials are urging the Supreme Court to let Lisa Cook keep her job as a Federal Reserve Board Governor. comes as President Trump is trying to remove Cook and test the central bank's traditional independence. Former Fed chairs, Alan Greenspan, Ben Bernanke, and Janet Yellen called on the High Court to preserve the Fed's independence as the justices weigh an emergency appeal from the administration. The Fed Board was designed to be largely independent from day-to-day politics. No president has fired a sitting Fed governor in the agency's 112-year history. U.S. stock indexes stumbled for the third straight day, giving up more of the big gains made so far this year. You're listening to NPR News from Washington.

Tattoo artists in South Korea will no longer need a medical license to do their jobs. And so after the country's parliament unanimously passed a bill doing away with the requirement, South Korea is currently the only country in the industrialized world with such a restriction. In the past, tattoos were associated with criminals in the country, but they're now increasingly perceived as a form of self-expression with K-pop idols and other celebrities openly displaying tattoos. A trio of spacecraft have embarked on an effort to track space weather after launching from Florida's space coast. Central Florida's public media's Brendan Byrne reports. The missions will study the sun's solar winds, a continuous stream of particles that create

the northern lights. They're also a significant source of radiation in space, which could negatively affect satellites in orbit or our power grids here on Earth. The three spacecraft, operated by NASA and NOAA, will help track and forecast these space weather events. NASA's head of science, Nikki Fox, says along with helping us here on Earth, the spacecraft will help keep astronauts safe on missions to the moon and beyond. It's going to be providing really critical data to let us know about the radiation environments that our astronauts are traveling through. The spacecraft were launched on SpaceX's Falconine rocket.

Just hours after liftoff, NASA confirmed all three are operating as planned. For NPR News, I'm Brendan Byrne in Orlando. Muppets are going up for auction this fall, including pieces from shows like Fragel Rock and the Dark Crystal, The Jim Henson company said this will be the first auction from its archives. Muppet creator Jim Henson died in 1990 at age 53. Online bidding will begin on October 22nd. I'm Rylan Barton.

You're listening to NPR News from Washington.