NPR News Now - NPR News: 10-09-2025 1PM EDT

Episode Date: October 9, 2025

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In the U.S., national security news can feel far away from daily life. Distant wars, murky conflicts, diplomacy behind closed doors on our new show, Sources and Methods. NPR reporters on the ground bring you stories of real people, helping you understand why distant events matter here at home. Listen to sources and methods on the NPR app or wherever you get your podcasts. Live from NPR News, I'm Dale Wilman. It's day nine of the federal government. shutdown and as NPR's Deirdre Walsh reports, Democrats and Republicans remain far apart. Top Republican and Democratic leaders remain deadlocked with little signs of a way out.

House Speaker Mike Johnson says his party did its job, but Democrats are more worried about political pressure from their base. The people who are supposed to be protected are being completely cheated by Democrats in the Senate because they want to play politics. The top Senate Democrat Chuck Schumer says Republicans are feeling pressure to extend health care subsidies that are expiring at the end of the year as part of any agreement. They realize that the American people are on our side in wanting to fix this health care crisis, address it in a serious way. But there are no serious negotiations on a compromise. Deirdre Walsh, NPR News.

Hamas and Israel have agreed to a tentative ceasefire. Under that deal, Hamas will release the remaining hostages in return for a release of Palestinian prisoners being held by Israel. Speaking at his cabinet meeting today, President Trump says, the region will now be rebuilt. Gaza is going to be slowly redone of tremendous wealth in that part of the world by certain countries. And just a small part of that, what they make will do wonders for Gaza. And I think you're going to see some tremendous countries stepping up and putting up a lot of money and taking care of things. Palestinians in Gaza, meanwhile, are having mixed reactions to the impending ceasefire

Abu Bakur Bashir reports. Olaa Abu Nasser is displaced in a tent in central Gaza. She says she hugged her children when she heard the news about the ceasefire. She said, yes, we are happy, but it is wrong to feel so. Each one of us has many scars deep inside. She's one of the few survivors from her extended family. After an Israeli strike on their building last year, killed more than 130 members of her family.

An NPR investigation found it was one of the deadliest Israeli strikes of the entire Gaza war. She says she fears Israel will resume the war after Hamas releases Israeli hostages. For NPR News, I am Abu Bakr Bashir. Chipmaker AMD has announced a deal to supply its chips to open AI. The chips will be used to build infrastructure for artificial intelligence applications. The agreement includes providing high-performance graphics chips for a total of six gigawas. of computing power for OpenAI's next-generation AI systems. China is now placing new restrictions on the export of rare earth minerals, and regulators are

also extending controls over the use of those elements. Rare earth minerals are critical components of consumer electronics and medical imaging. They're also used in oil refining. Stocks are down across the board on Wall Street at this hour. You're listening to NPR News. Nobel Prize announcements continue today. The Nobel Committee in Stockholm has announced the winner in literature, as NPR's Elizabeth Blair tells us. Hungarian author Laszlo Krasnohorkai has won the Nobel Prize in Literature.

The 71-year-old is known for the novels The Melancholy of Resistance and War and War. The Nobel Committee says it's honoring Krasnohrkai for his compelling and visionary body of work that in the midst of apocalyptic terror reaffirms the power of art. His first novel, published in 1985, was about a pair of swindlers and a nearly abandoned collective farm. The book was later made into a seven-hour movie. Previous winners of the Nobel Prize in Literature include Doris Lessing, Alice Monroe, Bob Dylan, and Derek Walcott. Elizabeth Blair, NPR News. European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen has survived two more no-confidence votes.

EU lawmakers today rejected censure motions, introduced by both far-left and far-right political groups. It's the third time she survived such a vote since taking office for her second term last year. Von der Leyen was backed by the big pro-European groups, which hold a majority of votes in the parliaments. Pope Leo the 14th criticized wealthy people today, saying they live in a bubble of comfort and luxury while the poor suffer. His comments following the release of his first teaching document, in that document Leo also confirmed that he agrees with Pope Francis on matters of social injustice, Leocredited Francis, who started the original teaching document for that text, but said that he made the document his own. I'm Dale Wilman, NPR News.