NPR News Now - NPR News: 10-11-2025 11PM EDT

Episode Date: October 12, 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. The government shutdown is making what's already been a bad situation much worse for Midwestern farmers. Frank Morris, a member station K-CUR reports. Most corn, wheat, and soybean farmers are losing money.

Shortages and tariffs have jacked up the price of fertilizer and farm equipment they have to buy, while trade wars are depressing the price of the grain they have to sell. Normally in hard times, Missouri farmer Richard Oswald would look to the U.S. Department of Agriculture for a short-term loan. I've literally done this for 55 years. It's been something that has always been there. Not this year. The USDA is mostly shut down. President Trump has promised farmers a bailout, but that's delayed.

And it's unclear how any assistance program would work absent a functioning USDA. Economists expect farm foreclosures to rise. Friend for your news, I'm Frank Morris in Kansas City. Most Americans do not approve of the Trump administration's immigration enforcement tactics. That's according to a recent. survey by the New York Times and Ciena University. And Pierce Meg Anderson has more. Immigrant advocate groups in Chicago say some federal immigration officers are kicking

in doors, dragging people out of cars, tear gassing and threatening them. Ed Yonka is the director of public policy at the ACLU of Illinois. What we're seeing is a general escalation of violence and the use of excessive force by ICE officers. An ICE spokesperson told NPR their officers are, quote, highly trained and act accordingly with law and policy. The agency's most recent use of force policy notes that officers should only use force when, quote, no reasonably effective, safe and feasible alternative appears to exist. Meg Anderson, NPR News. Oscar-winning actress Diane Keaton has died. She was 79 years old. She starred in Annie Hall, the first wives club, and dozens of other Hollywood hits.

MPR's Bob Mondello offers this remembrance. Her career spanned six decades, but if she'd quit Hollywood after the first, she'd still have been a leading lady for the ages. In just the 1970s, Diane Keaton starred in Looking for Mr. Goodbar, two Godfather movies, and six Woody Allen comedies, including Play It Again Sam, Love and Death, Sleeper, and Annie Hall, in which she played the Unforgettably Scattered title character. Oh, well, laity da, laudie da.

The film won Keaton, a best actress, Oscar, and she received three other nominations for her intense writer hanging out with socialists in Warren Beatty's Reds, her selfless daughter in Marvin's room, and her successful playwright, wooed by both Keanu Reeves and Jack Nicholson in Something's Got to Give. Keaton also directed, appeared both on Broadway and in more than 60 other films, and wrote several best-selling memoirs. Bob Mandello, NPR News. And you're listening to NPR News. Today is World Migratory Bird Day. It's a day to remind people to make their outdoor spaces bird-friendly by using native plants, not raking leaves, and in particular, turning off the lights at night. A new study in the journal Science examined birds during an eclipse show just how light-sensitive birds can be, and P.R. Amy Held reports.

A dawn chorus of bird song makes clear. Birds respond to light. Now scientists who used the total solar eclipse of April 2024 as a backdrop say light may be the most. most important cue for birds. Observing them when it was lights out midday, some species seemed unaffected. But study co-author Kimberly Roseville at Indiana University told the science podcast most were affected. They treated it like even when night lasted for four minutes and came at the completely wrong time of day. When the sun came back on at the end of that, the birds who normally sing a dawn chorus, that's what they did. It sheds light on just how attuned birds are to even short changes in light, affecting migration, feeding and breeding as humans flood the night with

light pollution. Amy Held, NPR News. In college football, the Ohio State defense forced three turnovers that resulted in 21 points as the number one Buckeyes beat number 17 Illinois today, 34 to 16. C.J. Donaldson ran for two scores in the wind. Ryan Niblett returned upon 75 yards for a touchdown as Texas beat 6 ranked Oklahoma, number 7 Indiana, knocked off number 3 Oregon 30 to 20, number 8 Alabama, meanwhile, slipped past number 14, Missouri, 27 to 24, and Dartmouth beat Yale 17 to 16 with the last second 51-yard field goal. I'm Dale Wilman, NPR News.