NPR News Now - NPR News: 10-12-2025 4PM EDT

Episode Date: October 12, 2025

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Live from NPR News in Washington, I'm Nora Rahm. It's day 12 of the government shutdown, and there's no apparent movement towards ending the stalemate. Democrats say any short-term measure must include a plan to extend health insurance subsidies due to expire at the end of the year. The Trump administration is using the shutdown to lay off thousands of federal workers. NPR Stephen Fowler has more. Trump administration officials have said that Democrats caused the government shutdown, The government shutdown means making hard choices about spending and staffing, and the White House feels like it's forced to make these tough decisions. At the same time, this is an extension of that Department of Government Efficiency push to slash the federal government's size and scope.

And before the shutdown even, we've reported on agencies hiring people back because they can't do basic functions or carry out the president's agenda items. NPR is Stephen Fowler. The ceasefire between Israel and Hamas in Gaza is now in its third day. President Trump is heading to the region. He's to speak to the Israeli parliament tomorrow. A survivor of the Hamas-led attack on Israel two years ago has been found dead in apparent suicide. NPR's Daniel Estrin met him the day he survived the attack.

Roe Isha Lev was at the Nova Music Festival in Southern Israel on October 7, 2023. It was the deadliest single attack Hamas carried out that day. At a hospital that evening, Shalev told NPR he and his girlfriend dove under a parked truck and played dead. Then they were shot. It was a huge nightmare. I didn't see myself getting out alive, he said. Later, he discovered his girlfriend didn't survive.

Weeks later, his mother killed herself. This past Friday, the day Israel announced a Gaza ceasefire, Shalev was found dead in a torched car. In a social media post, he asked for forgiveness and said he couldn't bear the pain. He was 30 years old. Daniel Estrin, NPR News, Tel Aviv. A new school to replace Rob Elementary in Uvaldi, Texas is complete, nearly three and a half years after a mass shooting that killed 19 students and two teachers. Texas Public Radio's Camille Phillips reports. Legacy Elementary is bright, colorful, and full of windows. But those windows are bullet-resistant.

And even after you're led in the visitor's entrance, you need a key card to access the classrooms. At the center of the school is a courtyard that looks up into a steel two-story tree with two big branches and 19 smaller branches, representing the teachers and students who died in the shooting. Javier Casares lost his nine-year-old daughter, Jackie, that day. It is a great school for these children, sadly, you know, to take the lives of our children to make the school. He says it's a bittersweet day, and he just wishes Jackie could have been one of the children to enjoy the school. I'm Camille Phillips and Yuvaldi. This is NPR News. China and the Philippines are blaming each other for a confrontation in the South China Sea today.

The Philippines says a Chinese coast guard ship used a water cannon and rammed a Philippine government vessel. China says Philippine vessels illegally entered Chinese waters. China claims the South China Sea as its territory. In Miami, it's the last day for a once-beloved, tourist attraction. NPR's Greg Allen reports, after 70 years, the sequerium Marine Park is shutting down. They call him Flipper, Flipper, Faster than Lightning. During the 1960s, the Flipper TV series was filmed at the Sequarium. The marine park on an island in Miami's Biscayne Bay was home to fish, sea turtles, manatees, dolphins, and orcas. In recent decades,

the park was criticized for the conditions in which it housed its marine mammals. Two years ago, the sequerium agreed to relocate its single remaining orca, Lolita, to a seapen in the Pacific Northwest, but she died before being relocated. After repeated violations, Miami-Dade County moved to evict the park operator, the Dolphin Company. The company is turning over the property and transferring its remaining animals to other marine parks. Greg Allen and PR News, Miami. Today is the final day for the Albuquerque International Balloon Festival in Albuquerque. Organizers call it the world's largest gathering of hot air balloons, with balloons in all colors and participants from around the world. Pilot David Baer told Colorado Public Radio, a common question is, how do you steer a balloon?

He said the answer is, you don't. You follow the wind wherever it takes you. I'm Nora Rahm, NPR News.