NPR News Now - NPR News: 10-17-2025 6AM EDT

Episode Date: October 17, 2025

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Live from NPR News in Washington, I'm Kourva Coleman. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is headed back to the White House today for another meeting with President Trump. This follows Trump's long phone conversation yesterday with Russian leader Vladimir Putin. NPR's Deepa Shivaram reports Trump and Putin are planning to meet soon in person. Trump said that he and Putin will meet in Hungary after top advisors from the U.S. and Russia get together. He thinks that will happen within the next two weeks. Trump has said he'll tell Zelensky about his call with Putin. He also remarked that the Russian and Ukrainian leaders have a, quote, terrible relationship.

I mean, we have a problem. They don't get along too well, those two. And it's sometimes tough to have meetings, so we may do something where we're separate, but separate but equal. Trump last met Putin in Alaska this summer, but the meeting didn't result in any progress on ending the war. It also didn't result in a meeting between Zelensky and Putin, which Trump wanted. Deepa Chivaram, NPR News. Former National Security Advisor John Bolton alleges President Trump is weaponizing the Justice Department against him. This comes after Bolton was charged with 18 criminal counts yesterday for allegedly mishandling classified material. NPR's Ryan Lucas says the indictment alleges this includes sharing classified information.

The indictment doesn't go into a ton of detail on that, but it does provide some. It says that one document, for example, reveals intelligence about a foreign adversary planning a missile launch. Another has intelligence about an adversary's plans for attacks against U.S. troops in a foreign country. There's very sensitive information related to human intelligence sources, so spies, there's covert action. So these are really very sensitive materials classified up to the highest level. NPR's Ryan Lucas reporting. Doctors in Israel and Gaza say more than a dozen Palestinian physicians taken during the war remain imprisoned in Israel. That's despite a ceasefire agreement that released Israeli hostages and Palestinian prisoners and detainees. And Pierre's Aib Betrawi reports

on one detained Palestinian physician. The director of the Kamal-Adwan Hospital in North Gaza, Dr. Hossam Abel Safaya, was set to be released in that exchange, according to his family and an official briefed by Israelis. Instead, the doctor's family and lawyer say an Israeli court extended his detention without charge for another six months. No public reason for his continued arrest has been given. Dr. Abel Safaya has been detained since last year after refusing to leave the hospital during weeks of Israeli bombardment that killed patients, staff, and his son. The Israeli military raided and then destroyed the hospital, alleging it had been used by Hamas, which staff deny. Physicians for human rights, Israel, says a total of 18 doctors and

at least 35 other medical staff from Gaza remain imprisoned without charge. A. It's Rawi, NPR News, Dubai. It's NPR. The federal government is well into its third week of a shutdown, and today is the deadline for the Trump administration to give a federal judge a list of all federal government employees being laid off. This includes rifts that have already happened or those that are planned. The judge has temporarily blocked the layoffs in response to a lawsuit by federal employee unions.

Officials in Anchorage, Alaska are getting ready to receive up to 2,000 people evacuated. from western Alaska. The coast was pummeled last weekend by the remnants of a typhoon. A couple of towns have been destroyed. One person was killed. Two more are missing. Black Garden ants have a natural nemesis. It's a lethal fungus. Researchers have found the insects have a few strategies to avoid infecting each other. Ari Daniel reports these strategies may hold a lesson or two for people. Several years back, University of Bristol biologist Natalie Stroyment described how these ants respond socially to the fungus. Infected workers quickly self-isolated, and some of the healthy ants increased their distance. It was a form of proactive social distancing,

if you wish. In new research, she and her colleagues, including Indiana University biologist Luke Lecky, found that when faced with an outbreak, the ants also modify how they build their nests. They were kind of more compartmentalized and they were less interconnected. The researchers believe that architectural principles from the ants might one day help inform the design of human enclosures. For NPR news, I'm Ari Daniel. On Wall Street and pre-market trading Dow futures are lower. This is NPR.