NPR News Now - NPR News: 10-17-2025 9AM EDT

Episode Date: October 17, 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 in Washington, I'm Corvick Coleman. President Trump will welcome Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to the White House today. They'll discuss Russia's war in Ukraine. This comes as Trump talked to Russian President Vladimir Putin by phone yesterday.

Trump says he'll meet Putin in a few weeks. The president has threatened attacks on Hamas if the armed Palestinian group continues to kill people in Gaza. Trump wrote online, quote, we will have no choice but to go in and kill them. NPR's Deepa Shiboram reports, Trump says U.S. troops would not. be involved. Peace negotiations between Israel and Hamas are still delicate as Hamas continues to return bodies of hostages. Part of the ceasefire deal brokered by Trump is that Hamas would have to disarm. But that hasn't yet happened. And in recent days, Hamas has been in conflict with gangs in Gaza. At the same time, Israel has said it is fired on militants trying to cross out of the ceasefire zone.

In the Oval Office, Trump said if Hamas doesn't behave, quote, will take care of it. It's not going to be a, we won't have to. There are people very close, very nearby that will go in. They'll do the trick very easily, but under our auspices. It's not clear who Trump meant. Administration officials have said U.S. troops based in the region are not intended to go into Gaza. Deepa Chivaram and PR News, the White House. A prominent business group is opposing one of President Trump's recent immigration policies.

NPR's Maria Aspen reports the U.S. Chamber of Commerce is suing the administration over its new fees for H-1B visas. The Chamber of Commerce is one of the biggest pro-business lobbying groups in the country. It's now suing President Trump over his new plans to charge employers $100,000 per visa for skilled workers, such as software engineers. The president's steeped new fee for these visas

through the business community and hundreds of thousands of workers who have them into chaos last month. In a statement, the Chamber called the fee unlawful and said it would hurt U.S. employers. A health care staffing business and labor unions have already sued the Trump administration over these fees. But the new lawsuit marks one of the only times this year that a big business group has openly opposed Trump's policies. Maria Aspen NPR News, New York. Officials in Anchorage, Alaska are expecting to take in up to 2,000 people

from western coastal Alaska. They were hit by the remnants of a typhoon left. weekend. Some towns and villages were flattened and included the town of Kipnuk, where resident Alexi Stone lived. In our religion, we'd say that we're native strong. We have native pride and nothing can break us down. But this is the hardest that we went through, but everybody sticking together. The typhoon left one person dead in Alaska. Two people are still missing. You're listening to NPR. Former National Security Advisor John Bolton has arrived at a federal courthouse in Maryland for an appearance. A federal grand jury indicted him on 18 counts of allegedly mishandling classified information.

Bolton says it's President Trump, who has weaponized the Justice Department against him, but the case against Bolton was launched during the Biden administration. The federal government is well into its third week of a shutdown. Today is the deadline for the Trump administration to give a federal judge a list, of all federal government employee layoffs. This includes rifts that have already happened or those that are planned. The judge has temporarily blocked the layoffs. That's in response to a lawsuit by federal employee unions.

New research finds that vigorous mental exercise can produce biological changes in a person's brain. And Pierre's John Hamilton explains. The study involved 92 healthy people who were 65 and older. Half spent 30 minutes a day for 10 weeks. playing video games like Solitaire and Candy Crush, the other half did exercises from a demanding cognitive training program called Brain H.Q. Etienne de Villersidani of McGill University says in people who got the training, levels of a key chemical messenger increased in a brain area involved in making decisions. It was about 2.3%, which is not huge, but it's significant.

De Valer Cidani said the chemical messenger, called acetylcholine, typically declines by about 2.5% every 10 years starting in middle age. So cognitive training, he says, rolled back the clock by about a decade. John Hamilton, NPR News. You're listening to NPR News from Washington. There are a lot of books out there. Big ones, small ones, smart ones, silly ones,

ones that thrill and ones that are, well, kind of a bore. But NPR's Book of the Day podcast is here to help you find your favorites. Through our author interviews, you can find out if a book is right for you in 15 minutes or less. So listen to NPR's Book of the Day podcast in the NPR app or wherever you get your podcasts.