NPR News Now - NPR News: 10-23-2025 1PM EDT

Episode Date: October 23, 2025

NPR News: 10-23-2025 1PM EDTLearn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

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. Lie from NPR News, I'm Lakshmi Singh. President Trump's pardon, Binance founder Chang Peng Zhao. The crypto billionaire had pleaded guilty to failing to establish enough guardrails in the world's largest crypto exchange to block money from flowing to terrorists and other criminal groups. After pleading guilty in 2023, he was sentenced to four months in prison.

The Trump White House today says the prosecution was part of a Biden administration war on cryptocurrency. Democratic lawmakers have raised ethics concerns about, such pardons. The NBA Portland Trailblazers head coach Chauncey Billups and Miami Heat player Terry Rozier are among dozens of people arrested by federal agents in connection with an FBI investigation into two illegal gambling schemes. One involved bets on NBA games and the other involved underground poker games. NPR's Becky Sullivan reports. Federal officials, including FBI director Cash Patel say that NBA insiders, such as Rozier, passed along confidential info to organized crime operations to place illegal bets on games. This is the insider trading saga

for the NBA. That's what this is. Rozier was previously investigated by the NBA back in 2023 after the league was alerted to suspicious bets on a game of his that year. The league had cleared him of wrongdoing. In a statement in PR Rozier's lawyer said Rozier was not a gambler and that he, quote, looks forward to winning this fight. The second indictment alleges that crime groups used former NBA stars like Billups to lure unsuspecting victims into high-roller underground poker games, then cheated victims out of tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars. Becky Sullivan and PR News. The NBA has placed both players on leave from their teams and says it will continue to cooperate with the relevant authorities. Social media site Reddit is suing

artificial intelligence company perplexity over alleged data theft. NPR's Bobby Allen reports, It's the latest legal battle over the controversial data collection practices of the AI industry. Reddit says AI search engine perplexity and other data scraping companies engage in a industrial scale unlawful collection of comments from millions of the site's users. Lawyers for Reddit compare the actions to would-be bank robbers who can't get into a vault, so they break into an armored truck instead. Perplexity deny the allegation saying its practices remained principled and responsible. A wave of lawsuits are now playing out centered on how AI companies train chatbots to become so powerful. Vast corners of the Internet have been scanned without permission, spurring copyright lawsuits from publications like the New York Times. In this case, Reddit says other AI chatbots have struck licensing deals, but perplexity has refused.

Bobby Allen, NPR News. The Dow Jones Industrial Average is up 123 points at last glance at 46,716. This is NPR. News. Russia continues its attacks on Ukraine as U.S. and NATO-allied diplomatic efforts for an end to the war continue. Washington Post columnist David Ignatius says Russia is conducting an increasingly aggressive campaign against European countries. Europe is frightened. They see Russia coming at them. They're used to having the United States as their friend and protector. And Trump increasingly seems to want to back away from European conflict.

and the Ukraine War in particular, that that scares Europeans, should scare all of us. David Ignatius on NPR's Morning Edition. Doctors have long known antidepressants come with side effects for cardiovascular and metabolic health. But a major analysis from researchers in the U.K. has, for the first time, pull together data for more than 150 drug trials to compare the physical side effects of dozens of antidepressants. Here's NPR's Willstone. The study in The Lancet this week details how each medication can affect weight, blood pressure, heart rate, cholesterol, and other areas of health. In some cases, the impact on weight could vary by as much as eight pounds or 20 heartbeats per minute.

Dr. Toby Pillinger is a psychiatrist at King's College London and was the lead author of the study. The good news is that those medications that are most commonly prescribed actually aren't too bad for a number of physical health parameters. So that's reassuring. Pillinger says the point is not to single out certain antidepressants as better than others, just to help doctors and patients pick the best medications. Will Stone, NPR News. The Dow is up more than 100 points. S&P has risen 37.

You're listening to NPR News. This week on Code Switch, we're talking about language, the words we use to insult each other and to define ourselves. The dictionary has been a battleground in these debates for centuries. Revising these sensitive terms in these politically explosive times, there's a risk. Listen to Code Switch on the NPR app or wherever you get your podcast.