NPR News Now - NPR News: 10-23-2025 9AM EDT

Episode Date: October 23, 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 Korva Coleman. Secretary of State Marco Rubio is going to Israel,

today to help support a U.S.-backed ceasefire for Gaza. Before he left, Rubio criticized a vote by Israel's parliament that seeks to annex the Israeli-occupied West Bank. That's home to Palestinians. Vice President Vance echoed Rubio's criticism, as the vice president concluded his trip to Israel today. Both Vance and Rubio are among several Trump administration officials who visited Israel this week for meetings. That includes Trump's son-in-law, Jared Kushner. NPR's Franco Ortonia's reports on ethics questions surrounding Kushner's involvement in the Mideast peace process. The president's son-in-law and former chief advisor has used relationships developed during the first administration to secure some fruitful business opportunities. Daniel Shapiro, who was the ambassador to Israel during the Obama administration, says it's fair to question whether those like Kushner should be doing diplomacy with countries they're also doing business with.

I don't think there's any question that Jared Kushner's involvement, in that critical phase, given the relationships he has and given the experience he's had working with these governments previously helped produce a result fairly quickly that brought about the good outcome. Shapiro says there are few lines between politics and business in the region, and that helped Kushner broker an agreement. Franco, Ordonias, NPR News. The North Carolina State Legislature has approved a new congressional map. The measure aims to help Republicans win an additional seat in the U.S. Congress next year. The bill passed the House yesterday. All those in favor will say aye. All those supposed to know. No. I just have it.

North Carolina is the latest state to redesign its maps to try to give Republicans a congressional advantage. California is trying to counter-moved by Texas. California voters will decide whether to adopt a new map that aims to give Democrats five more congressional seats. The Social media site Reddit is suing artificial intelligence company perplexity over alleged data theft. As 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. Proplexity 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. This is NPR. The Trump administration has announced two more U.S. military attacks on boats in the Central American region. They killed five people. These attacks happened in the eastern Pacific Ocean. Prior attacks have been in the Caribbean Sea. President Trump says he is attacking drug smugglers, but he has never offered evidence of that. Soft drink maker Coca-Cola is launching a new glass bottle version. It'll be for its signature drink made with cane sugar. From member station WABE, Marlon Hyde reports Coke made the change after pressure from the Trump administration. For Coke drinkers looking to avoid high fructose corn syrup, they now have a new option.

The Atlanta-based beverage giant is rolling out a new 12-ounce single-served glass bottle of Coke made with U.S. cane sugar. Corn syrup is used as an ingredient for coax in the U.S. and has been for a long time, partly because of cost. However, President Trump and his administration have pushed for the company to go away from using high-fruit toast corn syrup. Coke already offers products in the U.S. that use cane sugar, like Mexican Coke, except the sugar is imported from Mexico. A Coca-Cola spokesperson confirmed to NPR that the new soda will be available in select cities and retailers. For NPR news, I'm Marlon Hyde in Atlanta. The Union for Broadway's musicians has reached a tentative contract agreement with commercial producers. It avoids a potential strike that would have forced nearly two dozen Broadway

musicals to go dark. The tentative deal includes wage increases. It comes after a different union representing performers and stage managers concluded its own agreement last weekend. I'm Corva Coleman, NPR News.