NPR News Now - NPR News: 10-27-2024 9PM EDT

Episode Date: October 28, 2024

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Live from NPR News in Washington, I'm Janene Herbst. Former President Trump rallied at Madison Square Garden in New York City tonight. November 5th, 2024, nine days from now, will be Liberation Day in America. It's gonna be Liberation Day. Before he took the stage, a number of people spoke, including his wife, Melania, making this her first remarks

at a Trump campaign event this year. But many of the other speakers used crude, vulgar, and racist language, including comedian Tony Hinchcliffe, who called the U.S. territory of Puerto Rico a floating island of garbage. This is Trump tries to win the Latino vote. Vice President Harris slammed the comments, as did Puerto Rican superstar Bad Bunny, along with Ricky Martin, who wrote to his 18 and a half million followers on Instagram in Spanish, this is what they think of us. To Florida Republicans, Senator Rick Scott and Representative Maria Salazar also condemned the remark. And Harris' campaign through Philadelphia today culminating in

a rally at a community center in North Philly. We have an opportunity before us to turn the page on the fear and the divisiveness that have characterized our politics for a decade because of Donald Trump. Tomorrow she campaigns in Michigan. On Tuesday she holds a rally on the National Mall in Washington, DC. Palestinian officials say Israeli strikes on northern Gaza killed more than 30 people, including children. Israel's offensive in the hard-hit and isolated north has been going on for three weeks. The UN Secretary General calls the situation for the civilians there unbearable. Iran's supreme leader says

the weekend attack on key military targets should be neither downplayed nor magnified. That's according to Iran's state media. And Piers Arzu-Rezvani has more. While meeting with the families of four Iranian soldiers killed in Israel's attack, supreme leader Ali Khamenei said Israel exaggerated its destruction of Iran's defense system infrastructure. He refrained from calling for retaliatory strikes. It was a tempered response from the supreme leader, who now faces a choice to hit back and risk escalation or to stand down and risk looking weak.

In a letter to the United Nations Secretary General, Iran's foreign minister, Abbas Arachi, said Iran reserves the right to respond to Israel's, quote, criminal aggression. But it is Iran's supreme leader who has the ultimate authority to order strikes. Arzoo Rozvani, NPR News, Beirut. The UN Security Council is expected to meet tomorrow at the request of Iran to discuss Israel's attack on Iran this weekend, claiming they violate international law. The Israeli ambassador to the UN says it's another attempt by Iran to harm Israel, this time in the diplomatic arena. And Ambassador Danny Dannen says Israel has the right and the duty to defend itself and

to protect its citizens. U.S. futures contracts are trading higher at this hour. You're listening to NPR News from Washington. Federal health officials say most suspected cases of bird flu in Missouri, thought to be part of a cluster, have turned out to be negative for the virus. But still, as NPR's Will Stone reports, health experts say unanswered questions remain. The fear was that a handful of health care workers in Missouri caught the virus from a hospitalized patient. But testing by the CDC ultimately showed that none of them had any evidence of an infection.

That's welcome news considering that human-to-human spread of the virus would have been a new and troubling development. However, it does appear that a household contact of that Missouri patient was infected. Federal health officials suspect that both people caught the virus from a common source. What that was remains a mystery because neither person had any known exposure to an infected animal Meanwhile at least two new human cases have been confirmed in Washington state both connected to a poultry outbreak Willstone NPR News For the seventh year in a row the start of California's commercial

Dungeness crab season has been delayed to protect humpback whales from becoming entangled in trap and buoy lines. The State Department of Fish and Wildlife says commercial crabbing will be delayed at least until December 1st. The commercial season typically starts in mid-November. This crab industry is one of California's major fisheries and shellfish is especially popular around the holidays. Humpback whales can get caught in ropes connected to heavy commercial traps, leaving them injured, starved, or so exhausted that they can drown. US futures contracts are trading higher this hour.

Dow futures up about a half percent. NASDAQ futures up about six tenths of a percent. This is NPR News.