NPR News Now - NPR News: 10-28-2024 7PM EDT

Episode Date: October 28, 2024

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Jim Ewing had to get his foot amputated after a climbing accident. Thanks to a new procedure, his prosthetic feels like it's his real foot. Your brain recognizes this piece of equipment as being part of you. It just adopts it and starts using it as if it belongs there. How technology is augmenting humans. That's on the TED Radio Hour podcast from NPR. Live from NPR. Live from NPR News in Washington, I'm Jack Spear.

Israel's parliament has passed legislation banning the United Nations' main aid agency for Palestinians from operating in Israel. As NPR's Daniel Estrin explains, from Tel Aviv, the Biden administration warned Israel not to implement the move. The United Nations Relief and Works Agency, UNRWA, has been the main UN group for decades, providing aid to Palestinians in Gaza and aiding Palestinian refugees uprooted from their homes in Israel's founding war. Israel has long seen the agency as perpetuating Palestinians' refugee status in the Israeli-Palestinian

conflict. Israel has accused members of the UN agency of having ties to Hamas. The laws passed today by a vast majority of Israel's lawmakers ban the UN agency from operating in Israel and prohibits it from having official contact with Israel. The State Department says it's deeply concerned. It says UNRWA plays a critical humanitarian role in Gaza, and the Israeli ban could have implications under US law. Daniel Estrin, NPR News, Tel Aviv. UNRWA plays a critical humanitarian role in Gaza, and the Israeli ban could have implications under US law.

Daniel Estrin, NPR News, Tel Aviv. Former President Donald Trump is campaigning in Atlanta fresh off the latest controversy surrounding his campaign. The warm-up at a rally last night in Madison Square Garden by a comedian that included offensive and racist remarks. What was billed as a New York City homecoming of sorts for Trump, largely overshadowed by comments by Tony Hinchcliffe, who, among other things, described Puerto Rico as a floating island of garbage. For his part, Trump used the opportunity to propose a tax credit for family members who take care of a parent or loved one.

Organ donor registries say they're seeing an increase in people removing themselves from lists to donate organs for transplantation. More from NPR's Rob Stein. Donate Life America says, an average of 170 people a day removed their names from the National Donor Registry in the week since NPR reported allegations about an incident in Kentucky three years ago. The case involved a drug overdose patient who woke up as he was being wheeled into an operating room in Kentucky three years ago. The case involved a drug overdose patient who woke up as he was being wheeled into an operating room in Kentucky to have his organs removed.

State organ donor registries say they're also seeing similar trends. Organ procurement officials are pleading with the public to be cautious about the report until more is known. The Kentucky Attorney General and federal health officials are investigating the incident. Rob Stein in PR News. Fast food chain McDonald's says it has ruled out its ground beef as a source of an E. coli

outbreak that led to one death in Colorado and sickened dozens more people in 13 states. Company in a statement over the weekend said as a result it will resume selling quarter-pounder burgers at hundreds of locations beginning this week. McDonald says the US Food and Drug Administration continues to focus on slivered onions from a single supplier as a likely source of contamination. Stocks gained ground on Wall Street today. The Dow is up 273 points. The NASDAQ gained 48 points.

You're listening to NPR. Delta Airlines is suing the cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike over a global tech outage in July that led a number of major carriers to cancel thousands of flights, but none more so than Delta. Smarlin Hyde of member station WABE reports CrowdStrike has sued the airline in response, saying Delta is trying to shift the blame for its own failure to modernize its IT systems. Delta claims CrowdStrike failed to test the update that led to Microsoft systems going down, costing the airline $500 million due to canceled flights.

CrowdStrike denies these claims. Ramnath Shalapa is a professor at Emery's Goy Swetha Business School, who studies aviation. And essentially they're suggesting that, yes, we may have caused the first piece of this domino to fall, but it is your poor infrastructure that really led to the kind of the enormous amount of delays that have actually occurred. Meanwhile, federal officials continue to investigate Delta over refunds and reimbursements to affected

customers. For NPR News, I'm Marlon Hyde in Atlanta. It seems a thousand flowers can bloom when warring factions lay down their weapons, and in some cases, literally, in Colombia. After more than five decades of violence, a 2016 peace deal with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, known as the FARC, has made it safer for researchers to enter the country. That increased safety has led to the discovery of new animal and plant species, from brilliantly colored orchids to tiger-striped frogs.

It's hard to say they found roughly triple the number of new plant species in Columbia each year. Since the peace accord, still crime does remain high there, and continues to make it dangerous for environmentalists. I'm Jack Spear, NPR News in Washington.