NPR News Now - NPR News: 10-29-2025 3PM EDT

Episode Date: October 29, 2025

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Hi, it's Terry Gross, host of Fresh Air. Hey, take a break from the 24-hour news cycle with us and listen to long-form interviews with your favorite authors, actors, actors, filmmakers, comedians, and musicians, the people making the art that nourishes us and speaks to our times. So listen to the Fresh Air podcast from NPR and WHYY. Live from NPR News, I'm Lakshmi Singh. The Bahamas and Bermuda are in the path of a weekend,

but still destructive hurricane that's believed to have killed dozens of people in the Caribbean already. It struck Cuba this morning as a Cat 3 storm. Hurricane Melissa generated deadly floods in Haiti and devastated Western Jamaica yesterday. Hundreds of thousands of people were left without power. NPR's Michael Copley reports the U.S. State Department says it's working with Jamaica's government to help with recovery from what was a historic storm for the island. A State Department spokesperson says Jamaica's government requested help after the storm made landfall as one of the strongest Atlantic hurricanes on record. The spokesperson says the State Department positioned supplies ahead of time to deliver emergency relief.

Roads in Jamaica need to be cleared so rescue teams can get to people trapped in their homes. The government says the international airport could reopen for relief flights in the day. The storm is also causing flooding a neighboring Cuba, where it came ashore is a still strong category three storm. The State Department said in a social media post, it's deploying a disaster response. response team and search and rescue teams to help Caribbean countries hit by the storm. Michael Copley and PR News. The U.S. is lowering tariffs on South Korea from 25% to 15% including autos. In exchange, Washington secures a $350 billion investment from Seoul, $200 billion in cash.

The rest largely in the form of loan guarantees to support the U.S. shipbuilding industry. The Trump administration wanted all of it up front in cash, but South Korea warned that arrangement would have destabilized its economy. In remarks, President Trump had told other world leaders that he believes he could help broker peace to North and South Korea's decades of rivalry. Trump is also attempting to broker a ceasefire between Russia and Ukraine, as he had done between Israel and Hamas in Gaza. However, that truce continued to be tested by new violence. And appears Daniel Lesterner reports on Israeli strikes overnight. The Israeli military says troops were dismantling a Hamas.

tunnel yesterday afternoon. This is in an area of Gaza that troops are positioned in, and that Palestinian militants opened fire and killed a soldier. And Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu immediately ordered forceful strikes in response. And Palestinians report airstrikes on homes, on displaced persons' tents throughout Gaza. That's NPR's Daniel Lestrin reporting. NVIDIA is now the first $5 trillion company for comparison, according to the World Bank's data, the chipmaker's value, who exceeds the GDP of nearly every member of the G7, the group of seven major industrialized economies, with the exception of the United States. NVIDIA is among the world's leading companies in advanced technology investments.

It announced partnerships with Uber on robotaxies, Nokia on 6G technology, as well as a Department of Energy and the company OpenAI. This is NPR News. Policymakers at the Fed voted to cut interest rates for the second time six weeks, and Pierre Scott Horsley reports a central bank lowered its benchmark rate by a quarter percentage point. The rate cut, which was widely expected, is designed to support the U.S. job market, which has shown signs of weakness in recent months. Hiring slowed sharply over the summer, and some big companies have announced large-scale layoffs in recent days. While the

unemployment rate is still low by historical standards, it has been inching up in recent months. It's hard to know for sure just how soft the job market is, though. The regular monthly job tallys from the Labor Department have been suspended as a result of the government shut down. The government did issue a monthly report on inflation for September, showing prices are still climbing faster than the Fed would like. The central banks, as it remains committed to bringing inflation back down to its target of 2%. Scott Horsley-NPR News, Washington. President Trump has fired multiple members of the U.S. Commission of Fine Arts. More from NPR's Elizabeth Blair. The U.S. Commission of Fine Arts is an independent agency that advises the president

and Congress on design in architecture. As first reported by the Washington Post, the White House fired six commissioners. The chair position was vacant. The commissioners would have advised the president on the White House ballroom and his plans for a monument similar to the Art de Triumph in Paris.

Architect Bruce Redmond Becker, one of the commissioners who was fired, tells NPR in an email, neither project has been submitted for review yet. In 2021, President Biden fired four commissioners who'd been appointed by President Trump in his first term. Elizabeth Blair, NPR News, Washington. It's NPR.