NPR News Now - NPR News: 11-16-2025 5PM EST

Episode Date: November 16, 2025

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Live from NPR News in Washington, I'm Janine Hirst. The USS Gerald R. Ford Aircraft Carrier Strike Group is now in the Caribbean in an escalation of tensions between the U.S. and Venezuela. And Piers Joe Hernandez has more. The USS Gerald R. Ford was commissioned in 2017 and only left on its first combat deployment two years ago. It's part of a new class of advanced aircraft carriers being built for the United States military. The Ford has a number of technological advancements, including an electromagnetic system for launching aircraft. It also has a higher price tag than its predecessors, topping $13 billion, according to the Navy. The strike group at Leeds arrived in the Caribbean on Sunday as part of a growing effort to put pressure on Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro, but it's still unclear if the Trump administration is planning any military action against the country. Joe Hernandez, NPR News. The House is set to vote on the Epstein files this week after lawmakers gathered enough signatures to force a ballot.

And Pierce Luke Garrett reports one of the lawmakers behind the discharge petition is now warning of a last-minute cover-up. Republican Representative Thomas Massey of Kentucky helped gather the 218 signatures needed to force the vote. On ABC News, Massey cautions his fellow Republicans that this ballot record will live on beyond President Trump. In 2030, he's not going to be the first. president and you will have voted to protect pedophiles if you don't vote to release these files and the president can't protect you. But Massey says new Trump administration investigations may be an effort to bar the release of the Epstein documents indefinitely. If they have ongoing investigations in certain areas, those documents can't be released. So this might be a big smokescreen. Even if the

House advances the Epstein file bill, it faces difficult odds in the Senate and the White House. Luke Garrett, NPR News, Washington. A vast majority of children in Gaza are showing signs of anxiety and aggression after more than two years of war. It's according to a new UN report. And Pierce-Kal-Lonstorf reports. The report found that more than 90% of children in Gaza exhibit aggressive behavior or violence. Sadness and withdrawal, as well as disturbed sleep, are also common. The war has led to the collapse of education, health, and social systems.

And repeated displacement and trauma have broken down a sense of safety and stability. Children will require sustained long-term care to recover, the report says. Humanitarian organizations, including the UN, have stepped up efforts to address mental health services for children in Gaza as a fragile ceasefire is holding in its second month. But there is still daily and deadly bombardment by Israel in Gaza, which Israel says is to dismantle infrastructure used by militants. Kat Lansdorf, NPR News, Tel Aviv. You're listening to NPR News from Washington. A new study finds an outbreak of the bird flu on a remote island in the South Atlantic Ocean has had devastating consequences for the island's wildlife.

And peers Nate Roth has more. South Georgia, a sub-Antarctic island, hundreds of miles east of the tip of Argentina, is home to the largest breeding population of elephant seals on the planet. In 2023, the bird flu, H5N1 was first reported there. and an aerial survey the following year found that by then nearly half of the seals breeding females were gone. Marine ecologist Connor Bamford authored the new study in the journal Communications Biology. The loss of breeding females and the loss of the pups that they would have produced over the few years that will really cause this sort of double dip in the population.

He's hopeful the population will recover, but the amount of loss, he says, is jarring. Nate Rott and PR News. At the weekend box office, Now You See Me, Now You Don't. The third installment of the Now You See Me series took the top spot with an estimated $21 million in ticket sales. The film about a thieving magician brings back the original cast and also introduces new magicians and comes 10 years after the original. In second place, Paramounts the Running Man with $17 million. That film, directed and co-written by Edgar Wright, is the second adaptation. of Stephen King's novel, which was first published in 1982.

The new version stars Glenn Powell. I'm Janine Herbst, NPR News, in Washington.