NPR News Now - NPR News: 12-28-2025 3PM EST

Episode Date: December 28, 2025

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Live from NPR News in Washington, I'm Nora Rahm. President Trump is meeting at this hour with Ukrainian present Vladimir Zelensky at Trump's Florida resort. The two leaders are to discuss how to end Russia's war in Ukraine. Before they started, Trump said he thinks both sides want peace. I've got to make a deal. I've got to get it done. Too many people dying.

And I think both presidents want to make a deal. President Trump said he had a good and very productive telephone call with Russian President Vladimir Putin this morning and intends to call him back after the meeting with Zelensky. He also said there will be a strong security agreement as part of the deal. Somalia has called for an emergency UN Security Council meeting tomorrow after Israel decided to formally recognize the breakaway region of Somaliland. NPR's Michelle Kaliman reports the Israelis plan to exchange ambassadors with Somaliland soon.

More than 20 Arab and African states have joined. Somalia in condemning the move, calling Israel's recognition a blatant disregard to international law. There are fears in the region that the Israelis want to move Palestinians in Gaza to Somaliland. Though authorities in Somaliland say Gaza was not part of the talks on establishing relations. Somaliland plans to join the Abraham Accords, the normalization deals with Israel that started during the first Trump administration. It's a topic that could come up in Trump's talks with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Monday in Florida. Michelle Kellerman, NPR News, Jerusalem.

Diplomats from Thailand and Cambodia are meeting in China today to discuss their border dispute. They signed a new ceasefire yesterday after weeks of fighting. At least 100 people have died, and about half a million people have been displaced. The official Chinese news agency says the talks are aimed at promoting a complete and lasting ceasefire, resuming normal exchanges. and rebuilding mutual trust. 2025 will go down as a year of chaos for anti-poverty groups.

They've had to scramble to keep operating as the Trump administration targeted a string of safety net programs. NPR's Jennifer Lutton reports. The turmoil started in January with a presidential order to freeze all funding and came a string of budget cuts, pauses, and some reversals. Kelly Haddis at Community Action Group Hap in Ohio says the biggest challenge is uncertainty. The panic and the day-to-day not knowing is just really difficult.

The group laid off some people and shifted others to part-time, including front-desk clerk Kelsey Sexton. It cut my paychecks completely in half. We have a mortgage, a car payment. My husband was like, what are we going to do? And I'm like, I don't know. Advocates see little relief ahead as major cuts to Medicaid and snap food aid take hold. Jennifer Lutton and P.R. News, Logan, Ohio. This is NPR News in Washington.

In 2025, generative AI came out of its novelty phase and fully entered the cultural mainstream. NPR's Chloe Feldman reports, in one major shift, entertainment giants started to strike deals with AI companies. In one of the most prominent such deals, Universal Music Group settled its copyright infringement lawsuit with the AI music creation platform UDio in October and announced a partnership with its form form.

adversary to launch a subscription service in 2026. Users will be able to customize, stream and share licensed music on UDO's platform. And Disney announced earlier this month it would invest $1 billion in Open AI. The Mouse House will license many of its characters, including from the Marvel and Pixar universes, for users to create videos with the AI company's technology. Despite the new collaborative spirit, dozens of ongoing lawsuits in which artists and media corporations alleged tech companies use their works without permission or compensation to train their AI models are still working their way through the courts. Chloe Valtman, NPR News.

With the new year, more books, movies and classic characters will enter the public domain. Under U.S. law, the copyrights on thousands of creations from 1930 will expire on January 1, 2026. This year's class includes Animal Crackers, the Marks Brothers movie, the first four books starring Girl Detective Nancy Drew and The Little Engine That Could. Anyone will be able to use, share, and adapt the works without paying royalties. There's already a Betty Boop horror movie in the works. I'm Nora Rahm. NPR News in Washington.