Up First from NPR - Hezbollah Pager Explosions, Fed Interest Rate Decision, Drug Overdose Deaths

Episode Date: September 18, 2024

Electronic pagers carried by members of the militant group Hezbollah exploded across Lebanon and Syria on Tuesday. The incident killed at least a dozen people and injured thousands more. The Federal Reserve is set to announce a long-awaited rate cut. And drug overdose deaths in the U.S. are falling sharply. Want more comprehensive analysis of the most important news of the day, plus a little fun? Subscribe to the Up First newsletter.Today's episode of Up First was edited by Vincent Ni, Rafael Nam, Andrea de Leon, HJ Mai and Ally Schweitzer. It was produced by Iman Maani, Ziad Buchh, Nia Dumas and Mansee Khurana. We get engineering support from Carleigh Strange. And our technical director is Zac Coleman.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

How did someone turn thousands of pagers into little bombs? Members of the Lebanese group Hezbollah received a page, followed by explosions that came in homes, in stores, and on the street. I'm Steve Inskeep with Leila Fadl, and this is Up First from NPR News. The Federal Reserve decides on interest rates today. The current batch of data no longer requires patience. It requires action. So how will a rate cut affect the average American?

And new data suggests progress in the fight against America's drug epidemic. Drug overdose deaths, which have totaled over 100,000 annually for the past several years, are finally falling. We're seeing declines of 20%, 30%. Has the country turned a corner? Stay with us. We'll give you the news you need to start your day. Now Our Change will honor 100 years of the Royal Canadian Air Force and their dedicated service to communities

at home and abroad. From the skies to our change, this $2 commemorative circulation coin marks their storied past and promising future. Find the limited edition Royal Canadian Air Force $2 coin today. How does the brain process memories? Why is AI a solution and a problem for our climate? What is leadership in 2025 and beyond? The TED Radio Hour explores the biggest questions and the most complicated ideas of our time with the world's greatest thinkers. Listen now to the TED Radio Hour from NPR. As we're all navigating a divisive election, no matter what happens, the question remains, how the heck are we going to move forward together? So in this season of the StoryCorps podcast from NPR, stories from people who made a choice to confront the conflicts in their own

lives head on. And in sharing stories from the bravest among us, maybe we can take their lead and find some hope for the rest of us. Get the StoryCorps podcast wherever you listen. Hey there, this is Felix Contreras, one of the co-hosts of Alt Latino, the podcast from NPR Music where we discuss Latinx culture, music, and heritage with the artists that create it. Listen now to the Alt Latino podcast from NPR. The scenes across Lebanon were like something out of a James Bond movie. Yesterday, pagers exploded across the country. These are old-style communication devices, often used today by hospital staff or groups that want secure communications, which apparently included the armed group Hezbollah.

Many of its members were carrying these pages in bags or on their hips or in their hands when they detonated yesterday. Videos showed explosions in grocery stores, at desks, and in crowded streets. NPR's producer in Beirut, Jawad Rezala, reported from a hospital shortly after the blasts. Ambulances keep coming and no filming is allowed. Their army is here. It's a scene of chaos. The attack killed at least nine people, including two children and wounded thousands more. A U.S. official tells NPR that Israel has acknowledged to the United States that it was responsible. NPR's Daniel Estrin is following these developments from Tel Aviv and joins us now. Hi, Daniel.

Hey, Leila. So walk us through the details of what we know about what happened in Lebanon. This took place at 3.30 in the afternoon on Tuesday. Pagers exploded across Beirut in south Lebanon, and they also went off in Syria, according to a Syrian monitoring group. Hezbollah says that these were handheld pagers used by its operatives. The son of a Hezbollah parliament member was killed. The Iranian ambassador to Lebanon was wounded. And Lebanon's health minister said that the majority of the injuries were to the face and to the eyes.

And that might be because people were holding up these pagers to read a text message. According to the New York Times, a text message came in appearing to be from the Hezbollah leadership and then the blasts followed. Yeah, I watched some of these videos where people were buying groceries and then suddenly an explosion. And as we mentioned, Israel admitted to the U.S. that it was behind this mass attack. How did Israel carry this out? Well, first of all, the pagers. Hezbollah started using pagers at the beginning of this year because it was worried that Israel had infiltrated their smartphones.

That's what a Jordanian security expert told me, Amr El-Sabaileh. He follows Hezbollah, and he said that the group distributed these pages across the organization this year. And the New York Times reports that Israel booby-trapped the pagers before they were brought into Lebanon, and that the pager brand is apparently associated with a company in Taiwan. Now, NPR's Emily Fang is in Taiwan. She visited that company this morning, and the owner told her that the pagers were their brand, yes, but that they were manufactured by another company based in Budapest. And all that he knew was that one of the company's local directors was named

Teresa. So very mysterious. Still a lot we don't know yet. Very mysterious. And Hezbollah has warned that there will be consequences. Are there any signs you see that at this point could lead to an all-out regional war? I feel like we talk about this all the time, Daniel, but at this point, what do you think? Oh, yeah. I mean, we are fearful of a regional war and that fear, I think we're much closer to that today than we have been before. We've been speaking with security experts in the region who think it will take time for Hezbollah to respond. Its communication system has been hijacked. They are suspicious there might be a mole in their midst collaborating with Israel. So it's a big psychological blow. Hezbollah will need time to rebuild. I think the question is, will Israel be

the one to initiate a further attack on a weakened Hezbollah? Israel has been saying that military action is needed to stop Hezbollah's attacks on Israel. And the Biden administration has been trying to prevent a regional war, but based on NPR's reporting, the administration finds this attack very unhelpful. NPR's Daniel Estrin in Tel Aviv. Thank you, Daniel. You're welcome. The long-running battle against inflation is coming to a turning point today. The Federal Reserve is expected to start cutting interest rates, which is good news for anybody who's trying to borrow money to buy a car or grow a business. NPR's Scott Horsley joins us now to discuss. Hi, Scott. Good morning.

Good morning. So why is the Fed making this move now? It's moving because inflation has come down a lot. Annual inflation last month was just 2.5%. That's a big improvement from a couple years ago when it was north of 9%. And at the same time, we are starting to see some weakness in the job market. So Fed policymakers feel like it's time to start letting up on the brakes. One big question in today's meeting is how quickly they're going to move. Some people think the Fed is getting a late start on rate cuts and needs to act aggressively to catch up. Fed Governor Chris Waller is not in that camp. He thinks the central bank was right

to proceed with caution. I believe our patience over the last 18 months has served us well. But the current batch of data no longer requires patience. It requires action. So we're going to get some action today. We're not sure how much. And it's important to stress today's rate cut is just the first step we're likely to see interest rates fall further in the months to come. So you say there's uncertainty about the size of today's rate cut. What are the options? A normal rate cut would be a quarter percentage point.

But some are arguing for a more aggressive half-point reduction. The Fed acted aggressively to raise interest rates when it was focused on fighting inflation, and some want the central bank to be equally aggressive about cutting interest rates now that the focus is shifting to protecting the job market. Waller says he is open to that argument, but he didn't make any commitments when he spoke at Notre Dame a couple weeks ago. I am open-minded about the size and pace of cuts. If the data supports cuts at consecutive meetings, then I believe it will be appropriate to do so. If the data suggests the need for larger cuts, then I will support that as well. Fed policymakers like to say they are data-driven, but their challenge is so far the data has been kind of inconclusive. The latest jobs number was kind of weak, but not so weak you'd say you've got to go with a bigger rate cut.

The most recent inflation data showed price hikes remain a little stubborn, but not so bad that you definitely want to stick with a smaller rate cut. So that's why today's decision is still sort of up in the air. So does cutting interest rates mean the inflation battle is over? I wouldn't go that far. I think policymakers do feel confident that they've made a lot of progress and the prices are not going to go spiraling out of control again, but they're still going to be on alert. Inflation is still above the Fed's target of 2%.

And even once it's back to 2%, that doesn't mean that prices are going back to where they were before the pandemic. And of course, a lot of people remain frustrated by the cumulative price hikes of the last several years. Waller says he gets that. I don't dismiss any of the pain and suffering people have from this. I know I go to the grocery store myself. I'll look at certain products and say, hell no, I am not buying that. The good news is wages aren't going back to pre-pandemic levels either.

Average wages have been climbing faster than prices for over a year now. And eventually that means people's buying power should catch up. NPR's Scott Horsley. Thank you, Scott. You're welcome. For the first time in decades, drug overdose deaths in the U.S. appear to be plummeting. This is a big deal, a hopeful trend, which began late last year, and it's accelerating. It may mean thousands fewer drug deaths each year. NPR addiction correspondent Brian Mann is covering the story, and he joins me now.

Good morning, Brian. Good morning, Layla. Okay, so the fentanyl overdose crisis has been devastating. Are things finally getting better? You know, the experts I'm talking to say this looks really promising. Data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, they show more than a 10% drop in deaths. That's unprecedented.

And Dr. Nabarandas Gupta, a researcher at the University of North Carolina, says new, more recent data collected by many states shows an even bigger change. In the states that have the most rapid data collection systems, we're seeing declines of 20 percent, 30 percent. Ohio, for example, has seen drug deaths drop by roughly a third. Missouri, fatal overdoses down 34%. As Gupta says, if this trend holds, Laila, we could see 20,000 fewer overdose deaths each year in the U.S. I checked in with Keith Humphries. He's one of the nation's top addiction researchers at Stanford University, and he summed it up this way. This is going to be the best year we've had

since all of this started. So yeah, most researchers I talked to agree this is a big change. Okay, so do we know why this is happening? Well, first, to be clear, nobody thinks this problem is solved. Deaths appear to be way down and dropping fast, but there are still roughly 100,000 fatal overdoses a year. But Rahul Gupta, the White House drug czar, says he is convinced now that the tide is finally shifting. And he thinks it's because public health and addiction treatment programs are finally working. He points to one thing in particular, the spread of this overdose reversal drug, naloxone, also known as Narcan. He thinks that's really helping. And Gupta wants to

double down on those efforts in places that are still seeing really high drug deaths, especially Black and Native American communities. No way we're going to beat this epidemic by not focusing on communities that are often marginalized, underserved, communities of color. One thing that is interesting here, though, is a lot of experts don't think this drop in drug deaths can be explained entirely by these public health measures. It's such a big drop. Those things are likely helping, but it's still a mystery why so many people are now surviving compared with just a year ago. Researchers are now racing to try to understand the change. They want to build on it, keep it going, try to save even more lives. What about people experiencing addiction? I know you talk to a lot of people. Do they think this change is real? You know, some people I spoke to say drug use is as dangerous and

scary as ever. But I also spoke with people like Kevin Donaldson. He uses fentanyl on the street in Burlington, Vermont. And he told me more of his friends are surviving overdoses. For a while there, we're hearing about it every other day, but when was the last overdose we heard about? A couple weeks ago, maybe? That's pretty far and few between. Now, because someone survives an overdose doesn't mean they're free of addiction. But what addiction experts are telling me, Layla, is that by reversing the catastrophic level of death, this is an important first step. If this trend holds up, it gives thousands more people in the U.S. a chance, a shot to get into long-term recovery. NPR addiction correspondent Brian Mann. Thank you, Brian.

Thank you. And that's a first for Wednesday, September 18th. I'm Layla Faldin. And I'm Steve Inskeep. On the next Consider This from NPR News, the strike by auto workers late last year seemed to signal better times for the UAW, but a year later, for some, the future is in doubt. Consider This from NPR News. Today's episode of Up First was edited by Vincent Nee, Raphael Nam, Andrea Deleon, H.J. Mai, and Ali Schweitzer.

It was produced by Iman Maani, Ziad Butch, Nia Dumas, and Nancy Carano. We get engineering support from Carly Strange, and our technical director is Zach Coleman. Join us again tomorrow. Once again, we find ourselves in an unprecedented election. Thank you. Here are seasoned reporters dig into the issues that are shaping voters' decisions and understand how the latest updates play into the bigger picture. The NPR Politics Podcast. Listen on Spotify. Read about the impact of women in music with NPR's new book, How Women Made Music, a revolutionary history from NPR music. This stunning anthology offers original writing and illustrations, interviews and photos.

And the audio book includes 52 years worth of interview excerpts with more than 60 legendary artists. Visit npr.org slash howwomenmademusic to order now.