Live from NPR News in Washington, I'm Ryland Barton.
The Justice Department has announced criminal charges against former human president
Raul Castro and others.
“The charges stem from the 1996 shoot down of two civilian aircraft operated by the Miami-based”
exile group of brothers to the rescue, and appears Ryan Lucas reports. The indictment charges Raul Castro, the brother of Fidel Castro, with murder, conspiracy to murder and destruction of aircraft, acting attorney General Todd Blanch, announced the charges in Miami. "Today's indictment, while it does not bring back the murdered victims, it makes a statement.
The United States government has not forgotten these innocent men who were shot out of the sky." The indictment alleges that Castro authorized the shoot down of the two brothers to the rescue aircraft by Cuban military jets. Three U.S. citizens and a U.S. national were killed.
The 94-year-old Castro is not in U.S. custody.
The case against him is seen as part of the Trump administration's pressure campaign against the Cuban government. Ryan Lucas and PR News, Washington. House Republicans and Democrats passed a bill today banning large corporate investors from buying more homes.
“His NPR's Stephen Basaha reports the bill is also meant to address housing affordability.”
The main idea in the bill to make housing more affordable is to throw a lot of ideas at the problem. The bill is packed with new block grants, updates to old ones, and deregulation. Most of these provisions are meant to encourage home building across the country. This is a modified version of a bill the Senate passed two months ago.
Both versions ban corporate landlords with at least 350 houses from buying up any more. Investors can build new homes to rent out, but the house version of the bill strips out the Senate's requirement that those houses get sold off after seven years. The bill now heads back to the Senate to consider for final passage. Stephen Basaha and PR News.
Facebook, parent company Mehta is cutting about 8,000 employees and shifting another 7,000 into jobs that are more directly related to AI, and PR is a John Ruach reports. Mehta flagged the job cuts last month and a company spokesperson said affected employees were notified on Wednesday. The parent company of Facebook and Instagram has been retooling and investing heavily in
artificial intelligence.
“It expects to spend nearly twice as much on capital expenditures this year as it did last”
year, and much of that will go into its efforts to catch up to rivals in the AI race. The job cuts and reorganization come at a challenging time for Mehta. Earlier this year, it lost two court cases claiming its platforms have been harmful to children and young people's mental health, and in June it will return to court to face school districts, suing over claims that social media companies caused a costly mental health and addiction
crisis among students. On Ruach and PR news, single Gen Z women are outpacing the men of their generation when it comes to buying a home. They accounted for 35% of all home buyers in their generation while single Gen Z men represented 18%.
This is NPR. Tennessee officials will pay $835,000 to settle a lawsuit filed by a man who was jailed over a Facebook post. He made joking about the assassination of conservative activists Charlie Kirk, retired police officer Larry Buschart spent 37 days in jail before authorities dropped the felony charge
against him. The Perry County Sheriff said the posts alarmed residents, Buschart says he was exercising
his free speech rights and never should have been arrested.
School districts and their fleets of school buses are being hit by rising gas prices, and PR's Sequoia Carillo reports on a new survey looking at just how big the budget hole is. More than half of surveyed school districts reported that this year's cost of diesel was over their allotted budget, with 14% of those districts reporting costs running more than
20% over budget. The survey, conducted by the School Superintendents Association, looked at the cost of diesel for school bus fleets and how they were filling the gaps in the inflated landscape. Some measures included consolidating bus routes to save money, which 40% of the districts did, with about a quarter reducing the number of routes.
Other options included limiting non-required trips, like field trips. It's the Quakeville and Cernus. A beloved feline at the Nebraska State House is retiring from public life. Cameron, the capital cat, lived in a condone near the seat of power and Lincoln, but is moving to a new home with his caretaker, according to Nebraska Public Media, 10-year-old Cameron
took his civic duty seriously and frequented the capital to greet visitors and ensure lawmakers were enacting the will of the people in a statement Governor Jim Pillan says Cameron brought joy to the public. This is NPR News from Washington. This week on News Makers, Dana White, the head of the UFC, we're at a place where people
can't even talk anymore and if they find out that I'm French with the president and I'm a mag a piece of ****, I mean I'm talking to NPR right now, you're right, I talk to everybody. A dialogue with Dana White about politics, culture and masculinity on NPR's News Makers.
