"Live from NPR news in Washington, I'm Janine Herbst.
President Trump says he's temporarily pausing planned 50% tariffs on around $20 billion
worth of Canadian goods for three days that were set to go into effect early this morning, saying on social media that the U.S. and Canada have reached an agreement without giving details, but he did mention the Keystone XL pipeline. And here's Emily Fang has more. The deadline for these tariffs was supposed to kick in midnight last night, but with less than
two hours to go before that deadline, Trump announced he was temporarily calling them off.
“And he wrote on true social, what was key behind this deal was the potential to restart”
the Keystone pipeline, a joint project between U.S. and Canadian companies to deliver oil from Canada to the U.S. but it got mirrored in an environmental controversy, and its permit was ultimately revoked by President Biden through an executive order. Trump ruled back that executive order last year as part of his push to expand the U.S. oil and gas sector.
And here's Emily Fang reporting.
The U.S. and South Korea are shortening annual joint military drills, why about half, following orders from President Trump, and here's Anthony Cune reports from Seoul that in a social media post Trump criticized the exercises as costly and hostile toward North Korea. South Korea's Joint Chiefs of Staff said the drills which started Monday with end-fri-day instead of next Thursday's planned.
The Pentagon says that scaling back the drills will not compromise military readiness. On Wednesday, North Korean state media continued to criticize the drills as a threat to the north.
“South Korea's foreign minister Cho Hyun, meanwhile, told Parliament that both U.S. and South”
Korean officials were caught off guard by President Trump's social media post. He said that South Korea will take steps to ensure it's not sideline if the U.S. and North Korea resumed diplomacy, Anthony Cune and P.R. News, Seoul. "Boters in Alaska narrowed the field and races for Congress and governor in primary elections yesterday.
Alaska Public Media's Eric Stone reports, all eyes are on Alaska's Senate race as Democrats hope to flip the chamber." Democratic former Congresswoman Mirri Peltolla is leading incumbent Republican Senator Dan Sullivan in the race for Senate. Both will advance to the general election in November, according to a race called by
the Associated Press.
Who will take the third in fourth spots on the ballot after Alaska's unique top four
non-partisan primary is up in the air. But as of late Thursday night, a retired teacher with the same first and last name as the incumbent Sullivan looked as if he might make the cut. Some Republicans have accused him of trying to siphon votes from the incumbent Sullivan. The teacher, though, insists he's simply fed up with the Senator who shares his name.
Alaska voters also narrowed a 17 candidate field to four in the race for governor. And PR News, I'm Eric Stone in Juno. Meanwhile, in Florida, Democratic Socialist Angie Nixon easily won her Senate primary race and will face Republican Senator Ashley Moody and Congressman Byron Donald's won the GOP nomination for governor.
This is NPR News. In Ukraine, former Defense Minister, Mikhailo Federov, is calling for elections to be held despite the ongoing war. The former ally of President Zelensky made the appeal in a YouTube video, arguing that Ukraine faces a governance crisis.
Federov says a factor in his removal was an overhaul that he led of the defense ministries procurement system, which oversees billions of dollars in equipment purchases.
“Thousands of people have protested in key over his dismissal and demanded his reinstatement.”
Ukrainian law prohibits elections while the country is under martial law. The Trump administration has moved to repeal a rule that banned logging on tens of millions of acres of national forest. The public has 30 days to comment, and PR's Kirk Sigler has more. This decision of the 2001, roadless rule was widely expected.
President Trump's forest service, along with the timber industry, has argued that restrictions on new roadbuilding have severely hindered the U.S. government's ability to thin and log forests with the goal of preventing wildfires and smoke, like that's been engulfing much of the country again this summer, but the forest services behind its own targets on treating forests in areas where roads are already built, and environmentalists are calling
the overturning of the rule a giveaway to industry. Meanwhile, it's still not clear how interested timber companies are, in most of these pristine forests, they're hard and expensive to get to, and often very controversial, the log. Kirk Sigler and PR News, Mazula Montana.
And I'm Jeanine Herbst, NPR News in Washington. This week on Sharp Wave, you are what you eat may not be a phrase you associate with your mental health, but one in three people have insulin resistance in our country, and if you have insulin resistance, you are double the likelihood of developing major depression. We explore the link between your body and your brain.
