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Senators reach tentative deal to end the government shutdown

admin - Latest News - November 10, 2025
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Senators struck an agreement to end the lengthy U.S. government shutdown, three sources with direct knowledge of the details told NBC News.



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November 3, 2025
Nov. 2, 2025, 7:28 PM ESTBy Andrew GreifOne of the seemingly few bankable results early in this NFL season was the Detroit Lions scoring at least 30 points. They did it in four straight wins to start 4-1 and place themselves in the conversation of Super Bowl contenders.Yet the Lions have failed to exceed that total in each of their last three games, including Sunday’s 27-24 loss to Minnesota. The NFL’s best offense propelled the Indianapolis Colts to a 7-1 start. Then, on Sunday, they turned the ball over six times — more than their total from the previous eight games combined — in a stunning loss to the Pittsburgh Steelers.And the Green Bay Packers, who had re-asserted themselves as Super Bowl contenders during a 5-1-1 start? Naturally, they suffered their season’s first home loss on Sunday to a middling Carolina Panthers team.What connects those three results is the notion that at the season’s halfway mark, there appears to be a paucity of pigskin dominance across a league where teams toggle between looking superb and sliding, varying on the week.Entering this week, ESPN’s Football Power Index projected the Indianapolis Colts to finish with the highest win total in the league, at 12.2. How low is that? The last time 12 wins was enough to lead the league was 2014.In another sign of the parity that has led to many good teams, but no dominant leader, 12 teams entered Week 9 with positive expected-points-added ratings on both offense and defense. Through the same point last year, there were nine such teams; the season before, seven.One potential factor is the 2024 introduction of the “dynamic kickoff” that became permanent before this season. The rule change incentivizes the kicking team to kick a playable ball. Balls kicked into the end zone result in the offensive team taking over at their own 35-yard line, a yardage that gives offenses a sizable head start on their ensuing drive. Field-goal range is now only a few passes away. Facing often shorter fields, offenses in 2025 are averaging 328.9 yards per game, the lowest league average since 2008, yet are scoring 2.14 points per drive, the second-highest in NFL history. In Green Bay’s case, Sunday’s loss — to a Panthers team coming off a 31-point loss — wasn’t one to simply shrug off as a bad day. Star tight end Tucker Kraft was carted off with what was called a knee injury that Packers coach Matt LaFleur said “doesn’t look good.” In Detroit, the Lions gained more yards, completed all three four-down conversions and held the ball three minutes longer yet lost to the Vikings by committing more turnovers and converting fewer red-zone opportunities into points.”It’s probably one of the worst games we’ve played in a really long time,” Lions coach Dan Campbell said.More from SportsDodgers win Game 7 in extra-inning thriller to claim second straight World Series titleAn NFL kicker just hit a 68-yard field goal. Yes, you read that right.The Bears and Bengals traded collapses and comebacks in the wildest game of the NFL seasonBut the most baffling performance by a team previously sitting at or near the top of a conference was Indianapolis. Quarterback Daniel Jones had resurrected his career with the Colts by leading the team to its most points through eight games since 1964. The Colts had turned the ball over just four times in eight games, only for Jones to personally throw three interceptions and lose two fumbles against the Steelers alone. Their record, to this point, had largely been built on beating teams with losing records. The season’s final half, then, will be spent learning whether the Colts are the rare, dominant team they appeared for two months, or simply one of several good ones.Andrew GreifAndrew Greif is a sports reporter for NBC News Digital. 
November 21, 2025
Nov. 21, 2025, 5:00 AM ESTBy Dan De Luce, Courtney Kube and Gordon LuboldPresident Donald Trump and his Pentagon chief say U.S. military strikes on suspected drug boats in waters off Latin America are saving lives by preventing narcotics from reaching America’s shores.But drug cartels operating vessels in the Caribbean, where roughly 50% of the airstrikes have taken place, are mainly moving cocaine from South America to Europe — not to the United States, according to current and former U.S. law enforcement and military officials as well as narcotics experts. And the deadliest drug of all, fentanyl, is almost exclusively smuggled over land from Mexico, the officials and experts say.The realities of the drug trade in Latin America call into question part of the administration’s stated rationale for its unprecedented military campaign against suspected narcotics smuggling boats, and whether it will have any significant effect on the supply of narcotics in the United States, according to the officials and experts.“Fentanyl is not coming out of Venezuela. Fentanyl comes from Mexico,” said Christopher Hernandez-Roy, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies think tank in Washington. “What’s coming out of Venezuela is cocaine.”And most of that cocaine is no longer headed to the U.S., according to Hernandez-Roy, who co-authored a 2023 report on the subject.The cocaine market in Europe has “exploded” in recent years, he said, because it’s “more lucrative and there’s less of a chance, at least at some levels of the supply chain, of facing prison time.”A U.S. official with expertise on counternarcotics efforts offered a similar assessment, saying cocaine accounts for about 90% of the drugs coming from Venezuela and is “almost all destined for Europe.”White House spokeswoman Anna Kelly responded in a statement.“All of these decisive strikes have been against designated narcoterrorists bringing deadly poison to our shores, and the President will continue to use every element of American power to stop drugs from flooding into our country and to bring those responsible to justice,” Kelly said.Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell said “our intelligence did indeed confirm these boats were trafficking narcotics destined for America.”“That same intelligence also confirms that the individuals involved in these drug operations were narco-terrorists, and we stand by that assessment,” he added.Since Sept. 2, the U.S. military has carried out 21 lethal strikes on boats that the administration says are ferrying narcotics, killing more than 80 people, according to the Pentagon.A video Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth posted on X reportedly shows U.S. military forces conducting a strike on a vessel in the Caribbean Sea on Oct. 23.Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth via AFP – Getty ImagesThe administration has come under criticism at home and abroad over the legality of the boat strikes, with lawmakers from both parties expressing concerns that the attacks violate U.S. and international law. Some NATO allies have distanced themselves from the strikes and the United Kingdom has withheld relevant intelligence on Latin American drug smuggling at sea over concerns the campaign may be illegal, NBC News has previously reported.The Trump administration has defended the aerial attacks as a legal action against a threat to national security and an effective approach to fighting narco-traffickers.Trump has said each boat sunk by the U.S. military saves “25,000 lives” by stopping fentanyl and other narcotics from reaching U.S. shores. And in a social media post earlier this month, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said the U.S. military would “find and terminate EVERY vessel with the intention of trafficking drugs to America to poison our citizens.”Rahul Gupta, who served as director of the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy in the Biden administration, said most of the trafficking boats in the Caribbean are carrying cocaine bound for Europe, and the people on board tend to be young and desperate for work.“They’re recruiting young people, impressionable young people, so they can do these runs for $100, $500, $1,000 back and forth,” Gupta said.The drug runners at sea are often between 15 and 24 years old and the cartel leadership views them as expendable, Gupta said. For the cartels, “there is no message being sent because they really don’t care about these people,” he said.‘Go fast’ boatsOver the past several years, fentanyl and other synthetic opioids have accounted for the vast majority of overdose deaths in the U.S. In 2023, roughly 77,000 Americans died from synthetic opioids, primarily fentanyl, which accounted for 76% of all overdose deaths, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.Highly powerful but easily concealed, fentanyl is mostly transported not by boat in the Caribbean but over land across the U.S.-Mexico border, according to experts and U.S. government reports.Cocaine largely arrives to the country on boats that speed across the Pacific and originate from Colombia or Ecuador.A vessel in the eastern Pacific moments before a U.S. strike on Nov. 15.U.S. Southern CommandTrump has ordered a buildup of U.S. forces as part of his campaign against Latin American drug cartels, with an aircraft carrier and other warships and aircraft deployed in the Caribbean. But there is no similar naval buildup on the western side of South America in the eastern Pacific, the main route for cocaine into the United States.Drug runners from Venezuela typically take 60-foot “go fast” boats to a stop in the Caribbean, where the cargo is transferred to larger freighters and shipped on to European ports, sometimes via West Africa, the officials and experts say. Smaller amounts are smuggled aboard commercial airliners by human “mules.”One popular route has the smugglers heading to Trinidad and Tobago, a short, 7-mile boat ride from the Venezuelan coast, according to the officials and experts.The traffickers take advantage of uninhabited islands and European overseas territories in the Caribbean. The British, French and Dutch islands offer direct air and maritime routes to Europe and have commercial and familial ties to the European continent.A kilogram of cocaine costs about $28,000 in the United States, but the same amount fetches roughly $40,000 on average in Europe and as much as $80,000 in some European countries, according to a report funded by the Norwegian government.William Baumgartner, a retired Coast Guard rear admiral and former chief counsel to the service, said the strikes in the Caribbean will likely have no major effect on the flow of fentanyl into the United States.“These boats do not carry fentanyl. They are carrying cocaine,” Baumgartner told reporters in a virtual briefing last week.Baumgartner and other former military and law enforcement officials say the lethal strikes also deprive the United States of valuable intelligence about the cartel networks and their operations, as there is no opportunity to collect forensic evidence from seized narcotics or interrogate the smugglers.“Most of our intelligence comes from people that we capture on these vessels,” Baumgartner said. But if the U.S. kills or repatriates the people on board, “we actually hurt ourselves and our effectiveness in the long term,” he said.Past counternarcotics efforts have often merely forced the cartels to adapt and reconfigure their smuggling routes, experts said.Vanda Felbab-Brown, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, said the U.S. military strikes in the Caribbean were targeting boats that almost certainly were ferrying cocaine to Europe, and would not affect the vast drug problem in the United States. The attacks likely will not deter the cartels but only prompt them to choose different routes or methods, as the potential profit continues to provide a strong incentive to keep smuggling, Felbab-Brown said.Gupta, the former drug policy chief, said the administration’s approach amounted to a tactic without a strategy, with little prospect for success given that there are dozens of drug smuggling boats in the Caribbean on any given day.The strikes are “symbolic,” Gupta said. “But symbolism isn’t going to treat people with addiction. Symbolism isn’t going to dismantle cartels, their logistics network, their way to make money, their whole system that is there.”Dan De LuceDan De Luce is a reporter for the NBC News Investigative Unit. Courtney KubeCourtney Kube is a correspondent covering national security and the military for the NBC News Investigative Unit.Gordon LuboldGordon Lubold is a national security reporter for NBC News.
September 26, 2025
Sept. 26, 2025, 11:24 AM EDTBy Rob Wile and Steve KopackAnalysts are already warning that U.S. consumers could see higher prices due to new tariffs President Donald Trump plans to impose on drug product imports as soon as next week.But a series of exemptions may blunt the ultimate impact. In a Truth Social post late Thursday, Trump said that any branded or patented pharmaceutical products brought into the U.S. would face a 100% tariff starting Oct. 1.U.S. imports of pharmaceuticals totaled about $213 billion in 2024, a threefold increase from a decade earlier, according to data from the United Nations Comtrade Database.With Asia alone accounting for just over 20% of those imports by value, U.S. consumers could see a “meaningful commercial hit,” Louise Loo, head of Asia economics at Oxford Economics research group, said in a note to clients. Previous studies have shown that U.S. annual spending per capita on prescription drugs is about double the rest of the developed world. In July, Trump announced a plan to “get Americans the best prices in the world for prescription drugs” that involved asking major drugmakers to match low prices they offer elsewhere in the world. However, it is not clear what actions the pharma firms have taken to begin addressing that demand. The pharmaceutical industry is already warning that the new tariffs could derail further drug development while also raising prices. “Every dollar spent on tariffs is a dollar that cannot be invested in American manufacturing or the development of future treatments and cures,” Alex Schriver, senior vice president for PhRMA, the drug industry’s primary lobbying group, said in a statement. “Medicines have historically been exempt from tariffs because they raise costs and could lead to shortages.”Despite those warnings, a significant share of drug products could wind up being exempted from the new import duties. The tariffs do not appear to apply to so-called generic drugs, which account for 9 out of 10 prescriptions filled in the U.S., according to the Food and Drug Administration. The White House did not immediately respond to a request to confirm the exemption for generics, but assuming they will remain tariff-free, the impact to consumers could be more limited than feared. Trump also specified that any drug companies that currently have, or have committed to building, U.S.-based drug-making facilities would be exempted from tariffs. That’s a category that includes numerous major drugmakers. “Many pharmaceutical companies have facilities in the U.S., so it may be relatively easy to superficially expand those facilities to avoid tariffs being applied,” Paul Donovan, chief global economist at UBS Global Wealth Management, wrote in a note to clients. Analysts at JPMorgan agreed: “While there remains very limited details, we note that this will likely lead to a majority of pharma products being excluded from any tariffs” because most major companies have recently increased or have started to increase their U.S. manufacturing facilities.On the White House website, the administration maintains a “running list of new U.S. investment” from private companies. At least 15 pharmaceutical or drug makers are listed with investments ranging from new manufacturing facilities, tens of billions in expanded U.S. production and increased R&D spending. Many of those announcements would appear to meet the requirements laid out by Trump to avoid the new tariff.Two major European drugmakers, Roche and Novartis, said in statements that they expected little to no impact from the newly announced duties. “We are working to ensure that all major Novartis medicines for U.S. patients are manufactured in the U.S.,” Novartis said in a statement. “The announced 100% tariff should not have an impact.” Roche pointed to ongoing factory construction in the U.S., with multiple sites being expanded and upgraded in Kentucky, Indiana, New Jersey and California.Trump has signaled since at least April that drug imports would face tariffs. In anticipation, major drugmakers have indicated they have been stockpiling supplies, analysts said. As a result, consumers are unlikely to feel immediate effects even though the tariffs are set to kick in next week. “We think there may have been significant inventory accumulation this year,” Neil Shearing, group chief economist with Capital Economics, said in a note. This summer, Trump placed a maximum 15% tariff on most pharmaceuticals coming in from the European Union, which accounts for 60% of drugs imported by the U.S. E.U. officials believe that this agreement will shield it from the 100% duties, though they said they could not be certain. “This clear all-inclusive 15% tariff ceiling for E.U. exports represents an insurance policy that no higher tariffs will emerge for European economic operators,” a European Commission spokesperson told NBC News on Friday.Ireland’s deputy prime minister, Simon Harris, who also acts as trade minister, said his country is “studying the impact of this announcement” but added that he believed the 15% cap on pharma tariffs remained in place. Ireland alone accounts for 24% of pharma imports to the U.S.Rob WileRob Wile is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist covering breaking business stories for NBCNews.com.Steve KopackSteve Kopack is a senior reporter at NBC News covering business and the economy.
November 3, 2025
Names of 5 million Holocaust victims identified, Israel's Yad Vashem says
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