--:-- Janine Hurst: This message comes from the NPR Wine Club, which has generated over $1.75 million to support NPR programming. Whether buying a few bottles or joining the club, you can learn more at nprwineclub.org slash podcast. Must be 21 or older to purchase.
--:-- Janine Hurst: Live from NPR News in Washington, I'm Janine Hurst. The USS Gerald R. Ford Aircraft Carrier Strike Group is now in the Caribbean in an escalation of tensions between the U.S. and Venezuela.
--:-- Piers Joe Hernandez: The USS Gerald R. Ford was commissioned in 2017 and only left on its first combat deployment two years ago. It's part of a new class of advanced aircraft carriers being built for the United States military.
--:-- Piers Joe Hernandez: The Ford has a number of technological advancements, including an electromagnetic system for launching aircraft. It also has a higher price tag than its predecessors, topping $13 billion, according to the Navy.
--:-- Piers Joe Hernandez: The strike group it leads arrived in the Caribbean on Sunday as part of a growing effort to put pressure on Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro.
--:-- Piers Joe Hernandez: But it's still unclear if the Trump administration is planning any military action against the country.
--:-- Janine Hurst: Joe Hernandez NPR News.
--:-- Janine Hurst: The House is set to vote on the Epstein files this week after lawmakers gathered enough signatures to force a ballot.
--:-- Luke Garrett: One of the lawmakers behind the discharge petition is now warning of a last-minute cover-up.
--:-- Luke Garrett: Republican Representative Thomas Massey of Kentucky helped gather the 218 signatures needed to force the vote.
--:-- Luke Garrett: On ABC News, Massey cautions his fellow Republicans that this ballot record will live on beyond President Trump.
--:-- Luke Garrett: In 2030, he's not going to be the president, and you will have voted to protect pedophiles if you don't vote to release these files, and the president can't protect you.
--:-- Luke Garrett: But Massey says new Trump administration investigations may be an effort to bar the release of the Epstein documents indefinitely.
--:-- Luke Garrett: If they have ongoing investigations in certain areas, those documents can't be released. So this might be a big smokescreen.
--:-- Janine Hurst: Even if the House advances the Epstein file bill, it faces difficult odds in the Senate and the White House.
--:-- Janine Hurst: Luke Garrett, NPR News, Washington.
--:-- Janine Hurst: A vast majority of children in Gaza are showing signs of anxiety and aggression after more than two years of war.
--:-- Kat Lonsdorf: It's according to a U.N. report.
--:-- Kat Lonsdorf: The report found that more than 90 percent of children in Gaza exhibit aggressive behavior or violence, sadness and withdrawal as well as disturbed sleep are also common.
--:-- Kat Lonsdorf: The war has led to the collapse of education, health, and social systems, and repeated displacement and trauma have broken down a sense of safety and stability.
--:-- Kat Lonsdorf: Children will require sustained long-term care to recover, the report says.
--:-- Janine Hurst: Humanitarian organizations, including the UN, have stepped up efforts to address mental health services for children in Gaza, as a fragile ceasefire is holding in its second month.
--:-- Janine Hurst: But there is still daily and deadly bombardment by Israel in Gaza, which Israel says is to dismantle infrastructure used by militants.
--:-- Janine Hurst: Kat Lonsdorf, NPR News, Tel Aviv.
--:-- Janine Hurst: You're listening to NPR News from Washington.
--:-- Janine Hurst: A new study finds an outbreak of the bird flu on a remote island in the South Atlantic Ocean has had devastating consequences for the island's wildlife.
--:-- Nate Rott: South Georgia, a sub-Antarctic island hundreds of miles east of the tip of Argentina, is home to the largest breeding population of elephant seals on the planet.
--:-- Nate Rott: In 2023, the bird flu, H5N1, was first reported there, and an aerial survey the following year found that by then nearly half of the seals breeding females were gone.
--:-- Nate Rott: Marine ecologist Connor Bamford authored the new study in the journal Communications Biology.
--:-- Nate Rott: The loss of breeding females and the loss of the pups that they would have produced over the few years that will really cause this sort of double dip in the population.
--:-- Nate Rott: He's hopeful the population will recover, but the amount of loss, he says, is jarring.
--:-- Janine Hurst: Maid Rot, NPR News.
--:-- Janine Hurst: At the weekend box office, Now You See Me, Now You Don't, the third installment of the Now You See Me series, took the top spot with an estimated $21 million in ticket sales.
--:-- Janine Hurst: The film about a thieving magician brings back the original cast and also introduces new magicians and comes 10 years after the original.
--:-- Janine Hurst: In second place, Paramount's The Running Man was $17 million.
--:-- Janine Hurst: That film, directed and co-written by Edgar Wright, is the second adaptation of Stephen King's novel, which was first published in 1982.
--:-- Janine Hurst: The new version stars Glenn Powell.
--:-- Janine Hurst: I'm Janine Herbst, NPR News in Washington.
