--:-- [Up First theme music plays]
--:-- Leila Fadel: Good morning. We're having a heated discussion in here, not really heated, about the apostrophe in its. I-T apostrophe S versus I-T-S.
--:-- Steve Inskeep: And the discussion consists of, I wrote it wrong. You were wrong. I'm sorry.
--:-- Leila Fadel: The discussion is Layla's wrong. It sounds the same. Layla's rarely wrong. That's true.
--:-- Steve Inskeep: The United States broke with allies at the UN, refusing to blame Russia for its invasion of Ukraine. Is the U.S. burning its allies?
--:-- Leila Fadel: Oh, my God. You did it a third time. I eliminated two of the apostrophes. And there's yet a third one.
--:-- Steve Inskeep: Why do you got to point out all my flaws, Steve? No, I'm sorry. That's terrible of me.
--:-- Leila Fadel: The United States avoids blaming Russia for its invasion of Ukraine. U.S. allies differ at the U.N. The terms of the peace must send a message that aggression does not pay. Is the U.S. breaking with its friends?
--:-- Steve Inskeep: I'm Steve Inskeep with Leila Fadel, and this is Up First from NPR News.
--:-- Leila Fadel: The Colorado River drought could get worse. The Trump administration put billions of dollars aimed at keeping the river flowing on hold.
--:-- Steve Inskeep: These are not woke environmental programs. These are essential to continued ability to divert water. Okay, can the money be found elsewhere?
--:-- Leila Fadel: And a surgeon is on trial in France. He's accused of abusing hundreds of his patients, most of them children. Stay with us. We'll give you the news you need to start your day.
--:-- [Up First theme music continues]
--:-- Leila Fadel: This message comes from BetterHelp. President Fernando Madeira describes how BetterHelp online therapy has helped him.
--:-- President Fernando Madeira: For me, sometimes I just need to go and talk to somebody that is not going to judge me, right? Is going to be there and they're going to listen to me. And I can start just saying, look, I'm not feeling right today. And it feels natural. I love it.
--:-- Leila Fadel: To get matched with a therapist, visit betterhelp.com slash NPR for 10% off your first month.
--:-- Steve Inskeep: This message comes from the NPR Wine Club, a place to explore the exciting world of wine, including wines inspired by popular NPR shows, like all things considered Cabernet.
--:-- Leila Fadel: Whether buying a few bottles or joining the club, all purchases help support NPR programming and fund quality reporting developed to connect people to their communities and the world they live in. More at nprwineclub.org slash podcast. Must be 21 or older to purchase.
--:-- Steve Inskeep: This message comes from Sony Pictures Classics. In Eleanor the Great, June Squibb brings to vivid life the spirited 94-year-old Eleanor Morgenstein, who after a devastating loss tells a tale that spirals beyond her control.
--:-- Leila Fadel: From director Scarlett Johansson comes a comically poignant exploration of how the stories we hear become the stories we tell. Deadline puts it, there won't be a dry eye in the house. Eleanor the Great, now playing only in theaters.
--:-- Steve Inskeep: The deadline for that what-did-you-do-last-week email that federal workers received has come and gone. But everyone's still confused about who should have responded and what's next.
--:-- Leila Fadel: Yeah, I don't know if you've been following this. An email went out over the weekend, supported by a post on social media by Elon Musk, telling federal workers to reply with five things that they did last week.
--:-- Steve Inskeep: And Musk publicly saying, if you don't do this, we're going to count it as your resignation. A number of cabinet agencies told their employees to ignore this email or to reply to the management of the agency.
--:-- Leila Fadel: Various things. And now the acting director of the Office of Personnel Management has issued guidance, clarification, although things are not that much clearer.
--:-- Steve Inskeep: Charles Azel wrote that the agency should, quote, review responses and evaluate non-responses, not explicitly saying that you should or shouldn't write the email.
--:-- Leila Fadel: He added it's up to agency leaders to decide how to proceed. So federal workers were in this position of should I reply, should I not reply, and getting all these mixed messages.
--:-- Steve Inskeep: Elon Musk and President Trump weighed in again yesterday.
--:-- [Audio clip of President Trump speaking plays]
--:-- President Trump: I thought it was great because we have people that don't show up to work and nobody even knows if they work for the government. So by asking the question, tell us what you did this week, what he's doing is saying are you actually working?
--:-- Steve Inskeep: And then if you don't answer like you sort of semi or you fired because a lot of people are not answering because they don't even exist.
--:-- Leila Fadel: Is there evidence that there's a bunch of federal workers that don't exist?
--:-- Steve Inskeep: Well, administration people have quoted a survey finding that only 6% of federal workers are coming into work, but that turns out to be false.
--:-- Leila Fadel: And it turns out the vast majority do show up for the office and a limited number have hybrid schedules or work from home.
--:-- Steve Inskeep: The Trump administration has been shifting course on Ukraine so much that it was at odds with allies in Europe in votes at the United Nations.
--:-- Leila Fadel: Yeah, the United States opposed a resolution at the Security Council that demanded that Russia withdraw from Ukraine.
--:-- Steve Inskeep: American diplomats instead put forward a differently worded resolution that called for peace without blaming Russia for anything.
--:-- Leila Fadel: Here's how U.S. Ambassador Dorothy Shea put it.
--:-- [Audio clip of Ambassador Dorothy Shea speaking plays]
--:-- Ambassador Dorothy Shea: Our draft resolution is elegant in its simplicity, a symbolic, simple first step toward peace.
--:-- Steve Inskeep: And the Security Council did approve it with the United States, Russia, and China all voting yes.
--:-- Leila Fadel: Britain and France abstained. The exact choice of words matters because what the Security Council approves carries the force of international law.
--:-- Steve Inskeep: NPR's Michelle Kellerman joins us now to talk about all this.
--:-- Michelle Kellerman: Good morning. Good morning, Leila. So first, Michelle, why were the Europeans hesitant to join what the U.S. calls a simple step toward peace?
--:-- Leila Fadel: Yeah, because the resolution didn't recognize the reality that Russia started this war, nor did it even call for a just peace based on the UN charter, which Russia is violating.
--:-- Michelle Kellerman: British Ambassador Barbara Woodward told the council that no one wants peace more than Ukraine, but the terms matter.
--:-- Leila Fadel: And the terms of the peace must send a message that aggression does not pay.
--:-- Michelle Kellerman: This is why there can be no equivalence between Russia and Ukraine in how this council refers to this war.
--:-- Steve Inskeep: And while the U.S. says this is just a first step to support a peace process that will eventually include everyone, there's just a lot of concern about how the Trump administration is going about this.
--:-- Michelle Kellerman: President Trump himself doesn't seem to agree to the reality that Putin started the war and is the aggressor.
--:-- Leila Fadel: Yeah, and that wasn't the only vote at the UN yesterday.
--:-- Michelle Kellerman: Tell us about what happened in the General Assembly.
--:-- Steve Inskeep: Yeah, I mean, this whole thing started because the Ukraine and its European allies wanted the UN to mark the third anniversary of Russia's full-scale invasion by voting on a much longer statement, one that called on Russia to pull out, to stop targeting Ukraine's energy infrastructure, to return civilians, including Ukrainian children who were forcibly deported to Russia during the course of this war.
--:-- Michelle Kellerman: Now, the Trump administration did not like that, and that's why they drafted their own resolution, you know, challenging anyone to say we don't support peace.
--:-- Leila Fadel: And in the end, 93 countries supported Ukraine's version in the General Assembly.
--:-- Michelle Kellerman: And it was amazing to look at the board to see the names of the 18 countries that voted no on that. The U.S. was in league with Russia, Belarus, North Korea, just to name a few.
--:-- Steve Inskeep: Wow, very different than past votes.
--:-- Michelle Kellerman: Does any of this really make a difference, though?
--:-- Leila Fadel: Well, it's mostly symbolic. I mean, because the resolution that the U.S. drafted didn't actually demand anything of anyone.
--:-- Michelle Kellerman: It just called the conflict awful and implores a swift end to it. It didn't even call for a ceasefire or anything, you know, concrete.
--:-- Steve Inskeep: But what all of this kind of diplomatic theater did show is how far the Trump administration has come to embrace Vladimir Putin and how at odds that is with America's allies in Europe.
--:-- Michelle Kellerman: I mean, the allies are still trying to influence him. The French president was at the White House yesterday, and the British prime minister is meeting Trump later this week.
--:-- Leila Fadel: NPR's Michelle Kellerman. Thank you, Michelle.
--:-- Michelle Kellerman: Thank you.
--:-- Steve Inskeep: President Biden set aside billion to keep the Colorado River flowing. President Trump has now put that money on hold, which leaves the river big water users asking what next.
--:-- Alex Hager: Good morning. Thanks for having me.
--:-- Steve Inskeep: Okay, this money President Biden put aside basically pays farmers, cities, tribes, and others to not take water they own out of the Colorado River. Why?
--:-- Alex Hager: Well, climate change is shrinking the river to record lows. So at the nation's biggest reservoirs, that's Lake Mead and Lake Powell, water levels could drop low enough that they wouldn't be able to generate hydropower or even send water downstream.
--:-- Steve Inskeep: So the Biden administration has been telling farmers if they hit pause on growing some crops, the government will give them money to help replace any income they lost by leaving some water in the reservoirs.
--:-- Alex Hager: And that money came from the Inflation Reduction Act, and one of President Trump's first executive orders was to revoke that act in large part.
--:-- Steve Inskeep: So is that money just completely gone now?
--:-- Alex Hager: Water users have been told that their grants are under review, but they're not hearing much from their contacts with the federal government.
--:-- Steve Inskeep: And I'll note that NPR's questions about all this to federal agencies went unanswered.
--:-- Alex Hager: Some are confused as to why their funding is caught up in this freeze because it doesn't seem to be related to the Trump administration's stated priorities, like eliminating diversity programs and developing American energy production.
--:-- Steve Inskeep: These are not woke environmental programs. These are essential to continued ability to divert water. And without money to incentivize water savings, we're likely to keep seeing steady demand on reservoirs that are already dangerously low.
--:-- Alex Hager: Okay, so what happens if these big Colorado River users don't get the money President Biden promised?
--:-- Steve Inskeep: No one can say for sure, but I talked to a number of representatives for big water users, and they told me there's just a lot of question marks about what's going on or what might be next.
--:-- Alex Hager: But if they go back to using water like they did before the Inflation Reduction Act, that steady demand is going to make it more difficult to keep Lake Mead and Lake Powell from shrinking.
--:-- Steve Inskeep: Worth noting that the IRA also funded longer-term work to keep the whole Colorado River Basin ecologically healthy. So that's hundreds of millions of dollars for things like preventing wildfires and restoring habitats.
--:-- Alex Hager: I talked to folks who do that work on the ground, and they say if the federal funding goes away, it'll leave a gap that's too big to be filled by donors or local governments.
--:-- Steve Inskeep: Okay, so the seven states that use the river in the middle of tense talks about new rules for sharing its shrinking supply, how will this impact negotiations?
--:-- Alex Hager: Yeah, well, this is likely to make those talks harder. There's less water in the river than there used to be, and states know they need to cut back on their demand accordingly.
--:-- Steve Inskeep: So far, some of the biggest cutbacks on demand have only been possible because of federal incentive programs.
--:-- Alex Hager: So now the states might need to figure out new ways to make those difficult cutbacks to farms and cities whose economies and people depend on the Colorado River.
--:-- Steve Inskeep: That's Alex Hager with member station KUNC in Colorado. Thank you, Alex.
--:-- Alex Hager: Thank you.
--:-- Leila Fadel: A massive child sex abuse trial has begun this week in the west of France.
--:-- Steve Inskeep: Yeah, once respected surgeon admitted to abusing hundreds of minors over decades, most of them while under anesthesia.
--:-- Leila Fadel: The trial is set to last four months. Victims' advocates hope this will prompt a hard look at the failure of the system that should have prevented such abuse.
--:-- Steve Inskeep: We go now to NPR's Eleanor Beardsley to hear more.
--:-- Eleanor Beardsley: Good morning, Leila. So just break down the case for us first. Who is this surgeon? Where did he practice? Who did he abuse?
--:-- Leila Fadel: Okay, his name is Joël LeSquarnac. He's 74 years old now, and he was a prominent surgeon in Western France specializing in appendectomies, abdominal, and gynecological surgery.
--:-- Eleanor Beardsley: He's accused of abusing 299 of his patients over three decades, both girls and boys, and the average age was 11.
--:-- Steve Inskeep: He carried out the abuse mostly when they were anesthetized, when he was alone with them in the operating theater or recovery room.
--:-- Eleanor Beardsley: And damningly he was flagged for possessing child pornography in 2004. The FBI actually alerted French authorities after his credit card was linked to a pornography site, but the French judge imposed a four suspended sentence with no restrictions on his practice or mandated therapy.
--:-- Leila Fadel: He went on to serve in many hospitals and continued his abuse until 2017 when he coaxed his six-year-old neighbor into his backyard and abused her.
--:-- Steve Inskeep: He's now serving 15 years for that and facing another 20 for the new abuse cases that have come out since because he kept meticulous diaries of his abuse and named his patients.
--:-- Eleanor Beardsley: I spoke with Francesca Sata, a lawyer representing 10 victims and families. Here she is.
--:-- Francesca Sata: He benefited from an omerta, a silence, both personal and professional. He abused his own nieces, and Sata, like many believe his then-wife, among others, must have suspected something.
--:-- Steve Inskeep: I mean, you describe him getting caught around child pornography in 2004 and then his abuse continues for nearly over a decade. Why was he not stopped?
--:-- Eleanor Beardsley: Yeah, well, that's the question. You know, I spoke with freelance journalist Hugo Lemonnier, who just wrote a book about it. He says this trial, if it's only about this one man, will be a failure.
--:-- Hugo Lemonnier: Because the point, he says, is we continue to allow Lesquarnik to be alone with children. No one asked questions, likely because of his high position in society as a surgeon.
--:-- Leila Fadel: Here's Lemonnier.
--:-- Hugo Lemonnier: After he was found guilty of child pornography, nothing has changed because nobody wanted to see him as a danger. Nobody wanted to see the predator.
--:-- Steve Inskeep: And even though he's admitted his guilt, Leila, in France, the trial proceeds despite a confession unlike in the U.S.
--:-- Eleanor Beardsley: And this comes after another very covered trial internationally that documented a pattern of sexual abuse in France, a different trial, right?
--:-- Leila Fadel: That's right. Last year, the world watched the trial of a Frenchman and many other men who drugged his wife and brought these men into their home to rape her over a 10-year period and filmed it all.
--:-- Eleanor Beardsley: And just like in that case with the husband, this surgeon has admitted guilt. Yesterday, as the trial opened, Lascualnac told the court, if I'm appearing before you, it's because one day when most of these people were just children, I committed hideous acts.
--:-- Steve Inskeep: But this trial is missing what the other one had, which made it possible really to get through it for everyone watching. A hero, the wife Giselle Pellico, who bravely demanded that it be public so that society could progress.
--:-- Eleanor Beardsley: And that has led to a shift in mentalities and actually concrete changes in rape laws. People are hoping that this trial will have a similar effect.
--:-- Leila Fadel: On PR's Eleanor Beardsley in Paris, thank you for your reporting.
--:-- Eleanor Beardsley: Thank you, Leila.
--:-- [Up First theme music plays]
--:-- Leila Fadel: And that's up first for Tuesday, February 25th. I'm Leila Faldin. And I'm Steve Inskeep.
--:-- Steve Inskeep: If you'd like, make your next listen, consider this. The team behind NPR's All Things Considered goes deep into a single news story in 15 minutes.
--:-- Leila Fadel: You can listen now on the NPR app or wherever you get your podcasts.
--:-- Steve Inskeep: Today's episode of Up First was edited by Tara Neal, Eric Whitney, Kevin Drew, Jenea Williams, and Alice Wolfley.
--:-- Leila Fadel: It was produced by Ziad Butch, Nia Dumas, and Christopher Thomas.
--:-- Steve Inskeep: We get engineering support from Arthur Laurent, and our technical director is Carly Strange.
--:-- Leila Fadel: Join us again tomorrow.
--:-- Steve Inskeep: Yeah.
--:-- [Up First theme music continues]
--:-- Leila Fadel: This message comes from Odoo. Some say Odoo business management software is like fertilizer for businesses because it promotes growth.
--:-- Steve Inskeep: Others say Odoo is like a magic beanstalk because it scales with you and is magically affordable.
--:-- Leila Fadel: And some describe Odoo's programs as building blocks for creating a custom software suite.
--:-- Steve Inskeep: But some say Odoo is fertilizer magic beanstalk building blocks for business. Odoo. Exactly what a business needs.
--:-- Leila Fadel: Sign up at odoo.com. That's O-D-O-O dot com.
--:-- Steve Inskeep: This message comes from Progressive Insurance. Progressive makes it easy to see if you could save when you bundle your home and auto policies.
--:-- Leila Fadel: Try it at progressive.com. Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and Affiliates. Potential savings will vary. Not available in all states.
--:-- Steve Inskeep: This message comes from REI Co-op. A summit view. An epic climb. That first 5K. It all starts here.
--:-- Leila Fadel: With gear, clothing, classes, and advice to get you there. Visit REI.com or your local REI Co-op. Opt outside.
