NPR News: 09-02-2025 1AM EDT

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Live from NPR News in Washington, I'm Shay Stevens.

Nine former heads of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have signed an open essay criticizing Health Secretary Robert F.

Kennedy Jr.

Authors of the essay, published in the New York Times, focused on the sudden removal of the CDC's recently installed chief.

Former CDC Director Richard Besser says Kennedy is endangering public health, and he's urging consumers to be vigilant about their own personal health care.

I recommend that people turn to their doctors, their nurses, their pharmacists for the best advice in terms of vaccines and other health issues.

At this point, it's very hard to look at what's coming out of the CDC and have confidence that it's the best information for you and your family.

Messer briefly headed the CDC under the Obama administration.

Americans across the nation celebrated Labor Day by highlighting the rights of U.S.

workers.

NPR's Manessa Romo reports on new data showing President Trump's immigration policies are shrinking the U.S.

workforce.

Immigrants make up nearly 20% of the nation's workforce, but after more than 50 years of rapid growth, that population is now in decline, and that's affecting the labor force.

A 2025 Pew Research Center analysis of preliminary Census Bureau data showed more than 1.2 million immigrants left the U.S.

labor force between January and the end of July.

That includes people who are here legally, as well as undocumented immigrants.

Data from Mexico's central bank also shows remittances sent from the U.S.

to Mexico are down by nearly 5% over July of last year.

Vanessa Romo, NPR News.

North Korean leader Kim Jong-un is aboard a bomber train heading to Beijing,

where he is expected to join about 20 other world leaders at a military parade on Wednesday.

The BBC's Gene McKenzie has details from Seoul.

This is the North Korean leader's first trip to China for six years, and the first time he's ever attended an international gathering of world leaders.

For the past few years, he's prioritised his relationship with Vladimir Putin, helping Mr.

Putin fight the war in Ukraine.

But it's China that's traditionally kept North Korea afloat, and this trip suggests Mr.

Kim is ready to rekindle this relationship.

Appearing on stage beside Mr.

Xi, Putin and a host of other world leaders also allows Mr.

Kim to show the West that he's in a much stronger position than he used to be.

The BBC's Gene McKinsey in Seoul.

Meanwhile, China's President Xi Jinping is also expected to hold a bilateral meeting with Russia's leader Vladimir Putin on Tuesday.

A landslide has killed an estimated 1,000 people in western Sudan's Dar 4 region.

In a statement, the Sudan Liberation Movement Army says, Sunday's disaster destroyed an entire village following days of heavy rain.

The group is asking the United Nations and international aid groups to help recover the bodies of victims.

A civil war has left more than half the Sudanese population with insufficient food and medical care.

This is NPR.

Palestinian health officials say at least 31 people were killed in Israeli airstrikes across the Gaza Strip on Monday.

Israeli officials say the forces are only targeting militants and blaming Hamas for civilian casualties in densely populated areas.

The Israeli government had ordered civilians to leave Gaza City ahead of plans to seize the area.

The brains of shrews shrink in winter and then regrow in the summer.

As NPR's Nell Greenfield-Boyce reports, scientists have now figured out how that happens.

Presumably to conserve energy in winter when food is hard to find, the brains of shrews shrink by about 10%.

Later, the brains get bigger.

To see how they achieve this feat, researchers used MRI machines to peer inside the brains of anesthesia shrews, along with other lab tests.

Chechilia Baldoni is with the Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior in Germany.

She says it turns out brain cells don't die off.

So the cells inside the brain are shrinking in size.

A report in the journal Current Biology says the cells shrink because they temporarily lose water.

Understanding how the water balance gets restored could suggest possible treatments for human brain diseases that involve a decline in brain volume due to water loss.

Nell Greenfield-Boyce, NPR News.

In a post on his social media site, President Trump says he plans to award the Presidential Medal of Freedom to his former attorney, Rudy Giuliani.

The former New York City mayor was disbarred and criminally charged for promoting false claims about the 2020 election results, but Trump calls Giuliani a great American patriot.

This is NPR News.

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