NPR News: 12-07-2025 12AM EST

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Speaker 2 Live from NPR News in New York City, I'm Dwahlisai Kautau.

Speaker 2 Ahead of this year's Kennedy Center Awards show on Sunday, President Trump presented the honorees with newly redesigned medals at an Oval Office ceremony hours ago.

Speaker 3 Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome the President of the United States, Donald J. Trump.

Speaker 3 And I'm proud to be an American, wearing these dying over.

Speaker 2 Wearing a tuxedo and bow tie, Trump welcomed this year's recipients, actors Sylvester Stallone, singers Gloria Gaynor and George Strait, Broadway star Michael Crawford, and the rock band Kiss.

Speaker 4 We can hardly imagine the country

Speaker 4 music

Speaker 4 phenomena without its king of country or the American disco without its first lady.

Speaker 2 Trump described the group as the most accomplished and renowned class of Kennedy Center honorees ever assembled.

Speaker 2 President Trump's new national security strategy is critical of Europe in several ways, one of them being its support for Ukraine. We get more from Terry Schultz in Brussels.

Speaker 5 The strategy says Europe is in economic decline and faces impending civilizational erasure.

Speaker 5 It blames the European Union in part for undermining political liberty and sovereignty, including freedom of speech.

Speaker 5 It says within a few decades, certain NATO countries will become majority non-European due to excessive immigration.

Speaker 6 The German Marshall Fund's Ian Lesser says the document is unlikely to be widely appreciated, but the hard right and those who share that view about migration and replacement theories and things of that nature will find in this some common cause.

Speaker 5 On ex, former Swedish Prime Minister Carl Bilt notes, Europe seems to be the only part of the world where the new security strategy sees any threat to democracy, which he calls bizarre.

Speaker 5 For NPR News, I'm Terry Schultz in Brussels.

Speaker 2 Hong Kong is pressing ahead with the highly managed legislative elections on Sunday.

Speaker 2 That's despite the fact that authorities are still searching for human remains after a massive blaze killed at least 159 people in one of the deadliest fires in a century in the region.

Speaker 2 NPR's Emily Feng reports.

Speaker 7 On Sunday, Hong Kong will choose its next legislative council. The region is championing it as a patriots-only election, and in fact, only 20 of the 90 seats on the council will be directly elected.

Speaker 7 30 seats are chosen by committees reflecting Hong Kong's industrial interests, and a Beijing-appointed committee chooses the rest, ever since Beijing overhauled election rules in 2021.

Speaker 7 But the elections are still a litmus test for the region's chief executive, John Lee.

Speaker 7 He is under pressure to deliver a transparent investigation after the fire, and he's hoping to be chosen for a second term. Emily Fang and Pure News.

Speaker 2 And you are listening to NPR from New York City.

Speaker 2 In the West Indian state of Goa, officials there say at least 23 people have died after a fire engulfed a popular nightclub in Arpura village along the coast.

Speaker 2 Goa's chief minister said on social media that he visited the incident site and ordered an immediate investigation, saying, quote, those found responsible will face the most stringent action under the law.

Speaker 2 Eyewitnesses told the BBC that the midnight fire was concentrated around the kitchen area on the ground floor. Police said the dead include mostly club staff, but tourists are also among the victims.

Speaker 2 Waymo, the autonomous ride hailing service, plans to file a software recall after some of its cars illegally passed passed stopped school buses.

Speaker 2 And Paris Jeff Brady reports a federal investigation is also underway.

Speaker 8 An Atlanta TV station aired video in September showing a Waymo driverless taxi maneuvering around a stopped school bus. The bus's red lights were flashing and its stop sign extended.

Speaker 8 In Austin, Texas, the school district documented 19 similar incidents, one just moments after a student crossed in front of the Waymo vehicle.

Speaker 8 Waymo says in an emailed statement that a software issue contributed to the problem and that it has been fixed.

Speaker 8 No one was injured, and Waymo plans to file a voluntary recall of the software with the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, which launched an investigation.

Speaker 8 Waymo is a subsidiary of Alphabet, the parent company of Google, which is a financial supporter of NPR. Jeff Brady, NPR News.

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