NPR News Now - NPR News: 01-02-2025 4PM EST

Episode Date: January 2, 2025

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Live from NPR News in Washington, I'm Louise Schiavone. Authorities have identified the driver of the Tesla cyber truck that exploded in front of the Trump Hotel in Las Vegas as 37-year-old Matthew Allen-Livlesberger. He previously was an active-duty special operations soldier with the Army, then joined the National Guard, followed by the Army Reserve. The FBI says they found no indication that this case is related to the early New Year's morning deadly truck attack in New Orleans by 42-year-old American-born Shamsuddin Jabbar of Houston, also a veteran who died in a shootout with police.

Sheriff Kevin McMahill of Las Vegas described what investigators found in the remains of the cyber truck. There's an SLR model B-30 semi-automatic firearm, number of fireworks that were still in the vehicle that had to be removed. Notably we found an iPhone and a smartwatch and then several credit cards were also in the name of our subject. Officials say Littlesberger shot himself in the head before the blast. The Sugar Bowl college football playoff game kicks off at this hour in New Orleans. The Notre Dame-Georgia game had been postponed after the truck attack in the French Quarter on New Year's Day.

NPR's Becky Sullivan reports. The Sugar Bowl was originally scheduled to kick off last night at the Superdome in downtown New Orleans. But the attack on Bourbon Street took place less than a mile from the stadium that put the facilities on lockdown as authorities conducted a security sweep. Postponing the game, organizers said, was in the best interest of public safety. Thousands of fans had traveled to New Orleans for the game. A Georgia student was critically injured in the attack and was receiving medical treatment, a university official said. And among the dead is a former college football player, Tiger Besh, a Louisiana native who played at Princeton from 2016 to 2021. Both Notre Dame and Georgia said their

teams and personnel were safe and accounted for. Becky Sullivan, NPR News. Congress returns tomorrow with Republicans holding narrow majorities in both houses. That could complicate President-elect Donald Trump's plans to pursue an ambitious legislative agenda, and PR's Lexi Schepittle reports. The first order of business in the House will be electing a new speaker. While incoming Speaker Mike Johnson has Trump's endorsement, just a few Republican defectors could derail the voting process.

If the House hasn't chosen a speaker by Monday, that could delay the certification of Trump's 2024 presidential victory. Trump's legislative priorities will likely include passing a border security package and extending the tax cuts Republicans passed during his first term. Those are set to expire this year. Lawmakers will also need to fund the government by March to avoid a shutdown. And the Senate will soon begin confirmation hearings for Trump's cabinet picks, some of whom have yet to secure the support they'll need.

Lexi Shapiro, NPR News, Washington. Wall Street approaching the close. The Dow is down 151 points. The Nasdaq off 30 points. This is NPR News in Washington. In San Juan, Puerto Rico, Jennifer Gonzalez-Colon has been sworn in as governor, giving her pro-statehood new progressive party a historic third consecutive term. What would have been an upbeat event was overshadowed by widespread anger over a blackout across

the island on New Year's Eve. 1.3 million customers were affected. Outages were still being reported today as crews tried to stabilize Puerto Rico's power grid. Long-distance migrations can take a toll on animals. NPR's Jonathan Lambert reports on new research showing some bats time migrations to get a liftoff from passing storms. Studying bat migration is tricky, since bats are small and fly only at night. A new study published in Science used special trackers, essentially tiny bat backpacks,

that connect to wireless networks. The trackers allowed researchers to watch the migrations of a species called the noctua bat across central Europe and measure climate data. The study found that bats time their departure to leave just before a storm comes through Surfing storm tailwinds can make the bats migration which can span hundreds of miles a little bit easier Jonathan Lambert NPR news in Oxfordshire, England Researchers say that a dinosaur highway has been discovered during excavations in a limestone quarry paleontologists at the universities of Oxford in Birmingham say nearly 200 dinosaur tracks that date back 166 million years have been

identified. The dinosaurs were the Cetiosaurus and the Megalosaurus, a ferocious predator. I'm Louise Schiavone, NPR News, Washington.