NPR News Now - NPR News: 01-04-2025 10PM EST

Episode Date: January 5, 2025

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The Indicator is a podcast where daily economic news is about what matters to you. Workers have been feeling the sting of inflation. So as a new administration promises action on the cost of living, taxes, and home prices, The S&P 500 biggest post-election day spike ever. follow all the big changes and what they mean for you. Make America affordable again. Listen to The Indicator, the daily economics podcast from NPR. Live from NPR News in Washington, I'm Windsor Johnston.

Family and friends gathered at a memorial service to honor the late President Jimmy Carter in Atlanta tonight. The former president's grandson, Jason Carter, spoke about his grandfather's legacy. Celebrating this incredible life and a life that I think we can all agree is as full and powerful as any life can be. As someone said it's amazing what you can cram into a hundred years. President Carter's motorcade started in southern Georgia today where he was born and raised on a farm in Plains. The procession is scheduled to arrive in Washington, D.C. on Tuesday where he will lie in state at the U.S. Capitol building. His official state funeral will be held at

the National Cathedral on January 9th. A massive winter storm is forecast to hit more than two dozen states in the U.S. The National Weather Service says heavy snowfall, icy conditions, sleet and rain are expected to hit the central plains, the mid-Atlantic region and the southern U.S. over the next several days. NPR's Monsi Carana reports 62 million Americans are in the path of the storm. This year's first major winter storm is predicted to bring blizzard-like conditions to the central plains on Sunday. There's expected to be at least eight inches of snow from

central Kansas to Indiana. The storm will reach the East Coast by Sunday night. Travel delays are possible, especially if rain begins to freeze into ice. This can also make road conditions dangerous and power outages can occur. Severe thunderstorms are expected to roll into the South on Sunday. Mansi Karana, NPR News. Billionaire Elon Musk is expressing his support for far-right politicians around the world. In recent days, Musk has stepped up his criticism of Britain's center-left government and prime minister.

NPR's Lauren Frere reports from London. It started last summer when Elon Musk, a self-described free speech advocate, called Britain a police state for arresting people who'd posted disinformation that led to race riots. Since then, he's called for the release of a far-right Islamophobe jailed in the UK for assault and fraud. This week, Musk falsely accused Prime Minister Keir Starmer of failing to go after child rapists, and endorsed a post calling for the King to remove Starmer from power,

something the monarch isn't allowed to do. Even the far-right British MP Nigel Farage, who's courted Musk for donations, has distanced himself from some of his comments. Many Britons are perplexed by Musk's interest and wonder what it pretends for U.S. policy, with Musk slated for a role in the incoming Trump administration. Lauren Freyer, NPR News, London. This is NPR News in Washington. The man who rammed a pickup truck into a crowd on Bourbon Street in New Orleans had suspected

bomb-making materials at his home. Officials told the Associated Press that the driver had reserved the rental truck weeks ago and had purchased a cooler and gun oil before the attack. At least 14 people were killed and dozens of others were injured. The man, a U.S.-born citizen from Texas, was killed in a shootout with police. Scientists have analyzed DNA from a mysterious and elusive animal, the marsupial mole. As NPR's Nell Greenfield-Boice reports, this mole tunnels beneath the sands of remote deserts in Australia. This mole is so rare, a mere sighting in the wild makes headlines. To learn more about

it, researchers analyzed DNA from a single dead mole stored in a museum. Sarah Lucas is with the University of Münster in Germany. She says the genetic evidence suggests that this mole's population size abruptly crashed about 70,000 years ago. I think that is definitely one of the major findings of this paper because they were listed as extremely endangered because we had no idea about what their population dynamics were happening and again it's really hard to find a living one. A report on the finding in the journal, Science Advances, says the decline may have happened during a period of past climate change.

Nell Greenfield-Boice, NPR News. I'm Windsor Johnston and you're listening to NPR News from Washington. What's in store for the music, TV and film industries for 2025? We don't know, but we're making some fun, bold predictions for the new year. Listen now to the Pop Culture Happy Hour podcast from NPR.