NPR News Now - NPR News: 01-04-2026 10PM EST

Episode Date: January 5, 2026

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Live from NPR News, I'm Janine Herbst. Nicholas Maduro is expected in federal court in New York tomorrow to be arraigned on a four-count indictment charging him with drug trafficking. He's being held at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn. That's where dozens of Venezuelan celebrated when he arrived last night, but today it was the site of a protest. Steve Kastonbaum has more. Protesters chanted anti-war slogans as they paraded outside the facility.

including Carla Reyes, called for the immediate release of Maduro. We're standing here for the self-determination and the sovereignty of all people, all over Latin America, and today, it's Venezuela, tomorrow, maybe someone else. Nearby, a few Venezuelans expressed hope for the future of their homeland. 39-year-old Cynthia Davila came to the U.S. eight years ago. I am feeling very good. As for those protesting Maduro's capture. This is ridiculous, because these people, you see the face, it's not the Venezuelan people.

Protest organizers said they'll keep up their actions as long as the intervention in Venezuela continues. For NPR news, I'm Steve Kastenbaum in Brooklyn. President Trump's actions are a big departure from his promise not to get the U.S. involved in foreign conflicts. And peers Mara Liason reports it's not clear yet how his supporters will react. The big political question that Venezuela may answer is whether the MAGA movement stands for anything Donald Trump decides to do or for principles. such as non-interventionism, that transcend Trump. Most Republicans in Congress have been supportive so far, but a few, like Representative Marjorie Taylor Green,

who's leaving Congress this week after a falling out with Trump, says the president has broken his America first promise with his plan to, quote, run Venezuela. She says the president should be focused on domestic problems, like the price of food and health care. And it's not clear what Trump means by, quote, running Venezuela, whether it's a full-fledged occupation like Iraq, or something different. Mara Liason, NPR News.

President Trump is apparently threatening more countries, including Colombia and its president, telling reporters on Air Force One that Gustavo Petro likes making cocaine and selling it to the U.S., adding he's not going to be doing it for very long. Meanwhile, the UN Security Council plans to hold an emergency meeting tomorrow. MPIRS Robbie Griffith says more. United Nations Secretary General Antonio Gutierrez said he was deeply alarmed by the strike on Karachi. by the United States, which he called part of a recent escalation in the region. In a statement, Gutierrez said he was deeply concerned that the rules of international law have not been respected. The UN Security Council is set to meet at the request of Colombia,

with backing from Russia and China. Leaders of several other countries, including Britain and Germany, have emphasised their belief in the importance of international law in their responses to the strikes. Robbie Griffith, NPR News, London. US futures contracts are trading higher at this hour. You're listening to NPR News. from Washington. As the government releases troves of documents related to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, journalists, including those here at NPR, are racing to understand their contents. Given the huge volume, reporters are getting tech help, which now includes artificial intelligence.

Imperial Hosing-Nan has more. One way to receive a document dump is to divvy it up for a team of reporters and editors to read. Another way is to use the software to extract all the text and then reporters can look up keywords of interest to focus on. Both are still happening today, but AI adds the ability to go beyond keywords. Dylan Friedman is the AI Project editor at the New York Times. He gave the example of finding emails. Or sometimes it might say from, sometimes it might say sender.

And so AI is really good at kind of understanding that fuzzy context. Regardless of what technologies do, Friedman says. people, journalists, are making sense of the story. Hu Jinnan, NPR News. At the weekend box office, Disney's Avatar, Fire and Ash, the third chapter in James Cameron's epic, took the top spot with an estimated $40 million in ticket sales. So far globally, the film has made more than $1 billion.

In second place, Zootopia 2 with $19 million. So far, Disney's animated sequel has made more than $1.5 billion in six weeks, And that makes Zootopia 2, Disney's second highest-grossing animated movie ever, trailing only 2019's Photo Realistic, The Lion King, which took in just over $1.6 billion. This is NPR News.