NPR News Now - NPR News: 01-07-2025 3PM EST

Episode Date: January 7, 2025

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Live from NPR News in Washington, I'm Lakshmi Singh. 21-gun salute in honor of the nation's 39th president, Jimmy Carter. Carter's casket arrived a short time ago from Atlanta at Joint Base Andrews in Maryland, where his family waited in the frigid temperatures to receive him during the arrival ceremony. The country is paying tribute to Carter's legacy for his impact on diplomacy, as well as his faith-based and nonprofit work, including his work on behalf of the housing program Habitat for Humanity. Carter will lie in state at the U.S. Capitol.

Members of Congress will hold a service. And the public will be able to pay tribute to Carter until Thursday morning. Carter passed away last month at the age of 100. Facebook and Instagram owner Metta is getting rid of its fact-checking program, which has been accused of exercising anti-conservative bias.

NPR's Shannon Bond reports the move is part of big changes the company's making to how it polices posts ahead of President-elect Donald Trump's second term. Metta has relied on outside fact-checkers to address false and misleading posts since 2017. But CEO Mark Zuckerberg says the company has gone too far, echoing long-running complaints from President-elect Trump and other Republicans. We've reached a point where it's just too many mistakes and too much censorship. Metta will replace fact checks by independent professionals with community notes written by users, the same approach Elon Musk is taking at X.

Some fact-checkers who have worked with Metta for years pushed back against Zuckerberg's reference to quote, censorship, saying they add context, but have no power over Metta's content moderation decisions. Shannon Bond, NPR News. Shannon Bond Judge Eileen Cannon is temporarily blocking the Justice Department from releasing a final report by special counsel Jack Smith in his two cases against President-elect Trump. NPR's Carrie Johnson reports defense lawyers had asked the Florida judge to weigh in.

Judge Cannon, who was appointed to the bench by Trump, ordered the DOJ not to share Jack Smith's final report until a federal appeals court resolves the legal fight. Smith had been set to transmit his report to Attorney General Merrick Garland with an eye toward releasing it to the public as soon as this week. But Trump argues the special counsel was appointed unlawfully and that any public report would be legally invalid and hurt his transition into the White House. Federal

prosecutors dropped two criminal cases against Trump after he won the 2024 election and the final report by Smith may be the last chance for prosecutors to explain their decisions. Carrie Johnson, NPR News, Washington. U.S. stocks are trading lower this hour. The Dow Jones Industrial averages down 152 points. The Nasdaq has fallen more than 300 points. It's NPR News. A magnitude 7.1 earthquake struck the Chinese region of Tibet near the border with Nepal.

Chinese state media report at least 126 people were killed and at least 188 others were injured. Officials say the quake's epicenter is near one of Tibet's holiest sites. U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken was in Tokyo, Japan. He was dealing with diplomatic fallout from a US bid to block Nippon from acquiring US steel. A new study in mice shows how luck can shape an individual's life trajectory. NPR's Jonathan Lambert explains how the research suggests that competition raises the stakes of getting lucky. When scientists consider why some animals do better than others, they often point to genes or the environment.

But sometimes critters just get lucky. To study the role of luck, researchers raised groups of genetically identical mice in outdoor enclosures, allowing them to assess the impact of chance experiences, like happening to get to food first. When competition for resources was high, some individuals ended up doing significantly better than others over the course of their lives, the researchers report in the journal Science. That divergence largely didn't happen when competition was low, suggesting that competition can magnify the importance of luck.

Jonathan Lambert, NPR News. The Dow has fallen 161 points now. It's at 42,545. The S&P is down 57 or nearly 1 percent, and the NASDAQ is down nearly 1.7 percent. It's NPR News. Listen to this podcast sponsor free on Amazon Music with a Prime membership or any podcast app by subscribing to NPR News Now Plus at plus.npr.org. That's plus.npr.org.