NPR News Now - NPR News: 01-08-2025 3AM EST

Episode Date: January 8, 2025

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Live from NPR News in Washington, I'm Shae Stevens. That's the sound of flames consuming a house in the Pacific Palisades area of Los Angeles where thousands of homes are being threatened. Steve Futterman is outside of one of those properties. I'm looking at a series of homes which no longer exist. Beachfront homes on the Pacific Ocean, on Pacific Coast Highway, and one after another after another, I would say there are maybe a dozen

in front of me right now, which no longer exists. We can still see the fire burning, what's left, the remnants. We see the embers flying in the air. You might be able to tell some wind in the background, but these homes have been totally destroyed. Steve Futterman reporting the Palisades Blades and the so-called Eaton Fire have now consumed

over 3,000 acres in Los Angeles and neither one is contained. David Ortiz of the Los Angeles City Fire Department says a windstorm is pushing the flames. When you see the ocean front come in from the ocean, you'll see the activity pick up. A White House statement says that federal resources have been mobilized to aid responders. Work crews in Arlington, Texas are prepping roadways there for a possible snowstorm ahead of Friday's Cotton Bowl, a developing weather system threatens to carry an Arctic blast

in Texas, Oklahoma and other parts of the South. The U.S. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has announced a new rule that will remove some $49 billion in medical debt from credit reports. CFPB says the rule bans lenders from using medical information, a move that the agency says will raise credit scores by an average 20 points. It also says the change will take effect 60 days after being published in the Federal Register.

President-elect Donald Trump held a press event at Mar-a-Lago Tuesday to lay out plans for his second administration. Trump says the U.S. should regain control of the Panama Canal, saying the agreement that returned the shipping channel to Panama has been violated. He also wants the U.S. to acquire the Danish territory of Greenland and suggested he would use economic pressure to do so. We need Greenland for national security purposes. I've been told that for a long time, long before I even ran.

I mean, people have been talking about it for a long time. Trump says Greenland is needed for U.S. national security reasons, citing Russian and Chinese ships and waters near the territory. Authorities in Florida's Broward County say that homicide investigators are looking into the deaths of two stowaways found in the landing gear of a JetBlue plane. The names of the individuals and the cause of their deaths have not been released. The plane arrived in Fort Lauderdale from New York's JFK International Airport shortly after 11 p.m. on Monday. U.S. futures are slightly higher in after-hours trading

on Wall Street. This is NPR. Two Americans are among seven people arrested in Venezuela on suspicion of being foreign mercenaries. President Nicolas Maduro says the detainees also include two Colombians and three others who he says had been in Ukraine. The announcement comes days before Maduro is set to be sworn into a new term and over a year after his government released dozens of prisoners, including 10 Americans. A strike by ski patrollers at the nation's largest ski resort in Park City, Utah, is

now entering its 13th day. As NPR's Kirk Ziegler reports, Vale Resorts is facing mounting criticism and falling stock prices. The Park City Professional Ski Patrol Association's Margo Klingensmith says the union had no other choice but to walk off the job December 27th after trying to negotiate with Vale Resorts for months over what the union describes as a $2 an hour pay increase. We have tried at every corner of this negotiation cycle to avoid this outcome. Colorado conglomerate Vail, which bought the Park City Resort in 2014, has argued patrollers have gotten pay bumps the last four seasons that have outpaced inflation. Terrain closures and long lift lines due to the strike have led to mounting customer complaints, and Vail's stock price at one point fell by more than 5%.

Kirk Sigler, NPR News. A search continued for survivors of a magnitude 7.1 earthquake in southern Tibet. At least 126 deaths have been confirmed, with another 188 people reported injured. CCTTV reports that the quake destroyed over a thousand homes in the region. This is NPR.