NPR News Now - NPR News: 01-10-2025 10AM EST

Episode Date: January 10, 2025

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Live from NPR News in Washington, Oncorva Coleman, the Los Angeles County fire examiner, says at least 10 people have been killed in the firestorm that's engulfing parts of the L.A. region. More than 10,000 structures are lost or damaged. The Eaton Fire in the Pasadena-Altedena area remains fully uncontained. For Member Station KQED, Rachel Myra reports on some victims who've lost their homes. Flaring gas lines, downed power lines and huge tree branches littering the roads aren't enough to keep locals away from checking on their homes. But in many cases those homes are

no longer standing. That was the case for Herb Wilson who was on vacation with his wife in Hawaii when his daughter called him Monday to tell him what was going on. And we're just looking down the block at all the devastation and all the houses on the block are gone, with the exception of one. Wilson says he's made friends with many neighbors over 20 years. He says it's too soon to say whether he'll rebuild, but right now, despite the devastation, he wants to. For NPR News, I'm Rachel Miro in Altadena, California.

Meanwhile, the L.A. Unified School District is closed. Officials say in some cases schools are damaged or destroyed. In other cases, students have lost their homes. Nick Melvoin is with the L.A. Unified School Board and represents the area where the largest blaze, the Palisades Fire, is burning. He says he is working to get students back in class. My number one priority is getting kids in a physical location for next week. Not only so they can be there and safe with their peers, with their teachers, with their

principal, but so their parents, many of whom are staying with family members or in small hotel rooms, can have the kids in a safe location during the day so those parents can figure out how they're going to rebuild where they're going to go and how they can take care of their basic needs as well. He spoke to NPR's Morning Edition. President-elect Trump is appearing virtually in a New York courtroom at this hour. He's being sentenced for his convictions of falsifying business records in order to conceal an affair. The judge has said he is not inclined to impose penalties such as a fine or a jail term on Trump.

Stocks opened lower this morning after a stronger-than-expected jobs report. NPR's Scott Horsley reports the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell about 590 points in early trading. U.S. employers added more than a quarter million jobs in December, far more than forecasters had expected. The unemployment rate dipped to 4.1 percent, even as hundreds of thousands of new people joined the workforce. Many of the job gains last month were in sectors such as health care and government, which

are largely insulated from the ups and downs of the economy. But more cyclical sectors like restaurants and retailers also added tens of thousands of jobs in December. Average wages were up 3.9 percent from a year ago, which is likely more than enough to outpace price increases Given the ongoing strength of the job market the Federal Reserve is likely to move cautiously in cutting interest rates Scott Horsley in Pear News, Washington on Wall Street the Dow is now down 570 points. This is NPR Lawyers for tik-tok will argue in the Supreme Court today against a federal law banning the video sharing app.

U.S. officials say the company's Chinese parent company poses a security risk to Americans' personal data. There's a major winter storm blanketing a lot of the U.S. today. Winter storm warnings reach from Texas and Oklahoma to Virginia's Atlantic coast. Southern states are affected, too. Snow is falling across northern Georgia. Forecasters say residents should brace for a combination of snow, sleet, freezing rain, and ice. There's also a ground stop at Atlanta's airport this morning.

From member station WABE in Atlanta, Lily Oppenheimer has more. Snow is already dusting metro Atlanta, and the roadways are getting slippery. State officials are salting those major roadways but say people should stay off the roads. The Atlanta area is pretty much shut down as most schools are closed and government employees are being told to stay home. Governor Brian Kemp declared a statewide emergency. Georgia Power is preparing for widespread outages and local hospitals are cancelling elective and non-urgent procedures. The extra precautions are because Atlanta is remembering snowmageddon in 2014, a snow and ice storm that gridlocked traffic

and caused widespread chaos. For NPR News, I'm Lily Oppenheimer in Atlanta. The space company owned by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos is preparing to launch a spacecraft into orbit on Sunday. The new Glenn rocket is wider than the rockets built by rival SpaceX. These could help bigger payloads get into orbit. I'm Korva Coleman, NPR News.