NPR News Now - NPR News: 01-10-2025 5AM EST

Episode Date: January 10, 2025

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Consider This is a daily news podcast and lately the news is about a big question. How much can one guy change? They want change. What will change look like for energy? Drill, baby drill. Schools? Take the department of education, close it. Healthcare?

Better and less expensive. Follow coverage of a changing country. Promises made, promises kept. We're going to keep our promises. On Consider This, the afternoon news podcast from NPR. Live from NPR News in Washington, I'm Dave Mattingly. Authorities in Southern California say at least 10 people have been killed by wildfires burning out of control in and around Los Angeles.

The number of homes, businesses, schools, and other structures damaged or destroyed by the flames is nearing 10,000. They include the Palisades Fire between Santa Monica and Malibu and the Eaton Fire near Pasadena. Officials say they'll go down as the most destructive fires on record in the LA area. NPR's Frank Lankford spoke to one homeowner whose house was burned to the ground. Jingwan Liu Turvalon had a modest one-story house in Altadena, the small pool.

When she left Tuesday night, she thought she'd be back the next day. So we packed our documents, we packed the kids' artwork, and we packed one night worth of clothes. On Wednesday, her son Sam drove back to pick up more possessions. It was entirely burned to the ground. And I was just stunned, absolutely stunned. Gone are the photos and pictures on the walls and the entire block.

I keep on waking up at night thinking, oh my God, how did I not anticipate this? The Otervalon says she's not certain if her family will rebuild here. Frank Langford, NPR News. The sheriff of Los Angeles County says he expects the death toll to rise. Property losses are estimated in the tens of billions of dollars. Later today, President-elect Donald Trump will be sentenced in New York for his conviction on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records. Trump's latest legal effort to halt the sentencing was rejected by the U.S. Supreme Court yesterday in a 5-4 vote.

Judge Juan Mershon has said he intends to impose an unconditional discharge on Trump, meaning the incoming president will not face prison, probation, or fines. The latest numbers on employment in the U.S. are due out this morning from the Labor Department. NPR's Scott Horsley says they're expected to show a slowdown in hiring during the month.S. are due out this morning from the Labor Department. NPR's Scott Horsley says they're expected to show a slowdown in hiring during the month of December. Forecasters think today's report will show that U.S. employers added somewhere around 150,000 jobs in December. That's roughly in line with the average pace of hiring over the previous six months, although somewhat slower than earlier

last year. Job gains in October and November were distorted by hurricanes and the Boeing strike. The unemployment rate has generally been inching up in recent months, although at 4.2 percent in November it remains very low by historical standards. The Federal Reserve is keeping a close eye on the job market, as well as inflation, as it weighs how quickly lower interest rates the central banks expect to hold interest rates steady when policymakers meet later this month. Scott Horsley, NPR News, Washington. The Federal Reserve says credit card debt in the U.S. declined in November by the largest

monthly total since 2020. Economists say the cost of borrowing remains high. This is NPR News from Washington. Notre Dame is advancing to college football's national championship game. The Fighting Irish beat Penn State last night 27 to 24 to win the Orange Bowl in Florida and the first semifinal of the playoffs. Notre Dame intercepted a Penn State pass with 33 seconds left in the game to set up the winning 41 yard field goal by kicker Mitch Jeter. Notre Dame will play the winner of tonight's

other semifinal between Texas and Ohio State in the Cotton Bowl in Arlington, Texas. The national title game is a week from Monday night in Atlanta. Researchers have been examining why nearly two dozen species of kangaroo went extinct 40,000 to 65,000 years ago. As Ari Daniel reports, hundreds of teeth may provide an answer. Sam Arman took a detailed look at the teeth of more than 900 kangaroos from both fossils and modern animals. Whenever an animal chews its food, the food leaves marks, microscopic scratches on the surface of the teeth. Armin, who's a paleontologist at a natural history museum in central Australia,

used those scratches to figure out what the ancient kangaroos ate. His answer, a mix of shrubs and grasses, suggesting that a changing climate that wiped out a single group of plants likely wasn't behind the extinctions. Rather, he thinks humans who arrived in Australia around this time had something to do with it. Other paleontologists disagree, citing evidence that climate change did play more of a role. For NPR News, I'm Ari Daniel. I'm Dave Mattingly, NPR News in Washington.