NPR News Now - NPR News: 01-12-2025 3AM EST

Episode Date: January 12, 2025

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Live from NPR News, I'm Dale Willman. Medical officials in Los Angeles say the death toll in the wildfires there has risen to 16. Firefighters are still struggling to control the blazes and to protect people's homes. Kevin Jordan lives in Altadena and returned there after an evacuation order was lifted. He lost his home, his money and his cat. Jordan says he's lived in the area. Pretty much my whole life, my whole life. But my mom and my family just moved places to places. But this was like the safest home I've ever been to. Flames meanwhile have now also reached into LA's Mandeville Canyon. The fires in Los Angeles

have already threatened or destroyed parts of the city's cultural landscape and as NPR's Chloe Veltman reports, the Getty Center is among the latest landmarks to be facing danger. The Getty Center issued evacuation orders on Friday. The famed art museum is currently open only to emergency staff. So far the property remains undamaged and the personnel safe. Trees and vegetation burned on Tuesday at the center's coastal sister museum, the Getty Villa. Collections and staff are unharmed. Micah Rogers is the Getty's director of facilities. We have a strong culture of safety within the institution. We think about emergencies and preparedness constantly. Other cultural landmarks have already been destroyed in these fires.

The casualties include the actor Will Rogers' 1920s ranch home at Will Rogers' State Historic Park, the Topanga Ranch motel once owned by William Randolph Hearst and the Zane Gray estate home to the great Western novelist Zane Gray. Chloe Valtman, NPR News. Just over a week before President-elect Donald Trump takes office, groups of House Republicans are visiting Mar-a-Lago this weekend for meetings. As NPR's Amy Held reports, the GOP is strategizing over just how to push through its meetings. As NPR's Amy Held reports, the GOP is strategizing over just how to push through its priorities. As they prepare to take the

trifecta of power in Washington, the GOP has a lot of issues they want to address like immigration and border security, tax and spending cuts, and they want Trump to weigh in on how to prioritize and structure them. He met with Republican senators on Capitol Hill earlier this week and said he cares less about process, more about results. We're looking at the one bill versus two bills and whatever it is, it doesn't matter, we're going to get the result. Not if Democrats have their way.

Republicans are considering tools to get around a filibuster, including the high-risk, high-reward reconciliation process that would allow for a simple majority to pass legislation. Amy Held, NPR News. Special Counsel Jack Smith has resigned his position from the Justice Department. Smith and his team this weekend completed a two-volume report that documented two investigations that the group made into President-elect Donald Trump. His resignation was announced on Saturday and comes as legal fighting continues over just how much of the report will be made public. You're listening to NPR News.

Ships that transport everything from coffee cups to clothes across the ocean are often so large, no one notices when they collide with a whale. But new research could help reduce those collisions, Northwest Public Broadcasting's Courtney Flatt explains. Whales often get killed by ocean-going ships. So research published in the journal Science combined worldwide shipping data with whale migration routes. The study looked at blue, humpback fin, and sperm whales. It found they're at risk all over. Sean Hastings, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, California,

California, California, California, wherever you have coastlines, port, and migratory animals is where you have this conflict. That's Sean Hastings. He's with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Hastings says voluntary programs off the California coast ask ships to slow down, and they've helped a lot. The study found most whale ship hot spots could be covered if the shipping industry put the brakes on 2.6 percent of the ocean's surface. For NPR News, I'm Courtney Flatt in Richland, Washington.

Ceasefire talks between Israel and Hamas are continuing this weekend in Qatar. In a sign of progress, the head of Israel's Mossad intelligence agency has been sent to those talks. There has been just one ceasefire in the 15 months of fighting. The U.S. is pressuring Israel to agree to another ceasefire before President-elect Donald Trump is inaugurated later this month. Media reports from Syria say the new government has stopped an attack by members of the Islamic State on a Shiite shrine in a Damascus suburb.

The shrine has been the site of past attacks on Shiite pilgrims. The report says that IS members were arrested as they were planning the attack. I'm Dale Willman, NPR News.