NPR News Now - NPR News: 01-13-2025 8PM EST

Episode Date: January 14, 2025

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This is Eric Glass. In this American life, sometimes we just show up somewhere, turn on our tape recorders, and see what happens. If you can't get seven cars in 12 days, you gotta look yourself in the mirror and say, holy, what are you kidding me? Like this car dealership, trying to sell its monthly quota of cars, and it is not going well. I just don't want one balloon to a car. Balloon the whole freaking place so it looks like I'm circus. Real life stories every week. Live from NPR News in Washington, I'm Janene Hurst. In Los Angeles, firefighters

battling the two biggest blazes are worried about winds that are predicted to pick up again. The National Weather Service is forecasting wind gusts up to 70 miles an hour through Wednesday. LA Fire Chief Kristen Crowley. As this wind event continues, we urge the public to stay diligent, to stay ready, as the danger has absolutely not passed. Please adhere to any evacuation warning and orders immediately. The blazes have left at least 24 people dead,

with dozens listed as missing and thousands of homes and businesses destroyed. Cal Fire says more than 40,000 acres have burned and forced about 150,000 people to evacuate. The cause of the fires remain under investigation. Containment of the Palisades Fire is still just 14 percent and officials say it's spreading toward Brentwood. Meanwhile, older people in Los Angeles are especially vulnerable as wildfires continue to burn. Kelly McEvers has more from a Red Cross shelter where many older people evacuated

after the Palisades fire, the largest and most destructive one. Sarah James is 76. She's worried that she's so sleep deprived, she's stopped making sense. I close my eyes and think that I'll go to sleep instead of they pop open in 20 minutes and I'm wide awake. Her cop mate at the shelter, Francoise Myra, who's 64, says she's pretty sure her house is gone. She doesn't even know where to start to rebuild her life. She's having trouble logging into her accounts.

My password book is in ashes at home. I wrote it all down. My password book was like two inches thick. Volunteers here say older people who were already struggling with physical and mental health are struggling even more now. For NPR News, I'm Kelly McEvers in Los Angeles. The U.S. Supreme Court is refusing to hear a challenge brought by the state of Utah over control of millions of acres of federal land. Empires Kirk Sigler reports the case could have allowed the transfer of sale of some of those public lands.

Utah's case was always considered a long shot. A litany of prior court rulings has upheld the federal government's right to own and manage federal public lands in the West. But the current court's willingness to overturn precedent had legal experts saying Utah could have a shot. State Republican leaders who filed the suit say they're disappointed, but add they think federal land managers under the incoming Trump administration will be more favorable to the concerns of locals.

Coal and oil and gas companies have accused the Biden administration of being too restrictive. Environmental groups say the Supreme Court's refusal will ensure that federal public lands in the West aren't sold off to developers. Kirk Sigler, NPR News. U.S. futures contracts are trading higher at this hour. You're listening to NPR News from Washington. Special counsel David Weiss is slamming President Joe Biden for pardoning his son Hunter on the grounds that the prosecution was politically motivated. Weiss says that's a baseless accusation. The Justice Department released Weiss's final

report on his years-long investigation of criminal allegations against Hunter today. Hunter Biden was convicted in June of federal gun charges for lying about his addiction to crack cocaine when he purchased a gun. Three months later, he entered a guilty plea to tax offenses for failing to pay at least $1.4 million in federal taxes. Sentencing was expected in December in both cases. Scientists in Switzerland have developed batteries powered by fungi. MPR's Ruth Sherlock reports on this new breakthrough in which fungi generate electricity. The fungal batteries are made using a 3D printer.

Scientists at the Swiss research institution EMPER mixed printing ink with fungal cells. They combined two types of fungi, yeast fungus and white rot fungus, whose metabolisms together cause the right chemical reactions to generate electricity. The batteries are biodegradable. Rather than leaving behind toxic waste as most conventional batteries do, once these are spent they digest themselves from the inside. For now, the amount of energy they generate is small. The scientists say they could supply power to sensors for agriculture or research in

remote regions. Now the scientists are focusing on making the battery more powerful and long lasting. Ruth Sherlock, NPR News, Rome. And I'm Janine Herbst, NPR News in Washington. What's in store for the music, TV and film industries for 2025? NPR News in Washington.