NPR News Now - NPR News: 01-16-2025 11AM EST

Episode Date: January 16, 2025

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Live from NPR News in Washington, on Korova Coleman, Senate confirmation hearings are underway for several of President-elect Trump's nominees. They include former Congressman Lee Zeldin. He's been tapped to be the next administrator for the Environmental Protection Agency. Zeldin says he is committed to upholding the EPA's mission of ensuring clean air and water. I will foster a collaborative culture within the agency, supporting career staff who have dedicated themselves to this mission. I strongly believe we have a moral responsibility

to be good stewards of our environment for generations to come. Other nominees with hearings today include billionaire money manager Scott Besant for Treasury Secretary, and Trump's pick for attorney general Pam Bondi is facing questions for a second day. Florida Senator Marco Rubio is expected to be

confirmed as the next Secretary of State. Florida Governor Ron DeSantis has just announced Rubio's successor as US Senator. He's tapped Florida Attorney General Ashley Moody for the job. A vote in the Israeli cabinet to implement a ceasefire agreement in Gaza has been delayed. As NPR's Kat Lonsdorf reports, that's after the deal's mediators, the U.S., Egypt and Qatar, announced an agreement had been struck. Israel says that Hamas has gone back on several parts of the agreement at the last minute, according to a statement from the prime minister's office.

It said that the prime minister has indefinitely postponed convening the cabinet to vote until all details are agreed upon. The deal has to be approved by Israel's government before a ceasefire can go into effect. In a statement on the group's Telegram channel, Hamas denied it had created obstacles, saying it was, quote, committed to the ceasefire agreement announced by the mediators.

Two far-right members of Netanyahu's cabinet have been very vocal about opposing the deal, threatening to leave the government if Israel agrees to it, a move that could topple Netanyahu's coalition. Kat Lonsdorf, NPR News, Tel Aviv. California fire officials say there is progress fighting some of the deadly Los Angeles area wildfires. The Eaton Fire in the Pasadena-Alta Dena area is now more than half contained. And Piers Kirk Siegler reports, researchers at UCLA say the wildfires are more catastrophic because of climate change.

UCLA climate scientists are linking climate change to the extreme dryness in the Chaparral Hills in and around Los Angeles. Their research shows that when the brush fires ignited last week, vegetation was 25 percent drier than it would have been without factoring in climate change. Scientists say these fires would have still been dangerous, but maybe not quite as big, or have seen the intensity or rapid growth. This marks a change in communication lately in the scientific community, which had shied

away from tying any one disaster to climate change. But scientists now are pinning specific events like heatwaves, hurricanes, and fires directly to rising global temperatures as a result of human activity. Kirk Ziegler, NPR News. On Wall Street, the Dow is down nearly 40 points. You're listening to NPR. A new study suggests that eating red meat in large quantities can increase your risk of dementia and cognitive decline.

Researchers published a study in the journal Neurology. They found that among the people they studied, those who ate three-quarters of an ounce of processed red meat at least once daily had a 13 percent higher risk of developing dementia – that's compared to people who ate a minimal amount. Replacing one serving of red meat daily with nuts and legumes was associated with a 19% lower risk of dementia. Ancient DNA has revealed that during the Iron Age, women in an ancient Celtic society were at the center of their social network, unlike previous eras.

Ari Daniel prepared this report. For much of human history, societies have been centered around kinship, so couples have had to decide whose community they're going to live with. Most of the time, it's been the man's, which is why researchers were surprised when they sequenced the ancient DNA of a burial site of a Celtic tribe dating from 100 BCE to 100 CE in what's now southern England. The group was related along the female line, meaning that the men had left their families to live with their wives' community.

Laura Cassidy is a geneticist at Trinity College Dublin. The women are embedded in a much wider network, so they have a much greater support system. The same thing was true among hundreds of Iron Age genomes from cemeteries across Britain, suggesting it's a custom dating back centuries. For NPR News, I'm Ari Daniel. And I'm Koriva Coleman, NPR News in Washington.