NPR News Now - NPR News: 01-16-2025 6PM EST

Episode Date: January 16, 2025

NPR News: 01-16-2025 6PM ESTLearn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

This message comes from NPR sponsor Paramount Pictures' new film, September 5. Based on the true story of reporters covering the Munich Olympics, when the unthinkable happens, four outsiders will report from the inside, now playing in select theaters everywhere January 17. Live from NPR News in Washington, I'm Jack Spear. The country's wealthiest tech titans will sit close to President-elect Donald Trump as he takes his oath of office Monday. NPR's Luke Garrett reports they include Tesla CEO Elon Musk, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, and OpenIAA CEO Sam Altman. A source familiar with the planning tells NPR the tech billionaires will sit on the

inaugural platform on the west front of the U.S. Capitol. Musk, Bezos, and Zuckerberg are the world's three wealthiest people with a combined net worth of nearly $940 billion, according to Forbes. Musk spent $250 million to help Trump's campaign. Following Trump's victory, Silicon Valley CEOs have met with the president-elect and contributed to his inauguration fund. During his farewell address, President Joe Biden said, quote, An oligarchy is taking shape in America. Luke Garrett, NPR News, Washington. SpaceX's giant Starship rocket has blasted off the pad from the company's South Texas

launch site at its most complicated test flight to date. The booster from the huge rocket then returning back to Earth where it was caught by a giant mechanical arm or arms, key to reusability of the rocket. Starship will orbit the Earth and land in the Indian Ocean. Today's liftoff marked the seventh test of Starship, which company founder and CEO, Lon Musk, hopes will one day take astronauts to Mars. Calmer winds in Los Angeles today as officials hope the worst is over in the battle against raging wildfires there.

Steve Futterman reports. Officials here are beginning to sound more optimistic. The two major fires, the Palisades and Eaton fires, continue to burn but they have essentially stopped spreading and with very light winds, fire crews are making significant progress. Still those who live in mandatory evacuation areas are not likely to return home soon, LA County Fire Chief Anthony Morrone. The repopulation of residents will not occur for at least one more week. And there could be more problems ahead.

With the fires leaving hillside areas barren, there are warnings of potential mudslides when the areas are hit with winter rains. For NPR News, I'm Steve Futterman in Los Angeles. Filmmaker David Lynch has died. CalNor reports Lynch will be remembered for his surreal style of storytelling. David Lynch told American stories that were dreamlike and dark. His 1990s TV series Twin Peaks was about a murdered prom queen. His films included Blue Velvet, Wild at Heart, and Mulholland Drive.

Lynch told NPR in 2007 he followed one rule. Stay true to your own voice. That seems to be the best you can do. In the early 1980s, Lynch wrote and directed a version of Dune. Lynch did not get the final cut in his contract and hated the end result. David Lynch said he learned the hard way to always have creative control. For NPR News, I'm Kyle Norris. This is NPR. Virginia Woolf, the 20th century modernist writer known for novels like Mrs. Dalloway in Orlando was also a poet.

That's according to a scholar who unearthed two of Wolfe's poems, and Piers-Andrew Lumbong has more. They're lighthearted and jokey poems, one dedicated to her nephew, Quentin, the other titled after her niece, Angelica. The name was lazy and lovely, but the name was not the whole of her. There was the body and the soul of her. That's Sophie Oliver, lecturer of modernism at the University of Liverpool. She found the poems at an archival library in Texas in a box of letters Wolfe sent to her niece. Oliver says the poems offer a more complete picture of what Virginia Wolfe was actually like.

Because they're hastily drafted, because there's this kind of intimacy, this quietness about them that they're supposed to be sort of, you know, just a gift, an offering to people that she was close to. While they probably won't win any poetry awards, we now know a bit more about Wolf as a poet and an aunt. Andrew Limbong, NPR News. It doesn't appear to be getting any cheaper to come up with the money to buy a home heading into the new year, not only due to home prices, which are still stubbornly high, but borrowing costs are also elevated based on the latest numbers. Average interest rate on a 30-year mortgage again moved above 7% this week, the first time it's gone above that level since May of last year. Even small moves in mortgage rates can add hundreds of

dollars to the monthly cost of financing a home. Crudel futures prices fell $1.36 a barrel following stocks lowered today, oil ending the session at $78.68 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange. I'm Jack Spear, NPR News in Washington.