NPR News Now - NPR News: 10-28-2024 5PM EDT

Episode Date: October 28, 2024

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Anxious? This October, Shortwave is helping wrangle that fear, and the trick may have to do with horror movies. I feel more alive when I am in situations like this. Learn the surprising science to conquering fear when you subscribe now to Shortwave, the science podcast from NPR. Live from NPR. Live from NPR News in Washington, I'm Jack Spear. In the final week of the 2024 presidential race, Democrat Kamala Harris is making campaign stops in Michigan today.

Speaking at a semiconductor plant in Saginaw County, Harris said her administration would both reassess federal jobs requiring a college degree and make the U.S. even more preeminent in terms of technological innovation. What you are doing here on the ground makes real that investing in American industries and investing in American workers can happen at the same time. There doesn't have to be a tension between the two. That doing this work will also be about understanding, look, we got to win the competition for the 21st century. We're not gonna have China beat us in the competition for the 21st century.

The facility Harris toured, Hemlock Semiconductor recently received a $325 million federal grant for a new factory. Democratic Vice Presidential candidate Tim Walz is in Wisconsin today. Former President Donald Trump is campaigning in Atlanta fresh off the latest controversy surrounding his campaign. At a rally last night at Madison Square Garden, a comedian made racist and offensive comments, Tony Hinchcliffe referring to Puerto Rico as quote, a floating island of garbage. Trump is in Atlanta, Georgia tonight and is set to speak to reporters tomorrow at Mar

Longo. Iran has executed an Iranian-German journalist and software engineer for terrorism, a charge his family strongly denies, as NPR's Jackie Northam explains. The execution came two days after Israel launched retaliatory strikes on Iran. In 2020, Iranian security forces kidnapped Jamshid Sharmad as he was traveling through Dubai. He was brought back to Iran and convicted for allegedly taking part in the 2008 bombing of a mosque and for being a leader of a group aiming to topple Iran's government. At the time, the

68-year-old was a permanent resident of the U.S. and living in California. Iran's judiciary website called Sharmad a criminal terrorist. The charges against him were never backed up with documentary evidence. The State Department had no comment about Sharmad's case, but a spokesman said the U.S. has long opposed the way Iran carries out executions. According to human rights groups, Iran has executed more than 560 people this year. Jackie Northam, NPR News. No information on the economy this week. NPR's Scott Horsley reports.

The Commerce Department reports this week on how much the U.S. economy grew in July, August and September. We'll also learn how many jobs employers added in October. The monthly jobs report is expected to show some temporary weakness as a result of the Boeing strike and damage from hurricanes in the southeast. Quarter-pounders are going back on the menu at hundreds of McDonald's restaurants after a brief suspension of sales due to an E. coli outbreak. Slivered onions on the burgers are the suspected culprit. The fast food chain is set to report quarterly earnings tomorrow. Scott Horsley, NPR News, Washington.

Stocks gain ground on Wall Street today. This is NPR. Conclave, a movie about the Vatican, did surprisingly well at the box office in its opening weekend. NPR's Bob Bundell has details. It's not racy or scary like the Venom and Smile sequels that topped the box office list this weekend, but Conclave is definitely aimed at adults, both in subject matter, cardinals voting for a new pope, and in a pro. This is a conclave, it's not a war.

It is a war. And you have to commit to a side. Seniors have been slow to commit to cinema since the start of the pandemic, but almost half of Conclave's audience is 55 or older. That's a rarity in a movie that cracks the top 10. And with $6.5 million in the till, Conclave, at number three, is in only about half as many theaters as the films that beat it. With the Dodgers-Yankees World Series siphoning audiences away, Hollywood's

weekend as a whole was lackluster in North America, though results overseas were stronger. Bob Mandelo, NPR News. Uncrustables, those round white bread, peanut butter and jelly sandwiches are now a billion dollar business. That's according to parent company J.M. Smucker which says the sandwiches are so popular company now plans to open a third US plant to produce them next year. Uncrustables which have a hungry and devoted following among NFL football players almost failed to take off. Smucker says after the company bought the brand it lost money for more than a decade as it sought to figure out how to mass produce

the pillowy peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. Crude old futures prices took a tumble today down more than 6% after Saturday's retaliatory strike by Israel against Iran bypassed oil facilities. Oil fell to $67.38 a barrel. I'm Jack Spear in PR News in Washington.