NPR News Now - NPR News: 11-11-2024 11PM EST

Episode Date: November 12, 2024

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Support for this podcast and the following message come from Autograph Collection Hotels, with over 300 independent hotels around the world, each exactly like nothing else. Autograph Collection is part of the Marriott Bonvoy portfolio of hotel brands. Find the unforgettable at autographcollection.com. Live from NPR News, I'm Giles Snyder. President-elect Donald Trump is expected to name Florida Senator Marco Rubio as his top diplomat, NPR's Claudia Grisales reports. A source familiar with the Trump team's plans told NPR that Florida Senator Marco Rubio

would get the nod to be the country's next Secretary of State. Rubio, the son of Cuban immigrants, was first elected to the U.S. Senate in 2010. If confirmed, Rubio could serve as the highest-ranking Latino in the Trump administration. He would also become the first Latino secretary of state in the country's history. Rubio was once Trump's political nemesis, running against him for the Republican presidential nomination in 2016. He has since become a key Trump ally and was also considered to be Trump's running mate before another Senator, Ohio's JD Vance, was chosen for that role.

Claudia Grisales, NPR News, Washington. Senator Rubio's name is the latest on a growing list of those joining Donald Trump's administration, including Florida Congressman Mike Waltz as national security adviser. To Pennsylvania now, all the thousands of last-minute challenges to mail in ballot by far-right activists and Republican state lawmakers have either been withdrawn or rejected, as NPR's Hansi Lo Wang reports. Election officials in 15 Pennsylvania counties received more than 4,400 challenges against voters mail-in ballot applications,

most of them days before election day. NPR's confirmed around 77% of those challenges were withdrawn by right-wing activists and two Republican state lawmakers by last Thursday. To voter Christine Dax, whose ballot application was challenged. The timing underscores these objections were baseless. It's especially enraging because now that their preferred candidate has won. Now it's all gone away. It's all no big deal.

Business as usual. Hope everyone forgets, but I haven't forgotten. Definitely won't be forgetting that and public hearing. Some challenges said they were concerned about how overseas voters are entered into Pennsylvania's

voter registration system. County officials say they've been following state and federal laws. Hansi Luong, NPR News. Firefighters making progress on a 20,000 acre wildfire burning northwest of Los Angeles. A mountain fire has destroyed or damaged more than 200 buildings as Lance Orozco, member station KCLU reports. The nearly 3,000 firefighters battling Ventura County's mountain fire got a break over the weekend with the Santa Ana

wind stopping. National Weather Service meteorologist Ryan Walburn says a passing storm system could create another weaker wind event this week. There's no indication for the next week or so that we would see anything of the magnitude that occurred when this fire started. Kathleen Scott lost her home in Camarillo as she sifts through the debris. She says she's just grateful that no one died in the inferno. It's a miracle that people got out. Things are just things, you know. For NPR News, I'm Lance

Zyrosko in Thousand Oaks, California. This is NPR. Crews are not only fighting flames on the west coast, multiple small fires are burning in the Northeast, where a blaze in New York and New Jersey killed a park's employee over the weekend. That fire is one of several burning on the East Coast amid a lack of rain since September. Web Summit, Europe's largest annual tech event, has opened in Lisbon with the first of a series of debates on artificial intelligence. As Alison Roberts reports, businesses are considering what the incoming Trump administration

will mean for the sector. Of 3,000 startups registered at Web Summit this year, a record 44% have a female founder or co-founder, according to organizers. They're all chasing investors, something a number of last year's start-up program participants did successfully in the months that followed. This year's event features speakers from larger companies too, including several from the US that pulled out last year after Web Summit's founder, Paddy Cosgrave, accused Israel of war crimes in Gaza on social media.

After stepping aside for a short while, he's back overseeing an event that covers the social and political implications of tech as much as the latest hardware and software. For NPR News, I'm Alison Roberts in Lisbon. Japan's benchmark Nikkei is rising in Tuesday trading after Wall Street held on to gains from the surge in stocks that followed Donald Trump's election victory last week. The Dow closed up 0.7% on Monday, and both the S&P 500 and the NASDAQ added 0.1%. Bitcoin, the world's largest cryptocurrency, finished at a record high. I'm Joel Snyder, NPR News. This message comes from Deal.

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