NPR News Now - NPR News: 11-17-2024 1PM EST

Episode Date: November 17, 2024

NPR News: 11-17-2024 1PM ESTLearn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

This is Ira Glass with This American Life, each week on our show. We choose a theme, tell different stories on that theme. All right, I'm just going to stop right there. You're listening to an NPR podcast, chances are you know our show. So instead, I'm going to tell you, we've just been on a run of really good shows lately. Some big epic emotional stories, some weird funny stuff too. Download us, This American Life. Live from NPR News in Washington, I'm Nora Rahm. President-elect Donald Trump has wasted no time

in announcing his choices for his next administration. NPR's Mara Leysen reports some are considered questionable, including Tulsi Gabbard to be the Director of National Intelligence, Matt Gaetz for Attorney General, and Pete Hegsath for Defense. None of these three people has experience running large organizations like the Department of Defense or Justice or specific knowledge in these fields. And Tulsi Gabbard, for instance, is a Putin apologist.

Matt Gaetz is someone who's been under investigation by the House Ethics Committee for drug abuse and having sex with underage women. Pete Hegsath is a veteran and a Fox News weekend host. More has come to light about Hegseth's religious affiliation. NPR's Odette Youssef reports. Peter Hegseth is a veteran, perhaps best known for co-hosting a weekend show on Fox News. He often attacks diversity and inclusion initiatives, public education, and has said women should not have combat roles in the military.

As a professor of religious studies, Julie Ingersoll has looked at Hegseth's positions through the lens of his faith. She says he belongs to a Christian Reformation church that seeks to impose Old Testament biblical law across society. Julie Ingersoll- Certainly in keeping with the theological system and the culture that he supports, he sees his role in history and culture as bringing Christianity to bear on all of life across the globe. NPR attempted to reach Hegseth but did not hear back. Odette Youssef, NPR News. President Biden is visiting the Amazon rainforest today, the first sitting US.S. president to do so.

Later, he'll attend the G20 summit in Rio de Janeiro. Palestinian officials say dozens have been killed in an Israeli airstrike on a residential building that housed at least six families in northern Gaza. NPR's Ruth Sherlock reports. With much of northern Gaza cut off by the Israeli offensive against Hamas, Palestinian rescue workers are mostly unable to operate there. So there's little help for the wounded. And it's hard to get official figures of how many people died in the strike on this residential building in Beit Lahye in northern Gaza. Gaza officials say more than 70 people, six families, were sheltering in the building when it was hit.

Videos shared online of the site, not verified by NPR, show a gaping hole of broken concrete in a built-up area with damaged buildings all around. In a response to NPR, the Israeli military said overnight it conducted several strikes on what it called terrorist targets in the area. In recent weeks, fighting has intensified in North Gaza. As Israel says, Hamas has regrouped there.

The Israeli military says it's made continuous efforts to evacuate the civilian population from the active war zone. Ruth Sherlock, NPR News, Tel Aviv. This is NPR News in Washington. This is NPR News in Washington. A super typhoon that's been sweeping across the Philippines has made landfall in the main island of Luzon. The BBC's Simon Ponsford reports there have been evacuation orders for more than a million people. This is the sixth major storm to smash into the Philippines in the past month, and there are warnings it could be life-threatening. The super typhoon is battering the country's most populous island, Luzon, although the capital, Manila, where about 15 million people live, is not forecast to be in its path. The

government is worried that along with fierce winds, the storm will bring torrential rain and could cause flash floods and landslides. Hurricanes can have long-lasting eroding effects on coastlines. Gabrielle Dawkins of Houston Public Media spoke with a geologist who'd been monitoring the Texas coast. 80% of the coast is eroding, 80%. And the average rate for that is 1.27 meter per year. Shuhab Khan, professor of earth and atmosphericmospheric Sciences at the University of Houston, shared year-over-year statistics.

He says keeping a keen eye on the coast is a must, especially after hurricanes like Barrel earlier this year. Follett Island and from there on all the way to Sargent, there were a lot of damages. And then you go towards Metagodai, Decreeze, and finally Mustang and North Padre. We had minimal changes, if any. Khan says data being collected will help to quantify coastal erosion, track recovery process, and improve predictive models for storm damage. I'm Gabrielle Dawkins in Houston.

And I'm Nora Rahm, NPR News in Washington.