NPR News Now - NPR News: 11-20-2024 6AM EST

Episode Date: November 20, 2024

NPR News: 11-20-2024 6AM ESTLearn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

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 in Washington, I'm Corva Coleman. The focus on Capitol Hill today will be on the House Ethics Committee and whether it will release its report on former Florida Congressman Matt Gaetz. He's President-elect Donald Trump's nominee for Attorney General.

NPR's Giles Snyder said senators are weighing in on the issue. The House Ethics Committee investigation into Gaetz is looming over the Senate Judiciary Committee which will hold Gaetz's confirmation hearings. Iowa Senator Chuck Grassley is set to lead the panel next year. He's calling for as much transparency as possible. The committee's current Democratic Chairman Dick Durbin of Illinois says Gates's move to resign from Congress last week was designed to stop the public release of the report. And Pierre's Giles Snyder reporting. A powerful storm system moving into the Pacific Northwest

has triggered winter storm warnings from Northern California to Idaho. Parts of Washington state just east of Seattle are in blizzard conditions. The strong winds north of Seattle knock down trees, killing at least one person. The system is funneling a lot of moisture into the region. From member station KQED, Ezra David Romero reports, Northern California could get a foot

of rain. The largest rain totals are expected in the next few days. Dial Hong, a meteorologist with the Weather Service's Bay Area Office, says a flood watch starts Wednesday. The soils will begin to saturate and small creeks and streams will begin to fill up. We will see flooding concerns increase through Friday and the weekend. Hong says the rain will likely begin to subside on Saturday. A foot or so of snow could fall on the highest elevations in the Sierra Nevada.

Hong says rainfall totals may be above the seasonal average for the rest of the month and into early December. For NPR News, I'm Ezra David Romero in San Francisco. The U.S. Embassy in Ukraine's capital is closed today. Employees are being told to shelter in place. There's concern about a possible Russian air attack. This comes after Ukraine fired seven U.S.-made long-range missiles into Russia yesterday, something Russia said was an escalation of the war. And NPR's Tom Bowman tells us Russia also changed its nuclear weapons policy yesterday.

Russia has lowered the threshold for the use of nuclear weapons. That means nuclear weapons could be used in the case of a conventional weapons attack on Russia, one that is, they say, a critical threat to sovereignty or its territorial integrity. Russia has been saying for some time that such long-range attacks would mean NATO is directly involved in the Ukraine war, indicating that Russia could hit NATO targets like, you know, stocks of weapons destined for Ukraine. But this change in Russian doctrine, you know, there were basically before this three reasons for the use of nuclear weapons, if such weapons are used against Russia, if there's a threat to regime survival, or if its army is surrounded.

NPR's Tom Bowman prepared that report. You're listening to NPR. Authorities in Brazil say they've arrested five police officers who were accused of plotting to kill President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and two other Brazilian government officials. The arrests came on the last day of the G20 summit in Rio de Janeiro. Officials say the officers' alleged plan to kill Lula and the others came after he won the presidential election in 2022. Four of the accused are members of the Brazilian military. The imprisoned Hong Kong media mogul Jimmy Lai has testified in his long-running trial. The Hong Kong billionaire

is accused of violating a national security law that was installed by China. And here's Emily Fang reports. Lai has been in prison for almost four years. His newspaper Apple Daily was shut down and filed for bankruptcy, and several of his executives and sons were also arrested. Now he's speaking at his own trial in which he's being charged with colluding with foreign forces and sedition.

At the stand, he appeared significantly thinner than before his detention. He said he'd had meetings with Taiwan's former president and numerous US officials, including former Vice President Mike Pence and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, but said he did not ask them to take concrete action against China. And Lai said he thought it was, quote, too crazy to even think about Hong Kong independence

from China. He's facing a no-jury trial presided over by three judges specially chosen for national security cases. Emily Fang andPR News. Police in South Carolina say they're still trying to capture four remaining monkeys that escaped from a research facility two weeks ago. They were part of 43 monkeys that made a break for it through an unlatched door. This is NPR.