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

Episode Date: November 20, 2024

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Hey, it's Aisha Harris from Pop Culture Happy Hour. If you love NPR podcasts, you'll want the new NPR Plus podcast bundle. Enjoy an all-you-can-eat selection of NPR Plus podcasts with sponsor-free listening and bonus episodes. Plus, you'll be supporting public radio. Check it out at plus.npr.org. Live from NPR News in Washington, I'm Jack Spear. The House Ethics Committee was deadlocked about whether to release its report on Trump's

attorney general nominee Matt Gaetz. NPR's Deidre Walsh reports on the debate about allegations of sex trafficking by the former House Republican. House Ethics Committee Chairman Michael Guest told reporters after a closed-door meeting about their probe, At this point there has been no agreement to release the report. The Ethics Panel investigated Gates for allegations of paying for sex, including with a minor, and doing illegal drugs.

He resigned his seat just before the committee was set to consider its report. The top Democrat on the panel, Congresswoman Susan Wilde, said after guests spoke to reporters she wanted to clarify there was a vote, no member crossed party lines, and there was no consensus. The members did agree to meet again on December 5th. Gates, who insists he's done nothing wrong, spent the day meeting with Republican members of the Senate Judiciary panel, who will lead the confirmation process. Deirdre Walsh, NPR News, The Capitol.

New data show that about one in eight public school students in New York City did not have a permanent housing facility within the past year. NPR's Winsor Johnston reports the city is struggling to ease the ongoing housing crisis, a problem that did not begin with the current influx of migrants. State data show more than 200,000 migrants have come to New York City since 2022, with

the majority arriving from Latin America. Christine Quinn is the CEO of Wynn, the city's largest operator of homeless shelters. This number is not being driven exclusively by the number of migrants who have come into New York City. I think it's easy to almost write it off as that. A portion of this number is about the number of migrants, maybe 20%. Mayor Eric Adams has discouraged migrants from settling in New York City, warning that there's no guarantee that they would receive shelter or other services.

Windsor-Johnston NPR News. Cable company Comcast says it will spin off many of its networks that were once at the center of the entertainment giant's offerings. It comes as people are increasingly trading their cable TV subscriptions for streaming services like Netflix and Hulu. Comcast will spin off USA, Oxygen, eSciFi and golf channels, as well as CNBC and MSNBC. Target stores missed the mark in the most recent earnings report. NPR's Scott Horsley has more. Stock in Target slumped after the retailer

reported disappointing earnings for the most recent quarter and offered a conservative forecast for the Christmas shopping season. The news was a marked contrast with rival retailer Walmart, which reported better than expected results on Tuesday. Target has been cutting prices on groceries and other essentials in an effort to lure shoppers but the chain says customers are cautious about spending on more discretionary items such as home goods. Scott Horsley, Impair News, Washington. On Wall Street, the Dow is up 139 points today.

You're listening to NPR. A co-founder of the collapsed cryptocurrency exchange FTX was sentenced today to no jail time. Gary Wang, who testified for three days at the trial of FTX head Sam Bankman Fried, was praised by the judge for his cooperation in the case. Wang was the chief technology officer at the company, whose collapse was one of the biggest in U.S. history. Collapse of the cryptocurrency exchange cost customers upwards of $8 billion.

32-year-old Bankman Fried is now serving a 25-year prison sentence imposed by the judge after a jury last year found him guilty of stealing customer money to prop up his Alameda Research hedge fund. A closer look at the shell of a kind of mollusk has revealed its architecture in detail. Science reporter Ari Daniels says the design allows the animal to channel sunlight inwards. The mollusk in question is a clam-like creature called a heart cockle. Heart because they look like a heart shape. Some of the shells, they look like stained glass windows.

Dakota McCoy is a biologist at the University of Chicago. She and her colleagues found that tiny windows in the shells stream sunlight into their interiors, which the algae that live inside use to photosynthesize. McCoy observed that the mineral crystals of the shell are organized into long super narrow fibers similar to fiber optic cables. She says the shell could inspire designs for cameras with minuscule lenses and improve current fiber optic cable technology. For NPR News, I'm Ari Daniel.

Critical futures prices settled lower today after a larger than expected rise in stock piles oiled down 52 cents a barrel to $68.87 a barrel. I'm Jack Spear, NPR News in Washington.