NPR News Now - NPR News: 11-23-2024 9PM EST

Episode Date: November 24, 2024

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Support for NPR comes from NPR member stations and Eric and Wendy Schmidt through the Schmidt Family Foundation, working toward a healthy, resilient, secure world for all on the web at theschmidt.org. Live from NPR News in Washington, I'm Janene Herbst. President-elect Donald Trump today nominated Brooke Rawlins as Secretary of the Department of Agriculture. She served as the Director of the Domestic Policy Council in his first administration. Trump also tapped billionaire investor Scott Vesant as his Treasury Secretary. That's a position with widespread responsibilities in economic, regulatory, and international affairs. Empire Scott Horsley has more.

He'll probably get a friendly reception from the new GOP Congress if he's confirmed. One of his first jobs will be getting an extension of Trump's 2017 tax cuts, parts of which are set to expire next year. He'll likely be pushing on an open door when it comes to cutting taxes, although that would probably add to the federal debt, which we learned just yesterday has now surpassed $36 trillion. Danielle Pletka And Pierre Scott Horsley reporting. Trump is also promising to deport millions of migrants during his upcoming term, and there's growing concern that that would threaten the $106 billion construction industry in Texas. Julian Aguilar reports from El Paso. Julian Aguilar Veronica Carrasco, an undocumented immigrant

from Honduras, has worked as a painter for a home remodeling company in Mesquite, Texas, for 12 years. It makes me frustrated and worried. I'm a single mom. I have three children. Some economists and industry leaders are worried too. Housing would disappear. I think they'd lose half their labor. That's Stan Merrick, the CEO of Merrick, a Houston-based commercial and residential construction giant. In 2022, more than a half million immigrants worked in the Texas construction industry, according to a report by the American Immigration Council. Almost 60% of that workforce was undocumented. For NPR News, I'm Julian Aguilar in El Paso.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says few people have been vaccinated against flu or COVID-19 as the holiday season approaches. NPR's Rob Stein has more. The CDC says only about one-third of adults have gotten this year's flu shot and less than 18 percent have gotten one of the new COVID boosters. As for the new RSV vaccine, only 40% of adults ages 75 and older have gotten that recommended shot. There isn't a lot of flu or RSV right now and the COVID numbers are still falling from this summer's big surge, but all those viruses could pick up quickly as people start to travel and gather for Thanksgiving in the winter holidays. Rob Stein in PR News.

Amazon says it's investing another $4 billion in the artificial intelligence startup Anthropic amid the ongoing battle to lead the AI future in the Silicon Valley. The additional money brings Amazon's total investment to $8 billion. Anthropic is the company behind Claude, a chatbot like OpenAI. The money pouring into AI Ventures is fueling a search for the next chat GPT. This is NPR News. Tens of thousands of Spaniards marched in Barcelona today protesting the skyrocketing cost of renting an apartment in the popular tourist destination.

Protesters cut off traffic on main avenues in the city center. The lack of affordable housing has become one of the leading concerns for the southern EU country, mirroring the housing crunch across many parts of the world, including the U.S. The average rent for Spain has doubled in the last decade. In cities like Barcelona, rental prices have also been driven up by short-term renters, including tourists. A team in the UK says it's approximated King Richard III's voice with 90% accuracy. And fierce Catherine Fink has more. It all started 12 years ago when Richard III's skeleton was found underneath a parking lot in England.

Turns out a person's skeleton can tell us a lot about what they sounded like. We can predict the likely pitch range of a voice from a skeleton. Vocal coach Yvonne Morley Chisholm assembled a team of doctors, linguists, actors, and forensic psychologists to recreate Richard III's voice. It's a tall order for someone who's been dead for over five centuries But they found clues everywhere his upbringing his spelling even his scoliosis And now a digital avatar is on display in England where you can hear the king in his own words and His own voice or something close to it Catherine Fink, NPR News. The English king is known mostly these days as an iconic villain in a Shakespeare play.

I'm Janine Hurst, NPR News. This message comes from WISE, the app for doing things in other currencies. Send, spend, or receive money internationally, and always get the real-time mid-market exchange rate with no hidden fees. Download the Wyse app today or visit wyse.com, T's and C's apply.