NPR News Now - NPR News: 11-26-2024 7PM EST

Episode Date: November 27, 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 in Washington, I'm Jack Spear. Israel and Lebanon's Hezbollah militants are agreeing to a U.S. brokered ceasefire if it holds it would be the first such longer-term agreement to be reached since the wars with Israel, Gaza and Lebanon erupted last October.

MPR's Lauren Fraves in Beirut has more on the deal. This is a 60-day truce in which Israel will withdraw its ground troops from Lebanon, halt airstrikes. Hezbollah will move its fighters and weapons north of the Latani River. That's about 20 miles away from the Israeli border. The Lebanese army will deploy alongside United Nations peacekeepers who are already in the area of southern Lebanon. An international committee will monitor implementation of this.

President Joe Biden said his administration also intends to make a renewed push for a ceasefire in Gaza. Texas Governor Greg Abbott and President-elect Trump's picks for U.S. border czar Tom Homan traveled to Texas border towns where they visited national guard troops and public safety officers. Texas Public Radio's Gabriella Alcortes-Solario reports. The pair traveled to the border towns

to serve the troops Thanksgiving meals. Holman said mass deportation will be happening and praised Abbott on his work to secure the border. We've got a mass number of people, millions of people, who will get a final order and be ordered removed. If we don't do it, what is the option? Let them stay? Because if you let them stay, you'll never fix the border. He added that the nation has had enough of crime connected to immigration, and he feels Trump's planned deportation policy will bring crime down.

I'm Gabriela Alcorta Solorio in San Antonio. MPR has reported immigrants are less likely to commit crimes in U.S.-born Americans, according to a number of studies. The Biden administration is out with a proposal that would require Medicare and Medicaid to cover the cost of popular weight loss drugs like Ozempic and Wigovie. NPR's Windsor Johnston reports the plan could put the pressure on the incoming Trump administration. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services says 22% of people with Medicare had a diagnosis of obesity in 2022.

John Colley is a professor of economics and public policy at Cornell University. He says it's an expensive proposal, but can end up being more cost effective in the long run. By preventing and reducing obesity, you can improve people's health. There are a certain degree of cost offsets, meaning that you avoid certain medical expenditures

in the future. The Department of Health and Human Services estimates that the proposal would add $25 billion in Medicare costs and $11 billion for Medicaid over the next 10 years. Windsor-Johnston, NPR News. In the name of the fact it's the time that at least some retailers boost themselves out of the red with a rush of year-end profits. Shopping holiday known as Black Friday is this week, where the sales that used to focus on midnight mall sales and door busters are no longer the events they once were. That's because so many people now shop online. On Wall Street the Dow rose 123 points. This is NPR.

Russia is said to be continuing its extensive use of drones in its war against Ukraine, with the Ukrainian Air Force saying Russia launched Russia is said to be continuing its extensive use of drones in its war against Ukraine, with the Ukrainian Air Force saying Russia launched 188 drones against most regions of the country overnight. Officials say it's a record number of drones deployed in a single attack. The Ukraine's Air Force says most of the drones were intercepted, though some apartment buildings and critical infrastructure, including the power grid, were damaged. Russia has increasingly been hammering Ukraine with drone strikes as well as missile and

glide bomb attacks. Electric automaker Rivian has had to receive a $6.6 billion loan from the U.S. Department of Energy to restart construction of its new Georgia manufacturing plant east of Atlanta. However, as Marlon Hyde from WABE reports, the loan is not finalized and whether it goes through may depend on President-elect Donald Trump. The DOE is helping Rivian complete its Georgia manufacturing plant with a multi-billion dollar lifeline. U.S. Senator John Ossoff says the state offered incentives to bring the company here and there

was a real risk that this project might not have restarted. And that the billions of dollars of Georgia taxpayer dollars that had been committed by the state of Georgia to support this project could have gone to waste. Rivian says the loan is a conditional commitment and it is not finalized. If approved, the plant is expected to create 7,500 jobs through 2030 with vehicle production starting in 2028. For NPR News, I'm Marlon Hyde in Atlanta. Critical futures prices moved lower, extending yesterday's losses amid uncertainty as to whether Mideast ceasefire will lessen risk.

Oil was down 17 cents a barrel to end the session at 68.77 a barrel in New York. I'm Jack Spear, NPR News in Washington.