NPR News Now - NPR News: 11-27-2024 11AM EST

Episode Date: November 27, 2024

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The marketing for the movie Wicked has been inescapable. There's all the green and pink merch and Ariana Grande and Cynthia Erivo have been everywhere. But does the movie live up to the hype? We know you've been waiting for this one. We've seen Wicked and we have thoughts and we'll get to them all, including some weirdly heated opinions on defying gravity. Listen to the Pop Culture Happy Hour podcast from NPR. Live from NPR News in Washington, Ankurva Coleman, a truce between Israel and Lebanon,

took effect several hours ago. It's a 60-day ceasefire. During that time, Israel is to withdraw its troops from Lebanon and stop airstrikes there as well. Hezbollah fighters are supposed to move militants and weapons more than 20 miles away from the Israeli border. And B'Yath Lauren Freyer is in southern Lebanon and has more on the ceasefire. As for whether this is holding, it is. It apparently seems to be so far. There was one incident in which the Israeli military says it identified what it says were Hezbollah operatives returning to areas near the border.

It opened fire on them. That doesn't appear to have kicked off anything wider. NPR's Lauren Freyer reporting. President-elect Donald Trump's plan to impose 25 percent tariffs on Mexico and Canada and additional tariffs of 10 percent on China could upend the global trade industry. NPR's Windsor Johnston reports one expert suggests Trump is using international trade as a tool. Mark Wu is an international trade expert at Harvard University. He says the proposed tariffs are an ultimatum against the three largest trading partners

of the United States. The President-elect's recent remarks suggest that this is using trade as a bargaining chip to get at outcomes outside of international trade. So whether or not this is a good idea or not depends on whether or not he will succeed at getting to those desired outcomes. In a post on social media, Trump said the tariffs will go into effect on his first day in office and remain in place until Mexico, Canada, and China stop the flow of drugs and migrants into the U.S. Windsor-Johnston, NPR News, Washington.

This is one of the busiest travel days of the year in the U.S., the day before the Thanksgiving holiday. NPR's Joel Rose reports a shortage of air traffic controllers has caused ongoing flight delays at one airport in the Northeast. Hundreds of flights at Newark Liberty International Airport have been delayed in recent weeks because of an ongoing shortage of air traffic controllers in the New York area. Newark is a hub for United Airlines, which caused the disruptions there significant. United says the controller staffing shortages have led to delays and cancellations for more

than 340,000 passengers. The Federal Aviation Administration says it is trying to fix the longstanding staffing problems with Newark's airspace by relocating personnel from Long Island to Philadelphia. But the FAA acknowledges that staffing shortages in Newark may continue through the Thanksgiving holiday and beyond. Joel Rose, NPR News, Washington. The motoring club AAA predicts a record number of people will be traveling by air and automobile over this year's Thanksgiving holiday period. Six million people are expected to crowd the nation's airports this week. On Wall Street, the Dow Jones industrials are up about 35 points.

The Nasdaq is down 160. This is NPR. Forecasters say a blast of cold weather will dip into the central plains on Thanksgiving Day. The frigid weather will then spread south and east by Friday. The capital of South Korea has been socked by the biggest November snowstorm in decades. Meteorologists say up to 10 inches of snow have fallen on parts of Seoul. The Commerce Department says consumer prices accelerated last month. They rose at an annual rate of 2.3 percent. That's compared to the September report when prices were up 2.1 percent. Separately, the Commerce Department says the U.S. economy continued to expand in the third quarter of this year.

It increased by an annual rate of 2.8 percent, boosted by consumer spending. Researchers in Europe have published what could be the largest ever study of dinosaur poop. NPR's Jeff Brumfield reports the fossilized droppings provide clues about how they came to rule the earth. Everyone knows an asteroid killed the dinosaurs, but how did they come to dominate in the first place? Martin Kvarnstrom is a paleontologist at Uppsala University in Sweden.

We know a lot about the life and extinction of the dinosaurs, but not so much about the rise of the dinosaurs. To learn more, Kvarnström and his colleagues analyzed over 500 fossilized poops to see what they were eating. That's a lot of poop. They found that early dinosaurs had more diverse diets than other lizards alive at the time that probably helped them thrive during some major shifts in climate in the Triassic period. The work appears in the journal Nature.

Jeff Brumfield, NPR News. And I'm Korva Coleman, NPR News from Washington.