NPR News Now - NPR News: 12-11-2024 10AM EST

Episode Date: December 11, 2024

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Live from NPR News in Washington on Korova Coleman, stocks opened mixed this morning as the latest inflation data came out in line with expectations. NPR's Scott Horsley reports the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell about 10 points in early trading. Headline inflation was a little bit higher in November than the month before, but probably not high enough to alarm policymakers at the Federal Reserve. Investors still expect the central bank to lower interest rates by a quarter percentage point when policymakers meet next week.

The Fed may be cautious, however, about additional rate cuts in the coming year. Inflation is still higher than the Fed's 2 percent target, and it's taking some time to bring prices under control. The Labor Department says prices in November were up 2.7 percent from a year ago. Prices rose three-tenths of a percent between October and November. Food, rent, new and used cars, and medical care all saw price increases during November. Scott Horsley in PR News, Washington.

The proposed merger between grocery store corporations Albertsons and Kroger is now off for good. A day after two separate courts temporarily blocked the merger, Albertsons pulled the plug and then announced it's suing Kroger. Albertsons alleges Kroger did not do enough to get regulatory approval for the deal. Government regulators had objected saying consumers would pay higher prices if the two rivals merged. Prosecutors in Wisconsin filed additional felony counts against three people who advised Donald Trump to submit a slate of false electors in Wisconsin following the 2020 presidential election. From member station WUWM, Mayon Silver reports, 10 more charges have been added. Two former Trump attorneys, Jim Troupis and Kenneth Chesbrough, along with Mike Romant, a Trump aide, had each been charged with a single felony forgery count in June.

The charge stemmed from their effort after the 2020 election to have 10 Republican electors in Wisconsin cast their ballots for Trump, despite the fact that Biden won the state. Defendants say they were keeping their options open in case the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Trump's favor in a lawsuit challenging the Wisconsin vote after the election.S. Supreme Court ruled in Trump's favor in a lawsuit challenging the Wisconsin vote after the election. Despite that, the Wisconsin Department of Justice hit each of them with the additional felony forgery charges, one for each attempted elector. Litigation related to this scheme is also before courts in four other states.

For NPR News, I'm Ayaan Silver in Milwaukee. South Korea's former defense minister is in stable condition. He attempted suicide while he was in detention. NPR's Anthony Kuhn reports from Seoul he's being investigated for insurrection. Police at a detention center stopped Kim Yong-hyun when they discovered him trying to take his own life. Kim is believed to have played a key role in last week's failed attempt to put the country under martial law. Police, meanwhile, raided President Yun Sung-yol's office in search of evidence, but were blocked by the president's security detail. NPR's Anthony Kuhn reporting from Seoul. You're listening to NPR.

It's been four days since Syrian President Bashar al-Assad fled his country and his regime collapsed. Rebel groups that seize the capital, Damascus, have already formed a transitional government. Many of them are Islamist leaders who ran the opposition in the province of Idlib. Many Syrian families are looking for loved ones who disappeared into Syrian prisons and detention centers. Meanwhile, the Israeli military has conducted many airstrikes on Syrian sites. It says it wants to prevent Syria's arsenal of chemical weapons from falling into the

wrong hands. More details are emerging about the alleged shooter and the killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, but little has been revealed about the shooter's mental health. And Pierre's Katie Ariddle has more. Katie Ariddle, Journalist, The New York Times, New York Times, New York Times, New York Times been revealed about the shooter's mental health, and Piers Kadia Riddle has more. Mental health and gun violence are often talked about in the same category in the United States, but many experts are quick to point out that people with mental health disorders are not significantly more likely to commit violent crimes than the rest of the population. Jeffrey

Swanson studies this topic at Duke University. He says access to mental health care and gun violence are both things that need to be addressed. They're two separate, different, complicated public health problems that intersect just on their edges. Swanson says far more likely predictors of violence are access to guns and history of violent behavior. Katie Ariddle, NPR News. The federal government is proposing to list the monarch butterfly as a threatened species. Scientists say the butterfly's numbers have fallen in recent decades because of climate

change and loss of habitat. This is NPR.