NPR News Now - NPR News: 12-11-2024 4AM EST

Episode Date: December 11, 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, I'm Giles Snyder. As Syria begins a process toward a new form of government following the ouster of Bashar al-Assad, the U.S. says it will support a new Syria that renounces terrorism and protects the rights of minorities and women.

NPR's Tom Bowman says Syria's stockpile of chemical weapons are a major concern. A senior administration official told reporters yesterday the US has a pretty good idea where many of these chemical sites are and it's something quote we're very focused on. And the top US officer who oversees the region, General Eric Carilla, is now traveling there and I'm told that's something he'll discuss with his counterparts in Jordan and Israel. Secretary of State Antony Blinken says the transition process must ensure that any chemical or biological weapons are safely destroyed. The man charged in the fatal shooting of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson appeared in court in Pennsylvania Tuesday,

a day after he was arrested at a McDonald's restaurant in Altoona. Luigi Mangione was denied bail and his lawyer says he will oppose extradition to New York. More details meanwhile emerging about Mangione but little about his mental health as MPR's Katie Ariddle reports. 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. Wisconsin prosecutors have filed 10 additional felony charges against three people who advised President-elect Donald Trump to submit a slate of false electors in the state, even though president Biden won there in 2020. My own silver, member station, WWWM report. Two former Trump attorneys, Jim Trupis 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. 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 the scheme is also before courts in four other states. You're listening to NPR News. A federal bankruptcy judge has rejected

the sale of Alex Jones's Infowars platform to the Onion satirical news outlet. The Onion was named the winner of an auction last month over a company affiliated with Jones, but the judge says the Onion's offer and the process was flawed. The decision is a win for Alex Jones, who is embroiled in a long legal battle with relatives of the victims of the 2012 Sandy Hook school shooting. A new report finds that the number of billionaires in India has more than doubled over the last 10 years.

NPR's Amkar Khandekar reports that the Indian economy's growth is uneven as the country has one of the highest gaps between the rich and the poor. The latest billionaire ambitions report by UBS Bank says reforms introduced by the Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi helped double the number of billionaires in India to 185 over the past decade. It says India's billionaires now have the third highest total wealth of any country after the US and China. Modi's reputation as a business friendly leader has often come under criticism from the opposition

Congress party, who accuse him of colluding with India's billionaires, particularly the chairman of the Adani Group. Earlier this year, the research group World Inequality Lab found that income inequality in India today is worse than what it used to be when the country was a British colony over 70 years ago. Omkar Khandekar, NPR News, Mumbai. used to be when the country was a British colony over 70 years ago. Omkar Khandekar, NPR News, Mumbai.