NPR News Now - NPR News: 12-11-2024 8PM EST

Episode Date: December 12, 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. FBI Director Christopher Wray made it official today, saying he intends to resign at the end of President Joe Biden's term next month.

Announcing his intention to step down, Wray said he wanted to, quote, avoid dragging the Bureau deeper into the fray and said the FBI needs to continue to focus on its mission. When you look at where the threats are headed, it is clear that the importance of our work protecting the American people and upholding the Constitution will not change. And what absolutely, positively cannot, must not change is our commitment to doing the

right thing in the right way every time. The announcement comes a week and a half after President-elect Donald Trump announced he'll nominate Loyalist Cash Patel for the job, despite the fact Ray has three more years left in his term. Ray stepped into the post in 2017 after then President Trump fired FBI Director James Comey. President-elect Trump's nominee to head the Department of Health and Human Services

has been outspoken about a number of policies he would like to change if he's confirmed. NPR's Windsor Johnston reports Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is taking aim at corn syrup and corn oil, arguing they promote obesity and a number of other health ailments. LORI GAUDETTE, NPR Reporter, NPR News. Corn is the most heavily subsidized crop in the United States, and import quotas keep the price of sugar artificially high. John Colley is a professor of health economics

at Cornell University. He says changing the regs might be difficult. Between the high price of sugar and the low price of corn, that has led to the substitution where it's not sugar in a lot of our Sweden products. If you were to remove that, you'd save the federal government a lot of money. You'd have a very angry, powerful interest group, which is the agribusiness lobby. Going after corn syrup and corn oil would pit the incoming administration against major interests in the Midwest, the largest producer of corn in the U.S. Windsor-Johnston, NPR News, Washington.

In Southern California, fire crews are starting to make progress against the fast-growing Franklin fire. Steve Futterman reports from Malibu. After a second straight night of battling the fire there was some encouraging news from Los Angeles County Sheriff Robert Luna. As of this morning the Franklin fire is 7% contained. The containment figure may not seem like much but for LA County Fire Chief Anthony Maroney it is significant. 7% is seven percent than better than yesterday. Obviously the weather is cooperating that plays a huge role. Weather reports indicate the winds that have driven this fire are diminishing and the red flag wind

alerts are ending. For NPR News I'm Steve Futterman in Malibu California. Stocks mostly gained ground on Wall Street today after the latest inflation update would seem to clear the way for the Federal Reserve to cut interest rates one more time before year's end. The Nasdaq was up 347 points. The Dow fell 99 points today. You're listening to NPR. The Amazing Kresgen has died.

The famous mentalist who dazzled audiences with his mind reading skills, died yesterday at an assisted living facility in Wayne, New Jersey at the age of 89. Impress Chloe Veltman has this remembrance. The Amazing Kreskin became hugely popular in the 1960s and 70s with his guest appearances on TV talk shows, like The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson. Would you welcome The amazing Kreskin. He called himself a mentalist, not a psychic, best known for a theatrical trick in which he asked audience members to hide his paycheck somewhere in the auditorium while he went

outside. Then he'd come back in and find it, almost always successfully. He described the stunt in the 2005 documentary The Amazing Kreskin. If I don't find my fee, I don't get paid. George Kreskin Jr. was born into a Polish Sicilian family in New Jersey in 1935. He picked up the mind-reading bug from Mandrake the Magician, a comic book hero who used hypnotic techniques to ensnare his adversaries. Chloe Valtman, NPR News.

German automaker Volkswagen says it's offering workers at its newly unionized Tennessee assembly plant a 14% wage increase over four years along with profit sharing. The automaker and the United Auto Workers Union, which won an election at the plant back in April, have been engaged in contract talks for the past several months. It marks a major victory for the union. The plant in Chattanooga, Tennessee is the first to unionize in the South via an election since the 1940s and the first foreign-owned

southern plant ever to do so. Crude oil futures prices moved higher today, oil up almost 2.5 percent, and the session at 70.29 a barrel in New York. I'm Jack Spear, NPR News in Washington.