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

Episode Date: December 12, 2024

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Live from NPR News in Washington, I'm Lakshmi Singh. An American man has been found in a suburb of the Syrian capital. Local residents found him early today, wandering barefoot on the streets. NPR's Hadil Al-Shalchi has more. The American man who identified himself to reporters as Travis Pete Timmerman said that he was on a pilgrimage and was detained earlier this year after crossing into Syria on foot from Lebanon. Hungarian police had released a missing persons report for the 29-year-old after he went missing in Budapest after attending church there seven months ago. Timmerman, who is believed to be from Missouri, claimed he was

jailed in Sidneya Prison, one of the most notorious in the country. He was released after opposition forces entered the capital last week and overthrew President Bashar al-Assad. Video circulating of him earlier sparked speculation that he could be missing journalist Austin Tice, who disappeared in Syria 12 years ago. A United States official confirmed the man in the video was not Tice. Hadeel Al-Shalchi, NPR News, Damascus. The Franklin fire in Southern California now tops 4,000 acres. Containment stands at 7 percent. Flames driven by high winds have forced mass evacuations in Malibu.

Legendary actor Dick Van Dyke recounted his harrowing experience on NBC's Today. He said he and his family raced to escape the fire and at one point he says he became exhausted and neighbors came to his aid. Van Dyke turns 99 on Friday. President Biden has commuted the sentences of nearly 1,500 people who'd been on home confinement since the COVID pandemic. He also pardoned 39 others convicted of nonviolent crimes. And Piers Tamer-Keith reports the White House says this is the largest single-day grant

of clemency in modern history. In a statement, President Biden said that it was a great privilege of the presidency to be able to extend mercy to people who have demonstrated remorse and rehabilitation. The 1,500 people granted clemency had been serving long prison sentences and have been on home confinement since COVID. The president said they have successfully reintegrated into their families and communities and have shown they deserve a second chance. Biden plans to issue more pardons and commutations in the weeks ahead. He is still getting criticized for his decision

earlier this month to pardon his son Hunter. Tamara Keith, NPR News. President-elect Trump rang the opening bell at the New York Stock Exchange this morning. An image projected on the wall behind him showed that for a second time he was named Time magazine's person of the year. He talked about taking the U.S. economy to new heights, evoking cheers from company executives and traders in the room. Trump repeated his plans to cut the corporate tax rate to open up oil drilling and to keep lowering inflation.

Yesterday, the Labor Department reported consumer prices in November were 2.7 percent higher than a year earlier. From Washington, this is NPR. Well, one day after November's consumer price rating came out, the Labor Department released the Producer Price Index, tracks price changes a business' seat. NPR's Scott Horsley reports wholesale prices rose last month more than expected. Wholesale prices in November were up 3 percent from a year ago. That's the biggest annual increase in 21 months.

That underscores the message that inflation is not yet fully tamed. Wholesale prices rose four-tenths of a percent between October and November. New applications for unemployment benefits jumped last week. 242,000 people applied for jobless aid. That's up 17,000 from the week before. Some applications may have been delayed by the Thanksgiving holiday. Scott Horsley in Peer News, Washington. Animals like sharks, dogs, and parakeets develop their scales, hair, and feathers using a shared genetic toolkit. But NPR's Jonathan Lambert reports new research shows crocodiles are a bit different. Look at the head of a crocodile and you'll see a mishmash of weirdly shaped scales. A new study in the journal Nature finds that these irregular patterns aren't laid down by genes, like other scales,

but instead arise from a largely physical process. The skin on their heads grows faster than the underlying tissues, causing folding that creates this irregular pattern. Computer models of this physical process were able to recreate the different facial patterns of a variety of crocodile species. This shows that complex biological patterns can arise without complicated genetic changes. Jonathan Lambert, NPR News. US stocks trading lower with a dow down 80 points. This is NPR.