NPR News Now - NPR News: 12-12-2024 9AM EST

Episode Date: December 12, 2024

NPR News: 12-12-2024 9AM ESTLearn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Live from NPR News in Washington, I'm Korova Coleman. President Biden has commuted the sentences of nearly 1,500 people who had been on home confinement since the pandemic. He also pardoned 39 others convicted of nonviolent crimes. NPR's Tamara 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. Time Magazine says its person of the year is President-elect Trump. Magazine officials say that for better or worse, Trump had the most influence on the world and the news this year.

Trump is expected to be on Wall Street this hour to ring the opening bell for the stock exchange. Tech Giant Meta has donated $1 million to Trump's inaugural fund. As NPR's Bobby Allen reports, it's part of CEO Mark Zuckerberg's recent push to improve his relationship with Trump. For years part of CEO Mark Zuckerberg's recent push to improve his relationship with Trump.

For years, Trump denounced Zuckerberg, including for the executive's decision to donate money toward election infrastructure in 2020. Trump even called for Zuckerberg to be thrown in jail just four months ago. But now Zuckerberg has donated a million dollars to Trump's inaugural fund. Zuckerberg and Metta have not donated to inaugural funds in years past. The donation was first reported by the Wall Street Journal and confirmed by NPR. Zuckerberg courting Trump has included a dinner at Trump's Mar-a-Lago club in Palm Beach, Florida and other gestures of goodwill. It comes as other tech leaders cozy up to Trump in anticipation of an incoming administration expected to confront Silicon Valley with a

softer touch. Bobbi Bobby Allen NPR news residents near Syria's capital Damascus say they found a barefoot man wandering the streets and peers Ruth Sherlock is in a suburb and says the man identified Himself as Travis Timmerman an American freed from a notorious Syrian prison the way he got out seems to be that he was released along with thousands of other prisoners who were freed by rebels in those hours after they stormed Damascus and ousted the regime. They went to these prisons, they shut down the locks on the doors and they let people flee. Timerman said he was scared at the time that there might be fighting between the prisoners

and the, you know, between the prison guards and the rebels, but there wasn't. So he left his cell, he joined a large group of people, and they started walking away. NPR's Ruth Sherlock reporting. Meanwhile, Syrian rebel groups that toppled the dictator say they are now forming a transitional government. This is NPR. Researchers discovered a cemetery for people enslaved by Andrew Jackson. He was the seventh U.S. president who made his home in Nashville, Tennessee.

From member station WPLN, Cynthia Abrams reports the graves are located thousand feet from Jackson's main house at his Hermitage plantation. Until now, the Hermitage has been unable to locate where people enslaved under Jackson had been buried. But an anonymous donation prompted the Hermitage to utilize radar imaging to peer into the ground. The cemetery also shows rows of depressions and unnaturally placed pieces of limestone, assumed to be grave markers. 28 graves have been identified,

but researchers say there could still be more. The Hermitage says they will incorporate the cemetery into a tour and will engage descendants of those buried there. Jackson is also buried at the Hermitage. Over the course of his life, he enslaved more than 300 people. For NPR News, I'm Cynthia Abrams in Nashville. Brazil's president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, has undergone a second surgery for bleeding on his brain. Lula had the has undergone a second surgery for bleeding on his brain.

Lula had the first operation on Tuesday to stop the bleeding. This came after a fall at his home in October. Lula is 79 years old. Reuters news agency reports his doctors say today's second surgery went very well. The Joint Typhoon Warning Center says super tropical cyclone Chito is moving toward the east coast of Africa. The storm's top sustained winds are 155 miles per hour. It could swipe the top of Madagascar and then make landfall next Monday on the coast of

Mozambique. This is NPR.