NPR News Now - NPR News: 12-16-2024 3AM EST

Episode Date: December 16, 2024

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Live from NPR News in New York City, I'm Duah Lisi Kautau. President-elect Donald Trump says members of the congressional committee who investigated the deadly January 6th insurrection at the U.S. Capitol building, quote, should go to jail. He made the comment during an interview with NBC News last week, and the comment is getting bipartisan pushback, as NPR's Luke Garrett reports. Reliable Trump ally, Republican Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina told NBC's Kristen Welker he can't support him on this.

He thinks the members of the January 6th committee should go to jail. Do you agree with that statement? No. Welker then asked independent Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont whether President Biden should preemptively pardon January 6th committee members to protect them from Trump. Well, I think he might want to consider that very seriously. Look, that is an outrageous statement. This is what authoritarianism is all about.

Trump has also promised to pardon some Capitol rioters on his first day back in the White House. Luke Garrett, NPR News, Washington. From New York to Nebraska to California, dangerous winter warnings continue. More than 33 inches of snow was reported in western New York this weekend. Iowa reported a major ice storm causing hazardous driving conditions and an unusual tornado touched down in Scotts Valley, California, just north of Santa Cruz. National Weather Service meteorologist

Dalton Berenger says tornadoes are rare in the state but not unheard of. We're not on to something you know new and unprecedented here. It's kind of more like luck of the draw honestly. So we deal with these types of storms that are rotating offshore quite a bit that may produce water spouts over the ocean and they move onshore you, it's rare, but we see it at least a few times a year. Germany's foreign minister says anyone involved in committing atrocities for the ousted Syrian government should not seek refuge in her country. And Piers Ropp-Schmidtz reports from Berlin. Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbach said anyone

who worked for the regime of Bashar al-Assad would face the full force of the law should they try to seek to flee to Germany. Germany's been a major destination for Syrian refugees fleeing the civil war over the past decade. Nearly a million Syrians now live there. The country's interior ministry says Germany is extremely vigilant when it comes to curbing irregular migration, pointing to border checks that the country has put into place along its frontiers. Rob Schmitz and PR News, Berlin.

The Israeli military has begun withdrawing from parts of southern Lebanon as part of a ceasefire agreement with Hezbollah that is supposed to end the latest deadly conflict which began last October between the two, but Israeli strikes continue there this weekend. South Korean stocks showed early gains following the weekend impeachment of President Yun Song-yol. After years of legal back and forth, the Walt Disney Company has agreed to settle a class-action lawsuit brought by its workers at Disneyland for $233 million, a record in California. The settlement, once reviewed and approved in mid-January by the local Superior Court judge, means that workers at Disney's Anaheim theme park will receive back pay with interest dating back to 2019 when the wage theft lawsuit was filed claiming Disney received tax rebates from

the city but did not adjust wages accordingly. This announcement comes as the city of Anaheim is raising its minimum wage to $20.50 per hour. Authorities in the French overseas territory of Mayotte says the death toll could rise to hundreds after a powerful cyclone wrecked the island. NPR's Eleanor Beardsley reports France is sending aid and deployed 1,600 police officers to the Indian Ocean Islands. Mayotte, devastated by the cyclone Chideau.

French television news broadcasts are showing footage of the massive destruction brought by cyclone Chideau. Towns and villages are flattened, hospitals flooded. The French Interior Ministry says it's proving difficult to get a precise tally of the dead and injured, and the death toll could rise. The tropical cyclone also affected the nearby islands of Comoros and Madagascar off the east coast of Africa. Mayotte was colonized in 1843 and chose to remain a part of France in a 1974 referendum when the Comoros Islands declared independence.

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