NPR News Now - NPR News: 12-17-2024 1PM EST

Episode Date: December 17, 2024

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Ho, ho, ho! Santa here, coming to you from the North Pole. We're the elves in our podcast division of just completed work on this season's best gift for public radio lovers, NPR+. Give the gift of sponsored free listening and even bonus episodes from your favorite NPR podcasts, all while supporting public media. Learn more at plus.npr.org. Ha, ha, ho, ho, ho! Live from NPR News in Washington, I'm Lakshmi Singh.

All across U.S. state capitals today, presidential electors are meeting to carry out their constitutional duties of casting their electoral votes for the 2024 election. Their actions formalize that President-elect Donald Trump defeated Vice President Kamala Harris. Also, some of those dubbed fake electors in the 2020 election are back, casting real votes today on behalf of their states in favor of Trump. NPR's Hansi Lo Wang reports these Republican electors still face criminal charges related to efforts to overturn election results from four years ago. Eight of the Republican electors this year for President-elect Donald Trump have been indicted in Michigan and Nevada.

Four years ago, they sent false certificates to state and federal officials claiming that Trump had won those states' 2020 electoral votes. Those documents became part of the failed attempt to overturn those election results that culminated in the January 6th insurrection. Now in Michigan, cases against six of those returning electors are working their way through state court after the Democratic Michigan Attorney General announced charges last year.

In Nevada, state prosecutors filed new forgery charges this month against two returning electors. There are also ongoing prosecutions in Arizona and Georgia against pro-Trump electors from 2020 who also ongoing prosecutions in Arizona and Georgia against pro-Trump electors from 2020 who are not set to cast their state's electoral votes today. Anzila Wong, NPR News. With Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad deposed, survivors of chemical attacks his forces carried out say they can finally tell their stories. NPR's Laila Fadl has more from Damascus. For six years, Taufit Diab wasn't allowed to say how his four children and his wife

were killed on a spring day in 2018 in a Damascus suburb. Diab says Syrian intelligence forced him to deny that toxic chlorine gas was dropped on his building and that it killed his whole family, his brother and his brother's family. There were 12 of 42 people who died that day. Only now that Esset is gone, can he finally say how they were killed and demand that the attack is reinvestigated and his family's killers are prosecuted in court. Laila Faldon, NPR News, Damascus. A federal judge has granted lawyers for former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin

access to examine samples of George Floyd's heart tissue. Chauvin's in prison for violating Floyd's civil rights and murdering him in 2020. Minnesota Public Radio Matt Sepick has more. Chauvin is trying to rescind his 2021 guilty plea to federal charges of using excessive force. He argues that his original attorney failed to tell him about an email from a Kansas pathologist who believes Floyd

died of a heart condition, not Chauvin's knee on his neck. Prosecutors counter that a jury already rejected a similar medical opinion. Matt Sepick reporting from Minnesota. You're listening to NPR News. On the French island territory of Mayotte, a curfew is in effect as a result of Cyclone Chido. It was the strongest storm to strike the Indian Ocean archipelago in 90 years. Local authorities say at least 22 people were killed and more than 1,500 people were injured in Saturday's storm, but they fear the figures may be far higher, especially among undocumented

migrants who make up a large percentage of the island's population. In the 1950s, scientists exposed a tin of meat to a dose of radiation that they expected would kill all forms of life. Instead, they found what scientists think is the most radiation-resistant organism on Earth. NPR's Jessica Young reports scientists might finally know its secret. The organism is known by its nickname, Conan the bacterium. And researchers at Northwestern University and the Uniformed Services University have found what could be responsible for its radiation resistance. And it is in the combination of three components — manganese ions, phosphate, and peptides — which creates a complex that is more radiation

resistant than the sum of its parts, says co-author of the paper, Brian Hoffman. Oh my God. So something new that forms when you put the pieces together, which makes it better than one or the other, is that the combination, they interact with each other. Researchers hope that this discovery could lead to ways to protect humans from radiation, from exploring deep space or from radiological emergencies. The paper appears in the journal PNAS. Jessica Young, NPR News. The Dow Jones Industrial Average is down 286 points. You're listening to NPR News.

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