NPR News Now - NPR News: 12-18-2024 1PM EST

Episode Date: December 18, 2024

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Live from NPR News in Washington, I'm Lakshmi Singh. The Federal Reserve is expected to lower interest rates when policymakers wrap up a two-day meeting this afternoon. NPR's Scott Horsley reports the central bank may be more cautious about additional rate cuts next year. Markets are betting that the Federal Reserve will cut its benchmark interest rate by another quarter percentage point. The central bank has already lowered rates by three-quarters of a point since September.

Lower rates make it less expensive to borrow money to buy a car, grow a business or carry a balance on your credit card. Fed officials will also share some guesses this afternoon about where they think interest rates are going next year. On average, policymakers had expected expected lower rates by another full percentage point in 2025 when they last issued a forecast back in September. That forecast for cuts could be dialed back a bit today since inflation in recent months has proven stickier than expected.

Scott Horsley, MPR News, Washington. Police searching for a motive behind Monday's school shooting in Madison, Wisconsin, are talking to students to determine if the 15-year-old shooter was bullied. The Washington Post reports court documents reveal the teenage girl had a turbulent home life. NPR's Katie Riddle covers the mental health consequences of mass shootings and says experts offer this insight. Katie Riddle, NPR's Director of Mental Health and Mental Health Sciences, NPR There are patterns of behavior around mass shootings. Often in retrospect, when a tragedy

like this happens, those might seem obvious and people question why they were missed. But the vast majority of troubled adolescents don't commit mass shootings. NPR's Katie Ariddle, the teen shooter, killed another teenager and a teacher. Police say she also injured several students and a second teacher before she apparently took her own life. The community held a candlelight vigil last night. More information is emerging about a person who was hospitalized in Louisiana after contracting bird flu.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says, this marks the first human infection that has led to severe disease in the US. We have more on this from NPR's Will Stone. The person was exposed to sick and dead birds in backyard flocks before falling ill. Genetic sequencing shows the virus was part of a genetic lineage that's been circulating in wild birds and poultry. It's also what led to the hospitalization of a teenager in British Columbia, Canada. This version of H5N1 is different than what's spreading in dairy cattle, which has caused

most of the human infections in the U.S. Those have led to mild illness in agricultural workers. CDC health officials say there's still no evidence of person-to-person spread of the virus and they say the risk to the general public remains low. Will Stone, NPR News. The Dow Jones Industrial Average is up 137 points at 43586. The S&P has risen 10 points and the Nasdaq has gained 43. This is NPR News.

The New York Times reports CIA Director William Burns has arrived in Qatar, one of the major players in ceasefire talks between Israel and Hamas. The agency's intelligence chief was widely expected to meet with Qatar's prime minister in Doha this week. The U.S. has dispatched multiple top envoys to the Middle East recently, citing key developments in the region, including Israel's ceasefire with Lebanon's Hezbollah and the abrupt end to the Assad regime's authoritarian rule in Syria.

Sesame Street is looking for a new home. NPR's Elizabeth Blair reports, Max will discontinue streaming new episodes of the children's program after next season. In a statement, Max says that new episodes of Sesame Street are no longer core to its strategy, but it will rerun old episodes through 2027. A lot of Sesame Street's educational content is evergreen, but it's also known for talking about current issues in ways kids can understand and reaching underserved audiences. Polly Conway is senior editor for TV and streaming at Common Sense Media.

Polly Conway, Senior Editor, Common Sense Media Finding a new home is going to be integral to them creating new content and really reaching the audiences that need to be reached. In a statement, Sesame Workshop says it plans to announce new distribution plans in the coming months. Elizabeth Blair, NPR News. The Supreme Court will hear arguments next month over the constitutionality of the federal law that would ban TikTok in the U S where it has 170 million users. It's NPR.