NPR News Now - NPR News: 12-26-2024 8PM EST

Episode Date: December 27, 2024

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Live from NPR News in Washington, I'm Janene Herbst. New York has passed legislation to create a climate superfund. The law will let the state find major emitters of greenhouse gases and use that money to better protect people from extreme weather. In Piers Alejandra, Burunda has more. Human-caused climate change is expensive. This year alone, New York State saw eight weather disasters that cost more than $1 billion each, and that cost is likely to increase as the planet heats up. New York's new law works like the Environmental Protection Agency's Superfund program, where

polluters pay the cost of cleaning up an environmental problem they caused. The state will be able to fine climate polluters some $3 billion each per year over the next 25 years. Vermont signed a similar bill into law earlier this year. Legal experts say it's likely New York's new law will be challenged in court. Alejandra Burunda, NPR News. Investigators are trying to determine why an Azerbaijan Airlines jet crashed yesterday in Kazakhstan, killing 38 people.

Twenty-nine others survived. The Embraer 190 took off from the Azerbaijani capital, Beku, for a flight to Grozny in Russia. As the plane approached Grozny, the aviation tracking site Flightradar 24 says the jet encountered significant GPS interference. Survivors say they heard an explosion and then the plane began to buffet, and video of the wreckage shows punctures in the rear of the aircraft. And Piers Russell Lewis has more. We know this part of Russia has been subject to drone attacks fired by Ukraine's military. And we also know that Russia has been using anti-aircraft artillery and using GPS jammers

to try to shoot down these drones before they get to their targets. Again, it's too soon to pinpoint what happened and why, but surely these are the kinds of things that investigators will be parsing over in the days and weeks ahead. AMT. RENEE CLEMENTS. Impieres Russell Lewis reporting. The auto sector is facing two seismic changes, the rise in electrification and the emergence of Chinese automakers. As Impieres Rafael Nam reports, they are the reasons why Honda and Nissan are in talks for a merger.

Honda and Nissan are two major Japanese automakers with long histories. This week, they said they're in talks to merge. What's driving this is first the need to adapt to an electric future. Neither Honda nor Nissan are producing the buzzy electric vehicles they need to. Combining forces could allow them to become more competitive. Neither Honda nor Nissan are producing the buzzy electric vehicles they need to. Combining forces could allow them to become more competitive. There's another major reason behind the talks. Chinese automakers have been pretty successful so far in adapting to EVs. They now largely dominate China and are targeting markets abroad.

China has become the world's biggest auto exporter and therefore a big threat to companies like Honda and Nissan. Rafal Nam, NPR News. US futures contracts are trading lower at this hour. All three major indices are down about one-tenth of a percent. You're listening to NPR News in Washington. A fight led to a triple shooting at a Phoenix Sky Harbor airport last night. Christina Estes from member station KJZZ has more. It happened near a restaurant outside the security checkpoint. Two men were shot, along with a woman whose condition is described as life-threatening.

Sergeant Myra Riesen says everyone involved knew each other and police detained two suspects. We do not believe that there's any suspects out there outstanding. I want to put everybody at ease. Of course this is scary. It was Christmas evening. Everybody's trying to get home. You know, I 100% the community was pretty concerned for this. A security checkpoint was temporarily closed but airport operations are back to normal. For NPR News, I'm Christina Estes in Phoenix. Shoppers spent more this holiday season. MasterCard's spending pulse says spending rose 3.8 percent.

That's even though many people are still dealing with rising prices for food and fuel and other financial worries. And this year, retailers were even more motivated to get shoppers to buy early and in bulk since there were five fewer days between Thanksgiving and Christmas. MasterCard's spending pulse, which tracks all kinds of payments including cash and debit cards, says the last five days of the season accounted for 10 percent of that spending. Sales of clothing, electronics and jewelry rose. Wall Street ended the day in mixed territory.

The Dow was up 28 points, the NASDAQ down 10, the S&P 500 down 2. I'm Janene Herbst, NPR News in Washington.