NPR News Now - NPR News: 12-30-2024 10PM EST

Episode Date: December 31, 2024

NPR News: 12-30-2024 10PM ESTLearn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Live from NPR News in Washington, I'm Windsor Johnston. Funeral preparations are coming together for former President Jimmy Carter, who died on Sunday at the age of 100. Grant Blankenship of Georgia Public Broadcasting reports his hometown is already preparing. Carter spent most of his life in the southwest Georgia farming community of Plains. Normally, the Christmas decorations outside the main strip of shops downtown would have another week before they came down. Now most have been replaced with red, white and blue ribbons and the flags are at half staff. Agnes McAllister has cleaned rooms at the Plains Inn on the corner of the strip for about five years.

And I have to get everything ready upstairs because all the carters will be staying upstairs. And I have to get everything ready upstairs because all the Carters will be staying upstairs. It makes me feel good that I'm able to do that for them. Carter's funeral schedule will both begin and end in Plains. Between he will lie in repose at the Carter Center in Atlanta and lie in state at the Capitol in Washington, D.C. For NPR News, I'm Grant Blankenship in Plains, Georgia. President-elect Donald Trump has lost his bid to overturn a $5 million judgment against him for sexually abusing and defaming the writer, E. Jean Carroll. NPR's Danielle Kurt-Slaven has the latest.

Danielle Kurt-Slaven, NPR News, NPR News, NPR News, NPR News, NPR News, NPR News, NPR News, NPR News, NPR News, NPR News, NPR News, NPR News, NPR News, NPR News, NPR News, NPR News, NPR News, NPR News, NPR News, NPR News, NPR News, NPR News, NPR News, NPR News, NPR News, NPR News, NPR News, NPR News, NPR News, NPR News, NPR News, NPR News, NPR News, NPR News, NPR News, NPR News, NPR News, NPR News, NPR News, NPR News, NPR News, NPR News, NPR News, NPR News, NPR News, NPR News, NPR News, NPR News, NPR News, NPR News, NPR News, NPR News, NPR News, NPR News, NPR News, NPR News, NPR News, NPR News, NPR News, NPR News, NPR News, NPR News, NPR News, NPR News, NPR News, NPR News, NPR News, NPR News, NPR News, NPR News, NPR News, NPR News, NPR News, NPR News, NPR News, NPR News, NPR News, NPR News, NPR News, NPR News, NPR News, NPR News, NPR News, NPR News, NPR News, N her in a Manhattan department store in 1996. She had also accused him of defaming her in a 2022

statement claiming she had made up the story. He also said, quote, this woman is not my type. In their appeal, Trump and his attorneys argued that the court should not have admitted certain evidence, including testimony from two other women accusing Trump of sexual misconduct, as well as the infamous Access Hollywood tape in which Trump boasted about being able to grope women at will. But the appeals court said the lower court had not been wrong to admit those. In a statement, Trump spokesman Stephen Chung calls the case a witch hunt and says that Trump will continue to appeal. Danielle Kurzlaven, NPR News. The investigation continues into the jetliner that crashed in South Korea on Sunday. NPR's Anthony Kuhn reports that 179 people were killed. Officials, volunteers, and church groups comforted bereaved families,

many of whom sheltered in tents in the Muwan International Airport in South Chola Province. Anguished cries and sobs occasionally rose from the tents. Children screaming. Anguished cries and sobs occasionally rose from the tents. Family members asked officials to quickly return the bodies of their loved ones, but officials replied that only five of the bodies were relatively intact, while most were in pieces that needed to be properly sorted before being returned. South Korean authorities will inspect all Boeing 737-800s in service with the country's airlines. The flight recorders recovered from the crashed plane have been

taken to Seoul for examination. Anthony Kuhn, NPR News, Muang County, South Korea. This is NPR News. The Biden administration has announced an additional $2.5 billion to provide Ukraine with weapons in its war against Russia. The White House says it's working quickly to spend all of the money it has available to help Ukraine before President-elect Donald Trump takes office in January. Industry analysts are forecasting big gains in geothermal energy around the world in 2025. NPR's Julia Simon reports. Deep down in the Earth's crust, it is hot. Tap into that heat and the steam can turn a turbine that makes reliable electricity.

This technology is called geothermal energy. Analysts at the International Energy Agency, or IEA, say it's now becoming a lot cheaper to make. Tools from the oil and gas industry like fracking are enabling companies to access geothermal energy even deeper underground. And unlike other energy sources from underground, like oil, gas, and coal, geothermal energy generates a lot less planet-heating carbon dioxide and methane gas. The IEA says geothermal energy generates a lot less planet heating carbon dioxide and methane gas. The IEA says geothermal could meet up to 15 percent of global electricity demand growth between now and 2050 in the United States. Julia Simon and Pure News. The Biden administration says Chinese hackers were able to gain access to several employee

workstations and unclassified documents at the Treasury Department. In a letter to Congress, the agency says the hackers breached a security key used by a third-party software provider. This is NPR News.