NPR News Now - NPR News: 12-30-2024 2PM EST

Episode Date: December 30, 2024

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Live from NPR News in Washington, I'm Louise Schiavone. A New York federal appeals court has upheld a $5 million verdict finding Donald Trump liable for defaming and sexually abusing the writer, E. Jean Carroll. A New York jury found the president-elect liable in May 2023. NPR's Danielle Kurtzleben has more. E. Jean Carroll had accused Trump of assaulting 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

Kurtzleben, NPR News. President Biden says America and the world lost an extraordinary leader, statesman and humanitarian with the death of former President Jimmy Carter. The nation's 39th president died yesterday at his home in Plains, Georgia at the age of 100. NPR's John Rewich says in addition to 1978's Camp David Accords, Carter was known for establishing diplomatic ties between the U.S. and China in 1979.

The establishment of diplomatic ties between Washington and Beijing helped bring China out of isolation and underpin the country's meteoric economic rise. For years, few questioned robust engagement, but the mood has shifted. President Trump launched a trade war against China during his first term. And President Biden has cast the country as a competitor and tried to limit its access to U.S. technology. A spokesperson for China's embassy in Washington paid tribute to Carter, though, saying the 39th president demonstrated, quote, extraordinary political courage and vision in normalizing

ties with China. The spokesperson said China is ready to work with the U.S. to find what he called the right way to get along in the new era. John Ruch, NPR News. The rebels who deposed Syria's government now face the challenge of replacing it. An interim government has been established since Syria's military collapsed and President Bashar al-Assad fled. Many people celebrated Assad's defeat and they are now waiting

to see what the rebel group known as HTS will do differently. And PR's Hadil Halshashi has more. The leader of HTS, which is short for Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, is Ahmad al-Sharif, formerly known by his nom de guerre, Abu Ahmed al-Jolani. And at least publicly, he's been making all the right noises. HTS has roots in Al-Qaeda and it has told Syrians it won't turn the country into another Afghanistan. But a lot are worried.

Will they end up imposing a very stringent form of Islamic rule? NPR's Hadil al-Shalchi. The Dow was off 239. This is NPR. Washington's National Transportation Safety Board is sending investigators to assist in the probe of a plane crash that killed 179 people.

The Boeing 737-800 aircraft skidded off a runway at Muwon International Airport in Seoul, slammed into a concrete fence, and burst into a fireball. At the same time, South Korean officials plan to conduct safety inspections of all Boeing 737-800 aircraft operated by that country's airlines. What do squirrels eat? Evidently in California, at least it's not just acorns. Regina Barber reports on this documentation of the hunting behavior of squirrels. For the last 12 years, behavioral ecologist Jennifer Smith and her team have been observing a population of California ground squirrels. One day a video from an undergraduate student showed something surprising. One squirrel approaching a vole, targeting that

vole, biting it at the neck and taking it down, eventually crunching through the skull and then eating the meat from the bones. There has been evidence in the past of rare cases of squirrels eating roadkill, insects, or even taking sparrows. But this is the first time all stages of the hunt have been documented as a behavior of a squirrel population. Regina Barber and PR News. Donald Trump ally Elon Musk has taken to a major German newspaper to endorse Germany's far-right party ahead of key parliamentary elections there. The opinion piece by Musk and newspaper Welt am Sonntag was the second time he supported

the AFD or Alternative for Germany party. I'm Louise Ciavone and PR News.