NPR News Now - NPR News: 12-30-2024 5AM EST

Episode Date: December 30, 2024

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Support for this podcast and the following message come from Autograph Collection Hotels, with over 300 independent hotels around the world, each exactly like nothing else. Autograph Collection is part of the Marriott Bonvoy portfolio of hotel brands. Find the unforgettable at autographcollection.com. Live from NPR News in Washington, I'm Dave Mattingly. President Biden says he's lost a dear friend with the death of former President Jimmy Carter. The country's 39th president died yesterday at his home in Plains, Georgia at the age of 100, more than a year after entering hospice care. Biden says Carter was an extraordinary leader, statesman, and humanitarian. Carter was elected president in 1976 and later won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2002. NPR's Don Gagne has more.

Few took Georgia Governor Jimmy Carter seriously when he jumped into the race for president. The former peanut farmer announced his candidacy almost two years before election day. There was a major headline on the editorial page of the Atlanta Constitution that said Jimmy Carter's running for what? Carter was an outsider, capitalizing on distrust of Washington in the immediate aftermath of the Watergate scandal. We lost Carter! We lost Carter! After emerging from a crowded Democratic primary field, he narrowly defeated President Gerald

Ford in the general election, only to lose to another Washington outsider named Ronald Reagan four years later. Don Gagne, NPR News. Carter's funeral is scheduled for January 9th at Washington National Cathedral. At least four deaths are reported after severe weather, including tornadoes, moved across the southern U.S. over the weekend. Authorities say one fatality occurred in Texas,

two in Mississippi, and another in North Carolina. Rebecca Ackerman says she's still trying to process the aftermath of a tornado that went through Alvin, Texas. It's really hard to process. I know it's real. I can see that it's real, but still sometimes it doesn't feel real. The National Weather Service says it received more than 40 reports of tornado damage from Texas to Georgia.

Syria's new leader says it could take up to four years for the country to hold elections, following the recent ouster of longtime President Bashar al-Assad. NPR's Diya Hadid has more from Damascus. Ahmad al-Sharah spoke to Saudi-owned Al-Arabiya to lay out his vision for the country, barely three weeks after his rebels overran Damascus earlier this month, forcing the former leader Bashar al-Assad to flee. Sharaa said elections would take time because the country had not had a proper census in years and because Syria needs a new constitution. Sharaa says he hopes to hold a national conference with Syrian representatives who can set the

agenda. He says at the conference he'll dismantle the group he leads, HTS or Hayat Tahrir al-Sham. Shara also told Arabia that the time of the Syrian revolution was over and the time of nation building had begun. Investigators in South Korea are trying to piece together the events leading up to yesterday's deadly crash of a domestic commercial airliner at an airport in the country's southwest. 179 people were killed when the Boeing 737-800 slammed into a concrete fence and burst into flames after skidding off the end of an airport runway. Two passengers survived. Officials say the pilots aborted their first landing attempt and then issued a distress signal before touching down without the front landing gear deployed on their second try. Investigators say controllers issued a bird

strike warning before the distress signal was sent by the pilots of the budget airliner. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is recovering from prostate surgery. His office says the procedure to remove a benign growth was successful. NPR's Emily Fang says Netanyahu's latest health issue comes amid ongoing fighting between Israel and Hamas and Gaza and a corruption trial. This is not the first time the Prime Minister has had health problems while Israel is fighting on multiple fronts. In Gaza, against Houthi militants in Yemen, and in Syria, where Israeli troops have occupied more territory. Netanyahu also is in the middle of testifying in his own corruption trial.

A Jerusalem court agreed he could postpone several days of testimony this coming week due to surgery. At 75 years old, Netanyahu was among the more senior end of world leaders. He was fitted with a pacemaker last year and earlier this spring had surgery for a hernia. Emily Fang, NPR News, Tel Aviv, Israel. I'm Dave Mattingly, NPR News in Washington.