NPR News Now - NPR News: 12-31-2024 5PM EST

Episode Date: December 31, 2024

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Live from NPR News in Washington, I'm Windsor Johnston. Millions of people around the world are ringing in the new year. Crowds in Sydney, Australia welcomed 2025 with a massive fireworks display over the harbor in Southeast Asia. Cheers erupted as fireworks lit up the sky over Mumbai, India as the clock struck midnight. Cities across Europe are preparing to welcome the new year with parties and celebrations. In New York City, Times Square is gearing up for the annual ball drop. Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch says security has been stepped up in the area. Specialized units, including our emergency services unit, who will be strategically deployed

throughout the area on rooftops. Our canine teams who will patrol with bomb-sniffing dogs. Our aviation unit will be in the skies scanning the event and the surrounding areas. More than a million people are expected to pack Times Square to ring in the new year. Almost every obituary for former president Jimmy Carter mentions that he was a person of deep faith. But as NPR's Jason Derose reports, his relationship to the church and to other evangelicals was complicated.

Jimmy Carter was open about his faith as a born-again Christian while also guarding the separation of church and state. But Carter's time in the White House coincided with a political shift among evangelicals who took up public opposition to abortion and LGBTQ rights. By the time he was running for re-election in 1980, prominent evangelical leaders like Jerry Falwell were not endorsing Carter, but rather Ronald Reagan. Carter left the Southern Baptist Church in the year 2000 because it opposed women-leading congregations. Jimmy Carter said that he viewed Christianity as an opportunity to study the life of Jesus and say, quote, this is the person I want to be. Jason DeRose, NPR News.

Medicare beneficiaries will soon save a lot of money at the pharmacy counter. NPR's Cindy Lupkin reports. 2025 is the first year Medicare will have a $2,000 cap on out-of-pocket drug spending. It starts on January 1st and will limit out-of-pocket expenses over the course of the year for drugs on your plans Part D formulary. This typically includes drugs purchased at the pharmacy but not drugs administered in the hospital. A KFF analysis found that it will save millions of beneficiaries money every year, but it

will especially help a small subset of patients who spend well over $2,000 a year on expensive drugs for chronic conditions. The cap passed as part of the Inflation Reduction Act. The law also included Medicare drug price negotiation, which will continue in 2025, as well as caps of $35 a month for insulin. Sydney Lepkin, NPR News. This is NPR.

A parcel of land in Wyoming has been sold to Grand Teton National Park. Wyoming Public Radio's Chris Clements reports the news caps months of negotiations between state and federal officials to merge the land with the park to stop it from being developed. Wyoming's Republican Governor Mark Gordon certified the sale of the Kelly Parcel in Northwest Wyoming just before a critical fundraising deadline. Lawmakers approved the $100 million sale to keep it from being subdivided, a prospect that had sparked outrage across political lines. The land is surrounded by sawtooth

mountain ranges and speckled by sagebrush. This past summer, Jared Becker with the non-profit Greater Yellowstone Coalition talked about the significance of the sale. One square mile of land has significant implications on the ecology, particularly for big game species migrating through this area. The proceeds will be used to fund Wyoming public schools. For NPR News, I'm Chris Cummins in Laramie. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says cases of the norovirus continue to surge in parts of the U.S. The CDC says more than 90 cases of the virus were confirmed in the first week of this month. The agency says the caseload exceeds the number of outbreaks recorded in early December in the years leading up to the pandemic.

Stocks traded lower on Wall Street today. The Dow Jones Industrial Average was down 29 points at the close. The Nasdaq Composite fell 175. I'm Windsor Johnston, NPR News in Washington.