NPR News Now - NPR News: 12-31-2025 1PM EST

Episode Date: December 31, 2025

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Live from NPR news, I'm Lakshmi Singh. Russia attacked two Ukrainian ports in the Black Sea, hitting two civilian vessels. NPR's Joanna Kisis reports Russia is repeatedly striking the port city of Odessa, leaving much of it without power. Russian drones hit Odessa and the surrounding region overnight, injuring at least six and knocking out electricity and water again. Ukrainian president Volodyemir Zelensky told reporters that his country, is trying to buy more air defense supplies to protect cities from Russian forces.

They definitely want to cut off Odessa, he said. They are hitting ports, killing people and the economy, trying to reduce our exports by sea. On Tuesday, Ukraine's Navy said Russia hit two civilian ships that had arrived to load wheat. And now a Ukrainian drone attack has damaged a gas pipeline at a Russian port in the Black Sea. Joanna Kikisas and PR News Kyiv. Critics of the Trump administration warn a strike on Venezuela's shores constitutes a dangerous escalation in a conflict that until recently was confined to sea in the Caribbean and Eastern Pacific. The administration maintains it's about stopping the flow of drugs to the U.S. The Venezuelan government argues the U.S. is attempting to overthrow the Maduro government.

And Pierre-Frank Ordonez is following the standoff. The president has been warning for weeks that he was prepared to launch land strikes. first mentioned this port strike a week ago on a radio show. While he hasn't been clear about how the strikes were conducted, a U.S. official confirmed to NPR's Tom Bowman that the CIA struck the dock. Now, until now, the U.S. has focused on strikes on boats, it claims, are trafficking drugs and some oil tankers, but both of those operations have been taking place in international waters. So this is a really big deal to strike on land. It's an escalation, but also creates more risk of killing innocent Venezuelans who have nothing to do with any of that stuff.

Frank Ordonez reporting. Police in New York City are ramping up security ahead of tonight's New Year's Eve celebration in Times Square. NPR's Windsor Johnson reports thousands of officers and surveillance teams will be in place. New York City is rolling out heightened security for tonight's New Year's Eve celebration. Mayor Eric Adams says there are no known threats, but police say they're prepared. We will have plain clothes, K-9 teams, officers on horseback, on our trains, subway stations, and in helicopters, and on boats. Pedestrians and vehicle closures will be in effect leading up to and during the Fent. Securities is everyone's responsibility.

Again, see something, say something, do something. More than a million people are expected to pack into Times Square to watch the ball drop at midnight. Windsor Johnston, NPR News. You're listening to NPR. Well, parts of the planet have already rung in the new year from Australia to east and South Asia. Some countries will also observe another major celebration come February, and that's the lunar new year. Hollywood is mourning the loss of another actor in 2025. A spokesman for Isaiah Whitlock Jr. says, the actor died yesterday.

Whitlock delivered a wide range of performances and comedies and dramas and fans will remember him from The Wire. They're going to come talk to me about money laundering in West Baltimore? Whitlock was 71 years old. NASA's two Voyager spacecraft continued to operate nearly half a century after they were launched. Joe Palka tells us the probes are now in interstellar space. Voyagers 1 and 2 left Earth in 1977. Voyager 1 flew by Jupiter where it discovered two new moons and Saturn where it spotted five new moons and a new ring. Voyager 2 also flew by Jupiter, and then Uranus and Neptune, finding new moons

at all three planets. Both probes are now traveling faster than 34,000 miles per hour. Voyager 1 is nearly 16 billion miles from Earth, about 2,000 a half billion miles further than Voyager 2. Mission controllers successfully contacted both spacecraft in December using large radio antennas that are part of the agency's deep space network. Even traveling, at the speed of light, a radio signal takes nearly a day to reach the probes. For NPR news, I'm Joe Palka. The Dow is down 157 points. It's NPR.