NPR News: 01-20-2026 12PM EST
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Live from NPR News, I'm Lakshmi Singh. President Trump's insistence the United States acquire Greenland is overshadowing the annual World Economic Forum meeting in Davos, Switzerland this week. NPR's Danielle Kurtzleben reports Trump is threatening new tariffs on any nation that stands opposed.
Trump recently threatened to tariff eight European nations, all of them NATO members, if a deal is not reached for the U.S. to purchase Greenland, part of the Kingdom of Denmark. Trump also texted the prime minister of Norway that the fact he didn't win the Nobel Peace Prize is weighing on his decision-making. Overnight, Trump posted that French President Emmanuel Macron texted him, "...I do not understand what you are doing on Greenland." Treasury Secretary Scott Besant spoke already at Davos today defending Trump's tariffs. Tomorrow, Trump will speak, and Thursday will be an event for the Board of Peace that the president created to oversee the reconstruction of Gaza, where Trump has attempted to end the conflict between Israel and Hamas.
Danielle Kurtzleben, NPR News.
President Trump is expected to have more to say this week about his plan to reduce home prices in the U.S. It may include a ban on corporate landlords owning single-family homes. NPR's Jennifer Ludden tells us such a ban is popular with many, but it can be difficult to enact.
One cap on investor landlords did just take effect in Fishers, Indiana. Mayor Scott Fadness says the idea is to protect local homeownership.
It's been a source of generational wealth in our country, particularly in the middle class, and I hate to see that go away.
But in state after state, such proposals have failed. Economist Lori Goodman at the Urban Institute says the main driver of high prices is a housing shortage, and some investors are actually helping that by building homes to rent out. The best way to make housing affordable is to increase supply. Trump has said Congress would need to ban corporate home buying, and it's not clear that would pass either. Jennifer Ludden, NPR News, Washington.
More than 100 vehicles are involved in a string of highway collisions during a snowstorm in Michigan this week. Grand Valley Towing Manager Jeff Westfeld says yesterday's pileup on Interstate 196, just southwest of Grand Rapids, is one of the worst that his company's worked.
Full-blown accidents, to winch outs, jackknife semis.
State police report a lot of injuries, but no lives lost. Netflix says it is revising its $82.7 billion offer to acquire key parts of Warner Bros. Discovery. It says it's making it an alt-cash transaction instead of cash and stock. At last check on Wall Street, the Dow is down more than 500 points. S&P is off 78. Nasdaq's lost 313 points. It's NPR News. The Supreme Court hears oral arguments tomorrow in a case involving the Trump administration's attempt to fire Fed Governor Lisa Cook. The high court will weigh arguments over whether President Trump has the authority to dismiss Cook or whether it's presidential overreach. Remains to be seen if Fed Chair Jerome Powell will be there. He has frequently been a target of criticism by Trump for resisting interest rate cuts and has recently come under federal investigation.
Using a tool to accomplish a thing pretty common among humans and other species. But Austrian scientists say they've never seen a cow do it until now. NPR's Nate Rott brings us Veronica's story.
Veronica is a 13-year-old Swiss brown cow living in Austria amidst a lot of biting horseflies. To help relieve the itching, cognitive biologists from the University of Veterinary Medicine Vienna say she's figured out how to pick up sticks in her mouth and use them to scratch hard-to-reach places. Over 70 trials with a broom, they found she used each end, bristle and knob, separately for different areas. Similar, researcher Elise Auersperg says, to how chimpanzees employ multi-use tools.
This should give us some thought that we may perhaps have underestimated the intelligence of some livestock species.
Though, she adds, Veronica is fairly unique in that she's 13 years old and is kept as a pet.
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