NPR News: 12-11-2025 8AM EST
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What recent actions has the U.S. taken regarding Venezuela?
Live from NPR News, I'm Janine Herbst. President Trump says the U.S. seized an oil tanker off the coast of Venezuela, an escalation of his push against President Nicolas Maduro. The U.S. sanctioned Venezuelan oil shipments, trying to strangle its oil revenue. The country is selling what it can at a steep discount. Meanwhile, Venezuelan opposition leader and Nobel Peace Prize winner Maria Karina Machado a big supporter of Trump's actions against Maduro, is vowing to bring democracy to her country and end Maduro's government.
We ask the international community to cut those horses because the other regimes that support Maduro and the criminal structure are very active and have turned Venezuela into the safe haven for their operations.
Speaking there in Oslo after around a year in hiding. The Senate votes on two health bills today related to Obamacare. Empire's Selina Simmons-Duffin reports Democrats in Congress want to extend so-called enhanced premium subsidies. Republicans are divided.
24 million people enrolled in Obamacare this year, mostly small business owners and workers, farmers, ranchers. Nearly all of them got enhanced subsidies to help with monthly premium costs. Now those enhanced subsidies are expiring and costs are going up dramatically. Ellen Allen's premium costs are quadrupling. She's 64, lives in West Virginia, and has pre-existing conditions.
The bronze plan without vision and dental with a monthly premium of $1,967.50.
Senate Democrats' bill would put those enhanced subsidies back for three years. The Republican bill would put money in health savings accounts but would not bring down the higher premium costs. Selina Simmons-Duffin, NPR News, Washington.
The head of the National Transportation Safety Board is opposing part of the defense policy bill, which just passed out of the House today and is advancing to the Senate. And Pierce Joel Rose reports the NTSB warns the bill would undermine safety improvements made after a deadly mid-air collision in January.
In an unusual rebuke, National Transportation Safety Board Chair Jennifer Homendy raised major concerns about a provision in the defense policy bill now before Congress.
If it sounds like I'm mad, I am mad. This is shameful.
Homendy said the provision would roll back safety improvements that were recommended by the NTSB after the collision of a military Black Hawk helicopter and an American Airlines regional jet near Washington, D.C. in January. After the crash, the Defense Department agreed to require military aircraft to broadcast their position. But the NTSB says the bill's language would recreate exemptions that were in place at the time of the crash that killed 67 people. the nation's deadliest aviation disaster in more than 20 years. Joel Rose, NPR News, Washington.
You're listening to NPR News. Federal health officials expanded an outbreak of infant botulism tied to bi-heart baby formula to include any illness reported since the company started production in 2022. The CDC says the outbreak now includes at least 51 infants in 19 states. The company recalled all of its products last month. No deaths have been reported. NASA says it lost contact with a spacecraft orbiting Mars. As Joe Pelko reports, the MAVEN has been circling the red planet for more than a decade.
It's pretty easy to describe what scientists hope to learn from MAVEN. The MAVEN mission is about understanding the history of the climate on Mars. Bruce Joukowsky was MAVEN's principal investigator when it went into orbit in 2014. Mars is now a cold, arid planet, hostile to life. But scientists believe it was once wet and warm and potentially habitable. The Martian atmosphere most likely holds the explanation for why the climate changed so dramatically, and that's what the probe's instruments were designed to study. NASA says it's still investigating why communications were lost. For NPR News, I'm Joe Palka.
Italian cuisine is loved by many, and now the UN is handing it a major honor. The country's entire cuisine has been added to the UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity list.
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