Shownotes Transcript
Live from NPR News in Washington, I'm Janine Herbst. Tropical storm Milton has strengthened into a hurricane a day earlier than forecasters anticipated and ahead of its expected landfall this week in Florida. NPR's Juliana Kim reports three-quarters of the state's counties are currently under a state of emergency.
Meteorologists have described Milton as a rapidly intensifying storm, and that proved to be true when it upgraded into a Category 1 storm on Sunday, a day earlier than expected. The storm is still set to make landfall Wednesday on the west coast of the Florida Peninsula. Florida officials are anticipating the largest evacuation in the state since Hurricane Irma in 2017.
The National Hurricane Center urged Florida residents to complete storm preparations and seek safety by Tuesday in order to shelter in place the next day. Milton is expected to exit into the Atlantic Ocean by Thursday. Juliana Kim, NPR News.
The Supreme Court opens a new term tomorrow with transgender rights, guns, pornography, and much more potentially on the docket. And here's Nina Totenberg has more. Once again, it's the social issues that will interest most people, though there are plenty of relatively dull, though very important cases on regulation of everything from the environment to e-cigarettes.
So far, the blockbuster case of the term is a test of laws in 24 states that ban the use of puberty blockers and other hormone treatments for minors. The issues are enormously complex and present fundamental questions about the power of states to regulate medical care for minors and the rights of parents to make decisions for their children.
Also on the docket is a challenge to a Biden administration regulation that classified so-called ghost guns as firearms, even though the untraceable weapons are made from gun kits bought online. Nina Totenberg, NPR News, Washington.
Russia is claiming more battlefield successes with the capture of another village in eastern Ukraine. This as Ukraine said five civilians were killed this weekend by wider Russian shelling. And Pierce Charles-Mains has more. Russia's defense ministry said its forces had, quote, liberated Zhelaniv-Taroia, a village in Ukraine's Donetsk region where Russian troops have made recent steady advancements.
The settlement sits just outside Pokrovsk, a key logistics hub for Ukraine's army and Russia's next priority, before fighting slows in the winter months. Meanwhile, Moscow has continued to target other parts of Ukraine, with heavy missile and drone attacks reported on the capital Kiev, as well as the port city of Odessa. Ukrainian authorities say air defenses intercepted the majority of incoming fire, but are still calling for the West to lift restrictions on Kiev's use of Western-provided weapons to strike deep inside Russia itself.
Charles Mainz, NPR News, Moscow.
