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Kevin Durant powered the U.S. men’s basketball team in Olympic opener against Serbia

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Kevin Durant powered the U.S. men’s basketball team in Olympic opener against Serbia

Kevin Durant of Team United States looks to pass against Serbia’s Vasilije Micic (left) during the second half of Olympic group play at Stade Pierre Mauroy on Sunday in Lille, France.

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NPR is in Paris for the 2024 Summer Olympics. For more of our coverage from the games head to our latest updates.

PARIS – The U.S. men’s national basketball team started its march toward what the players hope is a fifth consecutive Olympic gold medal, with a 110-84 victory over Serbia on Sunday.

Three-time gold medalist Kevin Durant made his return to the court, scoring 23 points (21 in the first half), and making his first eight shots in the game. LeBron James added 21 points, nine assists and seven rebounds.

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“Everybody played their role pretty well,” Durant said. “My role was to come in and provide spacing and shot-making for the team, and I’m glad I was able to knock them down.”

Durant missed all five exhibition games that the U.S. played ahead of Paris, due to a calf strain. He’s hoping to make his own history in Paris – seeking a record fourth Olympic gold medal in men’s basketball.

U.S. coach Steve Kerr, who spent three seasons with Durant at the Golden State Warriors, brought Durant off the bench, rather than using him in the starting lineup.

“More than any player I’ve ever been around, when he comes back from a long absence, you don’t notice it,” Kerr said. “He’s so skilled and he just looked like he was in mid-season form after not playing in a real basketball game for a couple of months.”

The game against Nikola Jokic and Serbia was expected to be the most significant test of the men’s team’s opening round. Jokich, a three-time NBA MVP, scored 20 points with five rebounds and eight assists. Bogdan Bogdanovic scored 14.

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“The whole approach was that the strength of our team is depth,” Kerr said of Jokic. “And we’ve got three guys who can guard him. And that was the approach, rotate guys onto him and cross your fingers because he’s a brilliant player.”

Stephen Curry reacts at the end of the USA game against Serbia. It's his first Olympics and he says he's trying to savor every minute of it.

Stephen Curry reacts at the end of the USA game against Serbia. It’s his first Olympics and he says he’s trying to savor every minute of it.

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The game also marked a return to the Olympics for LeBron James after a 12-year gap.

“It was phenomenal,” James said. “Listening to our national anthem, listening to the fans cheer, definitely got a little nervous, my stomach, the butterflies came out.”

James said the game was the best the team has played so far.

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“I thought they tested us early. The second group came in, gave us a big lift,” he said.

To win its fifth straight gold medal, the men’s team has to advance out of its four-team group in the opening round of the tournament, and then win three consecutive games in the knockout round.

“Very, very important to get off to a good start in this tournament because every game is so big,” said Stephen Curry, who scored 11 points in his first game as an Olympian. “You want to get the gold. Serbia’s a great team, they run a very intricate offense and a very physical defense. KD was unbelievable in the first half and gave us a huge boost, and our defense in the second half opened the game up.”

The men’s national team will next face South Sudan on Wednesday, which is playing in the Olympics for the first time. During exhibition play this summer, the U.S. team narrowly avoided a loss to South Sudan, 101-100, to remain unbeaten.

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Video: What Trump Told Us About the ICE Shooting

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Video: What Trump Told Us About the ICE Shooting

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The New York Times sat down with President Trump in the Oval Office for an exclusive interview just hours after an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent shot a 37-year-old woman in Minneapolis. Our White House correspondent Zolan Kanno-Youngs explains how the president reacted to the shooting.

By Zolan Kanno-Youngs, Alexandra Ostasiewicz, Nikolay Nikolov and Coleman Lowndes

January 8, 2026

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Community reacts to ICE shooting in Minnesota. And, RFK Jr. unveils new food pyramid

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Community reacts to ICE shooting in Minnesota. And, RFK Jr. unveils new food pyramid

Good morning. You’re reading the Up First newsletter. Subscribe here to get it delivered to your inbox, and listen to the Up First podcast for all the news you need to start your day.

Today’s top stories

An Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer shot and killed 37-year-old Renee Nicole Good, a Minneapolis woman, yesterday. Multiple observers captured the shooting on video, and community members demanded accountability. Minnesota law enforcement officials and the FBI are investigating the fatal shooting, which the Trump administration says was an act of self-defense. Meanwhile, the mayor has accused the officer of reckless use of power and demanded that ICE get out of Minneapolis.

People demonstrate during a vigil at the site where a woman was shot and killed by an immigration officer earlier in the day in Minneapolis, Minnesota, on Jan. 7, 2026. An immigration officer in Minneapolis shot dead a woman on Wednesday, triggering outrage from local leaders even as President Trump claimed the officer acted in self-defense. Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey deemed the government’s allegation that the woman was attacking federal agents “bullshit,” and called on Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers conducting a second day of mass raids to leave Minneapolis.

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  • 🎧 Caitlin Callenson recorded the shooting and says officers gave Good multiple conflicting instructions while she was in her vehicle. Callenson says Good was already unresponsive when officers pulled her from the car. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem claims the officer was struck by the vehicle and acted in self-defense. In the video NPR reviewed, the officer doesn’t seem to be hit and was seen walking after he fired the shots, NPR’s Meg Anderson tells Up First. Anderson says it has been mostly peaceful in Minneapolis, but there is a lot of anger and tension because protesters want ICE out of the city.

U.S. forces yesterday seized a Russian-flagged oil tanker in the north Atlantic between Iceland and Britain after a two-week chase. The tanker was originally headed to Venezuela, but it changed course to avoid the U.S. ships. This action comes as the Trump administration begins releasing new information about its plans for Venezuela’s oil industry.

  • 🎧 It has been a dramatic week for U.S. operations in Venezuela, NPR’s Greg Myre says, prompting critics to ask if a real plan for the road ahead exists. Secretary of State Marco Rubio responded that the U.S. does have a strategy to stabilize Venezuela, and much of it seems to involve oil. Rubio said the U.S. would take control of up to 50 million barrels of oil from the country. Myre says the Trump administration appears to have a multipronged strategy that involves taking over the country’s oil, selling it on the world market and pressuring U.S. oil companies to enter Venezuela.

Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. released new dietary guidelines for Americans yesterday that focus on promoting whole foods, proteins and healthy fats. The guidance, which he says aims to “revolutionize our food culture,” comes with a new food pyramid, which replaces the current MyPlate symbol.

  • 🎧 “I’m very disappointed in the new pyramid,” Christopher Gardner, a nutrition expert who was on the Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee, tells NPR’s Allison Aubrey. Gardner says the new food structure, which features red meat and saturated fats at the top, contradicts decades of evidence and research. Poor eating habits and the standard American diet are widely considered to cause chronic disease. Aubrey says the new guidelines alone won’t change people’s eating habits, but they will be highly influential. This guidance will shape the offerings in school meals and on military bases, and determine what’s allowed in federal nutrition programs.

Special series

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Trump has tried to bury the truth of what happened on Jan. 6, 2021. NPR built a visual archive of the attack on the Capitol, showing exactly what happened through the lenses of the people who were there. “Chapter 4: The investigation” shows how federal investigators found the rioters and built the largest criminal case in U.S. history.

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Political leaders, including Trump, called for rioters to face justice for their actions on Jan. 6. This request came because so few people were arrested during the attack. The extremists who led the riot remained free, and some threatened further violence. The government launched the largest federal investigation in American history, resulting in the arrest of over 1,500 individuals from all 50 states. The most serious cases were made by prosecutors against leaders of the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers. For their roles in planning the attack against the U.S., some extremists were found guilty of seditious conspiracy. Take a look at the Jan. 6 prosecutions by the numbers, including the highest sentence received.

To learn more, explore NPR’s database of federal criminal cases from Jan. 6. You can also see more of NPR’s reporting on the topic.

Deep dive

U.S. President Donald Trump speaks during a news conference in the Roosevelt Room of the White House in Washington, DC.

U.S. President Donald Trump speaks during a news conference in the Roosevelt Room of the White House in Washington, DC.

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U.S. President Donald Trump speaks during a news conference in the Roosevelt Room of the White House in Washington, DC.

U.S. President Donald Trump speaks during a news conference in the Roosevelt Room of the White House in Washington, DC.

Andrew Harnik/Getty Images

Trump takes 325 milligrams of daily aspirin, which is four times the recommended 81 milligrams of low-dose aspirin used for cardiovascular disease prevention. The president revealed this detail in an interview with The Wall Street Journal published last week. The U.S. Preventive Services Task Force recommends that anyone over 60 not start a daily dose of aspirin to prevent cardiovascular disease if they don’t already have an underlying problem. The group said it’s reasonable to stop preventive aspirin in people already taking it around age 75 years. Trump is 79. This is what you should know about aspirin and cardiac health:

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  • 💊 Doctors often prescribe the low dose of aspirin because there’s no benefit to taking a higher dose, according to a large study published in 2021.
  • 💊 Some people, including adults who have undergone heart bypass surgery and those who have had a heart attack, should take the advised dose of the drug for their entire life.
  • 💊 While safer than other blood thinners, the drug — even at low doses — raises the risk of bleeding in the stomach and brain. But these adverse events are unlikely to cause death.

3 things to know before you go

When an ant pupa has a deadly, incurable infection, it sends out a signal that tells worker ants to unpack it from its cocoon and disinfect it, a process that results in its death.

When an ant pupa has a deadly, incurable infection, it sends out a signal that tells worker ants to unpack it from its cocoon and disinfect it, a process that results in its death.

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  1. Young, terminally ill ants will send out an altruistic “kill me” signal to worker ants, according to a study in the journal Nature Communications. With this strategy, the sick ants sacrifice themselves for the good of their colony.
  2. In this week’s Far-Flung Postcards series, you can spot a real, lone California sequoia tree in the Parc des Buttes Chaumont in Paris. Napoleon III transformed the park from a former landfill into one of the French capital’s greenest escapes.
  3. The ACLU and several authors have sued Utah over its “sensitive materials” book law, which has now banned 22 books in K-12 schools. Among the books on the ban list are The Perks of Being a Wallflower and Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West. (via KUER)

This newsletter was edited by Suzanne Nuyen.

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Video: Minnesota Governor Condemns ICE Shooting

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Video: Minnesota Governor Condemns ICE Shooting

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Minnesota Governor Condemns ICE Shooting

Governor Tim Walz of Minnesota slammed the fatal shooting of a woman by an immigration agent. President Trump said that the agents had acted in self-defense.

This morning, we learned that an ICE officer shot and killed someone in Minneapolis. We have been warning for weeks that the Trump administration’s dangerous, sensationalized operations are a threat to our public safety, that someone was going to get hurt. Just yesterday, I said exactly that. What we’re seeing is the consequences of governance designed to generate fear, headlines and conflict. It’s governing by reality TV. And today, that recklessness cost someone their life.

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Governor Tim Walz of Minnesota slammed the fatal shooting of a woman by an immigration agent. President Trump said that the agents had acted in self-defense.

By Jiawei Wang

January 8, 2026

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