Transcript of FlyDubai Pilot Investigation, SCOTUS Climate Change Case, Brazil Runoff Election

Investigators say the FlyDubai pilot who attacked his captain last week intended to crash the plane into Israel's main airport.

Israeli agencies are deflecting blame about why he was allowed to fly that route in the first place.

I'm Bim Martinez, that is Michelle Martin, and this is Up First from NPR News. The Supreme Court begins its new term today with a case about climate change. Can local governments sue energy companies for their role? Boulder, Colorado wants 2 oil companies to help cover the cost of damages.

And the son of Brazil's far-right former president is now the front-runner in the country's presidential election. Flávio Bolsonaro is headed to a runoff against the incumbent president, Lula da Silva. What's driving voters in Brazil back to the right? Stay with us. We'll give you news you need to start your day.

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An investigation into the mid-air attack aboard a commercial flight from Dubai to Tel Aviv last week has found that the co-pilot who tried to take control of the plane intended to crash it into Israel's Ben Gurion Airport.

That's according to a person familiar with the matter but not authorized to speak publicly. Investigation into the incident is still ongoing.

For more, we're joined by NPR's Kat Lonsdorf in Tel Aviv.

Hi, Kat.

Hey, good morning.

So there are several countries conducting investigations into this attack, so what do we know? What do we know about the attack?

Well, over the weekend, officials in the United Arab Emirates, which is leading the investigation, announced that they had deemed the incident a terrorist attack. That assessment agreed with what Israeli officials had been saying earlier. We still don't have a clear motive for the attack. This morning, a source familiar with the investigation told NPR that the co-pilot who attacked the captain intended to fly the plane to Ben Gurion Airport, which was its destination, but then crash it into the airport. This all happened in the morning here when Ben Gurion would have been full of people. That source also said that it's likely the co-pilot pilot acted alone. And just to be clear, this investigation is still very much ongoing.

Do we have any more detail about what actually happened on the plane?

Yeah, we're starting to get a clearer picture. Investigators said that the co-pilot of the FlyDubai plane carried out the attack with what's called a crash ax. That's a lightweight emergency tool stored in the cockpit. It's used to break through panels or jam doors in the event of a crash. The pilot was then able to open the cockpit door during the attack, and then passengers rushed in and subdued the attacker while another pilot who happened to be on board the plane helped land it. Both the pilot and the co-pilot are alive, and they're in the UAE now being questioned.

Do we know any more about the attacker, the co-pilot?

Yeah, the co-pilot is from Oman, according to Israeli officials, and that's raising questions here in Israel about how he was allowed to fly a plane heading to Israel, which doesn't allow pilots from countries it doesn't have diplomatic relations with to fly into its airspace. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that this pilot must have gotten through a, quote, loophole.

Kat, what has been the reaction from Israelis as this has all been playing out?

Yeah, generally Israelis are praising the passengers and the captain of the plane, who's from India, as heroes who averted a major disaster. But there's also this larger debate playing out about who dropped the ball to allow for something like this to happen. The Ministry of Transportation has been pointing blame at the security services and vice versa, while Netanyahu's opponents have been saying that this is a huge failure on his part, calling for a larger investigation. After a lot of public pressure, Netanyahu announced last night that there will be be some kind of formal examination, but there haven't been much more details on that.

And as you've been telling us, this is all happening as national elections in Israel are just weeks away.

Yeah.

Elections that will determine whether or not Netanyahu remains prime minister. Is there any sense that this incident will affect voters?

Well, Netanyahu is certainly making the media rounds about this attack, spending time with the passengers who stormed the cockpit and putting out press releases, going on foreign media. The polls here show that this is a very tight election coming up, and also that Israelis are largely already decided on how they're going to vote, so something like this might just entrench voters further, but it could be enough to motivate people who weren't planning to vote to go vote, and that could have an impact.

That is NPR's Kat Launstorff in Tel Aviv. Kat, thank you.

Thank you.

A new Supreme Court term begins today with a major case about climate change.

Boulder, Colorado, is suing 2 big energy companies over the cost of responding to natural disasters— disasters made worse by global warming. The energy giants say this isn't something state juries should handle.

NPR's Carrie Johnson will be in the courtroom for the arguments today, but first, she's here with us now to talk more about the case. Good morning.

Good morning.

So what is Boulder planning to argue, and tell us why it matters?

Boulder says Suncor and ExxonMobil knew decades ago that fossil fuels contributed to climate change and raised the risks of floods, wildfires and excessive heat. Boulder says it's had to pay a lot of money to harden infrastructure, and it says these energy companies should help cover some of those costs. Corey Rade White is legal director at the Center for Climate Integrity, which supports this lawsuit. He describes the stakes this way: Whether or not communities have the ability to hold corporations accountable when they knowingly deceive consumers about the harms they know their products will cause, Now, there are about a couple dozen cases where states and local governments are seeking to hold companies to account over climate change, so what the Supreme Court does here could have a sweeping effect.

And how are the energy companies responding?

These companies say this case does not belong in state court. They say climate change is a global issue, and the structure of the Constitution means the federal government should handle it. Todd Zywicki is a law professor at the Scalia Law School at George Mason University.

He supports Suncor and Exxon: This is about whether a bunch of hippies, rich hippies in Boulder County, are allowed to dictate environment and energy policy to the entire rest of the world.

Legal experts told me this case could extend even beyond climate to disputes about whether states can sue over the harms of AI and other issues that cross state boundaries.

Carrie, is there any hint of how the Supreme Court might receive this case or might come out on this case?

This is a tough one, and we now know only 8 justices are going to hear this case. That's because Justice Sam Alito recused himself last week, A bit of a surprise. Alito doesn't own stock in Suncor or Exxon, but he does have some investments in other energy companies that could be affected depending on how the court rules. That means there's the possibility of a 4-4 tie. If that happens, the ruling of the Colorado Supreme Court would stand, and that allowed this case to proceed in state court there.

OK, Carrie, before we let you go, the last couple of years have just seen some really significant cases at the high court. How is this term shaping up?

We do have some big cases already, including a challenge to state bans on the very popular AR-15 assault-style rifles. Those weapons are owned by millions of people in America, but they've also been used in a lot of mass shootings. There's going to be a clash over religion in schools, specifically a universal pre-K program in Colorado. Catholic schools want an exemption from an anti-discrimination policy that applies to LGBTQ people because they say it conflicts with Catholic teaching, and there are a number of immigrant immigration cases brewing. From the president's attempt to deport migrants to countries where they have no ties at all to a new case involving mandatory detention with no bond hearing, the Trump administration has tried to detain tens of thousands of immigrants, often people with no criminal record. Most lower courts have rejected that approach, but the court is still adding new cases to the docket, so more is going to be coming, and I'll be watching.

All right, thank you. NPR's Carrie Johnson.

Thank you.

Brazil's presidential election will go to a runoff later this month after the right made significant gains in Sunday's national vote.

Flávio Bolsonaro, the son of Brazil's former far-right president, had a strong night. He outperformed the country's veteran leftist incumbent, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.

NPR South America correspondent Carrie Cohn joins us from Rio with more on what we learned from the first round of voting. Good morning, Carrie.

Good morning.

So polls had said that the results would be very close. So just how close was it?

It was close. Flávio Bolsonaro won 47% of the vote. He's the 45-year-old eldest son of Jair Bolsonaro, who was barred from running after being convicted of plotting a coup to overturn the 2022 election. The current president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, received 45%. Polls had actually shown Lula with a small advantage going into yesterday's national elections. But Bolsonaro really outperformed and surprised many. 29-year-old Alan Belmanci was fishing off the seawall facing the famous Christ the Redeemer statue in the distance. He hadn't caught anything, but he was telling me he was so happy Bolsonaro won. He said he's been robbed robbed 3 times in the last few years and lost his car. He lost everything. He said he's sick of it and says Flávio Bolsonaro will do more to crack down on criminals than Lula. Augusto Félix da Silva was sitting a bit further down the seawall drinking a beer with his family, and he told me he's so tired of President Lula and is thrilled that Brazilians voted for a change and to get the economy growing again. Lula wants more poor people. The more poor people, the more votes He said Lula doesn't want the country to grow.

He just wants more poor people because with more poor people, he will get more votes.

Okay. And what do these results mean for Lula?

Lula will have to find a way to close the gap in this runoff. He's not going to really be able to win over the 8% of voters who went for the other candidates. They were far right and right, and their voters will fall in line with Bolsonaro, not with Lula. Lula will have to get new votes from those who sat out yesterday's election, and that's going to be very hard. Many Brazilians are just disillusioned with politics and were hoping for new younger candidates to vote for. Supporters of Lula gathered at a downtown plaza here in Rio last night and the mood was somber. 29-year-old Jasmine Suarez is a local DJ. She says it's scary, really scary, as she said about Bolsonaro and the right. Strong performance She said the right just brings with it a lot of hatred. And I heard that from many Lula voters, that they fear a Bolsonaro conservative back in power.

You know, there have already been a number of right-wing victories in Latin America. President Trump has taken credit for that shift. Is that what is happening in Brazil?

Brazil would be a huge win for the right for sure. Lula tried to repeatedly use Trump's increasing interventions in Latin America as a campaign issue, but voters were more interested in domestic issues like crime and the faltering economy. Trump may have been part of the backdrop, but for voters here, the issues at home were more immediate.

That is Carrie Connerio. Carrie, thank you.

You're welcome.

This week's Up First Sunday story examines the case of a deadly reporting trip in Ukraine. In a war zone, journalists have to balance risk and reward. For one Fox News reporter, that calculation ended in his colleagues' deaths.

Not one person would have been injured if Benji had just listened to the advisory.

Who's responsible for setting limits on reporting in a war zone when lives are on the line? Listen now to the Sunday Story from the Up First podcast on the NPR app. And that's Up First for Monday, October 5th. I'm Michelle Martin.

And I'm Eddie Martinez. Today's episode of Up First was edited by Tina Kraia, Anna Yukhaninoff, Tara Neal, Mohammed Elbardisi, and Taylor Haney. It was produced by Ziad Butch and Nia Dumas. Our director is Christopher Thomas. We get engineering support from Misha Hines and Patrick Murray. Our technical director is Carly Strange. Join us again tomorrow. Want to hear this podcast without sponsor breaks? Amazon Prime members can listen to Up First sponsor-free through Amazon Music. Or you can also support NPR's vital journalism and get NPR+ at plus.npr.org. That's plus.npr.org.

This week on Short Wave, the internet is obsessed with inflammation. And yeah, it is true.

Inflammation is at the heart of nearly every Disease in the body.

But it's also—

The body's natural response to danger.

So who really needs to be worried about it? Find out on Short Wave, the science podcast from NPR.

Yeah. While you're spicing your pumpkins, whatever people do, listen every week to Wait Wait... Don't Tell Me! on the NPR app or wherever you get your podcasts.