Who should win the Oscar for the best original song this year?
On the latest all songs considered from NPR Music, we rank the nominees.
“I think Diane Warren should have won two Academy Awards.”
The problem is very often the lyrics are not much more insightful than you would find on the nearest throw pillow.
Here the NPR Music podcast on the NPR app or wherever you get podcasts. Live from NPR News, I'm Jial Snyder. The US and Israel started attacking Iran nearly two weeks ago. Some 2,000 people are believed to have been killed with Lebanon's death toll from Israeli strikes climbing to more than 600. Israeli Army is sitting southern Lebanon and the suburbs of Beirut as it targets Hezbollah strongholds. And here's Hadeel Al-Shalci reports that humanitarian groups are alarmed.
At the sports city football stadium on the outskirts of Beirut, nearly 800 people are now crammed. They're crammed into white tents pitched by volunteers. People haven't had access to clean bathrooms and say they haven't showered for days. Samr Saffa is the general manager of Mahzumi Foundation, a nonprofit trying to help equip the stadium to make it more livable. He says resources are very limited.
What we have budgeted for within this year, we cannot cater for half a million displaced.
Saffa says organizations like his are feeling the impact of President Trump's cuts to international humanitarian aid.
“Making it difficult to provide essential services to those in need in Lebanon.”
Hadeel Al-Shalci and PR news, Beirut. A British warship, the HMS Dragon, has departed southern England for Cyprus, where a British military base was set by an Iranian drone. UK has given Washington limited use of its military bases for the war on Iran, as MPRs Loren Freyer reports on London. American B1 Lancer bombers are thundering over the Cotswalt, a rural area west of London that's home to a royal air force base. U.S. war planes have been taking off and landing there.
Photos show a mini crane carrying huge missiles across the tarmac. Prime Minister Keir Starmer, a former human rights lawyer, has expressed legal concerns about U.S. and Israeli attacks on Iran and has granted the U.S. only limited access to British bases for defensive operations only. But it's unclear how the British government can police that. Loren Freyer and PR news, London. Mixed day for the markets as a price of oil rose again, but inflation held steady.
And Paris Maria Aspen reports a down-dropped in the S.P. 500 down slightly the tech heavy NASDAQ saw a modest gain. The global oil supply got some relief from the war with Iran. After countries in the international energy agency agreed to release strategic reserves. But the price of Brancourt oil still went up and U.S. stock markets still went down. Investors also shrugged off the latest government data on inflation, which held steady last month in line with economists expectations.
But that data was collected before the war in the Middle East started driving up gas prices. There was some good news for tech investors, shares an oracle sword after Larry Ellison software company reported earnings that beat expectations. And reassured some of Wall Street's ongoing anxiety about an AI bubble. Maria Aspen and PR news. This is NPR news.
The Trump administration is planning to release 172 million barrels of oil from its strategic petroleum reserve.
Part of a wider release coordinated by the International Energy Agency, aimed at calming energy markets amid the Iran War. The IEA-based empiricism will make a record 400 million barrels available from the emergency reserves of its member countries. U.S. share amounts to more than 40% of the release.
Student loan borrowers could be getting wrong information from the companies that manage their loans. That's according to the nonpartisan government accountability office. Here's impures Corey Turner.
“GAO found the U.S. Department of Education stopped two key pieces of oversight under President Trump.”
One staff used to listen back to recordings of phone calls between borrowers and call center workers to make sure they were getting accurate information. And two, department staff would do special data accuracy checks because loan service or records can be pretty unreliable. Before these reviews stopped, GAO found that four of the five servicers failed that data check.
The Trump administration says these reviews do not meaningfully measure service or performance. But department officials told GAO the problem was staff capacity. The reviews stopped early last year. As the administration began cutting, the student loan office by nearly half. Corey Turner and P.R. News.
The WMBA and its players union have yet to reach a deal on a new collective bargaining agreement. The two sides started talking again Wednesday afternoon in New York. After ending a 12 hour negotiating session early Wednesday morning, revenue sharing is the key sticky point. I'm trial Snyder and P.R. News.
