Live from NPR News in Washington, I'm Ryland Barton.
The U.S. and Israel's war with Iran continues to escalate, yesterday Israel attacked
a crucial Iranian natural gas field, and then Iran responded today with a strike on
the world's biggest, liquified natural gas complex in Qatar. Now, the Trump administration is proposing $200 billion in additional funding for the war. Thomas Wright served as an senior director for strategic planning at the National Security Council under President Biden. He says it's unlikely Iran will surrender anytime soon.
“I think Iran only wants the war to end when it has some guarantee that he won't be”
back in six or ten months to strike again if it rebuilds. I think they want to impose a cost on the U.S. and Israel to deter a future strike. And so I don't think they would necessarily accept an unconditional cessation. Global crude oil prices continue to swing during the war, hovering around $177 in gasoline prices in the U.S. continue to climb.
The U.S. has pulled many levers to try to bring prices down and is considering others, but his NPR's Camilla Dominozki reports the scale of the disruption to global oil markets is profound.
About 20 million barrels per day typically passes through the straight of her moves.
Right now, maybe five million is making it around the straight like through pipelines. Dan Pickering is the chief investment officer at Pickering Energy Partners. Fifteen million barrels a day isn't easy to offset anywhere.
“That's the total production of the United States and where the biggest producer in the”
world. There is no easy fix. Tapping stockpiles and easing U.S. sanctions only partly fills the gap. And waving the Jones Act, which mandates goods traveling between U.S. ports, be sent on American built ships, might ease gasoline prices by a penny or less.
Camilla Dominozki and PR news. The Trump administration announced today that it will move significant management of the nation's federal student loan portfolio to the Treasury Department, continuing President Trump's effort to shrink and eventually shutter the education department. NPR's Sequoia Corrillo reports.
In the administration's latest move to shift responsibilities away from the Department of Education, management of much of the country's student loan portfolio worth nearly $1.7 trillion.
“We'll be phased over to the Treasury Department.”
The administration says Treasury is better equipped to manage the program. Loans into fault will move over first followed by loans that are in good standing. And in the final phase, Treasury will take over the free application for federal student aid or FAFSA.
More than 40 million borrowers hold federal student loans while about 12 million of them
are either into fault or on their way there. Sequoia Corrillo and PR news. U.S. stocks largely drop today but paired back big losses from earlier in the day. S&P 500 and Nasdaq both fell more than a quarter of a percent. The Dow fell nearly half a percent.
This is NPR news. Three men who alleged that actor Kevin Spacey sexually assaulted them have settled their claims in London. The men claimed that Spacey abused them at various times between year 2013. Spacey denies the allegations.
The case was due to go to trial later this year but the judge paused the proceedings after both sides agreed to the settlement terms. Plan Parenthood of Illinois has agreed to pay a half million dollars to end an investigation by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission into its DEI initiatives and PR's Andrea Xu reports.
According to the EEOC, the Plan Parenthood affiliate in Illinois violated Title VII of the Civil Rights Act by mandating employees attend affinity caucuses segregated by race and attend DEI trainings that involved repeated derogatory statements targeting white employees. Discrimination charges were brought by multiple employees. Plan Parenthood of Illinois said that since the complaint was filed, it's undergone significant
changes including within its leadership. Over the past year, the EEOC has increased scrutiny of corporate DEI programs. The agency is also investigating Nike over its diversity goals and has sued a Coca-Cola Bodler, alleging the company discriminated against male employees, Andrea Xu and PR news. It's the first day of March Madness, the NCAA College Basketball Tournament, and on
the men's side millions of brackets have already been busted after high-point university upset the much higher ranked University of Wisconsin, ESPN says just under 900,000 perfect brackets, brackets remain after the first wave of games today. This is NPR.
