"Li from NPR News in Washington, on Corva Coleman, President Trump says, "For...
days, the U.S. and Iran have held good and productive conversations about ending
the war in the Middle East." Writing online last hour, Trump says the U.S. will stop and he planned to tack on Iranian power plants for a five-day period. He says that's based on the success of ongoing discussions. Over the weekend, Trump had threatened Iran.
He'd said the U.S. would bomb all of Iran's power plants. If it didn't reopen the state of Hormuz, the near-closure has forced oil and gas-cost to skyrocket. Like oil and gas, the cost of fertilizer has spiked since the start of the war with Iran.
“Remember, station KCUR, Frank Morris reports.”
Farmers plant major crops like corn and soybeans in the spring, but first, they put down lots of nitrogen fertilizer, chiefly urea. Urea is made with natural gas, and almost half the world's exports of it typically shipped through the state of Hormuz. Urea prices have shot up by almost a third since the state closed.
Josh Lindville, Vice President of Feralizer at Stonex, says, "It's his nightmare scenario. It would be this exact event during this exact time of year." It doesn't get much worse than what we're dealing with today.
The Feralizer Institute, predicts American farmers, will be short, perhaps two million
tons of urea this spring and grow less food because of it. From Pyrenees on Frank Morris. There was a deadly collision on the runway of a New York airport late last night. The pilots of an air cannon at Jed had just landed when they collided with a fire truck on a runway at Laguardia, several people remain hospitalized.
This is day 37 at the partial shutdown of the Department of Homeland Security. It's unclear when the Senate might strike a deal to end it, and end long security lines at airports, and Pierce Claudia Grisallus reports. To restart DHS funding Senate Republicans need votes from Democrats who are holding out for a deal that includes reforms to immigration enforcement, but both sides remain far apart
and now President Trump is demanding the Senate pair DHS funding with the new partisan voting proposal. Here's Senate majority leader, John Thune.
“It's not politically good for anybody to have people out of work, and important functions”
of our government, not being carried out on a daily basis, and functions that are important to our homeland security and our national security. Democrats argue Republicans can fund TSA and other DHS components today, since they already directed major appropriations to the agency's immigration enforcement and a partisan law past last year.
Claudia D'Sullis and Pierre News. Meanwhile, President Trump has ordered federal immigration agents to deploy to major airports across the country. They're supposed to help TSA agents who are not getting paid because of the shutdown. But the head of the union that represents TSA agents says, "I say, agents are untrained,"
he says they could make airport security worse. This is NPR. The Trump administration installed a statue of Christopher Columbus on the White House grounds over the weekend.
“As NPR's angry end-drucivic reports, it is the replica of a statue that ended up in the”
Baltimore Harbor. In 2020, demonstrators threw the original statue into the harbor during a wave of protests sparked by the death of George Floyd. Pieces of the sculpture were later retrieved from the water and used for the restoration. The statue on display at the White House is on loan from an organization that promotes
Italian American culture. And a thank you letter to the group, President Trump said, "Columbus is fourteen ninety-two voyage, quote, "paved the way for the ultimate triumph of Western civilization."
During his second term, Trump has removed national exhibits acknowledging the country's
mistreatment of indigenous people and history of slavery, while praising European colonization and restoring tributes to Confederate generals. Marie and Russovic NPR News, Washington. More than a thousand journalists are supposed to return to work by today at the federal agency, Voice of America.
It broadcasts to the world in several languages. It features outlets, such as Radio Free Europe. Last week, a federal judge ordered that full-time VOA journalists be returned to work. He ruled that President Trump's choice to head VOA carry lake had illegally taken the powers of the CEO of the Network's Parent Agency.
The judge also ruled that lake acted unlawfully by ignoring a decision by Congress to annually fund the Voice of America. You're listening to NPR.
