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NPR News: 03-26-2026 7AM EDT

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"Live from NPR News in Washington, Uncore of a Coleman, thousands of US parat...

and Marines are deploying to the Middle East.

This comes as President Trump weighs, whether to seize Carg Island.

And beer's Jackie North and reports, that's home to Iran's main oil processing facility." Carg Island in the Persian Gulf is considered an economic lifeline for Iran, more than 90% of its oil exports are funneled through the tiny island. The buildup of troops heading to the Middle East is fueling speculation that the U.S. might try to seize and hold Carg Island.

Caitlyn Talmud, a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, says that would be militarily challenging. "Incerting U.S. forces, so close to Iran's shores would be risky and carry the potential for casualties."

Iran has warned it will launch retaliatory strikes against energy infrastructures in the region

if Carg Island is attacked, which could send world energy prices soaring. Jackie North and PR News sent a Democrats have blocked a Republican plan to end the partial shutdown of the Homeland Security Department.

It would have funded the agency, including TSA agents who are not getting paid.

But Illinois Democrat Dick Durbin says the GOP plan failed to address demands about federal immigration officers in the wake of the killings of too manyapolis protesters. "We have differences with opinion when it comes to ICE and standards that they'll live by, but we ought to separate all the others and fully fund them. We've tried to do that ten times on the Florida Senate Republicans have resisted this."

But North Dakota Republican Senator Kevin Cramer says the Democrats plan is "unserious." "I don't know how they can get a better deal. We've given them a lot, Donald Trump has given them a lot. It's clear that TSA agents should be being paid, and there's absolutely no reason in the law for them to be against this deal."

There are different wait times this morning at major U.S. airports. The longest is four hours at Bush Intercontinental Airport in Houston. The White House is missed a deadline for naming a new leader at the nation's top public

health agency, and PR's ping-hoong reports that leaves the Centers for Disease Control

and Prevention in an unusual position. Wednesday marks two hundred ten days since the last CDC director was fired. According to the Federal vacancies at, that's a limit for how long the role can be filled in an acting capacity by temps. The vacancies act is intended to prevent a president from circumventing the Senate confirmation

process. The CDC's interim leader, Dr. Jaye Bhattacharya, will no longer be the official acting director, but at a CDC all staff meeting, he said he would continue acting in the capacity as director. A spokesperson for the Department of Health and Human Services says Bhattacharya will continue to perform the delicate duties of the CDC director while the health secretary, evaluates

candidates for the permanent CDC role, ping-hoong and PR news. "You're listening to NPR news from Washington. Ousted Venezuelan leader Nicholas Maduro is scheduled to appear in U.S. District Court in Manhattan today. He and his wife, Celia Flores, want to have their federal drug trafficking charges thrown

out. U.S. troops seized them in Caracas in early January and brought them to New York. That triggered a leadership change in Venezuela." New research finds that drought could be increasing anti-biotic resistance in soils. NPR's Jonathan Lambert reports that anti-biotic resistance seems to appear in people who

end up in some hospitals. "Anabotic resistance is on the rise worldwide. Researchers typically point to human overuse as the main driver, but antibiotics in resistance

to antibiotics ultimately trace back to bacteria in the soil.

And soils around the world are becoming drier from climate change. To see if this might impact resistance levels, researchers analyze soils from around the globe. They found that drier soils tended to have bacteria with more resistance genes, and some of these genes were exactly the same as those found in human infections at local hospitals.

The study also found that hospitals in drier areas tended to have more resistant infections. A problem that could worsen with climate change. The researchers published in the journal Nature Microbiology. Jonathan Lambert and PR News award winning author Tracey Kitter has died of lung cancer at his daughter's home in Boston.

He was 80. Kitter won the Pulitzer Prize in the National Book Award for his 1981 narrative work, the soul of a new machine. It explored the new field of computers. This is NPR.

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