Live from NPR News in Washington, I'm Rylan Barton.
Iran says it closed the Strait of Hormuz again today after Israel continued to attack
“the Hezbollah militant group in Lebanon.”
The closure casts down over whether the precarious ceasefire to end the more than month war would hold as NPR's Greg Meier explains. There was sporadic fire today with Arab Gulf countries in particular reporting some attacks from Iran. Iran said it was hit at least once.
But broadly speaking, the Iran war is definitely going quiet. However, Israel is still heavily bombing Hezbollah in Lebanon. Israel says that conflict is not part of the ceasefire. Now Iran says it is. The U.S. is siding with Israel, but the fighting in Lebanon could be a problem if it
carries on.
NPR's Greg Meier reporting farmers in the heartland are hoping the ceasefire in Iran
will hold and the Strait of Hormuz will reopen, but NPR's Kirk Siggler reports many don't expect fuel or fertilizer prices to go down anytime soon.
“Farmers were already dealing with high equipment and fertilizer costs due to inflation and”
President Trump's latest trade war and the war in Iran has driven up those costs even more. Justin Sherlock grossed corn and soybeans. We really need this to be resolved soon and for oil and energy markets to try and stabilize if we can.
Sherlock is going into his fourth straight year in the red. The farmers here are still holding on or only surviving because land prices are so high and that's collateral to the banks. We're at a point where we're literally betting the farm to try and keep going one more year right now.
Farmers hope the war in geopolitics don't get in the way with ongoing trade negotiations with China traditionally North Dakota's largest buyer of soybeans. Kirk Siggler and PR News Fargo Democracy has significantly eroded since President Trump returned to office according to a
“new survey and PR's Frank Lankfit reports.”
The economist intelligence unit says the United States fell six spots last year in its global democracy index the US tied with Poland for 34th out of 167 countries. Consons hunter with economist enterprise sites a range of actions from Trump's lawsuits against news organizations to his deployments of the National Guard. She says the survey has a message.
Fight for your civil liberties for the functioning of government and for this amazing thing.
When we have of democracy it's the 250th anniversary of our independence. The White House's rejected surveys that accused the president of damaging democracy and Trump is repeatedly denied he tries to rule as an autograph. Frank Lankfit and PR News, Washington Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is launching a podcast aimed at creating what he calls radical transparency and government in a teaser
video Kennedy promises to expose what he says are corruption and lies affecting public health. The podcast is part of a broader strategy as the Department of Health and Human Services shifts focus from vaccine efforts to promoting healthy foods. This is NPR News.
Voters have continued to swing their support toward the Democratic Party since the 2024 election. Democrats overperformed elections in Georgia and Wisconsin yesterday results saw a shift of nearly 20 percentage points away from GOP margins in 2024 Liberals on Wisconsin Supreme Court expanded their majority to five to two after Chris Taylor be conservative Maria Lazar 60% to 40% Trump carried the state by less than a percentage point.
A new report finds artificial intelligence is reshaping the workplace but not evenly across the genders and PR's Windsor Johnston reports. A new data from lean in and nonprofit focused on women in the workplace show men are slightly more likely to use AI at work about 78 to 73% of women. Serial Freedler, a computer science professor at Haberford College says how AI is used
and judged can vary. Different types of work are going to be more or less appropriate to use AI to support or supplement parts of your job. With respect to gender, the gap goes beyond usage, women report less encouragement from managers, less recognition for using AI and greater concern will be judged negatively
or seen as cutting corners. Researchers warn those patterns could widen as AI becomes more embedded in the workplace. Windsor Johnston and PR news. The NHL's career goal scoring record holder Alex Ovechkin says he's waiting until after the Washington Capitol season is over to decide whether he'll retire or return to play
one more year. He's 40 years old and has been peppered with questions for several months now and this is NPR news from Washington. You know, I heard this really interesting thing on an economic spotcast the other day. Oh, well, that actually reminds me of something I read the other day in an economics book.
Yeah, I read it in the planet of Honeybook. It's like a podcast but more impressive when it sits on a shelf.
