Live from NPR News in Washington, I'm Libby Casey.
Israel says it's ready for direct talks with Lebanon's government to try and end its conflict with Hezbollah, but Lebanon doesn't control the Iranian-backed group, which reject negotiations with Israel. That stand-off could threaten the fragile U.S. Iran ceasefire ahead of talks this weekend in Pakistan, and PR's Kary Khan reports from Tel Aviv.
Iran's foreign ministry says it won't be involved in talks and left Lebanon as part of the deal. Israel insists it's fight with Hezbollah is not part of the two-week ceasefire between the U.S. and Iran, and continues hitting Hezbollah targets in Lebanon. Wednesday, Israel struck multiple targets, including in Beirut, killing more than 300 people.
President Trump says he told Israel's Prime Minister to pull back and speaking to NBC.
“Trump said Benjamin Netanyahu is "going to low-key it."”
Many Israelis, especially Northern residents, do not want Netanyahu to stop and in a video message Netanyahu told them he is still hitting Hezbollah with "great force." Kary Khan and PR news Tel Aviv. Three NASA astronauts and one from the Canadian Space Agency are about to return home after in historic mission around the room.
As in PR's Nell Greenfield Boys reports, their space capsule will hit Earth's atmosphere going nearly 24,000 miles per hour. One of the Artemis-2 astronauts' Victor Glover compared re-entry to writing a fireball across the sky. The outside of the crew capsule will be surrounded by superheated gases.
Temperatures will reach 3 to 5,000 degrees Fahrenheit.
The capsule's heat shield is critical, and while NASA found some unexpected damage
to the heat shield in an earlier, uncrewed test flight, officials say they're confident in the solutions that they implemented before the Artemis-2 mission.
“They've all goes as planned, parachutes will deploy, and the capsule will splash down”
in the Pacific Ocean near San Diego, California, Nell Greenfield Boys, NPR News. A wartime surge in energy prices caused a spike in inflation last month, and PR's Scott Horsley reports on the latest figures from the Labor Department. Consumer prices in March were up 3.3 percent from a year ago. That's the biggest annual increase in almost two years.
PR's has jumped nine tens of a percent between February and March, with a spike in gasoline prices accounting for nearly three quarters of that increase. Gas prices have jumped by more than $1 a gallon since the U.S. and Israel launched their war on Iran. Pump prices have remained high this week, despite the tentative ceasefire.
Higher prices for jet fuel also pushed up prices for airline tickets last month, while grocery prices were down.
Stripping out volatile food and energy prices, so-called core inflation in March was 2.6 percent,
a rate that's likely to make the federal reserve cautious about any further cuts in interest rates. Scott Horsley and Pianu is Washington.
“On Wall Street trading was mostly flat today.”
This is NPR News. Russia and Ukraine have agreed to a limited 32-hour ceasefire to mark the orthodox Easter holiday. If the agreement holds, it marks a rare pause in a war now in its fifth year. NPR's Charles Mains has more from Moscow.
In a statement, Russian President Vladimir Putin sent his forces would abide by the ceasefire from 4pm Saturday through end of Easter Sunday. Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky had previously called for "neaster truce" and agreed to Putin's offer, saying it was a chance for Russia to choose real progress towards peace and avoid a return to hostilities.
Yet the Creman spokesman, a metripeescope, later characterized the ceasefire as a temporary humanitarian gesture. Moscow has made clear in Moscow's view, and in lasting settlement, the petted on Ukraine making further territorial concessions, the man who was rejected, not least, without iron-clad security guarantees from the U.S.
Charles Mains and Pianu's Moscow. K-pop band BTS may be back on international stages after a three-and-a-half-year break, but its world tour is skipping China. China has blocked most South Korean entertainment since 2016, and an un-ignalaged band, started when South Korea allowed a U.S. anti-missile system on its soil, angering China.
In error, in the unveiling of a new statue of baseball Hall of Famer, Yichiro Suzuki at the Seattle Mariners' home park today, when it's bronze-bat broke. Suzuki joked that New York Yankees' closer-in-fellow Hall of Famer, Mariana Rivera, got the best of him, again.
Suzuki was inducted into the Hall of Fame last summer, he's the third Mariners' player
to have his number retired. This isn't PR news. "This is our glass. On this American life, we tell stories about when things change, like for this guy David, who's an entire life took a sharp and expected and very unpleasant term, and it did
take me a while to realize it's basically because of them and keep rest of them, that's right, because the monkey pressed the button.
