Live from NPR News in Washington, I'm Ryland Barton.
President Trump says the U.S. has begun a blockade of Iranian ports.
He's trying to get Tehran to open the street of Hormuz and accept a deal to end the war.
“"We can't let a country blackbell or extort the world because that's what they're doing.”
They're really blackbelling the world. We're not going to let that happen." Iran responded with threats on U.S. Allied ports in the region that poses serious risks for the global economy and the nearly weak, long ceasefire. The Lebanese Red Cross is accusing Israel of directly targeting one of its ambulance teams
in an attack yesterday that killed one paramedic and wounded another, Lebanon's government says at least 87 health workers have been killed and Israeli attacks during this current invasion. Israel has accused Hezbollah of transporting weapons in ambulances, and Piers Lauren Freyer reports. The Lebanese Red Cross says its paramedic Hassan Badawis suffered a direct strike by an Israeli
drone, while carrying out his humanitarian duty during an emergency response mission in Binchibale near the Israeli border.
“The area has been under invasion by Israel, which calls it a Hezbollah stronghold.”
The Red Cross notifies the Israeli military via United Nations peacekeepers whenever it sends out an ambulance team. Lebanon's health ministry called Badawis killing a violation of international humanitarian law. Wright's group's call Israel's repeated killing of medics here a war crime.
Israel says it abides by the law, but sometimes revokes legal protections for health workers if they misuse their role. Lauren Freyer and PR News be rude.
A federal judge has dismissed President Trump's $10 billion lawsuit against the Wall Street
Journal. Trump sued over an article about a body birthday greeting two decades ago to the late and disgraced finance here, Jeffrey Epstein, and Piers David Folk and Flick reports.
“The Journal reported the greeting was part of a celebratory book put together in 2003 for Epstein's”
50th birthday by his girlfriend, She Lane Maxwell. Trump said it was fake and sued, as the private citizen, though the Murdoch's are his political allies. U.S. district court judge Darren Gales wrote that Trump had failed to alleged sufficiently that the journal enacted with what's called actual malice, even knowledge a story is false
or failure to seek the truth. Gales found that journal had made numerous efforts to verify its reporting and included Trump's denial. The judge left the door open to Trump refiling the suit, however, and a spokesperson for his legal team tells NPR, "It will do just that." David Folk and Flick and PR News.
It was announced today that for that very article, the White House Correspondence Association has awarded the Wall Street Journal this year's Katherine Graham Award for Courage and Accountability. More than 1,000 movie stars, writers, and directors declared their unequivocal opposition to the proposed paramount merger with Warner Bros. Discovery in an open letter a large swath of
the industry came out against the $111 billion deal that would consolidate the two legacy
studios, arguing it would reduce jobs in an already downsized Hollywood. This is NPR News. Hungarian election winner Petter Majar says he would talk to Russian president Vladimir Putin but won't initiate contact. He defeated Putin ally Viktor Orban yesterday. Majar says he will ask Putin to end the killing in Ukraine and plans to review Hungary's Russian energy
contracts. The housing market remains sluggish in March, existing home sales fell 1% compared to a year ago, according to the National Association of Realtors, and PR's Stephen Bassaha reports the Association is expecting the housing slump to continue. The NPR is revising its housing forecast down for the year. That's because the worth of Ron has raised the cost of borrowing and that sent mortgage rates up. The Association went
from injecting a double digit increase in existing home sales to just 4%. New home sales are projected to be flat. The NPR says lower consumer confidence and software job growth are also keeping buyers out of the market. Home prices also hit a record high for March. The median existing home sale was a bit less than $410,000. But the NPR says housing is actually getting more affordable since wages are growing faster than prices. Stephen Bassaha and PR news.
The faith-based AI market is expanding with tools for various religions. There's an AI Jesus that for $199 a minute will offer words of prayer and encouragement. Many people are reckoning with how these technologies shape their relationships to faith and spiritual guidance, somewhere about AI's potential to exploit religious users while others see it as a tool for spiritual exploration. This is NPR News. This month on through line,
the story of the Supreme Court fight over whether a boy born to Chinese immigrants was truly American. If the sons and daughters of Chinese are not citizens, then what of the English, the Irish, the Germans, the French, the dramatic history of birthright citizenship on our series America in pursuit from through line. Listen on the NPR app or wherever you get podcasts.
