Live from NPR news in Washington, I'm Janine Herbst, a Pakistan flagged oil t...
for home has become the first carrier to transit the Strait of Hormuz with crude since
“a U.S. blockade of the waterway began on Monday.”
This after Iran opened the Strait on the condition that the U.S. adheres to the terms of a ceasefire, and appears Jackie Northam has more. There have been confusing statements from Iran about opening the Strait of Hormuz, an illustration of the competing power structures in the country. Foreign Minister Abbas Audarqi first announced all commercial ships could transit the
Strait. President Trump applauded the move but said the U.S. blockade of Iranian vessels would remain until negotiations with Iran ended.
Iran's powerful revolutionary guard cornevi command then issued its own statement, saying
"All ships needed its permission to pass through the Strait." And if the U.S. blockade continued, Iran would take reciprocal measures. Finally, the new Supreme Leader moached about Hormunei, waiting and saying it is "conditionally open." Jackie Northam and PR News.
Meanwhile, the White House's predictions of relief at the gas pump by late summer has some experts saying that may be unrealistic, and here's Windsor Johnston has more. Treasury Secretary Scott Beasant told reporters this week that gas prices could fall to around $3 a gallon by late summer, but energy experts say that's a bold claim and far from certain Michael Weber is a professor at the University of Texas at Austin.
"How long will it take for the system recover? It's in least weeks. I mean, it looks like it's months to me, just to get the flows restored. Just to get the tankers filled up again, but there's also all the damage, equipment or infrastructure in the vertical that was attacked, that will take months for years to fixed."
Weber says there's no quick way to reverse what's driving prices right now, with global supply disruptions still rippling through the market and summer demand on the rise costs could stay high for some time. Mr. Johnston and PR News, Washington The White House is pitching Congress on the largest defense budget request in U.S. history.
And here's Claudia Gonzalez reports the $1.5 trillion figure doesn't include costs from the war with Iran. The administration has also on track to ask Congress for a supplemental war funding plan that
could near the $100 billion mark, Betty McCullum top Democrat on a House Defense Appropriation
subcommittee told Army officials this week they need a full picture to conduct oversight.
“That's the only way we can do our job properly to do the oversight that we are tasked with.”
To be clear, the size of the request for defense spending is shocking. Trump officials are calling the $1.5 trillion defense budget request so far, a paradigm-shifting investment. While street sharply higher by the closing bell, the Dow up 868 points, the S&P 500 up 84, a record.
This is NPR News. Human Rights Watch says more than 9,000 subordinates have been deported back to El Salvador since President Trump took office last year. Once in their country, many face a grim future, including detention for years.
Cynthia Serio Martinez-Beltron has more.
Lawyers, researchers and humanitarian groups say many Salvadoran deportees are in prison up on their arrival. They can then be caught from contacting families and attorneys. Many of them have no criminal record in the US or El Salvador. All of this is the result of an emergency power imposed four years ago by El Salvador President
Najib Bukele. The extraordinary move was only supposed to last 30 days, but Bukele keeps renewing it. Since of thousands of people, some with serious criminal records and gangties have been arrested. The crackdown has taken El Salvador from being the murder capital of the world to a country with a lower homicide rate than the US, and with the highest incarceration rate in the
world. Sergio Martinez-Beltron and PR News Pope Leo is on a 10-day trip to four nations in Africa. Today he celebrated mass in Cameroon urging the more than 120,000 people gathered to reject violence and be generous with their neighbors. The crowd greeted Leo with singing and dancing, and they held up banners welcoming the
Pope. Many spent hours at the venue hoping to get a spot for the Pope's mass. Catholicism is growing in Africa, some 20% of Catholics worldwide live on the continent. What happens when our political party becomes the prison through which we see every other aspect of our identities.
“What we're living through, I think, is really the two parties taking opposite sides on”
whether we want to keep making this type of social progress or whether we want to go back in time. This is the MPR's coach podcast in the NPR app or wherever you get your podcasts.
