Live from NPR News in Washington, I'm Kristen Wright.
Washington is stepping up its pressure campaign against the Cuban government, former President Rahul Castro's criminal indictment in the U.S. is an escalation of President Trump's push for regime change. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said today, Cuba poses a national security threat and a negotiated peaceful agreement between the U.S. and Havana isn't likely right now.
He wouldn't reveal to reporters how the U.S. government plans to bring Fidel Castro's brother Rahul into custody. "I'm not going to talk about how we're going to get him in here. We were trying to get him in here. Why would I say to the media what our plans are about that?
“I know you have to ask, but why would I answer that?”
The bottom line, there's a lot, at that point it becomes a fugitive of American justice and
well, you know, if there's an announcement of probably, we'll tell you, we'll tell you afterwards not before." Rubio was speaking in Florida on his way to a NATO foreign minister's meeting in Sweden. Rahul Castro is charged with murder and connection to the 1996 downing of two civilian aircraft operated by the Miami-based exile group, brothers to the rescue.
Four Cuban Americans were killed, and Pierre's Ryan Lucas reports. The administration has been ramping up pressure on Cuba since early January. After the successful U.S. military operation to capture Venezuela's president, Nicolas Maduro, and bring him to the U.S. to face narcoterrorism charges. Then, the administration has ordered a blockade of Cuba, that's cut off fuel ship, men's
Cuba's economy is in freefall.
The CIA director just visited the island for talks, and now we have this Castro indictment.
“Castro is 94 years old, he's not in U.S. custody, but of course the shadow of that”
Maduro raid hangs over all of this. Blanche was asked yesterday, how far the U.S. would go to get his hands on Castro. He said there's a warrant out for his arrest. He expects Castro will show up on his own, or his plans put it by another way. Pierre's Ryan Lucas reporting, on Capitol Hill, the House of Representatives, is expected
to vote later today on a resolution to end the war with Iran. The former Sudical Company Eli Lilly is studying a next-generation obesity drug. It's not on the market yet, but new study results show it helped people lose more weight, than the obesity injections and drugs already on the market, and Pierre's Sydney Lupkin reports. Eli Lilly is researching retitutide, unlike Wagovi and Zeppound, which target the GLP-1
of Warmoan, this new drug works on three hormones, GLP-1, GIP, and Glucogon.
The company says that in the clinical trial, people taking it for 80 weeks lost an average of more than 70 pounds at the highest dose.
“That's compared with five and a half pounds for the patient's taking a placebo over”
the same time period. And people taking Eli Lilly's experimental drug lost more weight than people taking Zeppound or Wagovi over a similar time period in other studies. One side effects were similar to other GLP-1 drugs, including nausea and other gastrointestinal issues.
Eli Lilly has not yet submitted retitutide for food and drug administration approval. Sydney Lupkin and Pierre News. This is NPR News from Washington. Faculty members at Harvard have overwhelmingly passed a new cap on the number of A's they can give out to students.
Kirk Karapheza from Member Station GBH reports that goal is to restore some meaning to letter grades. But Harvard more than half of all grades awarded to undergraduates last year were A's up from just a quarter to decades ago. Now the number of A grades in any given course will be limited to the top 20% of students
plus four additional A's per class. Government professor Stephen Levitsky supports that change. He says the status quo rewarded different levels of work with the same grade. The students who work their tails off and really do outstanding work get the same grade as students who are smart and know how to BS away through an essay and do good but not
great work. Critics argue the cap assumes only a limited number of students can produce outstanding work. The new policy takes effect in fall 2027. For NPR News, I'm Kirk Karapheza in Boston.
NOAA is forecasting a below-normal Atlantic hurricane season. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration came out with its new outlook today. Forecasters are expecting 8 to 14 named storms. That's a slightly smaller number than average. NOAA says as many as three of those could wind up being major hurricanes.
The main reason is El Nino. That's the weather pattern that makes it harder for hurricanes to form in the Atlantic Ocean. I'm Kristen Wright and PR News in Washington. Support NPR's vital journalism and get NPR+ at plus.npr.org.
