Live from NPR News in Washington, I'm Libby Casey.
Iran's semi-efficient news agency is reporting that Tehran is suspending talks with the
“U.S. over Israel's operations in Lebanon and Gaza.”
Iran's Test-Neeam News Agency, which is associated with the Islamic Revolutionary
Guard Corps, said today that Tehran is suspending all communication through intermediaries with the U.S., there is no immediate confirmation from senior Iranian officials that messages mostly relayed via Pakistan between the warring parties were being suspended. Ukraine targeted oil and gas infrastructure in several regions of Russia over the weekend. The attacks are the latest in a growing campaign of Ukrainian strikes on Russia's energy
industry that keep calls long-range sanctions. From Moscow, NPR's Charles Mayans reports. Ukraine said its drones struck an oil refinery in the Russian city of Saratov, some 500 miles to the southeast of Moscow, with local governor confirming damage to civilian infrastructure. Separately authorities in Russia's southern, crossed-and-art regions said a drone struck
a large fuel depot, causing a massive fire, months of Ukrainian attacks of degraded Russia's oil export capacity by some estimates up to 40 percent. That's NPR's Charles Mayans. Three Ebola vaccine candidates are being fast tracked for development by the coalition for
“epidemic preparedness, a global health organization, NPR's Jonathan Lambert reports.”
The Ebola outbreak centered in the Democratic Republic of Congo is already one of the largest on record, with over 1100 suspected cases. It's driven by a rare species of Ebola, Bunebujo, for which there are no approved vaccines or treatments, but there are several candidate vaccines and three will receive millions of dollars to jumpstart development.
One is a Bunebujo version of the Ervbo vaccine, which was approved for a different Ebola strain. Another is being developed by the University of Oxford using a platform similar to the Oxford
AstraZeneca COVID vaccine, and the third is an mRNA vaccine from Moderna.
It takes time for manufacturers to make enough product for clinical trials, so it'll likely be several months before any candidate reaches the outbreak. Jonathan Lambert and PR news. Congress returns to Washington this week after a memorial day break, but the problems they left behind haven't gotten any easier.
And PR's Eric Medaniel has more.
“In order to pass, a party-line bill to fund immigration enforcement operations for the”
rest of Trump's term, the rules say Senate Republicans have to allow Democrats the chance to put amendments up for a vote. That's become a problem. Democrats are planning an amendment to ban President Trump's new fund of taxpayer dollars for those claiming to be victims of politically motivated prosecutions, and GOP leaders think
the amendment has more than enough Republican support to pass. It's an awkward situation for the party in power and money that could provoke the higher of the president. Some hope to the president would walk away from what he describes as an anti-weaponization fund while lawmakers were back home meeting with constituents that didn't happen.
Eric Medaniel and PR News Washington. You're listening to NPR news. A new report says working Americans are putting more of their paychecks into retirement accounts. That's according to fidelity investments, which says those contributions reached a record
amount in the first quarter.
And PR's Stephen Bassaha reports. For workers that have a 401(k), they're total savings rate reached about 14.5%. That is the contribution for both employees and employers, and a record rate according to fidelity. Mike Chemrow is Vice President of Thought Leadership at Fidelity Investments.
The good news is we're seeing very positive behaviors, not only among older workers who may be higher salary, who may have a little bit bigger nest egg, but also among our Gen Z employees. Not only did report some signs of financial stress, 2.5% of workers with retirement accounts dipped into their savings last quarter, a slight increase from a year earlier. Stephen Bassaha and PR News
Nearly 1,000 United Auto Workers' members walked off the job overnight at a Michigan plant that makes axles for GM pick-up trucks. The union once a wage increase. Top wages are about $22 an hour, which despite inflation is down from $29 in $2,000 in $8 when the union may concessions to save jobs.
Rescue workers in law are searching for an alternative way into a flooded cave where two people have been trapped for nearly two weeks. Heavy rain has made the main entry impossible. Five of the seven people initially trapped have been rescued. Help is coming from several countries, including those involved in the 2018 TIE Cave
Rescue. This is NPR News Live in Washington. News shows new music, new movies, keeping up with pop culture sometimes feels like a full-time job. Thankfully, over at pop culture happy-hour, it's literally our job.
We break down what's actually worth watching, listening to, and pretending you already knew about. So the next time someone says, "Did you see that?" You can say, "Yeah, obviously." Follow NPR's pop culture happy-hour wherever you get your podcasts.
