NPR News Now - 2am ET, October 14 | The latest headlines from NPR

Episode Date: October 14, 2026

The latest headlines from NPR at the top of this hour. The stories you hear are written, reported and fact-checked by NPR journalists.  Learn more about the standards of our journalism at npr.org/ethics. Support public media with NPR+ and enjoy perks for over 25 podcasts like this one. This show’s perks include sponsor-free listening. Learn more at plus.npr.org.See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.NPR Privacy Policy

This is NPR News Now. The latest headlines every hour. Live from NPR News, I'm Trial Snyder. With the midterm elections just three weeks away, President Trump is on the road. He's to spend the night in Las Vegas after headlining a campaign rally for Republican Senator Dan Sullivan in Wosilla, Alaska. NPR's Tamara Keith. This is a midterm year with an unpopular president and Republicans are playing defense in a whole lot of places. that would have been considered safe seats even just a few months ago.

Does that mean that Democrats are going to win all of these races? Probably not. But if Republicans are spending money on defense, they aren't spending money on offense. And the triage has really started to begin now. During the Alaska rally, Trump announced that Taiwan would invest more than $4 billion in a proposed pipeline and buy gas from it. His appearance in Alaska was part of a Western swing that will take President Trump to Arizona and Montana on Wednesday. A federal judge late Tuesday handed the Trump administration a setback in the president's battle against three news outlets. U.S. District Judge Timothy Kelly is extending his order blocking

the White House from banning reporters from CNN, MS now, and Politico while the case plays out. Kelly says they are likely to succeed on their constitutional free speech and due process claims. Hundreds of Cornell students, faculty, and town residents gathered in Ithaca Tuesday to express their support for a former student who says she was sexually assaulted at a fraternity house nearly two years ago. John Yunhan, a member station WSKG reports the university has banned fraternity parties for the entire school year. The protests in Ithaca is the latest in a string of rallies across the country, and it comes nearly one month after a former Cornell student, known as Jane Doe, filed a lawsuit saying she was plied with ketamine and sexually assaulted by members of the Kai-5 fraternity in 2024. Several hundred people gathered in the town square just steps away from Cornell's campus to express their support for Jane Doe. Cornell faculty will debate issuing a vote of no confidence in university leadership on Wednesday.

For NPR news, I'm Zheng Yun-Han in Ithaca. Pope Leo has been diagnosed with lung cancer. Megan Williams reports. The Vatican says test during Tuesday's operation confirmed the 71-year-old Pope has lung adenocarsinoma, the most common form of lung cancer. Surgeons at Rome's Jamalie Hospital removed the lower lobe of his right lung in what his lead surgeon described as an attempt to make the procedure curative.

The minimally invasive operation lasted about 90 minutes, and the Vatican says there were no complications. Leo woke normally from the anesthetic and is resting in his hospital room. The cancer was discovered after a recent routine health check found a small growth on his lung. For NPR News, I'm Megan Williams in Rome. This is NPR News.

An engineer at OpenAI has been charged with secretly installing a recording device inside a conference room. According to an FBI affidavit filed Tuesday, the Saudi National was arrested Friday. A week after the company discovered the device wrapped in toilet paper and inserted into a USB port on the back of a television. Federal regulators have fined Bank of America more than a billion dollars for failing to take steps to prevent money laundering by customers. The Treasury Department says B of A allowed more than $5 billion to change hands without the required reporting over a seven-year period. The penalty is one of the largest in Treasury Department history. The WMBA is announced at game three and four of next week's finals will be rescheduled. NPR's Becky Sullivan reports on the change needed to accommodate comfort.

at Atlanta major arena. The Atlanta Dream have swept their way through the playoffs to reach the WNBA finals for the first time in 13 years, where they'll face the Golden State Valky's. There was just one problem. The Dream normally play in a very small arena. The Gateway Center Arena was built before the league's boom and popularity, and it seats just 3,500 fans, far too few for the very biggest games of the WNBA season. Often the Dream moves marquee games to State Farm Arena, home of the NBA team, the Atlanta Hawks, but there were scheduling conflicts with games three and four, concert one night in the Hawks' home opener, the other, a situation critics called embarrassing and avoidable. Now the league says game three will be moved up a night, while game four

will tip off a few hours early in the Hawks game a little later that night to fit both. This is NPR News.