NPR News Now - 6pm ET, October 07 | The latest headlines from NPR

Episode Date: October 7, 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 in Washington, I'm Rylan Barton. A judge is ordering Tennessee officials to preserve evidence connected to the failed execution of Krista Pike by lethal injection last week. Pike would have been the first woman executed in Tennessee in nearly 200 years, but she survived. Today, Pike's attorneys said she woke up this week in the hospital angry and confused. Tony Gonzalez of member station WPLN reports. Nashville judge Aisha Miles ordered prison officials to preserve medical supplies, remnants of the drug pentobarbital, and communications about their decision-making on the night of Krista Pike's scheduled execution.

After Pike's legal team argued she deserves visitation similar to her time in prison, Miles also granted them more access to her in the hospital. The same protocols that would have been followed while she is incarcerated. at the women's prison should be followed there. Pike was unconscious for more than five days following the botched execution, but her attorneys say she is now able to speak. For NPR News, I'm Tony Gonzalez in Nashville. Pikes was the second failed execution in Tennessee this year. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth awarded the USS Abraham Lincoln

the presidential unit citation during a visit to the ship a day before the carrier's return to home port in San Diego. The award is the highest award a unit can receive. and one typically reserved for significant achievement in combat. It comes after reports of crew stress, supply shortages, and suicide attempts during the carrier group's extended deployment to the Middle East. There were a few folks in the media who tried to turn the USS Abraham Lincoln into some sort of a symbol, a symbol of dysfunction, or a symbol of low morale, or a symbol of a failed

mission. And what I look out at right here, and when I talk to your leadership and I have had a chance to talk to a number of you, I think. know it's the exact opposite. In his speech, Hegseth told sailors he was the one to sign off on the orders to extend the ship's deployment. President Trump says he deserves the Nobel Peace Prize, despite starting the ongoing war with Iran. The award will be announced this Friday. NPR's Emily Fang reports. Trump argues that he should be recognized for stopping Iran from getting a nuclear weapon. I did things that nobody else has ever done. I'm not bragging. I'm just telling you the facts.

Trump has criticized the Nobel Prize Committee in the past for giving former President Barack Obama a peace prize, but not him. He also said he'd, quote, indirectly won the prize after last year's recipient, Venezuelan opposition activist Maria Corina Machado, gave Trump the award medal. And she gave it to me, and I said, wow, what an honor. I settled eight wars. Another one is coming. Another war or another award.

The president did not specify what he meant by that. Emily Fang and Peer News, the White House. Tropical storm Isayas has formed in the Gulf of Mexico. It's expected to become the first hurricane of the Atlantic season before hitting the U.S. Gulf Coast later in the week. This is NPR News. A top official with the World Health Organization says the UN Health Agency doesn't know how a lab employee in Siberia died, but amid concerns about the plague, she's calling on Russia to provide more information. Maria van Kerkhov is the WHO Director of Epidemic and Pandemic Management.

She says the agency doesn't know what the causative. agent was behind the woman's death last week, and quote, this is why we need more information. OpenAI has released what it says are solutions to hundreds of complex math problems. As NPR's Jeff Brumfield reports, mathematicians are struggling to check the company's work. In an online repository, OpenAI published what it said were 377 solutions to outstanding math problems and fields ranging from number theory to topology. The results come just a month after the company published what it claimed was a solution to one of the toughest problems in mathematics. Mathematicians are still checking that finding, and they criticized OpenAI for failing to effectively show how its machine found an answer.

This time, the company did include its AI's reasoning, but only for 10 of the problems so far. Jeff Brumfield, NPR News. A series of audiobooks the NHL launched to connect with fans of the hockey romance genre is no longer available on online. line. A league spokesperson says that the hot for hockey episodes were specific to games during the opening week of the season. Hockey has picked up new fans. Recently, after TV shows heated rivalry and off-campus featured the sport, Commissioner Gary Bettman says the NHL plans to continue marketing to new fans. This is NPR News.