NPR News Now - NPR News: 03-20-2026 12AM EDT

Episode Date: March 20, 2026

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Live from NPR news, I'm Giles Snyder. NPR has learned that President Trump's Board of Peace has given Hamas a formal proposal to lay down its weapons. The proposal calls for Hamas and all other militant groups in Gaza to decommission their weapons in Pierre's Daniel Estrin, in Tel Aviv. We have really been waiting for this moment ever since the ceasefire began in Gaza in October. At that time, the U.S. said that Hamas would have to decommission its weapons, whatever that means. Hamas said it was willing to discuss its weapons, but there really was no movement on that because we were waiting for the U.S. to hand over a formal proposal. And today, my NPR colleague, Abu Bakr Bashir, was told by a senior U.S. official that that proposal was handed over to Hamas last week. We confirmed this with an additional official in the region and also another person briefed on the matter.

Word of the Hamas proposal comes as Israel launched a new wave of attacks on Iran, a day after President Trump said he told, Israel not to repeat strikes on Iranian gas infrastructure. Turkey says it's in contact with officials in the U.S., Iran and Israel, to try to end the war that's escalated across the Middle East. Turkey is among 12 Muslim and Arab countries that met in Saudi Arabia Thursday after Iran bombed a major liquefied national gas complex in Qatar. Impires Emily Fang reports. Turkey has so far stayed out of the regional conflict over Iran. Appearing alongside his Qatari counterpart, Turkey's Foreign Minister, Hakkan Fidane, said through an interpreter that Turkey is mediating and is in contact with Israel and other countries. We are speaking to the Americans and Iranians as well. First of all, we try to understand where they stand.

Turkey says it's intercepted three Iranian missiles since the U.S. and Israel began striking Iran. Iran denies firing them at Turkey. But this week, NATO, of which Turkey is a member, deployed a third U.S.-made Patriot Air and Missile Defense system to protect Turkey's insurlic airbase in the south of the country. Emily Fang and Pierre News, Van Turkey. Back in the U.S., Planned Parenthood of Illinois has agreed to pay a half million dollars to end investigation by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission into its DEI initiatives. In Pierre's Andrea Shoe reports. According to the EEOC, the Planned Parenthood affiliate in Illinois violated Title VII of the Civil Rights Act by mandating employees attend affinity caucuses segregated by race and attend DEI trainings

that involved repeated derogatory statements targeting white employees. Discrimination charges were brought by multiple employees. Planned Parenthood of Illinois said that since the complaint was filed, it's undergone significant changes, including within its leadership. Over the past year, the EEOC has increased scrutiny of corporate DEI programs. The agency is also investigating Nike over its diversity goals and has sued a Coca-Cola bottler, alleging the company discriminated against male employees.

employees. This is NPR News. A senior vice president of Super Micro Computer and two others affiliated with the company have been charged with conspiring to smuggle at least two and a half billion dollars of computer servers with advanced invidia chips to China. The indictment was unsealed in federal courts in Manhattan on Thursday. The U.S. has had export restrictions on China for advanced AI chips since 2022. The Justice Department says two of the the men have been arrested. A third remains a fugitive. NPR found people in Illinois, Oregon, at Minnesota, who said immigration officers took what appeared to be DNA samples after arresting them. NPR's Meg Anderson reports they said they were arrested while protesting the Trump

administration's immigration enforcement tactics. The federal government is allowed to take the DNA of people at arrests. In fact, a Homeland Security spokesperson told NPR that federal law enforcement is required to collect samples from anyone they arrest. But Orrin Kerr, a law professor at Stanford University, says the fear is, what happens if a federal officer arrests someone for something they are legally free to do, like peacefully protesting? It turns out the officer was wrong, but the DNA test has been conducted. What then?

Kerr says it's unclear whether or how someone could get those records erased in that scenario. It's also unclear where the DNA samples of protesters are ending up or how they'll be used. DHS did not respond to NPR's questions about that. Meg Anderson, NPR News. The financial markets in Asia are mixed in Friday trading. Japan's midchmarked NICA is down more than 3%. This is NPR News.