NPR News Now - NPR News: 04-08-2026 12AM EDT

Episode Date: April 8, 2026

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Live from NPR news, I'm Jail Snyder. The U.S. and Iran have agreed to a two-week ceasefire. President Trump says he will hold off on striking Iran as long as Iran agrees to the complete and immediate opening of the Strait of Hormuz to transport oil. NPR's Deepa Shivaram reports. In announcing this ceasefire, Trump also shared some other details of the negotiations, and he sounded pretty optimistic in his post on social media. He said that the U.S. received a 10-point proposal from Iran. and called that a, quote, workable basis on which to negotiate. And he said that almost all of the various points have past contention have been agreed to between the U.S. and Iran.

And so that two-week period will allow for some of the agreements here to be finalized. Neither the U.S. nor Iran have said when the ceasefire would begin since it was announced there have been attacks across the Gulf region and in Israel, where Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says it supports the ceasefire, but that the deal does not come. fighting against Hezbollah and Lebanon. State Department has confirmed the release of American journalist Shelley Kittleson in a statement on social media. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the U.S. is now working to support Kittleson's safe departure from Iraq.

Kittleson was abducted in Baghdad in late March by an Iran-backed militia. Lunar scientists have been pouring over the photos sent back by the Artemis 2 astronauts. The astronauts captured more than 175 gigabytes of imagery when they flew. flew by the moon. They also recorded hours of audio as they described the colors, craters, and ridges they saw. Here's NPR's now Greenfield Boys. Kelsey Young is a geologist who leads the science team for the Artemis II mission. She says several dozen scientists are in a room at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston, scrutinizing the thousands of images. And there is something in every image that surprises me, right? I mean, you might think that after looking at hundreds of images taken of the lunar

surface, I would get sick of it. I have not. She says NASA will release a report on all of the lunar science findings within six months after the end of the mission. The astronauts are expected to come home Friday with a splashdown in the Pacific. Nell Greenfield Boyce, NPR News. Now to Southern California, where a warehouse employee was arrested Tuesday and is facing arson charges following a massive fire that destroyed the facility operated by the paper goods company, Kimberly Clark. Ontario Police Corporal Emily Williams says calls to dispatch led to the arrest. We had multiple people calling into Ontario Dispatch Ontario Fire with information. We can't get into the specifics of the information,

but the information that came in from them led us to believe that it was suspicious in nature and let us to contact the suspect. Authorities say the 29-year-old suspect was employed by a third-party company at the warehouse. Firefighters fought the blaze for several hours early Tuesday. This is NPR. Britain has blocked Kanye West, now known as Ye, from entering the UK after anti-Semitic comments he's made. And Pierre Fadamal Kasab reports this follows controversy over his scheduled appearance at a music festival in London this summer. The UK government said it had made the decision to block West from travelling to the UK on the grounds his presence in the UK would, quote,

not be conducive to the public good. The rapper has made several anti-Semitic remarks in recent years. last year selling swastika t-shirts on his website. He has since apologised for the comments, attributing them to his bipolar disorder. But his scheduled appearance as the headline act of London's Wireless Festival prompted widespread outrage. The festival, scheduled for July, has now been cancelled altogether.

British Prime Minister Kirstama said West should never have been invited to perform and that his government would not stop fighting the poison of anti-Semitism. Fatimer al-Kasab, NPR News, London. Vice President J.D. Vance is due back in Washington, D.C., Wednesday, following a trip to Hungary, where he criticized the European Union, saying the EU is interfering with Hungary's parliamentary election. Vance's visit to Budapest came ahead of Sunday's election in which he endorsed Prime Minister Victor Orban, breaking with norms of U.S. administrations not openly campaigning in foreign elections.

Orban has been in power for 16 years. he is trailing in the polls. Following the announcement of that two-week ceasefire between the U.S. and Iran, oil prices are back below $100 a barrel. I'm Giles Snyder. NPR News.