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Episode Date: August 28, 2026

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Live from NPR News, I'm Lakshmi Singh. Today, marks six months since the United States and Israel went to war with Iran, with direct talks essentially at a standstill. NPR's Hidal-Al-Shalchi reports Tehran, in the meantime, has turned the strait of Hormuz, into its strategic weapon. When Israel and the U.S. went to war with Iran on February 28th, one of the stated goals was to bring down the regime in Tehran, While the killing of Ayatollah al-Ichamanei delivered a blow to the Islamic Republic,

Iran's leaders have managed to hold on to power, and instead of collapsing, the regime has taken an even harder line. In the past six months, Iran blockaded the Strait of Hormuz, disrupting global oil supplies that have been felt at the gas pump worldwide. The war has had severe economic consequences for Iran. The cost of living has skyrocketed. Some Iranians say they're buying groceries on credit and find it hard to track down medicine. Hadil al-Shalchi, NPR News, Istanbul. About 2,500 people are still unaccounted for after deadly flooding along the China-Nipal border this week.

Chinese officials say more than 500 of them on the Tibet side. Among the missing are at least 264 nationals. NPR's Jennifer Pack reports rescue crews have reached the hardest hit area after operations were briefly suspended over fears in upstream lake could overflow. The lake was formed after an enormous. The enormous chunk of ice snapped off a glacier, triggering waves of mud, water, and ice barreling down the Himalayas on Wednesday. Trees and homes were swept away or submerged. Chinese state media showed aerial shots of the Geelong border checkpoint buried under a mudslide, including a six-story building.

Some of the debris jammed up the water. A lake started forming upstream and it's been filling up. It's also been raining in the area. Chinese rescue workers are racing to reduce the risk of more flooding. and police in Nepal say the Chinese have told them to be on alert on their side of the border. Jennifer Pack, NPR News, Beijing. The White House is honoring the first group of astronauts to travel beyond low Earth orbit since 1972 and had traveled farther than any other human.

NASA commander Reid Weissman, pilot Victor Glover, and mission specialist Christina Cook and Jeremy Hansen of the Canadian Space Agency travel around the moon and back during a nine-day mission earlier this year. President Trump has presented them with the Congressional Space Medal of Our nation will conquer, and we will conquer indeed, this vast frontier that we have before us, and we'll reach American courage and we'll use American genius and daring and all of the things that we have that nobody else can ever compete with. We will explore it. We will tame it, and we will win it. We will always win. President Trump speaking moments ago from the Johnson Space Center in Houston. From Washington, this is NPR News.

Researchers at NASA and the University of Maryland say, new evidence suggests microbes from Earth could potentially survive on the moon. Scott Mascioni of Member Station WYPR has that story. University of Maryland researchers studied environments on the moon and then tried to see if earth-born microbes would be able to handle the conditions. The answer was yes if the bacteria and fungi were in pockets of shadow, that protected them from lethal radiation. Now with NASA plans underway to get humans back on the moon by 2028,

Stefano Bertone, a scientist who worked on the study, says they'll need to be careful. We want to preserve the scientific record that the moon represents and that we don't want to contaminate the moon and just assume that everything will reset. Bertone says NASA may need to consider how it collects samples to reduce contamination. For NPR news, I'm Scott Mosse. in Baltimore. Federal Reserve Chair, Kevin Warsh says inflation in the U.S. remains too high and that policymakers will be watching things carefully, though he did not give a clear indication of how he intended to act. In his speech in Jackson Hole, Wyoming today, Warsh noted

inflation is running above the Fed's 2 percent target, adding the Fed's predominant focus right now should be on prices. A divided Fed kept interest rates on hold in July, and Warsh came under intense scrutiny from markets after he failed to provide a clear game plan of how he and the Fed would bring down inflation. U.S. stocks trading lower this hour with the NASDAQ down 150 points. This is NPR News.