NPR News: 03-02-2026 11PM EST

0:00The U.S. launches a military operation against Iran. Our objective is to defend the American people by eliminating imminent threats from the Iranian regime. On State of the World, we'll bring you the latest on the operation, as well as reaction from the region and around the globe. Listen to State of the World on the NPR app or wherever you get your podcasts. Live from NPR News, I'm Giles Snyder. The State Department is urging Americans to leave more than a dozen countries in the Middle East as a U.S. and Israel continue strikes on Iran. In Piers-Michel Kaliman reports. Secretary of State Marco Rubio says the U.S. is determined to wipe out Iran's ballistic missile capabilities and its navy to prevent it from threatening countries in the region. The hardest hits are yet to come from the U.S. military. The next phase will be even more punishing on Iran than it is right now. Iran is responding with drone and missile strikes across the region,

1:00and the State Department has been pulling some staff out of embassies in Gulf countries. The Department is also urging Americans in the region to sign up for emergency alerts and leave when possible. The U.S. Embassy in Lebanon announced that it will be closed on Tuesday. Michelle Kaliman and B.R. News, the State Department. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is defending the decision to attack Iran. He told Fox News earlier this evening that Iran was in his words rebuilding to make its atomic bomb program immune. Virginia Senator Mark Warner said today, but that while there was a threat to Israel, there was no imminent threat to the U.S. He and other top lawmakers participated in a classified briefing today. Beyond the beltway, some rank-of-file Democrats and Republicans are taking different sides on the U.S. were with Iran and Paris-Frank Langford reports from Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. Tom think is a Democrat who served on a nearby bureau council. The U.S. attack shocked him. I was horrified. It just reminds me of Iraq and things that have happened before,

2:03and you wonder where is Congress. Patrick Basem has a different take. He's running for the York County Republican Committee and says he's glad to see President Trump trying to remove any potential nuclear threat. I think it's a great day for the Iranian people. They should feel liberated. I feel liberated as an American not having to deal with that thought in my head. Basem said he hopes Iranians can overthrow the regime and hold free elections. Frank Langford, NPR News, Harrisburg. Now to Texas, we're voting in the state's primary election ends tomorrow and one of the big questions is whether gains Republicans made with Latino voters in 2024 are sticking. NPR is actually Lopez. Issues like the economy and immigration played a big role in this shift among some Latino voters in 2024. But now, those issues are a liability for the party. Brandon Roddinghaus at the University of Houston says polling shows Latinos are becoming increasingly unhappy with President Trump's handling of the economy, as well as aggressive immigration enforcement operations. There's a sense that the Republicans have squandered a

3:05situation where they were likely to get the Latino vote on their side for several election cycles. Roddinghaus says significant participation among these voters in the state's Democratic primary could be one sign these voters could be shifting away from the GOP. Ashley Lopez, NPR News. This is NPR. The Supreme Court has sided with Republicans in the latest redistricting case in an unsigned order. The court said the boundaries of the only Republican held congressional district in New York City do not need to be redrawn for this year's midterm election. The order blocks a lower court's decision that the district is unfair to black and Hispanic residents as seat is currently held by GOP Congresswoman Nicole Malletakis. The origins of human affinity for alcohol may be visible in our primate relatives. When fruits ripen, they ferment and produce alcohol. For some primates, that smell may be a shortcut to finding sugar and calories. But there wasn't much evidence the chimps were actually

4:06consuming the alcohol. So a team of researchers, including UC Berkeley PhD student Alexey Marrow, sampled urine from wild Ugandan chimps. At least 10 of the animals urine contained a concentration equivalent in humans to having had one or two drinks. This plausible that our ancestral diet may have had similar alcohol just baked into our everyday existence. Perhaps leading to our modern attraction to the stuff, except that today we can produce and consume it at much higher concentrations. For NPR News, I'm Ari Daniel. A total lunar eclipse will turn the moon blood red across multiple continents Tuesday. It will be visible in the morning and North America, Central America and the western part of South America. People in Australia and Eastern Asia will be able to see a Tuesday night. This message comes from Wise, the app for international people using money around the globe.

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