NPR News: 03-11-2026 2PM EDT

0:00Who should win the Oscar for the best original song this year? On the latest all songs considered from NPR music, we rank the nominees. I think Diane Warren should have won two Academy Awards. The problem is very often the lyrics are not much more insightful than you would find on the nearest throw pillow. Here's the NPR music podcast on the NPR app or wherever you get podcasts. Lie from NPR News, I'm Lakshmi Singh. A US military investigation suggests an American Tomahawk missile was responsible for an estimated 175 deaths at an Iranian girl school at the start of the US Israel war against Iran. A US official who was not authorized to speak publicly confirmed to NPR that the Pentagon is investigating how the targeting air occurred, not whether the US was responsible. NPR previously reported that the girl school may have been shown on outdated US intelligence maps as a military building.

1:00If confirmed, the strike would rank among the worst incidents of US inflicted civilian casualties in decades. A special Pentagon office to prevent accidental targeting of civilians created by Congress was scaled back to a skeleton crew by Secretary of Defense Pete Hagseth soon after he took office last year. Major oil-consuming nations have agreed to tap into their strategic oil reserves with a coordinated release of 400 million barrels of crude. Here's NPR's Camila Domenoski. The IEA was formed in the wake of the oil crisis of the 1970s to protect against future disruptions to oil supply. Member countries had to agree to hold stockpiles in reserve in case of emergency. The near closure of the Strait of Hormuz, the essential waterway, through which about 20 percent of the world's oil and gas passes, is precisely that kind of emergency. Releasing that oil could help stabilize prices, but there's a limit on how much oil can be pulled out of storage at a time. You can't pull it all at once. Analysts say global reserves

2:02are not enough to make up for the daily shortfall created by the war. Camila Domenoski, NPR News. As President Trump describes its strikes have decimated Iran. We have hit them harder than virtually any country in history has been hit, and we're not finished yet. Trump addressing reporters as he embarked to down visits to Ohio and Kentucky to tout his economic agenda this midterm election year. Well, a new survey shows nearly half of all Americans say they would support the idea of National Guard members patrolling polling places in the U.S. in the November elections. NPR's Miles Parks report such action is not legal. President Trump hasn't explicitly said he wants to use the National Guard to monitor this year's elections, but it's something voting officials have been worried about since Trump did say he wished he had deployed the Garden 2020. A new NPR PBS News Maris poll finds such unprecedented action would be supported by 46 percent of Americans, and roughly three in four Republicans. Experts NPR spoke with said those numbers could indicate that many people do not know it's illegal

3:05for the federal government's deployed troops to monitor voting, and that Trump has falsely but effectively convinced many that voter fraud is a widespread problem in American elections. Miles Parks and for your news, Washington. You're listening to NPR News. The Food and Drug Administration is taking a new approach to regulating e-cigarettes. The move reflects a shift away from banning flavored nicotine products, including menthol and PR's Yukino Guchi reports. For years, federal and state regulators have tried to crack down on a growing number of flavored e-cigarettes, including mint or menthol, that anti-smoking advocates say appeal to younger people. In new guidance issued this week, the agency says it will now consider approving minty as well as spiced flavors, if companies show evidence that adult smokers are using them to try to curtail cigarette consumption. This move drew criticism from

4:07anti-tobacco groups who've argued that any flavor, including menthol, are a harmful gateway to nicotine use because they make vaping and smoking taste better. Yukino Guchi and PR News. Consumer prices rose 2.4% in February from a year earlier, exact same as the annual increase scene in January. Measured on a monthly basis, consumer prices rose 3.10th of a percent last month from January slightly higher than what we saw in January. The data show inflation is studying, but it does not capture the run-up in gas prices since the war with Iran. That will be reflected in the data that come out next month, which will give a better snapshot of how the war is affecting inflation. U.S. stocks trading lower this hour, the Dow is down 350 points, or roughly three-quarters of a percent. It's NPR.