NPR News: 03-11-2026 3PM 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 Amalakshmi Singh. A military investigation is suggesting that the United States was responsible for the March 1st Tomahawk missile strike on a girl school in Iran where an estimated 175 people were killed, most of them children. A U.S. official not authorized to speak publicly confirmed to NPR that the Pentagon's examining how the targeting air occurred, not whether the U.S. is responsible. Three commercial ships were struck around the straight of Hormuz setting one cargo ship on fire. More than a dozen vessels have come under attack

1:00around the strategic waterway since the war began late February, which has brought shipping to a virtual standstill. Here's NPR's Jackie Northam. Maritime monitoring agencies say fire broke out in the engine room of a tie flag cargo ship after it was struck off the coast of Oman. Iran has claimed responsibility. Two other ships flying Greek and Japanese flags were also hit. U.S. Central Command says it attacks 16 Iranian mind-laying vessels around the straight of Hormuz, although it's unclear whether Iran has laid mines in the narrow waterway. Iran has warned vessels need permission to pass through the straight of Hormuz. Hundreds of oil tankers around the straight are idle because of the risk, sending the price of oil skyrocketing. President Trump promised to send naval escorts, but that hasn't happened yet. Jackie Northam, NPR News. The State Department now says it has directly helped more than 30,000 U.S. citizens evacuate from the region. Despite President Trump's endorsement, Republican Clay Fuller was unable to

2:04avoid a runoff next month, and the Georgia race has succeed. Former Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor and PR Stephen Fowler looks at the Trump factor in other races. After last week's election, Trump's campaign political director James Blair posted online that everyone Trump endorsed either one outright or advanced to a runoff, and that was true in Texas North Carolina and Arkansas. But many of those were uncontested primaries, or there were no serious challengers. New Chinese export data beat expectations showing the country increase exports this past January and February. President Pierre is Emily Fang. Export figures for the first two months of the year rose by nearly 22% compared to the same period the year before. That boosted the difference between the value of goods China exported versus the value of those it imported to more than $213 billion. And that's largely due to surging exports to Europe and Southeast Asia, where Chinese exporters have found new customers, even as their sales to the American market dipped due to high U.S. tariffs last year.

3:05Now some Chinese companies with a presence in the U.S. are trying to claw back some of those tariffs they paid before the Supreme Court ruled this year that the way most of the Trump administration's tariffs were implemented was unconstitutional. Emily Fang and Pierre News. Student loan borrowers could be getting wrong information from the companies hired to manage their loans. That's one takeaway from a new investigation by the non-partisan government accountability office. And Pierre's Cory Turner has details. GAO found the U.S. Department of Education stopped two key pieces of oversight under President Trump. One, staff used to listen back to recordings of phone calls between borrowers and call center workers to make sure they were getting accurate information. And two, department staff would do special data accuracy checks because loan service or records can be pretty unreliable. Before these reviews stopped, GAO found that four of the five servicers failed that data check.

4:05The Trump administration says these reviews do not meaningfully measure service or performance. But department officials told GAO the problem was staff capacity. The reviews stopped early last year as the administration began cutting the student loan office by nearly half. Cory Turner and Pierre News. Inflation remained about the same last month as they were in January. The Labor Department reports consumer prices rose 2.4 percent compared with the year before. The Fed's target has been 2 percent. Dozens of members of Congress are urging FIFA, the global soccer governing body to lower the cost of tickets to the 2026 World Cup. Being held in the U.S. Mexico and Canada this summer, they publicly released their letter to FIFA's president today. On Stubhub's website, the price of entry to any given game, for example, range from $800 to $3,000 for a single ticket. It's NPR News.