NPR News: 03-15-2026 11PM EDT

0:00Live from NPR News in Washington, I'm Dan Ronan. Gulf states are reporting new missile and drone attacks today as Iran widens its campaign. Iran's people should evacuate from three major ports in the United Arab Emirates. Israel announced new missile strikes on Tehran today as well, as Iran targets the world's oil supply. President Trump is calling on other nations to protect the straight-of-form moves, but as NPR's Aroznu-Rezani reports, the response so far has been fairly muted. Since the start of the war, Iran has blocked some oil tankers and attacked cargo vessels trying to pass through the strait, which has led to a huge spike in global oil prices, nearly a fifth of the world's oil supply typically passes through this vital oil export route. The waters off Iran's coast have become a strategic battleground in the war. The U.S. bombed military targets on Iran's Harq Island Saturday. Trump said the U.S. might hit the island again, quote, just for fun, if Iran continues interfering

1:00with ships passing through the strait of Hormuz. Aroznu-Rezani NPR News, Erbil, and the Kurdistan region of Iraq. The Pentagon has identified all six Air Force personnel killed when their refueling tanker crashed in Western Iraq, marched the 12th. Its Kurdist state of member station W.E.K.U. reports the crew included a Kentucky native. Several sergeant Ashley Pruitt of Bardstown, Kentucky was among those killed in the crash. Pruitt, 34, is the second Kentucky and killed in U.S. military operations against Iran. U.S. Army Sergeant Benjamin Pennington, 26 of Glendale, Kentucky, died of wounds sustained in a march-first attack on the Prince Sultan Air Base in Saudi Arabia. Pruitt and two of her crew members were assigned to the 6th Air Refueling Wing at Medil Air Base in Florida. The other three were assigned to the 121st Air Refueling Wing at Rickenbacher Air National Guard Base in Columbus, Ohio. The Air Force is investigating the crash.

2:01For NPR News, I'm Curtis Tate in Richmond, Kentucky. The chair of the FCC, Brendan Carr, is threatening the licenses of broadcasters over what he says is fake news about the U.S. Israeli war in Iran. NPR's Daniel Kertzleibin reports. The FCC chair, Brendan Carr, made the threat in a social media post that accused outlets of, quote, running hoaxes and news distortions, unquote. He added, quote, broadcasters must operate in the public interest and they will lose their licenses if they do not, unquote. In the post, Carr attached a social media post in which President Trump said that outlets including the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal want the U.S. to lose the war in Iran. He also characterized workers at those outlets as truly sick and demented people. The administration has multiple times accused news organizations of pushing fake news after running stories about difficulties and damages the U.S. has suffered in the war. Daniel Kertzleibin and PR News. It's NPR. The 98th Academy Awards saw one battle after another win six big awards with six, including

3:06Best Picture Directors Supporting Actor and Casting. Centers followed with four awards, including the Best Actor Award for the Leading Man, Michael B. Jordan. Jesse Buckley took home the actress, the Best Actress Award for Hamnet, Paul Thomas Anderson won the Best Director Award, and in the Best Supporting Actor category, the awards went to Sean Penn for one battle after another, and Amy Madigan for weapons. It was a tie at the Academy Awards, NPR's Bob Mandello explains. It wasn't a major category, and the films themselves were brief, but it took twice as long to present Best Live Action Short as most awards because there were two winners. One was the singers about a bar where some very unusual patrons turn out to be amazing vocalists, and the second was two people exchanging saliva, a story about a society where kissing is banned. If those sound unusual, they're both winning, was equally so. Ties have happened only seven times in the 98-year history of the Oscars, Bob Mandello,

4:08NPR News. A powerful late winner's storm is moving through the Midwest and is heading to the East Coast. Heavy storms, heavy snow hit parts of Minnesota and Wisconsin Sunday. Hundreds of flights at the Minneapolis St. Paul International Airport were canceled. There were also hundreds of cancellations at Chicago's major airports, O'Hare and Midway. Ties of Wisconsin got two and a half feet of snow. The big storm is heading towards the East Coast with heavy rain from South Carolina to Maryland. I'm Dan Ronan, NPR News in Washington. With March Madness getting underway, coaches are pushing their players to the limits. But an investigation finds that in some instances, tough coaching can go too far. She would call us idiots, stupid, worthless, low off the low. From the Sunday story, coaches accused of emotional abuse and the players who pushed back. The Sunday story from the Up First Podcast, listed now on the NPR app.