NPR News: 09-04-2026 12PM EDT

0:00Live from NPR News in Washington, I'm Linda Kenyon. The judge in the Lindsey Clancy case was on the verge of declaring a mistrial. But Clancy's defense attorney has asked the judge for an hour to appeal to the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts for an emergency stay. Prior to the request for the stay, Judge William Sullivan explained why he was about to declare the mistrial. I would find that under K-Sline's statutory law, the jury did not ask to be sent back which would be a possibility if they had requested it to be sent back to them. But under the statute in the case law, I don't feel I have any choice but to declare a mistrial. Lindsey Clancy was accused of strangling her three children to death. The defense claimed postpartum psychosis. The US job market rebounded in August as employers added a surprising 162,000 jobs. NPR Scott Horsley has details. The labor force has generally been growing slowly this year as baby boomers retire and

1:02immigration dries up. But last month we actually saw a pretty big influx of workers. More than 600,000 people came off the sidelines in August and joined the workforce. Most of them found jobs so that's encouraging. The labor department says unemployment stayed at 4.1%. The White House has launched a new online arcade on its website. NPR's Franco-Ordornias reports on the five old school games tied to Trump's agenda. The games themselves play off of designs and themes of popular games like Tetris. The White House announced the new retro arcade on social media and a series of posts. In one of the posts, the Sega logo turns into a mega logo. The Tetris game is titled Build the Wall where the player stacks Tetris style blocks to prevent people from entering. Another game, Flappy Bill, has a bald eagle carrying legislation across the national mall. The player must avoid hitting columns. The objective of the game, Trump Savings Tycoon, is to catch and collect cash and prizes to, quote, fill your kids' Trump accounts, which, of course, are the tax advantage investment

2:07accounts launched in July. Franco-Ordornias and Pia News, the White House. Rescures in Nepal have pulled two workers alive from a hydropower tunnel. Nine days after torrential flooding triggered landslides and wiped out whole villages. Michael Sullivan reports. Rescures say the men were pulled from the tunnel after rescuers heard voices inside and followed the voices to locate the men. Emergency teams are now continuing efforts to find more workers trapped inside the Treshuli 3A tunnel. More than 1200 people are known to have been killed in the floods, with more than 5,000 still missing in both Nepal and China. For NPR News, I'm Michael Sullivan in Changri, Thailand. On Wall Street at last check, the Dow was down 304 points. You're listening to NPR. The nation's second largest school district is blocking all students from using artificial intelligence on school computers.

3:08Marianna Dale from Member Station LAS reports on the new restrictions in the Los Angeles Unified School District. The district is using web-filtering software to prevent students from accessing generative AI tools on district-issued laptops and tablets. PSOda Kautmal is LA Unified's Chief Academic Officer. She says the district will review data and collect feedback about student AI use throughout the school year before revising its policy. This is an emerging technology and as a school district as large as ours, we really have to be mindful about implementing so it makes sense for our teachers, for our students, for our families. There is currently no mechanism or policy to prevent students from using AI on personal devices to complete schoolwork. New York City Public Schools announced this week that AI will be banned in elementary and middle schools. For NPR News, I'm Marianna Dale in Los Angeles. It could be an experiment in trust. Elon Musk has sent dozens of self-driving cybercabs to the streets of Austin, Texas,

4:09but these caps have no steering wheels or brake pedals. Some company prepares to launch the service in several other cities. Tesla shares Rose on Thursday in part due to hopes that these taxis will catch on, even though riders will have no way to take control of the vehicles in the event of an emergency. I'm Linda Canyon, NPR News in Washington. Billionaire Mark Cuban has stared into the belly of the beast of America's healthcare system. I mean, it's so bad you can go through a long list of really quality hospitals and they don't know their costs. So can Medicare for all be a solution? We take a hard look at the cost of the program along with US healthcare itself. Find this and hear more stories from the indicator from Planet Money on the NPR app.