NPR News: 09-05-2026 9PM EDT

0:00Live from NPR News in Washington, I'm Dan Runman. The U.S. says it struck three Iranian oil tankers this after Iran threatened the U.S. Navy warships. It's the latest exchange of firepower between Iran and the U.S. after the most intense week of strikes and months. NPR's Kerry Khan reports. According to Central Command, U.S. forces hit three Iranian crude oil carriers. One year Iran's vital production facility, Carg Island. The U.S. says Iran had launched missiles toward two U.S. Navy warships, patrolling the Strait of Hormuz. Senkham said in a statement that a U.S. aircraft carrier and a guided missile destroyer evaded unprovoked Iranian missile attacks. Senkham says it then destroyed the oil carriers. One was in waters off a man. Iran had no immediate comment. Here Saturday, an Iranian state news agency said one of its tankers had been hit by U.S. forces.

1:00Iran and the United States continue to battle for control over the Strait, which is a critical transportation passageway for much of the world's oil and energy supplies. Kerry Khan and NPR News. The Trump administration's plan to begin evacuation work on an arch in Washington is facing a legal challenge. NPR's Rachel Treesman reports a federal judge is stepping in. In a late-night motion, the judge ordered the administration to provide 48 hours notice before doing anything other than information gathering at the traffic circle where it wants to build its 250-foot arch. The three-veant non-veterans and architectural historian who sued over the arch earlier this year had asked for a restraining order. After Interior Secretary Doug Bergam announced that excavation work would begin within two weeks, even though the structure hasn't gotten final federal approval. The Trump administration then clarified in a legal filing that it was talking about archeological surveys, not construction. Rachel Treesman and NPR News.

2:01The U.S. Forest Service says it's closing down dozens of research stations across the country, but the cuts are not as deep as what had been earlier feared. This week, the head of the Forest Service backtracked from an earlier projection that would have closed even more of the facilities were scientists are working to preserve public land and PR's Kiera Eisner reports. On Thursday, the Forest Service announced it had finished its review of which research stations it would close. 41 facilities across Hawaii, Alaska, and New York City were among the locations added to the list of places that wouldn't be shuttered because of their quote, critical importance. The news came after months of lobbying and advocacy from scientists, lawmakers, and defenders of public lands. Some scientists were relieved their research could continue. Their staff believed the months of dispute and review were an enormous waste of time and that the facilities should never have been endangered in the first place. Kiera Eisner and PR News. It's NPR. Triple A says the price of unleaded regular gasoline is now 414 a gallon.

3:06That's six more expensive than what it was a week ago. Diesel, the main fuel in the trucking industry on rail hit a record high today, 588 a gallon up 3 cents in just the last day. The United Nations has adopted a resolution to adopt a new world map. As NPR's Jonathan Lambert reports, the new map will accurately reflect the size of Africa and other parts of the world. Representing the spherical nature of Earth on a two-dimensional map requires some adjustments. Perhaps the most famous of these is known as the Mercator Projection, a rectangular map that's been in use for centuries. It depicts the northern hemisphere as much larger than it is in reality. For example, Greenland appears to be roughly the same size as Africa when Africa is actually 14 times larger. Critics argue the map is biased and reinforces a colonial worldview. The African Union led the push for the adoption of a new map called the Equal Earth Projection. It has rounded sides and represents each continent proportionally.

4:07The resolution passed almost unanimously. The United States was the only country to vote no, saying it was a distraction promoting an ideological agenda. Jonathan Lambert, NPR News. The Army Corps of Engineers is restarting an environmental project on the display's river near Chicago that officials say is critical to the Great Lakes. It's called the Brandon Road Interbase and Project. It's designed to stop invasive carp from getting into Lake Michigan. The project had been stopped by the White House. This is NPR. As the political landscape shifts beneath our feet, we're all vulnerable to a well-funded distraction economy determined to take our eye off the bomb. Our weekly politics series, if you can keep it, is here to help where our focus is not the horse race, but the state. We tackle the big political stories of the day and why they matter for our democracy. Join me, Todd Zwilland and me, Jen White, on the 1A podcast from WAMU and NPR.