NPR News: 09-06-2026 5PM EDT

0:00Live from NPR News in Washington, I'm Dan Runner. White House envoys Steve Whitkopf and Jared Kushner are describing their first face-to-face meeting with Ukraine's President Vladimir Zelensky as substantiate. Whitkopf said he was very encouraged by the direction of the talks to end Russia's four-and-a-half year-long war with Ukraine. The meeting followed an earlier session in the Kremlin with Russian President Vladimir Putin. Kushner spoke with ABC. These are some of the hardest problems that's in the world. You know, and I think that you have to try and you have to bring to it. Obviously, Steve and I bring different approaches to these things, but we work very well together as partners, but we're not bringing our approaches. We're really representing President Trump, and we're doing it the way that he wants to see these things done. For his part, President Zelensky insisted before the meeting that any peace agreement must include security guarantees for Ukraine and what he called a dignified post-war piece. In Germany, the far right alternative for Germany party has won the most votes in a close

1:02they watched regional election. Exit polls currently show the parties have to have a lead of about 25 points, but as Esmi Nicholson reports, it's unclear whether that party has enough seats to govern. Speaking to public broadcasters at the FAAFD federal leader, Ali Svidal said Chancellor Friedrich Merz's conservative Christian Democrats will never win another election. We're seeing explosive growth here, she said, referring to the state of Saxony and Halt. We're going to see explosive growth across all of East Germany and at the federal level too, she said. The AFD candidate responsible for that growth is Orich Ziegmann, de former salesman with a radical platform promising mass deportations, the segregation of refugee children in schools, and closer relations with Russia and the MAGA movement in the US. While it's not yet clear whether the AFD can rule outright, Ziegmann declared we have written history and thanked Friedrich Merz for being a very good campaigner for the AFD. For MPR News, I'm Esmi Nicholson in Berlin. Miami Fire Officials said there are multiple

2:04patients after a cargo plane crashed at Miami International Airport, NPR's Shondalee Stuster reports. The FAA says an Amazon Prime Airplane was landing when it overshot the Miami International Airport runway around 2 o'clock PM local time on Sunday. Miami Dayed Fire Rescue says the plane struck multiple vehicles and caught fire. There are quote multiple patients and more than 60 units working to extinguish the fire, Miami Dayed Fire Rescue also said. The Miami Dayed Aviation Department said all runways and taxiways at the airport were closed as of 3 o'clock PM and a ground stop had been issued until 5.30 PM local time. An Amazon spokesperson says the company's priority is the safety, well-being, and care of everyone involved. The FAA says it will investigate the crash. Shondalee Stuster and PR News. It's NPR. The maker of the smart rings called Aura is preparing to go public in what could be a blockbuster IPO. The company's first financial disclosures

3:09shows a massive trove of personal data and a very loyal base of subscribers willing to pay a monthly fee. NPR's Elena Saluca reports. The Aura ring has been writing the wellness trend to sell 3.6 billion rings in the past year. That's according to the company's new disclosures ahead of the public listing on the NASDAQ. Aura's pitch is that it tracks over 50 metrics like the heart rate, stress levels, sleep patterns. It also sells a subscription for about $6 a month to be able to see most of that data. The company's filing says Aura has, quote, amassed one of the largest and highest quality longitudinal biometric data sets in consumer health, representing nearly 42 billion hours of physiological data. Aura says it's revenue doubled from 2024 to 2025 and seems on track to do that again this year. Elena Saluca and PR News. The price of a gallon of diesel fuel had hit another record today at a nationwide average of 589, this according to AAA. California has

4:09the most expensive diesel fuel in the nation. It's $7.81 a gallon. Diesel is the main fuel in both the trucking and the freight rail industries and the higher prices are causing trucking companies, the railroads and freight brokers to pass along much of the higher price of the fuel to shippers. Diesel is also very important to the agriculture industry and the elevated cost of not only diesel is impacting farmers as they prepare for the harvest season. I'm Dan Ronan, NPR News, Washington. 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 ball. Our weekly politics series, if you can keep it, is here to help where our focus is not the force 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.