NPR News: 09-08-2026 9PM EDT

0:00Live from NPR News in Washington, I'm Ryland Barton. The U.S. is hitting back at Canada after Canada put retaliatory tariffs on American goods into place today. The White House now says it's banning Canadian motorcycles, dairy and alcohol products from the U.S. along other actions. And here's Emily Feng has more. Sighting what it called discriminatory measures against American cheese, the White House announced it was stopping most Canadian alcoholic beverages, dairy, and motorcycles. And Trump administration has also threatened potential 50% tariffs on Canadian assembled and made cars that could kick in this coming January, despite a free trade agreement signed during Trump's first-term exempting such cars from tariffs. Earlier this week, Trump also wrote on a social media site he was forbidding Canadian origin products from the GSA. That's the federal government's procurement platform which handles hundreds of billions of dollars of orders and contracts for goods and software and other services that support federal offices. Emily Feng and Pierre News Washington. New Hampshire Republican John Sonunu will face Democrat Chris Papas in November and the

1:03race to replace retiring Democratic U.S. Senator Jean Shaheen as according to a race call from the Associated Press. Sonunu was ousted from the Senate by Shaheen in 2008. He was one of two former Senators Shaheen has previously defeated seeking to return to Washington. Papas left his seat in the first congressional district after four terms to run for Senate. The military says it destroyed five Iranian oil tankers. As Iran hits back at American targets in the region, Secretary of State Marco Rubio was asked about the latest flare-up on his swing through South America as NPR's Michelle Kellman reports. The Trump administration has been trying to pressure Iran through sanctions in a military blockade but with no negotiations in sight to end the war and Iran testing the blockade, Secretary Rubio is warning that these clashes will continue. The back and forth is pretty straightforward and that is that Iran continues to try to hit U.S. naval ships and for every time they do that or try to do that, they're going to lose tankers. And I think you'll see that again today. He was speaking at the end of a day of talks in Colombia where he talked about security

2:08cooperation with the new right-wing government to fight drug trafficking. Michelle Kellman and PR News, Baranquia, Colombia. A jury four person says the loan holdout juror in the Lindsey Clancy trial said he had reasonable doubt but still wouldn't acquit. That's according to an interview with Boston's NBC 10. Last week a judge declared a mistrial when jurors failed to reach a unanimous verdict over whether Clancy was criminally responsible for killing her three young children. Clancy's lawyer is asking President Trump to pardon her. A president's pardon power applies only to federal crimes and Clancy was prosecuted under state law but Trump has taken a broad view of his clemency powers. To a stock sank today after the three-day weekend and the latest fighting in the war with Iran pushed oil prices higher, the S&P 500 fell more than half a percent. We're listening to NPR News. Republicans are descending on Dallas this week for a two-day convention called by President Trump to rally his party ahead of the midterm elections.

3:09Trump has said he wants to channel the national conventions that are held every four years when a party's presidential candidate is formally nominated and rising political stars speak. Republicans have never held a midterm convention before but Democrats did in the 1970s and 80s. The program for International Student Assessment or PISA tells us how the world's 15-year-olds are doing in subjects like science, math and reading, NPR's Genaki Metha reports on the 2025 results. The idea behind PISA is to see how students nearing the end of their school career are doing at applying their academics to real-world tasks. The good news for American students? They did better in science and reading than students in most other countries. Though China and Singapore topped every subject. Compared with 2022, American students' scores didn't change much other than a dip in reading skills. Girls did better than boys in reading but boys scored higher on computational problem-solving and math. And the performance gap between high-performing and low-performing American students was much bigger than in other countries.

4:10Starting with this latest report, PISA will now happen every four years instead of three. Genaki Metha and Pair News The creators of satirical cartoon South Park say they've apparently changed the show's name to South America. In the head of its 29th season, the renaming appears to target President Trump who's recently tried to rename bodies of water like Lake Ontario to Lake America and the Gulf of Mexico into the Gulf of America. You're listening to NPR News from Washington. I haven't seen my son since 2012. This is Deborah Tice. The disappearance of her son Austin is one of the biggest missing person cases in the world. What do you want from me? I should have the mystery. I know that my son is somewhere alive. Listen to Where Is Austin Tice from NPR's Embedded and BBC Radio 4 on the NPR app or wherever you get your podcasts.