NPR News: 04-23-2026 12PM EDT

Live from NPR News in Washington, I'm Libby Casey. President Trump says he has ordered the U.S. military to shoot and kill any Iranian boats that deploy mines to choke traffic through the Strait of Hormuz. Trump issued the post on social media shortly after the U.S. military seized another tanker it says is associated with the smuggling of Iranian oil. That ratcheted up a standoff with Tehran over the Strait, which has been mostly closed off for weeks. Normally, a fifth of the world's oil and natural gas pass through it. The GOP-led Senate has once again blocked a Democratic-led measure to limit President Trump's war powers in Iran. NPR's Claudia Grisaldas reports Democrats say they'll force the vote again until Trump officials publicly testify on the conflict. Wisconsin Senator Tammy Baldwin says it's long past time for Congress to put a check on President Trump's led war. The president said that the war would be over in a matter of days. We are coming up on the two-month mark with no real end in sight. Baldwin is one of several Democrats forcing the war power votes to put Republicans on record While most Republicans remain loyal to Trump some have warned their position could shift at the war 60 mark at the end of this month Claudio Salas NPR News The Capitol A routine annual paper about COVID vaccines by staff at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has been blocked. NPR's Peng Huang reports on the unusual move. Every spring, after the winter peaks of cold and flu, the CDC reports on how well seasonal vaccines worked. For those who got them, how much less likely were they to get hospitalized or to die from the disease? This March, CDC staff published a paper on flu vaccine effectiveness in the agency's flagship weekly publication, and they plan to do the same for the COVID vaccine, but Acting Director Dr. Jay Bhattacharya held the COVID paper for weeks. Now, the planned publication has been canceled. The stoppage was first reported in the Washington Post and confirmed by Andrew Nixon, a spokesman for the Department of Health and Human Services. Nixon cited concerns about how the paper estimates vaccine effectiveness, even though the CDC's methodology has been the same for years. Ping Huang, NPR News. The Trump administration is reclassifying state-licensed medical marijuana as a less dangerous drug Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche signed the order today NPR Bill Chappell says it an historic shift This does not immediately change things for recreational marijuana The new policy applies to two types of products marijuana that FDA approved or marijuana derived products that are FDA approved and ones that are regulated by a state medical marijuana license program. Marijuana has long had the same Schedule I classification as heroin and LSD. Moving medical marijuana to Schedule 3 puts it in the same category as some common prescription painkillers. This is NPR News Live in Washington. Judges at the International Criminal Court have confirmed charges of crimes against humanity against former Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte. He's accused of deadly anti-drug crackdowns he allegedly oversaw while in office. A three-judge panel unanimously found there were substantial grounds to believe the ex-leader was responsible for dozens of murders, first as a mayor in the southern Philippines and later as president. Duterte was arrested in the Philippines last year. Proceedings have been delayed over concerns about his health. A new study suggests Europe only wild monkeys have adopted an interesting strategy to help them stomach human food eating dirt NPR Nate Rott has more Living on the tourist rock of Gibraltar Barbary macaques interact with a lot of humans And a quick search of YouTube will show you that many of those interactions involve them pilfering food. A new study in the journal Scientific Reports finds the macaques which most often interact with humans are more likely to eat dirt, like soil and clay. What scientists call geophagy or geophagia, a behavior researchers believe that helps the monkeys buffer their stomachs from the types of yucky guts we all get after too much junk food. Nate Rott, NPR News. A new study suggests the comet that passed by Earth from another star last year likely originated in a cold, isolated corner of the galaxy, which has yet to gel into its own solar system. Comet 3i Atlas is the only interstellar visitor to be confirmed and quite possibly the oldest. The findings were published in Nature Astronomy. It's NPR.