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 Live from NPR in Washington, I'm Rylan Barton. The 60-day deadline for an agreement to end the Iran war and resolve the dispute over its nuclear program is expiring. Talks to reopen the Strait of Hormuz have stalled, and Washington and Tehran appear even farther apart than they were when they made the agreement in June. Here's President T in the Oval Office today. Well, they want to make a deal, but they're not going to make the kind of a deal that I feel is necessary. Look, we're in there for one reason. Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon. Iran has issued far-reaching demands for opening the Strait of Hormuz. T appears to be banking on economic pressure to get Tehran to back down. President T's son-in-law, Jared Kushner, met with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu today. He's in Israel pushing for progress on a post-war plan for Gaza. Yesterday, he held a rare meeting in Egypt with leaders of Hamas. NPR's Daniel Estrin has more from Tel Aviv. An official briefed on the meeting, speaking anonymously to offer details, said the U.S. wants Hamas to start disarming and hand over control of Gaza to a new Palestinian committee. Hamas says it accepts those terms. But Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu opposes Israel withdrawing from Gaza until Hamas completely disarms. There's been no real progress on a post-war transition since major military operations ended in Gaza 10 months ago. And Netanyahu is wary of making public concessions on Gaza with Israeli elections just 10 weeks away. Daniel Estrin, Tel Aviv.
Unexpected employee absences can be costly for the retail, manufacturing and fast food industries. A startup is helping frontline workers with last-minute support. NPR's Andrea Hsu reports. For years, Sienna Daniel worked to help unemployed and underemployed people get the skills they need to secure jobs. Many got jobs, but then their car would break down or their child care would fall through. Bottom line was if we didn't have some of those wraparound supports available to them, they didn't remain in the jobs. Now Daniel's startup, Escalate, aims to solve that problem through an app. If an employee has a transportation problem, they can request an Uber voucher. If their kid is sick, they can get a Visa gift card to pay a family member or friend to watch their child. In a pilot with the McDonald's franchise, call-outs declined dramatically once these common obstacles were removed. It's a cost-saving solution they're working to replicate elsewhere.
The T administration says it is temporarily pausing construction of a controversial border construction project in Texas' Big Bend National Park. The head of the agency tasked with building it is in Texas to do an on-the-ground evaluation. The project is faced bipartisan opposition by critics who say it's marring a pristine environmental area and that the region's rugged and remote terrain already serves as a deterrent to migrants and smugglers.
U.S. stocks slipped further from their record heights today after the price of oil rose again.
Days of storms have left at least seven people dead in Indiana. Floodwaters finally receded yesterday. Meanwhile, heavy rain continues elsewhere in the Midwest and Appalachia. Most of West Virginia, Southeast Ohio, and Northeast Kentucky are under a flood watch through tonight.
Actor Hayden Panettiere has died. She starred in the TV shows Heroes in Nashville and appeared in the Scream horror films. She was 36 years old. NPR's Anisaciat Silkes has more. Hayden Panettiere lived much of her life in front of a camera. She first appeared in a commercial when she was 11 months old. When she was barely school-aged, she was already a regular on the soap opera One Life to Live. On the TV series Heroes, she played a high school cheerleader with healing powers and then went on to star in the series Nashville as rising country music sensation Juliet Barnes, which earned her two Golden Globe nominations. Panettiere had recently released a memoir about life as a child star, her subsequent addictions and recovery, and her battle with postpartum depression. Her cause of death was not made public. She would have turned 37 this Friday. Anastasia Tsilkes, New York.
City employees in Wells, Maine, have found an original handwritten transcription of the Declaration of Independence from 1776. According to the Portland Press-Herald, after the declaration was adopted by the Second Continental Congress, copies were distributed to local church ministers with instructions to read them aloud to their congregations. Then town clerks would transcribe the document into their official town records.