NPR News: 02-23-2026 8PM EST
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Live from NPR News in Washington, I'm Ryland Barton. Mexico's military says its forces killed one of the country's most powerful drug lords during an operation to capture him. The death sparked chaos across the country as armed men set banks, businesses, and vehicles on fire. Today, even as the situation has calmed, schools are closed and people are staying indoors.
What happened during the operation against El Mencho in Mexico?
NPR's Eder Peralta explains the significance of the cartel leader known as El Mencho.
Within the past 10 years, he turned the Jalisco New Generation Cartel into one of the biggest organized crime groups in the world. They took over a whole lot of territory in Mexico and began operating outside the country in Europe and the U.S. The U.S. says El Mencho's cartel trafficked billions of dollars worth of cocaine and fentanyl into the U.S. El Mencho has been indicted several times in American courts and the U.S. had put a $15 million bounty on his head.
NPR's Ader Peralta reporting. The number of judges in the nation's immigration courts shrank by about a quarter in the last year due to firings and resignations, even when accounting for new hires, according to an NPR analysis. The drain has led to depleted staff morale, mounting case backlogs, and a floundering due process system. Twelve immigration courts have lost over half of their judges. Many courts are down to skeleton crews to handle thousands of cases. Two courts have no judges at all. A panel of federal judges has denied an attempt to block Utah's new congressional map from being used in the midterms. As Martha Harris of member station KUER reports, this was the latest attempt by Republicans to get rid of the map.
Utah's congressional map used to have four safe Republican seats. But the state got a new court-ordered map last year. It has one district that favors Democrats. Republicans want the new map blocked and the old map reinstated for the 2026 midterms. A panel of three federal judges denied that request. On Friday, the Utah Supreme Court denied a separate attempt to change the map. President Trump has pushed Republicans to redistrict so the party can hold on to the House. As of now, it's looking increasingly likely that Democrats will have a shot at picking up a seat in Utah in 2026. For NPR News, I'm Martha Harris in Salt Lake City.
The stock market's dropped after President Trump said he would impose a new 15% global tariff. As NPR's Rafael Nam reports, fears about AI also hit Wall Street today.
Although the Supreme Court determined that some of Trump's tariffs were illegal, the president made clear he will try to use other rules to continue imposing them. Over the weekend, he announced a 15% tariff on all imports, higher than the 10% he had initially unveiled on Friday. The president used a provision that allows him to set tariffs for up to 150 days. On top of that, stocks are also reflecting fears that AI could hit the economy by leading to big job losses. Rafael Nam, NPR News.
This is NPR News from Washington. A horse's whinny. is more complex than you might expect. Here's reporter Ari Daniel.
How has the U.S. responded to the Jalisco New Generation Cartel?
Horse whinnies are made up of two tones, one low and one high. A team of researchers wanted to know more, since it's rare for mammals to produce two simultaneous frequencies like this. So they videoed the vocal tract of whinnying stallions. They CT scanned half a dozen horse larynxes. And they audio recorded the whinnies of several horses with a rare disease that tends to paralyze one of the vocal folds. The result?
We finally know how horses produce these two tones at the same time.
Elodie Briefer is an animal behavioral scientist at the University of Copenhagen, and she and her colleagues conclude that a whinny is a unique blend of vocal fold vibration that generates the low pitch and a whistling above the larynx that produces the high pitch. For NPR News, I'm Ari Daniel.
U.S. skier Lindsey Vonn says she nearly lost her left leg in that devastating crash at the Milan Cortina Olympics. The 41-year-old Vonn says the complex fracture caused compartment syndrome, trapping blood in the muscle.
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