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What recent military action did the U.S. take in relation to Iran?
Live from NPR News in Washington, I'm Janine Herbst. The U.S. military says it fired a missile to disable a commercial ship that was headed toward a port in Iran. This as the U.S. and Iran are still trying to work out a deal to reopen the Strait of Hormuz. NPR's Greg Myhre has more.
U.S. forces issued more than 20 warnings telling the commercial ship it was in violation of the U.S. blockade. When the ship still refused to comply, a U.S. aircraft shot a Hellfire missile into the engine room of the vessel, the Leon Star, which is registered in Gambia. U.S. Central Command, which is responsible for the Middle East, said the missile disabled the ship.
The commercial vessel was in the Gulf of Oman, near the Strait of Hormuz, where the U.S. Navy is enforcing the blockade that prevents ships going to or from Iranian ports. In another development, U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, speaking in Singapore, said U.S. forces are prepared to resume military action if no deal is reached on ending the conflict. Greg Myhre, NPR News, Tel Aviv.
The head of the World Health Organization visited eastern Congo's Bonilla, a city at the heart of the latest Ebola outbreak. It's a rare strain of the virus that has no known vaccine or treatment, and it's spreading fast. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus says building community trust is important.
I came here to show that the communities in Ituri, North Kivu and South Kivu, that they're not alone and that we are here to support. And we understand their pain, but we also understand that they have the energy and all that it needs to stop this.
He says the Democratic Republic of Congo has faced Ebola 16 times before and has ended every outbreak and that it gives him confidence this outbreak will be ended too. The WHO says there are 906 suspected cases and 223 suspected deaths in the region. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission wants to rescind a rule from 1979 that guides companies on fighting discrimination.
Empire's Andrea Hsu has more.
After Congress passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964, many companies faced a dilemma. They might be accused of discrimination if they didn't fix the underrepresentation of women and Black workers in their ranks. But taking affirmative action to hire more women and Black people might also constitute discrimination.
In 1979, the EEOC issued guidance saying preferential hiring is OK as long as you've documented the imbalance and you come up with a reasonable and temporary plan to fix it. But now the agency wants that rule gone. It's currently under review by the White House. Agency Chair Andrea Lucas has argued, quote, the way to stop discriminating based on race is to stop discriminating based on race.
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