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Life Inside Iran, Trump and Cuba, Fed Interest Rates

Life Inside Iran, Trump and Cuba, Fed Interest Rates

Up First from NPR
Mar 18, 2026 14 min
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About this episode

Iran is retaliating for the killing of its top security chief with strikes across the region overnight, and Iranian are crossing into Iraq just to buy food they can no longer afford at home. <br>Secretary of State Marco Rubio says Cuba needs new people in charge, raising questions about what the Trump administration is actually planning for the island. <br>And the Federal Reserve meets today facing a scrambled economic outlook with energy prices are soaring because of the war and the job market is weakening.<br/><br/><em>Want more analysis of the most important news of the day, plus a little fun? </em><a href="https://www.npr.org/newsletter/news"target="_blank" >Subscribe</a><em> to the Up First newsletter.</em><br/><br/>Today’s episode of Up First was edited by Hannah Block, Rebekah Metzler, Rafael Nam, Mohamad ElBardicy, and Alice Woelfle.<br/><br/>It was produced by Ziad Buchh and Nia Dumas.<br/><br/>Our director is Christopher Thomas.<br/><br/>We get engineering support from Neisha Heinis. Our technical director is Carleigh Strange.<br/><br/>Our Supervising Producer is Michael Lipkin.<br/><br/>(0:00) Introduction<br>(01:55) Life Inside Iran<br>(06:15) Trump and Cuba<br>(10:10) Fed Interest Rates<br/><br/>See <a href="https://pcm.adswizz.com">pcm.adswizz.com</a> for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.<br/><br/><a href="https://www.npr.org/about-npr/179878450/privacy-policy">NPR Privacy Policy</a>

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