Good morning. You’re reading the Up First newsletter. Subscribe here to get it delivered to your inbox, and listen to the Up First podcast for all the news you need to start your day.

Today’s top stories

A Cornell University sexual assault case that produced no criminal charges is now under state scrutiny. New York Gov. Kathy Hochul appointed Attorney General Letitia James’ office as special prosecutor after new information raised questions about what campus police shared with the local district attorney. NPR confirmed the woman who reported the assault gave police a detailed account, including that she had been raped.

• 🎧 NPR’s Brian Mann tells Up First the case has shattered students’ trust in Cornell. Hundreds gathered Thursday night, some sobbing as they spoke. One student told Mann the woman at the center of the case “could have been any one of my friends or a classmate.”

Tennessee tried to execute Christa Pike on Wednesday. She survived. Pike, who was sentenced to death for the 1995 murder of Colleen Slemmer, remains in critical condition after receiving two doses of the lethal injection drug pentobarbital. Gov. Bill Lee has now paused executions for the remainder of his term and ordered an independent review of what went wrong.

• 🎧 It’s the second failed execution in Tennessee this year. WPLN’s Marianna Bacallao says that one failed execution might be a fluke, but two suggest a pattern. Lee previously paused executions from 2022 to 2025 after a review found problems with the state’s execution drugs. The current protocol grew out of that review, but the state is again investigating what went wrong.

The monthly jobs report will be released this morning. For many Americans, the math is getting harder: prices are up, wages aren’t keeping pace and borrowing costs more.

• 🎧 Forecasters expect today’s report to show that employers added 80,000 to 90,000 jobs in September, NPR’s Scott Horsley says. That would be slower than August but stronger than earlier in the summer. Horsley says wage growth is another key measure, and pay increases aren’t keeping pace with prices.

Renee Good’s family filed two civil lawsuits against the federal government yesterday over her death last January. The 37-year-old was fatally shot by a federal agent during an immigration enforcement operation in Minnesota. The first lawsuit alleges ICE officer Jonathan Ross used excessive force. The second alleges that federal officials conspired to interfere with the civil rights of individuals in Minnesota.

Today’s listen

Journalist and director Rachel Szor and Israeli journalist and filmmaker Yuval Abraham attend the photocall of Naza presented in competition at the 83rd International Venice Film Festival, at Venice Lido on Sept. 10, 2026.

Stefano Rellandini/AFP via Getty Images

hide caption

toggle caption
i

Stefano Rellandini/AFP via Getty Images

NAZA features 24 anonymous Israeli intelligence officers and soldiers describing the surveillance and targeting systems they used in Israel’s war in Gaza – including AI — and the civilian deaths they say those systems allowed. Palestinian and international journalists have long documented that toll; the film brings testimony from inside the Israeli military system. Its title loosely translates to “collateral damage.” The film turns that abstraction back into human lives. NAZA opens in U.S. theaters this week after winning praise abroad, while in Israel it has drawn protests, accusations of treason and threats to revoke the filmmakers’ citizenship.