A federal bankruptcy judge dismissed an effort by the National Rifle Association to declare bankruptcy on Tuesday, ruling that the gun rights group had not filed the case in good faith.Read More
Similar to the national trends, the patients being hospitalized in Washington are now overwhelmingly young and middle-aged adults — not older Americans who are mostly vaccinated at this point.Read More
Those collecting unemployment benefits under the American Rescue Plan must accept "suitable" employment when offered, President Biden said Monday, responding to last week's underwhelming April jobs report.Read More
The Food and Drug Administration said Monday that children 12 to 15 years old are now eligible to receive a key COVID-19 vaccine as the agency expanded its emergency use authorization for the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine.Read More
Gay and transgender people will be protected from discrimination in health care, the Biden administration announced Monday, effectively reversing a Trump-era rule that went into effect last year.Read More
A Supreme Court justice is gravely ill, ideological control of the court hangs in the balance — throw in a ruthless president and an international conspiracy, and what you have is the plot of Stacey Abrams's new novel, While Justice Sleeps. Yes, that Stacey Abrams, the Georgia politician, and she's written a thriller ripped straight from the headlines — inspired by a Read More
A ransomware attack has shut down one of the largest refined products pipelines in the United States, and a security analyst said it shows that "core elements of our national infrastructure" remain vulnerable to cyberattack.Read More
Responding to concerns raised by the U.S. Justice Department about aspects of a controversial election review, the leader of Arizona's state Senate says plans to go door-to-door asking residents about their voting history are "indefinitely" on hold.Read More
The Justice Department has filed federal criminal charges against Derek Chauvin, accusing the former police officer of using excessive force and violating the civil rights of George Floyd. Floyd died after Chauvin pressed on his neck for more than nine minutes on the pavement outside a convenience store last year in Minneapolis.Read More
Nước — the Vietnamese word for country and water — permeates Eric Nguyen's haunting debut. Signifying both a place of origin and the means by which a boat refugee departs from such place of origin, Things We Lost to the Water poignantly explores all the ways in which Vietnamese refugees are affected by country and water — in sum, by dislocation.Read More
The analysis comes from researchers at the University of Washington's Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, who looked at excess mortality from March 2020 through May 3, 2021, compared it with what would be expected in a typical non-pandemic year, then adjusted those figures to account for a handful of other pandemic-related factors.Read More
Residents living on the West Coast don't know when the next earthquake will hit. But a new expansion of the U.S. earthquake early warning system gives 50 million people in California, Oregon — and now Washington — seconds to quickly get to safety whenever the next one hits.Read More
A federal judge has issued a sweeping ruling that would revoke a pandemic eviction moratorium put in place by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.Read More
Facebook was justified in its decision to suspend then-President Donald Trump after the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, the company's Oversight Board said on Wednesday.Read More
Former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin who was convicted last month of murdering George Floyd filed court documents for a new trial on Tuesday.Read More
President Biden on Tuesday is set to announce new steps to reach rural Americans in the push to get as many people as possible vaccinated for the coronavirus, a White House official tells NPR. This emphasis comes as rural hospitals are raising alarms about the pace of vaccination — even among their own employees.Read More
A senior Drug Enforcement Administration official told NPR efforts to target drug cartels operating inside Mexico have unraveled because of a breakdown in cooperation between law enforcement agencies and militaries in the two countries.Read More
Do transgender women and girls have a constitutional right to play on women's sports teams? That question will be argued before the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Monday.Read More
Pope Francis is taking additional steps to crack down on corruption at the Vatican by decreeing that all bishops and cardinals be tried if they are suspected of criminal behavior. This marks the second time in two days that the pope has worked to hold top church officials accountable for their actions.Read More
Four astronauts who've spent the past six months aboard the International Space Station as part of the first operational mission of SpaceX's Crew Dragon capsule are back on Earth after splashing down safely on Saturday in the Gulf of Mexico.Read More
After spending much of the past year tending to elderly patients, doctors are seeing a clear demographic shift: young and middle-aged adults make up a growing share of the patients in COVID-19 hospital wards.Read More
The federal mask mandate, which was set to expire on May 11, will remain in effect through Sept. 13, according to updated guidance issued by the Transportation Security Administration on Friday.Read More
The far-right media outlet Newsmax, which amplified former President Donald Trump's false allegations of election rigging and widespread voter fraud, said on Friday there is no evidence that Dominion Voting Systems and one of its top employees, Eric Coomer, manipulated election results in 2020.Read More
The Biden administration is set to enact a travel ban on any non-U.S. citizens or permanent residents coming to the country from India as multiple coronavirus variants have driven India's COVID-19 outbreak to troubling new heights. The policy will take effect starting on Tuesday, the White House said.Read More
You fall in love with a person, but you get a package deal. That's one of the big messages of two new novels that ruminate on love and family, particularly the family that's thrust upon you when you happen to mate with one of their kith or kin.Read More
The gates of Disneyland are opening again Friday, to welcome customers for the first time since the resort was closed at the start of the global pandemic. Only California residents will be allowed to visit, and daily crowd sizes will be limited due to safety protocols.Read More
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration says it is moving to ban menthol cigarettes and flavored cigars, based on the evidence of the addictiveness and harm of the products.Read More
"America is on the move again," President Biden said in his first joint address to Congress Wednesday night, remarks given amid the coronavirus pandemic. "Turning peril into possibility. Crisis into opportunity. Setback into strength."Read More
Mario Gonzalez of Oakland died April 19 after what police previously called a "scuffle" with officers. The Alameda Police Department said Gonzalez suffered some sort of "medical emergency" after an interaction with police.Read More
Federal investigators in Manhattan executed a search warrant Wednesday at Rudy Giuliani's apartment as part of a probe into the former New York City mayor's activities involving Ukraine, his attorney told NPR.Read More
An astronaut who flew on one of the most famous space missions of all time has died. Michael Collins, 90, was part of the three-member crew on Apollo 11, the first lunar landing mission in 1969. Unlike Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin, he never walked on the moon. Collins stayed behind and piloted the command module as it circled above. Because of that, Collins is often Read More
Fox News says a New York court should dismiss Smartmatic's $2.7 billon lawsuit against the cable TV network and some of its hosts, saying its coverage of bogus election-fraud claims is protected by the First Amendment. Fox also says the voting technology company hasn't backed up its allegations of "actual malice" related to its defamation claims.Read More
Every so often, a fantasy series with adventure, magic and an unfairly attractive villain comes along and captures the imagination and attention of a passionate base of readers. And when that series leaps into a fully realized television adaptation? Well then, that niche fixation can become a global fantasy phenomenon overnight. And Netflix is hoping its new adaptation Read More
Andrew Brown Jr. died from a fatal gunshot to the back of head, his relatives and family attorneys said Tuesday, citing the results of an independent autopsy. The finding bolsters the claim that Brown was "executed," the family said.Read More
The CDC says people who are fully vaccinated do not need to wear a mask when they're outdoors, unless they're in a crowd, such as attending a live performance, sporting event or parade. People are considered fully vaccinated two weeks after receiving the second dose of the Pfizer or Moderna vaccines, or two weeks after the single dose Johnson & Johnson shot.Read More
The NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund wants Attorney General Merrick Garland to suspend grants to local law enforcement until he's sure that no federal taxpayer money is funding police departments that engage in discrimination, according to a letter obtained by NPR.Read More
In surveillance video released by the New York City Police Department's Hate Crime Task Force, the victim can be seen being pushed to the ground by an unidentified man, who then kicks him in the head multiple times.Read More
Chloé Zhao has won the Oscar for directing Nomadland, becoming the first woman of color to win the award and the second woman to win (Katheryn Bigelow, was the first). Zhao was also the first woman to get four Oscar nominations in a single year, in the Best Film Editing, Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Director and Best Picture categories.Read More
Hester Ford, who was America's oldest person living, died at her home in Charlotte, N.C., on April 17. Ford was at least 115 years old, though some records say she was possibly 116.Read More
In a virtual ceremony, Louise Erdrich was named the winner of this year's Aspen Words Literary Prize, for her novel The Night Watchman. The $35,000 prize goes to a work that "illuminates a vital contemporary issue and demonstrates the transformative power of literature on thought and culture."Read More
A special Pentagon panel is recommending a seismic shift in how the U.S. military handles sexual assault cases, saying independent judge advocates, not commanding officers, should decide whether to pursue legal charges in such cases.Read More
The Food and Drug Administration and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced Friday after the panel voted that the vaccine is safe and effective at preventing COVID-19, and its benefits outweigh the known risks.Read More
LeVar Burton will host a week of Jeopardy! this summer, after nearly 250,000 people signed a petition backing the actor and director's long-held aspiration to try out for the job that was left vacant by Alex Trebek, who died last year.Read More
Peeling paint. Cracked buckets. Employees dragging unsealed bags of medical waste. Procedures ignored. Inadequately trained staff. All of these were problems noted by U.S. Food and Drug Administration inspectors at the Emergent BioSolutions factory in Baltimore – a facility that is intended to produce materials for the Johnson & Johnson COVID-19 vaccine.Read More
With the verdict against former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin now in for the murder of George Floyd, attention is turning to Congress and whether lawmakers can meet the growing demand from across the nation for meaningful changes to policing.Read More
The new book World Travel: An Irreverent Guide is credited to Anthony Bourdain. But it was not really written by the bestselling author, chef and TV personality who died in 2018.Read More
Recycling works, but it's not magic. As America continues to lead the world in per capita waste production, it's becoming more and more clear that everybody – manufacturers and consumers — "over-believes" in recycling.Read More
"The Louvre is dusting off its treasures, even the least-known," said Jean-Luc Martinez, President-Director of the Musée du Louvre, in a statement on Friday. "For the first time, anyone can access the entire collection of works from a computer or smartphone for free, whether they are on display in the museum, on loan, even long-term, or in storage."Read More
The American ambassador to Russia is returning to Washington, D.C., for "consultations" after President Biden imposed a new round of sanctions on Moscow last week, including the expulsion of 10 diplomats — a move quickly followed by reciprocal measures from the Kremlin.Read More
The jury has found former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin guilty on all the counts he faced over the death of George Floyd. The trial has been one of the most closely watched cases in recent memory, setting off a national reckoning on police violence and systemic racism even before the trial commenced.Read More
