NPR News, Author at Northwest Public Broadcasting

Empty Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine vials are collected in a tray to be destroyed to prevent them from being resold or refilled, at a vaccination center in the Victor Jara Stadium in Santiago, Chile, Tuesday, March 30, 2021. (AP Photo/Esteban Felix)

New clinical trials showed that Pfizer's COVID-19 vaccine elicits "100% efficacy and robust antibody responses" in adolescents from 12 to 15 years old, the drug company announced Wednesday. The trial included 2,260 participants; the results are even better than earlier responses from participants ages 16 to 25.Read More

Filmmakers Call Out PBS For A Lack Of Diversity, Over-Reliance On Ken Burns

Ken Burns speaks during the PBS segment of the Summer 2019 Television Critics Association Press Tour.

Nearly 140 documentary filmmakers have signed onto a letter given to PBS executives, suggesting the service may provide an unfair level of support to white creators, facing a "systemic failure to fulfill (its) mandate for a diversity of voices."Read More

Supreme Court Weighs Whether NCAA Is Illegally ‘Fixing’ Athlete Compensation

As March Madness heads into its final days, college athletes are playing on a different kind of court: the Supreme Court. On Wednesday the justices heard arguments in a case testing whether the NCAA's limits on compensation for student athletes violate the nation's antitrust laws.Read More

Pentagon Releases New Policies Enabling Transgender People To Serve In The Military

Pentagon spokesman John Kirby, seen here at the Pentagon last week, announced the military's new policies on Wednesday, International Transgender Day of Visibility. CREDIT: Andrew Harnik/AP

The new regulations provide "access to the military in one's self-identified gender provided all appropriate standards are met," the Defense Department said in a statement, and "provide a path for those in service for medical treatment, gender transition, and recognition in one's self-identified gender."Read More

Flu And Colds Are Down. Should We Continue Wearing Masks Beyond The Pandemic?

Nicole Grayson is a fourth-grade teacher at a private Christian school in Franklin, Tenn. She and her colleagues have noticed that students and teachers, who have been meeting mostly in person but wearing masks, haven't had the usual seasonal illnesses this year. Blake Farmer/WPLN News

A study released this month in the Journal of Hospital Medicine, led by researchers from Vanderbilt University Medical Center, found that across 44 children's hospitals, the number of pediatric patients hospitalized for respiratory illnesses is down 62%. Deaths have dropped dramatically too, compared with the last 10 years: The number of flu deaths among children is Read More

NFL Expands Regular Season To 17 Games Per Team In Long-Expected Revenue Boost

National Football League owners voted Tuesday to approve an enhanced schedule that will bring the number of regular-season games to 17 per team starting this year. The long-discussed change is expected to bring additional revenue to the NFL, which finalized a new round of broadcast rights agreements earlier this month.Read More

Arrest Made In Attack On Asian Woman In Manhattan, As Bystanders Watched

Cameron Hunt and his father, Calvin Hunt, hold signs of support on Tuesday outside the West 43rd Street apartment building in Manhattan where a man physically and verbally attacked a 65-year-old Asian American woman on Monday in an incident that police are investigating as a hate crime. CREDIT: Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images

A 65-year-old Asian American woman was physically and verbally attacked by an unidentified man in Midtown Manhattan on Monday in an incident police say they are investigating as a hate crime.Read More

President Biden Makes 1st Judicial Nominations, Including A Supreme Court Contender

President Joe Biden waves before boarding Air Force One

President Biden announced his first judicial nominations Tuesday, including Ketanji Brown Jackson for the U.S. Court of Appeals seat vacated by Merrick Garland when he became U.S. attorney general. Jackson is considered a potential Supreme Court contender.Read More

Tina Turner’s Life Explored In New Documentary

Tina Turner and her children, photographed in 1967. Courtesy of HBO

Near the end of HBO's new documentary, Tina, the movie implies the legendary singer has made a decision: after this film rolls out, Tina Turner just might be done appearing in public and talking about her life. It's an odd message, coming from a woman whose life story and experiences have inspired at least four books, an Oscar-nominated biopic, a Broadway musical and, now, Read More

WHO Report: Wildlife Farms, Not Market, Likely Source Of Coronavirus Pandemic

World Health Organization investigative team member Peter Daszak (shown here during a trip to China in February) tells NPR that the group's report calls for additional research on farms that breed exotic animals in southern China. Hector Retamal/AFP via Getty Images

The highly anticipated World Health Organization report on the origins of the coronavirus that sparked a global pandemic is due out Tuesday. NPR has obtained an early copy. According to the report, data suggests that the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market in Wuhan was not the original source of the outbreak.Read More

CDC Director Fears ‘Impending Doom’ If U.S. Opens Too Quickly

Dr. Rochelle Walensky, the CDC's director, said Monday that she is "scared" by the rising number of coronavirus cases, hospitalizations and deaths in the United States. Susan Walsh/Pool/AFP via Getty Images

Amid growing optimism about the rising pace of vaccinations in the U.S., the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has one request for the American people: Don't act as if the pandemic is over – it's not.Read More

Trial Begins For Derek Chauvin, Former Minneapolis Officer Accused In Killing Of George Floyd

Defense attorney Eric Nelson (left) with his client, former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin, on Monday. Chauvin is on trial for murder in the death of George Floyd in police custody in May 2020. AP

The prosecution and defense made opening arguments in the murder trial of former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin on Monday morning. The trial is starting in earnest 10 months after George Floyd's killing triggered outrage and protests against racial inequality across the United States.Read More

Federal Eviction Moratorium Extended Just 2 Days Before Expiration

Constable placing eviction notice on door in Texas

With many Americans behind on their rent during the pandemic, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is extending an order aimed at preventing evictions through June.Read More

Comedian Eddie Izzard Switches To Screenwriting And Acting For ‘Six Minutes To Midnight’

Eddie Izzard co-wrote the script for Six Minutes to Midnight, and stars as half German, half British teacher Thomas Miller. Courtesy of IFC Films

Eddie Izzard, the wildly-admired and inventive comic, was in a museum in the British resort town of Bexhill-on-Sea, where she spent much time as a child, when historians showed her an old badge from the Augusta Victoria school for girls in the 1930's. There was a Union Jack on the crest — and a Nazi swastika.Read More

Farcical ‘Life Of The Mind’ Skewers Academic Life And Adjunct ‘Hell’

BOOK COVER - The Life of the Mind, by Christine Smallwood

The Life of the Mind is about endings that dribble to a close, the inexorable erosion of dreams, the slow leak of youthful buoyancy. It's about being young-ish at a time in history when it feels like many things might be fading away, including the natural world. The great accomplishment of Smallwood's taut novel is that while it is, indeed, about all those grim subjects, Read More

President Biden Says ‘Nothing Has Changed’ But Child Migrants Crossing Border At Higher Pace

Graphic of unaccompanied minors crossing US-Mexico border - today and through 2014

It is true, as Biden states, that numbers often rise during the early months of the year when temperatures begin to warm. But the number of children arriving today without their parents is considerably higher than at the same time in 2019 and 2020. In fact, the number of unaccompanied children being apprehended by the Border Patrol were higher in February than they've been Read More

Why Nearly All Mass Shooters Are Men

A memorial with flowers for victims of the Boulder King Sooper shooting

A staggering 98% of these crimes have been committed by men, according to The Violence Project, a nonpartisan research group that tracks U.S. mass shooting data dating back to 1966.Read More

Bach’s Favorite Instrument You’ve Probably Never Heard Of: The Long-Lost Lautenwerck

Johann Sebastian Bach playing the organ, not the lautenwerck, circa 1725. From a print in the British Museum. Rischgitz/Getty Images

No lautenwerks survived the 19th century. Picture extremely delicate harpsichords — in fact, lautenwercks are alternately called lute-harpsichords. Their strings are made of guts, originally from sheep (like lutes), which gives lautenwercks a warm, intimate tone distinct from brassy, metal-strung harpsichords.Read More

Children’s Author Beverly Cleary, Creator Of Ramona Quimby, Dies At 104

By NPR News March 27, 2021

Children's author Beverly Cleary died Thursday in Carmel, Calif., her publisher HarperCollins said. She was 104 years old. Cleary was the creator of some of the most authentic characters in children's literature — Henry Huggins, Ralph S. Mouse and the irascible Ramona Quimby.Read More

Here’s How A Long Shutdown Of The Suez Canal Might Roil The Global Economy

By NPR News March 26, 2021

High-resolution satellite imagery shows the Suez Canal and the container ship Ever Given that remains stuck north of the city of Suez, Egypt. CREDIT: ScapeWare3d/DigitalGlobe/Getty Images

Now, with the ship lodged sideways in the canal, closing off the main oceangoing highway between Europe and Asia, much of that cargo is sitting idle. It's either waiting to transit the canal or stuck in port while owners and shippers decide what to do.Read More

DOJ Has Charged Nearly 500 With COVID-Related Fraud In The Past Year

By NPR News March 26, 2021

On the anniversary of the CARES Act, the Justice Department says that over the past year it has charged 474 defendants with fraud or other criminal schemes tied to the pandemic. The grand total that fraudsters tried to scam from the government and the public in those cases is more than $569 million.Read More

Once Imperiled, America’s Bald Eagle Populations Are Soaring

U.S. bald eagle populations have more than quadrupled in the lower 48 states since 2009, according to a new survey from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. CREDIT: Prisma Bildagentur/Universal Images Group via Getty Images

A new survey by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service found there are more than 70,000 breeding pairs of the iconic raptor in the contiguous U.S. In the late 1960s, there were fewer than 500.Read More

Half Of The Jury In The Derek Chauvin Trial Is Nonwhite. That’s Only Part Of The Story

A member of the Minnesota National Guard stands outside the Hennepin County Government Center during jury selection in the trial of former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin on March 11 in Minneapolis. Chauvin is facing murder charges in George Floyd's death. Among the 12 jurors and three alternates selected are three Black men, one Black woman and two multiracial jurors. CREDIT: Kerem Yucel/AFP via Getty Images

The jury chosen for the trial of former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin, charged with murder in the death of George Floyd, is notable because it is significantly less white than Minneapolis itself.Read More

Georgia Governor Signs Election Overhaul, Including Changes To Absentee Voting

Voters stand in line to cast their ballots during the first day of early voting in the U.S. Senate runoffs at Lenora Park in Atlanta in December 2020. CREDIT: Tami Chappell/AFP via Getty Images

Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp on Thursday signed a massive overhaul of election laws, shortly after the Republican-controlled state legislature approved it. The bill enacts new limitations on mail-in voting, expands most voters' access to in-person early voting and caps a months-long battle over voting in a battleground state.Read More

U.S. Refugee Program ‘On Life Support,’ Facing Big Challenges