The COVID-19 vaccines are here, but if it's your turn to get vaccinated, how are you supposed to sign up? The answers vary by place, so NPR created a tool to help you understand how things work in your state and connect you with local resources. And we're sharing guiding principles and advice for navigating the process below.Read More
The warnings not to consume water out of the tap began in many places as early as Monday, but as of Wednesday night many municipalities had expanded those orders as the state grapples with the ongoing weather, energy and water crises that have placed unprecedented strain on the state's entire power grid.Read More
Heavy snowfall, ice storms and bitter temperatures continue to put an enormous strain on the state's power grid. This as the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT), which manages roughly 75% of the Texas power grid, announced Wednesday morning that some 600,000 households had power restored overnight.Read More
The emergence of AIDS provides the impetus for It's a Sin, a hit British series about five young people who share a London apartment over the years from 1981 to '91. The show is the semi-autobiographical brainchild of Russell T. Davies, a writer best known for creating Queer as Folk and resurrecting Doctor Who. With his gimlet eye for the pop jugular, Davies turns the Read More
For many families, paying for college is one of the biggest financial decisions they'll make. College tuition is the highest it's ever been — and the financial aid process is anything but clear. American journalist Ron Lieber's new book, The Price You Pay for College aims to take the black box of college financials and, "turn it lighter and lighter shades of gray."Read More
Race and challenging assumptions about race is central to what Black Violin does: Outside of playing for fun or for creative expression, Marcus finds it particularly satisfying to disarm people who don't expect him to be a violin scholar. "The number-one reason I play violin," he says, "is because I'm not 'supposed to.' "Read More
Lunar New Year hits differently this year. It's an annual holiday celebrated on a bedrock of bringing families, across the country and overseas, together for home-cooked meals and lots of catching up.Read More
Candles and books rest on a trunk at the bottom right corner of the wide shot. There, too, are special photographs of alto saxophonist Immanuel Wilkins with family in his childhood home in Philadelphia. "One of the brightest things about this pandemic was going home to spend time with my mother, father and grandmother after being on the road for a while," Wilkins told NPR Read More
Secretary of State Antony Blinken has been in office three weeks. He arrives at a challenging time: the U.S. must figure out how to deal with China, Russia and Iran, the coronavirus pandemic rages on, and the State Department must rise from the morale slump it suffered during the Trump administration.Read More
The WHO team's main public conclusion so far is that it's "extremely unlikely" that the virus originated in a lab in Wuhan. The scientists think the virus most likely started in bats, then jumped to other animals, then to humans.Read More
For decades, the prevailing theory about the extinction of the dinosaurs was that an asteroid from the belt between Mars and Jupiter slammed into the planet, causing cataclysmic devastation that wiped out most life on the planet.Read More
Far-right-friendly social media site Parler limped back to life on Monday with a new Web host, retooled community guidelines and a promise that content inciting violence will be removed.Read More
In January, President Joe Biden signed an executive order to open up the federal health insurance marketplace for three months starting Monday so uninsured people can buy a plan and those who want to change their marketplace coverage can do so.Read More
We lost Armando Manzanero this past December in Mexico City to COVID-19 complications at the age of 85. This week, we present our tribute for Valentine's Day, a day when his profound words can help us express the inexpressible.Read More
Johnson says she wrote You Should See Me in a Crown for her readers, yes, but also for herself: "I wanted to remind myself that it is possible to be Black and queer and from where you're from, and still get all the best things out of life."Read More
Brig. Gen. Mark Quander is taking a new leadership role at the prestigious military school of West Point at a time that the spotlight has returned to the problem of extremism in the military.Read More
A horn made from a conch shell over 17,000 years ago has blasted out musical notes for the first time in millennia. Archaeologists originally found the seashell in 1931, in a French cave that contains prehistoric wall paintings. They speculated that the cave's past occupants had used the shell as a ceremonial cup for shared drinks, and that a hole in its tip was just Read More
Business and civil rights groups in California are demanding action after a recent surge of xenophobic violence against Asian Americans in the San Francisco Bay Area left one person dead and others badly injured. The brazen, mostly daylight assaults have rattled nerves in communities ahead of Friday's Lunar New Year holiday.Read More
One of the virtues of Judas and the Black Messiah is that it gives us such a captivating sense of who Hampton was. He's played here by an electrifying Daniel Kaluuya, who captures the young man's gift for inspiring other activists and his ferocious critique of the nation's white power structure.Read More
The White House announced Friday that President Biden hopes to shut down the prison at the Naval Station Guantanamo Bay in Cuba, a tall task that the Obama administration failed to do nearly a decade ago.Read More
A majority of senators voted to convict Trump — 57 to 43, including seven Republicans. But two-thirds, or 67 votes, is needed to convict. It was the second time Trump was acquitted in an impeachment trial. The seven GOP senators who voted to convict Trump Saturday were: Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, Susan Collins of Maine, Richard Burr of North Carolina, Lisa Murkowski of Read More
Dogged by the coronavirus pandemic and the Trump administration's interference with the census schedule, the latest expected release date — six months past the March 31 legal deadline — could throw upcoming elections into chaos in states facing tight redistricting deadlines for Congress, as well as state and local offices.Read More
The Senate has voted unanimously to award Capitol Police Officer Eugene Goodman with a Congressional Gold Medal, the institution's highest civilian honor, for his actions to protect the Congress during the deadly Jan. 6 siege on the U.S. Capitol.Read More
Singer, songwriter, guitarist and accordionist Flory Jagoda worked hard to preserve the music and language she inherited from her Sephardic Jewish ancestors in her adopted American home. Named a National Heritage Fellow by the National Endowment for the Arts in 2002, she died on Jan. 29 at age 97 in Alexandria, Va. at a long-term memory care facility, according to an Read More
President Biden has finalized deals to buy 200 million more COVID-19 vaccine doses from Pfizer and Moderna by the end of July, increasing the likelihood of delivering on his promise to have all Americans inoculated by mid-summer.Read More
Congressional forecasters are projecting a federal deficit of $2.3 trillion this fiscal year, even without the additional $1.9 trillion in spending that President Biden has proposed.Read More
The book is guided by the structure of time. We go full circle from June through to May; summer through to spring. There is a poem for each month, just as there is a poem for each feeling. Pleasure, annoyance, boredom, spiritual awakening — we feel it all. And as the poems travel through time, the poet's vulnerability and loneliness are palpable enough to, perhaps Read More
The keyboardist, composer and bandleader Chick Corea — one of the most revered figures in contemporary jazz, but whose work spanned fusion to classical — died on Feb. 9 at age 79.Read More
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is now blocked from Instagram after he repeatedly undercut trust in vaccines. Kennedy has also spread conspiracy theories about Bill Gates, accusing him of profiteering off vaccines and attempting to take control of the world's food supply.Read More
President Biden raised some of the thorniest bilateral issues, but also talked about potential areas for cooperation, the White House said. The call comes after Biden and top administration officials did rounds of calls with allies and partners in the Indo-Pacific region, signaling that the United States will depart from the Trump administration's go-it-alone approach to China.Read More
House impeachment managers showed chilling new footage to senators during Day 2 of Donald Trump's Senate impeachment trial, highlighting just how close the violent mob got to then-Vice President Mike Pence and congressional lawmakers on Jan. 6.Read More
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released new research on Wednesday that found wearing a cloth mask over a surgical mask offers more protection against the coronavirus, as does tying knots on the ear loops of surgical masks. Those findings prompted new guidance on how to improve mask fit at a time of concern over fast-spreading variants of the virus.Read More
In the 1920s, the Russian physicist Leon Theremin debuted an electronic instrument that could be played without any physical contact. Players stood in front of a box and waved their hands over antennas, summoning otherworldly sounds seemingly from thin air. The theremin might have been regarded as a passing novelty if not for the late Clara Rockmore, a virtuoso who helped Read More
Mary Wilson, one of the co-founders of The Supremes, died Monday at the age of 76, her publicist announced. Wilson "passed away suddenly" at her Henderson, Nev., home, the singer's longtime friend and publicist Jay Schwartz said in a statement. No cause of death was given.Read More
The National Transportation Safety Board has determined that the probable cause of the crash that killed Kobe Bryant, his daughter Gianna and six other passengers last year was the pilot's decision to continue flight under adverse weather conditions. The result, they said, was the pilot's "spatial disorientation" and loss of control.Read More
The second impeachment trial of Donald Trump will move forward after the Senate voted Tuesday that the trial of a former president is constitutional. Trump was impeached by the House for inciting an insurrection at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6. The Senate Tuesday vote was 56-44, with six Republicans joining all 50 Democrats.Read More
The Senate trial of former President Donald Trump for one article of impeachment — incitement of the insurrection at the Capitol on Jan. 6 — starts Tuesday with a debate over whether the Constitution allows for prosecution of a president once he leaves office. The debate comes about a year after the Senate acquitted then-President Trump on two counts of abuse of power and Read More
WallStreetBets started as an investment forum — and its moderators continue to insist it is just that as the group has now grown to boast nearly 9 million members. But interviews with some of its members and an examination of its threads also show something else — that it's morphed into a movement of sorts, riding a giant wave of unresolved anger from the Great Recession.Read More
President Trump made history when he became the first president to be impeached twice by the House of Representatives. Roughly a year ago, the Senate acquitted Trump on two articles — abuse of power and obstruction. This time he faces one article approved by the House arguing he incited an insurrection at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, the day that Congress was required by Read More
The first sitting member of Congress, Texas Republican Rep. Ron Wright, died Sunday after receiving a positive test diagnosis for the coronavirus infection, his campaign announced in a statement on Monday.Read More
As the Pentagon wrestles with concerns over right-wing extremism among service members, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin has signed a memo directing commanding officers and supervisors to institute a one-day stand-down within the next 60 days to address extremism within the nation's armed forces.Read More
The roads taken by the family in The Removed, Brandon Hobson's new novel, are essential ones in this moment of national reclaiming. The story in this book is deeply resonant and profound, and not only because of its exquisite lyricism. It's also a hard and visceral entrance into our own reckoning as a society and civic culture with losses we created, injustices we allowed, Read More
Ever since the pandemic closed the nation's schools in March 2020, there has been no official national source for understanding where schools have reopened, how many hours of live instruction students are getting online and just how unequal the access to learning has been over the past 11 months.Read More
President Biden said on Friday that his plan to raise the federal minimum wage to $15 per hour is unlikely to happen as part of the $1.9 trillion COVID-19 aid package.Read More
The House quickly approved a budget resolution intended to speed the drafting of President Biden's $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief package. The Senate approved the same budget resolution early Friday morning. With the Senate evenly divided, Vice President Harris cast the tiebreaking vote.Read More
In 2012, when he was already well into his 80s, Christopher Plummer told NPR that he was busier than he had been in a long time – and that was OK with him. "You never stop learning how to act, both on screen and on the stage," he said. "I feel like I'm starting all over again. Every sort of decade I feel this, and that's very satisfying."Read More
With millions of older Americans eligible for COVID-19 vaccines and limited supplies, many continue to describe a frantic and frustrating search to secure a shot, beset by uncertainty and difficulty. The efforts to vaccinate people who are 65 and older have strained under the enormous demand that has overwhelmed cumbersome, inconsistent scheduling systems.Read More
The House of Representatives has voted to strip Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of her committee assignments, following uproar over her past incendiary comments and apparent support of violence against Democrats. The vote was 230 to 199.Read More
Parler, the far-right-friendly social media site that was knocked offline after the violent mob stormed the U.S. Capitol, has fired its CEO. John Matze said the company removed him as chief executive, following a fight with conservative donor Rebekah Mercer, who controls Parler's board, after an apparent fight over the future of free speech on Parler.Read More
Tove Ditlevsen's brilliance is evident when you read her confessional memoir, The Copenhagen Trilogy, which is newly available in a crisp translation by Tiina Nunnally and Michael Favala Goldman. Told in a sneakily plain, highly addictive voice, it's the portrait of the artist as a young woman who wrote as hard as she lived.Read More