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The good news is that firefighters in California have regained control of the Caldor Fire near Lake Tahoe and tens of thousands of evacuated residents can now return to their homes. The bad news is the Caldor Fire is the second wildfire this season to burn through the Sierra Nevada Mountains from one side to the other. Something that never happened before this year. The other fire to do it is the...

Most kids are now in their third year of school during the pandemic. It's been a time of ups and downs; adjustments and re-adjustments. Some have flourished in online school and want to stay home — others have floundered and are excited to go back. NPR spoke to a group of kids ages 6 and up about what the pandemic has been like, and how they're feeling about the new school year. Two experts in chi...

The Supreme Court's conservative majority allowed a Texas law banning most abortions to go into effect. Almost immediately, abortion providers had to begin turning people away. NPR's Nina Totenberg reports on the court's interpretation of the Texas law and its controversial enforcement provision, which allows any private citizen to sue someone who helps a person get an abortion — with the plaintif...

Some states in the south are have more people in the hospital than at any point during the pandemic — fueled by the highly transmissible delta variant and low vaccination rates. Dr. David Kimberlin, co-division director of Pediatric Infectious Diseases at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, tells NPR the hospital system is Alabama is on the verge of collapse. He spoke to reporter Pien Huang ....

The U.S. military's mission in Afghanistan is over. For many still living in the country, a new struggle has begun: how to move forward after they were not able to make it before the U.S. withdrawal. Mark Schmitz is also grappling with how to move forward. His 20-year-old son, Jared, was one of 13 U.S. service members killed in an attack on the Kabul airport. Schmitz spoke to NPR's Rachel Martin —...

Hurricane Ida's winds intensified rapidly as the storm approached coastal Louisiana over the weekend — making landfall at its most powerful. NPR's Rebecca Hersher explains how Ida was supercharged by climate change. Now the hurricane's remnants are moving north and east, where millions are bracing for flooding and tornado threats. Janey Camp with Vanderbilt University tells NPR why climate change...

A federal bankruptcy judge says he'll rule Wednesday in the case of Purdue Pharma, makers of OxyContin. The company is owned by the Sackler family, who are at the center of a national reckoning over the deadly opioid epidemic. NPR addiction correspondent Brian Mann has been covering the story of Purdue Pharma for years, and explains how the Sacklers may emerge from Purdue's bankruptcy proceedings...

Venezuela is facing an economic and humanitarian crisis as extreme poverty and violence have forced many to flee the country in recent years. How did a country once wealthy with oil resources fall into such turmoil? See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences. NPR Privacy Policy

For Afghans like Fawad Nazami, life under the Taliban would be a fate 'worse than death.' Nazami is a political counselor at the Afghan embassy in Washington D.C. He told NPR this week he would never return to an Afghanistan under Taliban rule. Now, that same Afghanistan confronts a deadly new reality: the emergence of ISIS-K, which claimed responsibility for this week's attack that killed 13 Amer...

12 U.S. service members were killed in an attack at the Kabul airport on Thursday. They were among some 5,000 U.S. troops evacuating American citizens, Afghans allies, and others from Kabul. At least 60 Afghans were also killed. New York Times journalist Matthieu Aikens describes the scene at the airport moments after the attack. NPR's Quil Lawrence reports on reaction from the Pentagon. For more...

New York City, New Jersey, Goldman Sachs, and the Pentagon all imposed new vaccine requirements in the days following the FDA's full approval of Pfizer's COVID-19 vaccine. Public health officials — and the President — hope more mandates will follow. But some businesses are trying a different approach to encourage vaccination. NPR's Andrea Hsu visited one offering $1,000 bonuses to vaccinated emplo...

The Biden administration said Tuesday that the U.S. was on pace to meet an August 31 deadline to fully withdraw from Afghanistan, but that "contingency plans" are being developed in case they do not complete evacuations in time. Some Afghan evacuees will wind up in America, where one of their main destinations is the Seattle area. NPR's Martin Kaste reports on the resettlement effort ramping up th...

School districts can't find bus drivers. The TSA is short on security screeners. Ports can't find enough workers to load and unload shipping containers. Across many different sectors, the unavailability of workers is holding the economy back, and sending prices even higher. NPR's Scott Horsley reports. Fuel truckers are another critical job that employers can't fill fast enough, explains NPR's Cam...

Antioch police officials suspected one of their veteran detectives of leaking operational details as far back as 2010. But they didn't fire Santiago Castillo for another seven years. During that time, he investigated hundreds of cases including several homicides, and his testimony helped put dozens of people behind bars. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal...

Across the country, it looks like this time, last year. Schools — some days or weeks into the start of the new year — are forced to close temporarily over COVID outbreaks. In many cases, the closures are necessary because too many teachers and staff members are sick or quarantined. Audie Cornish talks to three teachers about their fear, exhaustion, and hope at the start of a new school year. For m...

As many as 100,000 Afghans — those who worked with the U.S. military over the years, and their families — are trying to get out of the country. But access to the Kabul airport is controlled by the Taliban, and the American military says evacuating American citizens is its 'first priority.' Among the Afghans trying to flee are those who've applied for or been granted a Special Immigrant VISA. James...

Just weeks after the shock of a presidential assassination, Haiti was hit by a devastating 7.2 magnitude earthquake on Saturday. The death toll is nearing 2,000 — and still rising — while thousands more are injured and homeless. Haiti's last major earthquake was in 2010. It killed an estimated 200,000 people and injured 300,000 more. This week's quake struck farther from major population centers,...

Hospitals like the University of Mississippi Medical Center are overwhelmed. Dr. LouAnn Woodward, vice chancellor of the Jackson hospital, told NPR they are nearly out of beds — and treating patients in hallways. Meanwhile, Biden administration health officials are coalescing around a plan that would advise most Americans to get a COVID-19 booster shot eight months after their last dose. A booster...

The Taliban now control Afghanistan. How did the country's government fall so quickly — and why didn't the U.S. see it coming? NPR put those questions to the former commander of U.S. and allied forces in Afghanistan, General David Petraeus. Afghanistan's future remains unclear, especially for its women and girls. One of them is Freshta Karim, a Kabul resident and founder of a mobile library projec...

In the agricultural town of Salinas, Calif., Police Officer William Yetter repeatedly makes mistakes. First there's a stolen bike he doesn't investigate. Then, his bosses discover he's not filing police reports on time. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences. NPR Privacy Policy

In the last week, the Taliban have gained control of large sections of Afghanistan faster than most people expected. The Pentagon is dispatching troops to assist in evacuating staff from the American embassy in Kabul, where refugee camps are growing more crowded. The U.N. says the country may be on the brink of a humanitarian catastrophe. State Department spokesperson Ned Price told Audie Cornish...

What struck John Kerry the most about this week's landmark U.N. report on climate change? "The irreversibility" of some of the most catastrophic effects of global warming, he tells Audie Cornish. Kerry, the U.S. Special Envoy for Climate, tells NPR the U.N. report underscored the need for the world to respond more forcefully to climate change — and he's called an upcoming U.N. climate summit in Sc...

In the next few weeks, millions of children will head back to school. Many of them are too young to be vaccinated. At the same time, children are being hospitalized with COVID-19 in small but growing numbers — and approaching rates higher than the winter surge. Dr. Marcos Mestre with Niklaus Children's Foundation Hospital in Miami told NPR's Weekend Edition Sunday many of the children his hospital...

The Tigray region in northern Ethiopia is at the center of a civil war that broke out last November, after rebels there attacked a military base. Since then, the political fight has become an ethnic one, with troops no longer distinguishing civilians from rebel fighters. NPR's Eyder Peralta visited the war-torn region in May and spoke with the people at the center of the conflict. The United Natio...

A landmark new report from the United Nations warns that the world is running out of time to avoid the catastrophic effects of global warming. Those effects are already becoming clear as extreme weather, drought, and fire become more common. One of the latest examples: wildfires are raging amid a record heat wave in Turkey, Lebanon, Italy and Greece. Durrie Bouscaren reports for NPR from Istanbul...