Year: 2023

The Endangered Species Act turns 50 this year.

The landmark law has been successful for decades at stopping extinctions of several plants and animals.

Recovering endangered or threatened species to the point where they no longer need federal protection has been more difficult because of climate change.

NPR’s Nathan Rott speaks with Martha Williams, Director of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service about the agency’s plans to mitigate threats of extinction caused by climate change.

The writers and actors strikes have been grinding on for months with no end in sight. Many on the picket lines are struggling to pay for basics.

NPR’s Ailsa Chang talks to Fran Drescher about what it’s going to take to end the strikes. Drescher’s the president of SAG-AFTRA, which represents the actors on strike.

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Giant machines sucking carbon dioxide out of the air to fight climate change sounds like science fiction, but it’s close to becoming a reality, with billions of dollars of support from the U.S. government.

And a key player in this growing industry is a U.S. oil company, Occidental Petroleum.

With a major petroleum company deploying this technology, it begs the question, is it meant to save the planet or the oil industry?

NPR’s Camila Domonoske reports.

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Google was founded 25 years ago by two Stanford PhD students, Larry Page and Sergei Brin.

The company went on to shape the internet and now, after a quarter century, finds itself at a turning point. With the rise of AI and social media platforms like TikTok, its continued dominance is not assured.

NPR’s Ari Shapiro talks to Nilay Patel, editor-in-chief of The Verge, about Google’s legacy and what the future holds for the company.

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It’s been over three years since the pandemic started and changed the way millions of Americans work.

The possibilities of remote work gave a new kind of freedom to many workers. But as more and more companies demand employees return to the office, is the work from home era coming to an end?

Host Scott Detrow speaks with Anne Helen Petersen, culture writer and the author of Out of Office, about the future of remote work.

After three and a half years, the pause on federal student loan payments is coming to an end. Getting more than 40 million borrowers back into repayment will be an enormous challenge, especially because many students who graduated when the pause was already in place have never made a payment.

We put borrowers’ questions to two experts: NPR Education correspondent Cory Turner, and Carolina Rodriguez, director of the Education Debt Consumer Assistance Program, a non-profit funded by New York State to help residents navigate repayment of their student loans.

Read Cory’s list of 12 things every student loan borrower should know.

And if you’re having an issue with your student loan servicer, Cory wants to know. Email him at dcturner@npr.org.

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Hundreds of towns, cities and counties across the country impose curfews on young people.

On September 1st a curfew went into effect in seven neighborhoods across the District of Columbia that will affect those aged 17 and under.

Like many other cities, the nation’s capital has seen an increase in violent crime. And some of the most shocking crimes have been committed by young people.

Teens as young as thirteen as well as pre-teens have been suspected of, or charged with carjacking. In the past couple of months a 14 year-old and a 16 year-old have been charged with murder. And young people are also the victims of violent.

Keeping kids inside at night may seem like a good strategy for cities facing a surge in youth violence. But experts say that research doesn’t back up the effectiveness of curfews.

Host Scott Detrow speaks with Kristin Henning, director of the Juvenile Justice Clinic at Georgetown University about what does and doesn’t work.

For the second time this summer the top Republican in the Senate, Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, abruptly went silent at a news conference.

He was about to answer a question from a reporter when he suddenly froze up. He seemed unable to speak. An aide then stepped in, trying to keep things moving along.

The senator’s silences have raised concerns about his mental fitness – and larger questions about an aging Congress.

NPR’s Mary Louise Kelly speaks with Dr. Ann Murray, the Movement Disorders division chief at the Rockefeller Neurosciences Institute at West Virginia University.

When people find themselves in the path of a hurricane they are faced with the question: should they evacuate or not? Who makes that call and how?

NPR’s Mary Louise Kelly speaks with former FEMA administrator Craig Fugate about the decision-making process behind evacuation orders and why people should heed them ahead of hurricanes making landfall.

On Tuesday, the Biden administration released a list of 10 medications that it’s planning to negotiate prices for Medicare in an effort to bring down the costs of some of the most expensive drugs. It’s part of a reform included in the Inflation Reduction Act. Many on the list are life-saving drugs that treat diabetes, cancer and other major health problems.|

The new prices that the federal government will eventually negotiate for these prescription drugs won’t actually go into effect until 2026, and that’s only if it doesn’t get tied up in court with drugmakers. Six pharmaceutical companies who have filed lawsuits against the administration are calling these provisions unconstitutional.

Juana Summers speaks with NPR’s pharmaceuticals correspondent Sydney Lupkin and Deepa Shivaram at the White House about the battle lines being drawn between the Biden Administration and pharmaceutical companies.