Category: International

COVID vaccines are available to children as young as six months old. Still, plenty of parents and caretakers have questions before they get their children the jab. NPR Health Correspondent Rob Stein and Dr. Nia Heard-Garris, a pediatrician at the Ann and Robert H. Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago, answer some of those questions from listeners.

In participating regions, you’ll also hear a local news segment to help you make sense of what’s going on in your community.

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Trigger bans. Restraining orders. State and local disputes. New fights about old laws. After Roe, states are awash in abortion-related legal challenges. Michigan governor Gretchen Whitmer tells NPR ‘there’s a lot of confusion,’ and ‘it’s a terribly anxious time.’

The chaos has trickled down from state courts to individual abortion care providers, where staff and patients have been struggling to adjust to rapidly-changing legal realities. NPR’s Sarah McCammon visited one provider in Shreveport, Louisiana.

The shifting legal realities could make accessing abortion care difficult for members of the military who are stationed in certain states. NPR’s Brian Mann spoke to women in the military about their concerns.

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It may be too soon to crown the “song of the summer”. NPR Music’s Stephen Thompson says there’s no one quality that the songs that carry that title have… it’s a collective feeling, a shared vibe.

For so many Americans on this July 4th, songs of the summer and songs of protest feel one and the same.

NPR’s Ann Powers is a music critic, and Shana Redmond is a professor at Columbia University, and the author of “Anthem: Social Movements And The Sound Of Solidarity In The African Diaspora.” They explain the role of protest music in this moment.

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In states across the country, long before the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, pregnant people were already being criminally charged, convicted, and imprisoned for loss of pregnancy. Advocates for reproductive rights say this is because laws created to protect pregnant people from violence and abuse are being used to prosecute people whose pregnancies end prematurely.

We speak with Dana Sussman of National Advocates for Pregnant Women about how the prosecution of pregnancy loss could look in the country’s new, post-Roe era. The organization documents and provides legal defenses in cases involving pregnant people charged with pregnancy-related crimes.

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As many countries have loosened their COVID-19 restrictions and reopened their borders, the demand for travel is high. Meanwhile, there are hundreds of flights getting canceled and delayed on a daily basis across the globe. A shortage in airline staff, especially pilots, is a big reason why.

Pilots took to the picket lines this week to protest this shortage. They are also frustrated by stalled contract negotiations and strained pilot schedules.

NPR’s Ari Shapiro spoke to Captain Casey Murray from Southwest Airlines Pilots Association about what has caused this shortage.

Airline companies are having to get creative in their efforts to recruit, hire and retain pilots. NPR’s David Schaper reports about how one major airline opened its own flight school.

Additional reporting in this episode came from Amanda Andrews at George Public Broadcasting.

In participating regions, you’ll also hear a local news segment to help you make sense of what’s going on in your community.

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While the last few decades have shown major progress when it comes to LGBTQ+ rights globally, queer people have had to continue to fight for them.

During Pride month there have been several high-profile instances of violence targeted at queer people. These events are stark reminders that the struggle for equal rights and safety for LGBTQ+ people continues.

NPR’s Ari Shapiro spoke with three high-level diplomats assigned to LGBTQ+ issues – the U.S.’s Jessica Stern, Italy’s Fabrizio Petri and Argentina’s Alba Rueda – about whether life is improving for queer people globally.

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Cassidy Hutchinson’s testimony before the January 6th committee landed with a bang. The surprise hearing on Tuesday, featuring this aide to former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, was the most powerful evidence to date in the case that House investigators have been building through hours of public hearings.

NPR Senior Political Editor and Correspondent Domenico Montanaro and NPR National Justice Correspondent Carrie Johnson walk through the case the committee has built so far, its implications for a potential criminal prosecution of former president Donald Trump and the impact it might have on an extremely polarized American public.

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There are 1.5 million people in state and federal prisons in the United States. Very few of them get a chance to earn a bachelor degree. That’s due to a decades-old ban on the use of federal money to help people in prison pay for college classes.

But that’s about to change. Starting with the 2023-2024 school year, people in prison will be eligible to receive Pell grants in the amount of nearly $7,000 per year. Experts say this change will mean a chance at higher education for hundreds of thousands who are academically eligible.

NPR’s Elissa Nadworny reports on what the change means, and tells the story of a man who earned the type of degree that will soon be available to many more people.

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Congress and the Supreme Court took big steps in opposite directions last week, in the country’s long standing debate on whether and how to regulate guns.

Congress passed the first major federal gun legislation in decades, with bipartisan support. President Biden signed it into law on Saturday.

Meanwhile, on Thursday, the Supreme Court issued a 6-3 opinion striking down a major gun control law in New York. The sweeping ruling puts many other gun regulations in states across the country, on shaky ground.

Daniel Webster, whose research focuses on policies intended to reduce gun violence, explains the real world impact he anticipates after these changes. Webster is Co-Director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Violence Solutions.

This episode features reporting from NPR’s Nina Totenberg.

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Omar Little, Jimmy McNulty, Stringer Bell, Snot Boogie. If you recognize these names, you are probably a fan of the HBO series The Wire.

This month marks 20 years since the series premiere. It ran for five seasons, following the lives of the cops, criminals, political players, and everyday folks caught up in Baltimore’s often futile war on drugs.

Many argue that The Wire is the best television show ever created and has earned praise for its realistic, humanizing, multi-dimensional portrayal of Black characters. But 20 years on, the conversation about policing in Black communities has changed. The deaths of Freddie Gray, George Floyd, and many others after encounters with police and the rise of the Black Lives Matter Movement have brought about more public scrutiny, debate, and criticism of the police.

As social commentary, is The Wire still relevant? We speak with NPR TV critic Eric Deggans and Ronda Racha Penrice, editor of the essay collection, Cracking The Wire During Black Lives Matter.

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