Category: International

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 with their personal fortunes in tact. Find more of Brian’s reporting here or follow him on Twitter @BrianMannADK.

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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 means flooding will become more common in areas where people haven’t been accustomed to it in the past.

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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?

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 Americans and dozens of Afghan civilians. Seth Jones with the Center for Strategic and International Studies explains how the group fits into the complex picture of Afghanistan, where the Taliban is still trying to gain international recognition. Mina Al-Lami, a BBC expert on extremist messaging, has been following their efforts.

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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 employees.

Meanwhile, Delta airlines announced unvaccinated employees would face a monthly surcharge. And some are arguing that airline passengers should be subject to vaccine requirements, too. Juliette Kayyem spoke about that with NPR’s Noel King — originally aired on Morning Edition.

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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 coverage of unfolding events in Afghanistan, listen to NPR’s morning news podcast, Up First, via Apple, Spotify, Google, or Pocket Casts.

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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 Camila Domonoske.

Also in this episode: reporting from NPR’s Andrea Hsu on why millions of older workers have decided to retire early during the pandemic.

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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 there.

President Biden made the decision not to extend evacuations despite calls to do so from some members of his own party. NPR’s Asma Khalid examines what Biden’s decisions on Afghanistan reveal about his view of America’s role in the world.

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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.

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 Miervaldis, chairman of No One Left Behind — which helps Afghan and Iraqi interpreters resettle in the U.S. — tells NPR the process has been frustratingly slow.

For Afghans and the families who do make it out, those who wind up in the United States will be offered help from organizations like the Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service. Krish O’Mara Vignarajah, the group’s president and CEO, tells NPR how the resettlement process unfolds.

This episode also features stories from family members of Afghan refugees already living in the U.S., which which first aired on NPR’s Weekend Edition Saturday, with production from Hiba Ahmad and Ed McNulty. Correspondent Eleanor Beardsley in Paris reported on Afghan refugees in France.

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