Category: International

From the beginning of the pandemic, the debate about the origins of the coronavirus was immediately politicized by former President Donald Trump. But now international efforts to investigate and find answers have stalled. NPR’s Will Stone explains why.

Despite a new focus on the lab leak theory, many scientists still believe the virus emerged naturally, reports NPR’s Geoff Brumfiel.

NPR media correspondent David Folkenflik has also reported on the media’s coverage of the lab leak theory.

Listen to Fresh Air‘s interview with Vanity Fair’s Katherine Eban on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or Pocket Casts. Read Eban’s article about the lab leak theory here: The Lab-Leak Theory: Inside the Fight to Uncover COVID-19’s Origins.

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Back in March, Congress approved nearly $50 billion in aid for people who need rental assistance to avoid eviction. At the same time a federal moratorium on evictions is expected to be extended till the end of the July.

In June 1971, then-President Richard Nixon said the U.S. had a new public enemy number one: addiction. It was the beginning of America’s long war on drugs.

Fifty years later, during months of interviews, NPR found a growing consensus across the political spectrum — including among some in law enforcement — that the drug war simply didn’t work.

The stories in this episode are from NPR’s Brian Mann and Eric Westervelt as part of a special series: The War On Drugs: 50 Years Later.

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This all started with a guest essay by Tom Hanks for The New York Times called “You Should Learn the Truth About the Tulsa Race Massacre,” in which Hanks made the case for a more widespread teaching of American history involving Black Americans, especially of events like the Tulsa Race Massacre. He wrote: “History was mostly written by white people about white people like me, while the history of Black people — including the horrors of Tulsa — was too often left out. Until relatively recently, the entertainment industry, which helps shape what is history and what is forgotten, did the same. That includes projects of mine.”

NPR TV and film critic Eric Deggans appreciated those words, but wrote in a column of his own that Hanks could do more from his powerful perch in Hollywood.

Eric speaks to host Audie Cornish about the reaction to his column, and how Hollywood reckons with its own power. (And no, he is not trying to cancel Tom Hanks.)

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Remote learning simply didn’t work for many children with disabilities. Without the usual access to educators, therapists and in-person aides, the families of these children, and many like them, say they watched their children slide backward, losing academic, social and physical skills.

Now they’re demanding help, arguing to judges, state departments of education and even to the U.S. Department of Education that schools are legally required to do better by their students with disabilities.

NPR education correspondent Cory Turner and reporter Rebecca Klein have spent months reporting on complaints filed across the country from families who say schools need to act now to make up for the vital services kids missed.

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Last month, President Biden laid out an ambitious goal: to get 70% of adults in the U.S. at least one vaccine dose by July 4. With less than three weeks to go, that goal may too ambitious, Harvard epidemiologist Bill Hanage tells NPR, and some states may see localized outbreaks this year.

Still — nearly two dozen states have already exceeded the 70% threshold. Many are clustered in the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic, while states with the lowest rates are largely in the South and Southwest. But there is one exception: New Mexico — where some counties report vaccination rates as high as 90%. NPR’s Kirk Siegler explains why.

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Juneteenth, the celebration to commemorate the end of chattel slavery in the United States, is the newest federal holiday after President Biden signed it into law on Thursday. It’s another example of how the racial reckoning following the murder of George Floyd has been reshaping the way Americans think and talk about race. That shift is also evident in reparation programs for Black descendants of slaves that are being enacted by groups around the country.

The Virginia Theological Seminary, for example, has started cutting checks to descendants of the forced labor the campus long relied on. The city of Evanston, Ill., has started to offer housing grants to its Black residents, and other progressive local governments are considering similar approaches.

Despite increasing interest in reparations, there is not yet widespread acceptance among Americans. A recent poll from the University of Massachusetts Amherst shows that two-thirds of the U.S. does not agree with cash reparations on a federal scale.

Professor Tatishe Nteta ran the poll. He explains what the findings say about the political future of reparations in the U.S.

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From computer chips to rental cars to chicken breasts, a complex global supply chain is straining under pent-up post-vaccine demand. NPR’s Scott Horsley explains what’s going on — and why Biden administration officials think price hikes will eventually level out.

Additional reporting this episode from NPR’s Camila Domonoske — who reported on computer chips in car manufacturing — and NPR’s Weekend Edition Sunday, which reported on slowdowns in food processing and manufacturing.

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Wednesday will be President Biden’s first meeting with one of America’s greatest adversaries. Drawing a contrast with his predecessor is the least of what the commander-in-chief hopes to accomplish when he sits down with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

NPR’s Mary Louise Kelly is covering the summit in Geneva, where she spoke to former U.S. Ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul about what the U.S. could expect to gain from negotiations.

For more coverage of the negotiations, follow Mary Louise Kelly on Twitter and tune into NPR’s Up First on Wednesday morning. Listen via Apple, Spotify or Pocket Casts.

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About two months after the coronavirus began spreading in the United States, groups of Americans began to protest the quarantine lockdown measures in their states. At some of these anti-lockdown rallies reporters Lisa Hagen of WABE and Chris Haxel of KCUR discovered they weren’t the spontaneous grassroots uprisings they purported to be. Rather, they were being organized by a group of three brothers: Aaron, Ben and Chris Dorr.