All posts tagged: NPR

Jack Smith has resigned from the justice department, after submitting his Trump report : NPR

Jack Smith has resigned from the justice department, after submitting his Trump report : NPR

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Special counsel Jack Smith, speaking about an indictment of Donald Trump on Aug. 1, 2023, at a Department of Justice office in Washington. Jacquelyn Martin/AP/AP hide caption toggle caption Jacquelyn Martin/AP/AP WASHINGTON — Special counsel Jack Smith has resigned from the Justice Department after submitting his investigative report on President-elect Donald Trump, an expected move that comes amid legal wrangling over how much of that document can be made public in the days ahead. The department disclosed Smith’s departure in a court filing Saturday, saying he had resigned one day earlier. The resignation, 10 days before Trump is inaugurated , follows the conclusion of two unsuccessful criminal prosecutions against Trump that were withdrawn following Trump’s White House win in November. At issue now is the fate of a two-volume report that Smith and his team had prepared about their twin investigations into Trump’s efforts to overturn the results of his 2020 election and his hoarding of classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago estate. The Justice Department had been expected to make the document public in the …

Meta to end fact-checking program on Facebook and Instagram : NPR

Meta to end fact-checking program on Facebook and Instagram : NPR

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Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg testifying during the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee hearing in January 2024. Zuckerberg announced on Jan. 7, 2025 that the company would no longer work with third-party fact checking organizations. Brendan Smialowski/AFP via Getty Images hide caption toggle caption Brendan Smialowski/AFP via Getty Images Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced Tuesday that the social media company, which owns Facebook and Instagram, would stop working with third-party fact-checking organizations. Repeating talking points long used by President-elect Donald Trump and his allies, in a video Zuckerberg said the company’s content moderation approach resulted too often in “censorship”. “After Trump first got elected in 2016, the legacy media wrote nonstop about how misinformation was a threat to democracy. We tried in good faith to address those concerns without becoming the arbiters of truth,” Zuckerberg said. “But the fact checkers have just been too politically biased and have destroyed more trust than they’ve created, especially in the U.S.” Meta set up one of the most extensive partnerships with fact checkers after the 2016 presidential election, in which …

2 dead and several injured in Southern California plane crash : NPR

2 dead and several injured in Southern California plane crash : NPR

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Firefighters tend to people after a plane crashed through the roof of a building near Fullerton airport on Jan. 2, 2025, in Fullerton, Calif. Jeff Gritchen/AP/The Orange County Register hide caption toggle caption Jeff Gritchen/AP/The Orange County Register FULLERTON, Calif. — Two people died and 19 were injured Thursday when a small plane crashed through the roof of a sprawling furniture manufacturing building in Southern California where at least 200 people were working, police said. The people who died were believed to have been on the plane, while those injured were inside the building. The deceased victims will be identified after officials have contacted the next of kin, the Fullerton Police Department said in a statement. Eleven people were taken to hospitals, while eight were treated and released at the scene, police said. The plane crashed less than two minutes after taking off from the Fullerton Municipal Airport in Orange County, located 6 miles from Disneyland, according to the flight-tracking website FlightAware. Security camera footage from Rucci Forged, a wheel manufacturer across the street, shows …

One Syrian refugee celebrates the fall of Bashar al-Assad in Ohio : NPR

One Syrian refugee celebrates the fall of Bashar al-Assad in Ohio : NPR

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Mohammed al-Refai Andrew Trumbull hide caption toggle caption Andrew Trumbull When Syria’s dictatorship fell in early December, a celebration broke out nearly 6,000 miles away in Toledo, Ohio. At the parking lot of a Kroger supermarket, families danced and sang to Syrian music. Women ululated, and men wrapped themselves in the flag of their home country. People leaned on their car horns, expressing their joy at the end of a regime that relied on brutality and terror as a means of governing Syria for more than half a century and waged a civil war that forced millions of people to become refugees. The first time I visited Toledo to meet Syrian refugees was nearly a decade ago, on my very first reporting trip as a host of All Things Considered. At the time, a 22-year-old named Mohammed al-Refai had just arrived in the city of 265,000. His situation was unusual. After his family fled Syria across the border to Jordan, Mohammed got a visa to come to the United States. His parents and siblings did …

At a secret Ukrainian drone command post, Russian soldiers are hunted : NPR

At a secret Ukrainian drone command post, Russian soldiers are hunted : NPR

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Callsign “Sonic”, 34, a сommander of the strike unmanned aerial vehicle platoon, known as Dovbush’s hornets, a unit of 68th Separate Jäger Brigade. He watches the live streams of drone pilots operating in the Donbas Region on Dec. 19, 2024. Anton Shtuka for NPR hide caption toggle caption Anton Shtuka for NPR NEAR POKROVSK, Ukraine — In a small town outside Pokrovsk, a city in eastern Ukraine under siege by Russia, a soldier guides an armored vehicle down a muddy, snow-swept lane. In the early winter darkness, lights flash on the horizon as the two armies trade artillery fire. In the driveway of a rundown house, two soldiers work quickly under the glow of headlamps, loading weapons from a shed into the back of a battered truck. “They’re going to take one of our drones into the field,” says a 35-year-old military technician named Yurii. For security reasons, Yurii declines to be photographed and shares only his first name. He says he was a video game programmer before enlisting in Ukraine’s army earlier this year. …

Big Lots says it is having going-out-of-business sales : NPR

Big Lots says it is having going-out-of-business sales : NPR

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A shopper leaves the Big Lots store on Dec. 4, 2012 in Berlin, Vt. Toby Talbot/AP hide caption toggle caption Toby Talbot/AP National retailer Big Lots says it will begin holding going-out-of-business sales at its remaining stores because it still has not found a buyer to boost it from bankruptcy. The discount chain has not said it is going out of business. In a statement released Thursday, however, it said it is holding the going-out-of-business sales to protect the value of the company. It previously was in talks with Nexus Capital Management to purchase it, but that deal has fallen through, the retailer said. The company said it is still pursuing an alternative transaction with Nexus or another party. Big Lots said its goal is to complete a transaction by early January. “We all have worked extremely hard and have taken every step to complete a going concern sale,” Big Lots CEO Bruce Thorn said in the company’s statement. “While we remain hopeful that we can close an alternative going concern transaction, in order to …

The Best Queer Books of 2024, According to NPR

The Best Queer Books of 2024, According to NPR

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This content contains affiliate links. When you buy through these links, we may earn an affiliate commission. Today, I have another installment of “The Best Queer Books of 2024, According to…” Previously, I sifted through The New York Times, Amazon, Publishers Weekly, and Barnes & Noble lists for the queer titles included. This time, I’m highlighting the NPR picks. The year-end NPR list is a little different from most. They put out a list of hundreds of “Books We Love” from the year, which you can sort by category, like “Book Club Ideas” or “Seriously Great Writing” or “Historical Fiction” or “It’s All Geek to Me” or “Rather Short” or a combination of different aspects. There isn’t an LGBTQ filter, but that’s where I come in! There are 351 books on the 2024 NPR list, so there’s a very good chance I missed some, but I spotted 30 queer titles included in a range of genres. It’s nice that they included queer books I haven’t seen mentioned in other lists, like Cuckoo by Gretchen Felker-Martin …

Monarch butterflies will be listed as a threatened species : NPR

Monarch butterflies will be listed as a threatened species : NPR

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Monarch butterflies from Canada stop to rest in Cleveland’s Wendy Park on their way to Mexico on Sept. 12, 2023. Sue Ogrocki/AP hide caption toggle caption Sue Ogrocki/AP MADISON, Wis. — U.S. wildlife officials announced a decision Tuesday to extend federal protections to monarch butterflies after years of warnings from environmentalists that populations are shrinking and the beloved pollinator may not survive climate change. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service plans to add the butterfly to the threatened species list by the end of next year following an extensive public comment period. “The iconic monarch butterfly is cherished across North America, captivating children and adults throughout its fascinating life cycle,” U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Director Martha Williams said in a news release. “Despite its fragility, it is remarkably resilient, like many things in nature when we just give them a chance.” The Endangered Species Act affords extensive protections to species the wildlife service lists as endangered or threatened. Under the act, it’s illegal to import, export, possess, transport or kill an endangered species. A …

What happened to the General Motors EV1? : NPR

What happened to the General Motors EV1? : NPR

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The General Motors EV1 pioneered technology you can still find in electric vehicles today. Just over 1,000 were built, and the cars were only available for lease in a few states. General Motors Co./GM hide caption toggle caption General Motors Co./GM It was the most reliable car he had ever driven — that’s how Kris Trexler remembered his General Motors EV1. “It was just a car that I took home, plugged in at night, got up the next morning — it was like having a gasoline station in the garage,” he told NPR Member station Michigan Public in 2010. Trexler was one of the hundreds of people who got to drive an EV1 — the first modern, mass-produced electric vehicle from a major automaker. The little two-door car looked like a cross between a flying saucer and a computer mouse, and it pioneered technology you can still find in today’s EVs. GM built just over 1,000 EV1s before ending production in 1999, spawning a community of passionate super fans eager to join the EV revolution. …

President Biden pardons son Hunter : NPR

President Biden pardons son Hunter : NPR

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President Biden and his son Hunter Biden walk in downtown Nantucket, Mass., on Friday. Jose Luis Magana/AP hide caption toggle caption Jose Luis Magana/AP President Biden announced late Sunday that he had signed a full and unconditional pardon for his son Hunter Biden. The pardon comes in the last weeks of President Biden’s time in office and despite his public assurances in the past that he would neither pardon nor commute his son’s sentence. “I signed a pardon for my son Hunter,” Biden said in a White House statement. “It is clear that Hunter was treated differently.” The pardon also comes less than two months before President-elect Donald Trump will return to the White House. In a Sunday night post on social media, Trump called Biden’s pardon an “Such an abuse and miscarriage of Justice!” In his post, Trump asked if Biden’s pardon would apply to people convicted of attacking the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, as Congress was certifying the 2020 presidential election. Trump said during this year’s presidential campaign that one of …