NPR News

Christchurch, New Zealand, is parting ways with its official city wizard after more than two decades. His offensive remarks about women and the local government's new tourism strategy reportedly spelled his doom.

Netflix has fired an unnamed employee connected to the brewing internal blowback the company is facing over Dave Chappelle's most recent comedy special The Closer. First reported by The Verge, the news is coming as Netflix employees plan a walkout on Wednesday over transphobic comments made in the special.

A veteran officer with the U.S. Capitol Police was arrested Friday for allegedly encouraging a suspect in the Jan. 6 Capitol riot to hide evidence of their involvement in the attack. He is facing two counts of obstruction of justice, and has been placed on administrative leave while the case is ongoing.

The officer, Michael Angelo Riley, has worked for the Capitol Police for nearly 25 years, the department told NPR, and most recently served as a technician with the K-9 unit.

PinkPantheress agreed to an interview, but kept her camera off and chose not to share her name. The life of the internet's buzziest new artist has been shrouded in mystery, but in conversation she's cheeky and approachable. The 20-year-old from southeast England laughs through her phase of making K-Pop fan edits, name-drops formative artists with the abandon of someone who religiously makes Topsters, and describes the song "All My Friends Know" on her new mixtape as a "Drake type beat."

La Niña will most likely be joining us for the winter again, according to federal forecasters.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's (NOAA) Climate Prediction Center announced on Thursday that La Niña conditions have developed and are expected to continue, with an 87% chance that they will be in place from December to February.

BEIJING — In 1961, Muhammad's then-teenage parents loaded as many belongings as they could onto yaks and horses, then set off walking toward the snow-tipped Pamir mountains. Their destination: Afghanistan.

They were among hundreds of Uyghurs who have fled northwest China's Xinjiang region to Afghanistan since the 1950s. The Uyghurs, a mostly Muslim Turkic ethnic minority, made the arduous trek along ancient pilgrimage and trade routes to the neighboring country to escape religious and political persecution under the Chinese government.

A British bakery has been forced to pull its top-selling cookies from the market, after regulators informed the owner that the sprinkles are illegal. The U.S.-made sprinkles contain a coloring that's legal for some uses — but not for sprinkling.

A panel of experts voted unanimously to recommend that the Food and Drug Administration authorize a booster dose of the Johnson & Johnson COVID-19 vaccine.

In a 19-0 vote, the panel recommended that the booster dose come at least two months after initial immunization with one shot of the J&J vaccine. It applies to people 18 years and older.

During the meeting, J&J presented data that showed the protection of the single shot remained largely stable over time but that a second dose pushed protection to a higher level.

A Texas school district has once again become the center of controversy after an administrator reportedly instructed teachers to provide students with "opposing" views of the Holocaust.

Apple has fired a lead organizer of the #AppleToo movement, as the company investigates multiple employees suspected of leaking internal documents to the media.

Janneke Parrish, a program manager who had been with the company for more than five years, told NPR that she was fired on Thursday. Apple claimed she had deleted files and apps from her company phone amid an investigation into how details of a company meeting with Apple CEO Tim Cook leaked to the press, Parrish said.

The Last Duel is a sprawling, often ungainly movie — a talky, three-part Rashomon-style drama that mixes past and present-day politics — but there's a bracing intelligence to its messiness. It opens the way a lot of Ridley Scott period epics do, on a gloomy day with two sides preparing for battle.

The U.S. Justice Department will ask the Supreme Court to put on hold Texas' restrictive abortion law as legal challenges against the law proceed.

"The Justice Department intends to ask the Supreme Court to vacate the Fifth Circuit's stay of the preliminary injunction against Texas Senate Bill 8," Anthony Coley, a DOJ spokesman, said in a statement.

Nikolas Cruz will plead guilty next Wednesday to killing 14 students and three staff members at Marjorie Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., his defense team says.

With the admission of guilt in the 2018 mass shooting, Cruz's legal team will focus on the penalty phase of the trial, hoping to secure a punishment of 17 consecutive life sentences for their client, rather than the death penalty that prosecutors are seeking.

World Cafe has been on the air for 30 years this year. To celebrate, every week for the next 30 weeks, you can join us while we look back into the archives. But let's be clear: World Cafe has no plans to slow down... so we also want to look forward to the future of music – with our 30 Under 30 list. We've chosen 30 artists who are 30 years old or younger, who we believe are poised to be the next generation of World Cafe stars. Each week, we'll reveal one of the artists on that list.

As Tamu Shatallah walked past the inauguration stage draped in gold, his thoughts were on the deadly civil war that has plagued Ethiopia for nearly a year.

It's a war "between brothers, between sisters," Tamu said. A war that, as far as he can tell, has done nothing for his country.

That stage in Ethiopia's capital city Addis Ababa was where Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed sat last week as he watched a procession of military bands, having just been elected to a second five-year term last week. Behind him, written in large letters was a message: "A new beginning."

China's Tiangong space station will have its first female astronaut after a trio of spacefarers blasted off for a six-month stay aboard the orbital outpost.

Wang Yaping, 41, will be the first female "taikonaut" — the term China uses for its astronauts — to board the station. She and two male colleagues, commander Zhai Zhigang, 55, and Ye Guangfu, 41, are expected to set a new space endurance record for China.

As health care workers face increased pandemic burnout, some states — particularly in underserved areas — have had challenges retaining existing staff and recruiting new clinicians.

Autumn in New York is often a wondrous time — but last year was a whole different story. During a phase of the pandemic before vaccines or rapid tests, jazz clubs were still dark, like so many other businesses. There was a lot of hurt in the musical community.

After thirty years of living in the Rogue Valley, Teresa Safay has cleared out her Ashland home. She’s moving out of the valley for good.

“I just don’t feel safe here any more,” she says.

Safay used to run a vacation rental business out of a wisteria-framed triplex — “just 98 steps from the Ashland Co-Op” — which was pretty successful during its first years.

“But then smoke started to play a really big influence in it all, and cancellations started coming in year after year,” Safay says. “When the season that people are coming is unbearable, they don’t come.”