NPR News

Oregon officials say a Trump Administration decision to tighten work requirements for some food stamp recipients could affect 19,000 Oregonians.

Chum salmon are spawning in the lower Columbia River right now, and a local conservation land trust has the perfect spot to watch them in action. 

The Columbia Land Trust invited the public to sip hot chocolate with whipped cream and marshmallows on Friday while watching chum salmon spawn on a rare patch of gravel along the Vancouver riverfront.

Tanya Mikkelson organized the event for the land trust on a piece of property the group manages for conservation. She said three tours on Friday weren’t enough for everyone who wanted to attend.

The Clark College Association for Higher Education, Clark College’s faculty union, voted Saturday to authorize a strike.  

Union members at the Vancouver, Washington, community college have been working to negotiate a contract with the school for 14 months. They say their pay lags behind local K through 12 school districts, other colleges and the private sector.  

As for when the strike will take place, faculty union president and Clark College communication studies professor Suzanne Southerland said that’ll depend on the college’s reaction.  

Oregon State University’s Board of Trustees Friday is expected to announce the university’s new president.  

The candidate the board is considering will be publicly introduced during a special board meeting 10 a.m. Friday at OSU’s Memorial Union Horizon Room in Corvallis. The meeting is open to the public.  

If appointed, that candidate will start the job on July 1, taking the place of current President Ed Ray.  

Former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker, the closest thing to a rock star economist as this country has seen, died Monday at 92, NPR has confirmed. He was reportedly suffering from prostate cancer.

It has been more than three decades since Volcker stepped down from the Fed. And it's a safe bet that many younger Americans do not even know his name.

Here's how Robert Kavesh, a longtime professor at New York University, remembers his life-long friend: "The economic hero of post-World War II America I would have to say was Paul Volcker. And that's saying something."

Updated at 9:50 a.m.

The World Anti-Doping Agency's executive committee says Russian athletes can't compete under their flag at international events for the next four years, declaring Russia's Anti-Doping Agency to be non-compliant with its rules. The committee says critical data about Russia's athletics programs was "neither complete nor fully authentic."

Morning Edition host Rachel Martin interviews former Vice President Joe Biden aboard his campaign bus en route to Decorah, Iowa, about his bid for the Democratic nomination and the impeachment inquiry against President Trump.

This is the transcript of a conversation held on Dec. 6, 2019.

Rachel Martin: Mr. Vice President, thank you very much for having us.

Former Vice President Joe Biden: Well thanks for being on the bus. I appreciate it.

On the bus, very exciting. So we're in Iowa.

The Justice Department's internal watchdog is set to release a highly anticipated report Monday about the Russia investigation — including allegations of surveillance abuses against President Trump's campaign.

Inspector General Michael Horowitz's report is expected to address a simmering dispute that lies at the heart of the partisan fight that has animated Washington for the past two years.

The question is, Did the Justice Department and FBI do anything improper when investigating possible ties between the Trump campaign and Russia?

Updated at 9:58 a.m. ET

Democrats in the House are taking the next step toward impeaching the president, presenting evidence of what they see as President Trump's impeachable conduct.

"The evidence shows that Donald J. Trump, the president of the United States, has put himself before his country," House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerry Nadler of New York said in his opening statement during a congressional hearing Monday. "He has violated his most basic responsibilities to the people. He has broken his oath."

Just off the highway near Washington’s Tri-Cities, 20 miles southeast of Pasco, Steve Angster steps into a giant trench. In it, the U.S. Geological Survey geologist is hoping to find evidence of a fault line.

He looks out through the morning fog. It’s hard to see the surrounding landscape, but Angster knows it well. 

“On a clear day you could see Rattlesnake Mountain, and then, we have what we call the rattles, which are those little buttes along the way,” Angster says.

Tina: The Tina Turner Musical tells the rags-to-riches — to rags again, then to riches again — saga of Tina Turner's life.

It starts in Nutbush, Tenn., where the young Anna Mae Bullock was born. Then it documents her rise to stardom with Ike Turner — who she eventually married and then left after years of abuse — and then her improbable (but somehow entirely fitting) second rise to fame as a solo performer, in her mid-40s no less.

Caroll Spinney, the actor and puppeteer who portrayed Big Bird and Oscar the Grouch on Sesame Street over five decades, died Sunday at age 85.

The Sesame Workshop said Spinney had died at home in Connecticut, and that he had long lived with dystonia, a disorder that causes involuntary muscle contractions.

The FBI is investigating the shooting at Naval Air Station Pensacola on Friday as an act of terror.

Rachel Rojas, the special agent in charge of the FBI's Jacksonville Field Office, said in a news briefing Sunday that investigators are working with "the presumption that this was an act of terrorism."

Doing so, she said, "allows us to take advantage of investigative techniques that can help us more quickly identify and then eliminate any additional threats to the rest of our community."

There is currently no evidence of such a threat, she added.

In Glacier Bay, Alaska, mountains rush up farther and faster from the shoreline than almost anywhere else on the planet. Humpback whales, halibut and sea otters ply the waters that lap rocky, pine-crowned islands, and you can stick a bare hook in the water and pull out dinner about as fast as it takes to say so.

This is the place 31-year-old Laura Marcus chose for her Arete Project. Or just maybe, this place chose her.