Month: August 2021

The Taliban now control Afghanistan. How did the country’s government fall so quickly — and why didn’t the U.S. see it coming? NPR put those questions to the former commander of U.S. and allied forces in Afghanistan, General David Petraeus.

Afghanistan’s future remains unclear, especially for its women and girls. One of them is Freshta Karim, a Kabul resident and founder of a mobile library project called Charmaghz, who spoke to Audie Cornish. Karim is one of many Afghans who NPR reached in Kabul during the final hours before its collapse into Taliban control. Those interviews aired on Morning Edition, and on special coverage produced by the staffs of Weekend Edition and All Things Considered.

For more Afghanistan coverage listen to Up First via Apple, Spotify, or Google; or the NPR Politics Podcast via Apple, Spotify, or Google.

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In the agricultural town of Salinas, Calif., Police Officer William Yetter repeatedly makes mistakes. First there’s a stolen bike he doesn’t investigate. Then, his bosses discover he’s not filing police reports on time.

In the last week, the Taliban have gained control of large sections of Afghanistan faster than most people expected. The Pentagon is dispatching troops to assist in evacuating staff from the American embassy in Kabul, where refugee camps are growing more crowded. The U.N. says the country may be on the brink of a humanitarian catastrophe.

State Department spokesperson Ned Price told Audie Cornish the 300,000-member Afghan military needs “the willpower” to stand up to the Taliban.

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What struck John Kerry the most about this week’s landmark U.N. report on climate change?

“The irreversibility” of some of the most catastrophic effects of global warming, he tells Audie Cornish. Kerry, the U.S. Special Envoy for Climate, tells NPR the U.N. report underscored the need for the world to respond more forcefully to climate change — and he’s called an upcoming U.N. climate summit in Scotland the “last best hope” for global action.

At the same time, the Biden administration faces an uphill battle to take major action on climate at home. Hear more on that from the NPR Politics Podcast via Apple, Spotify, or Google.

In participating regions, you’ll also hear a local news segment that will help you make sense of what’s going on in your community.

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In the next few weeks, millions of children will head back to school. Many of them are too young to be vaccinated. At the same time, children are being hospitalized with COVID-19 in small but growing numbers — and approaching rates higher than the winter surge.

Dr. Marcos Mestre with Niklaus Children’s Foundation Hospital in Miami told NPR’s Weekend Edition Sunday many of the children his hospital is treating come from families with unvaccinated parents or caretakers.

Unlike last year, many schools will have no remote learning option this fall. While some may have mask mandates, a handful of Republican governors — including Florida’s Ron DeSantis — have issued executive orders banning those mandates. NPR’s Pien Huang surveyed experts about how to keep children safe during the delta surge. Read more coverage from the NPR science desk here.

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The Tigray region in northern Ethiopia is at the center of a civil war that broke out last November, after rebels there attacked a military base. Since then, the political fight has become an ethnic one, with troops no longer distinguishing civilians from rebel fighters.

NPR’s Eyder Peralta visited the war-torn region in May and spoke with the people at the center of the conflict.

The United Nations says more than 400,000 people are now living in famine conditions in Ethiopia, putting them at risk of starvation if the country’s civil war doesn’t let up.

The United States is the country’s largest foreign aid donor. And the person who controls that funding currently is Samantha Power, administrator for the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID). She spoke with Ari Shapiro about she learned from her recent trip the area.

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A landmark new report from the United Nations warns that the world is running out of time to avoid the catastrophic effects of global warming.

Those effects are already becoming clear as extreme weather, drought, and fire become more common. One of the latest examples: wildfires are raging amid a record heat wave in Turkey, Lebanon, Italy and Greece. Durrie Bouscaren reports for NPR from Istanbul.

And, as NPR’s Jeff Brady reports, climate change is also changing lives in subtler ways.

Other reporting heard in this episode came from NPR’s Rebecca Hersher, who’s been covering the new U.N. report on climate change.

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Episode four of On Our Watch from NPR and KQED investigates the case of a plainclothes Stockton police officer who grabbed a Black 16-year-old, took him to the ground and punched him, knocking the teen’s two front teeth onto a convenience store floor.

After months of bipartisan negotiation, the Senate may finally vote this weekend on a 2,700 page infrastructure bill that includes $1 trillion in spending on things like roads, bridges, public transit, and broadband.

New York Governor Andrew Cuomo is refusing to resign after this week’s explosive report from the state’s attorney general. It detailed multiple allegations of sexual harassment and assault against Cuomo.

Cuomo has categorically denied harassment and groping allegations. And he said that people have “sought to unfairly characterize and weaponize everyday interactions.”

Multiple high profile politicians have called for Cuomo to step down, including President Biden. Meanwhile, NPR’s Brian Mann discusses how Democratic leaders in New York state legislature plan to move forward with impeachment proceedings.

In participating regions, you’ll also hear a local news segment that will help you make sense of what’s going on in your community.

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