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Veteran Broadcaster Larry King Dies At 87

With his trademark suspenders and deep baritone voice Larry King spoke with presidents, world leaders, celebrities, authors, scientists, comedians, athletes — everyone. The Peabody Award-winning broadcaster died Saturday at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles. He was 87. The death of the famed interviewer was announced on King's Twitter feed in a posting from his production studio , Ora Media. No cause of death was provided, but King had recently been hospitalized with COVID-19. "For 63 years and across the platforms of radio, television and digital media, Larry's many thousands of interviews, awards, and global acclaim stand as a testament to his unique and lasting talent as a broadcaster," the statement read. "Additionally, while it was his name appearing in the shows' titles, Larry always viewed his interview subjects as the true star of his programs, and himself as merely an unbiased conduit between the guest and audience." It's a philosophy that King himself spoke about in

What Trump's Declassified Asia Strategy May Mean For U.S.-China Relations Under Biden

Eight days before the Trump administration departed, it declassified a key document that it said "provided overarching strategic guidance" to its approach toward Asia, a region it dubbed the Indo-Pacific. The 10-page, lightly redacted report, in use across the government since 2018, seeks to explain the challenges the U.S. faces from a rising and more assertive China, spells out vital U.S. interests in the region and lays out a plan for both mobilizing and helping key allies in achieving U.S. aims. The document states that the U.S should maintain "diplomatic, military and economic preeminence" in the region while "preventing China from establishing new, illiberal spheres of influence." It also envisions a Korean peninsula "free of nuclear, chemical, cyber and biological weapons," and expresses commitment to "accelerate India's rise" so that the two countries can "cooperate" to "preserve maritime security and counter Chinese influence." The paper elucidates the motivations behind some

Maurice Chammah Charts The History Of The Death Penalty In 'Let The Lord Sort Them'

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Loyal Dog Spent Days Waiting Outside Hospital For Sick Owner

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Parents With Disabilities Face Extra Hurdles With Kids' Remote Schooling

The Americans with Disabilities Act says schools have to help not just students but parents with disabilities, too, like making sure deaf or blind parents can communicate during parent-teacher conferences. But what happens when kids are learning at home? That's uncharted territory. Rosabella Manzanares, a first grader at Betsy Ross Elementary in Forest Park, Ill., has a spelling test. Like so many kids around the country, she's taking the test at home, sharing a Zoom screen with a class full of other boisterous 6-year-olds. Rosabella's teacher relies on parents to grade simple assignments like this. But while Rosabella can hear the spelling words, her mother can not. Chantelly Manzanares uses American Sign Language, or ASL, which is different than English. It's a visual language. It has its own grammar. It uses different sentence structure. Rosabella and her siblings grew up using ASL. But while they've become fluent in English, Manzanares is not. She can grade this spelling test,

How Biden's Administration Is Prioritizing The COVID-19 Pandemic

The Biden Administration is taking a far more aggressive, nationally coordinated approach to the pandemic. We hear more about how it plans to support vaccination efforts.

After Capitol Riot, Law Enforcement Officials Try To Remove Extremism From The Ranks

NPR's Scott Simon speaks with Houston Police Department's Chief Art Acevedo about what can be done to root out extremism from law enforcement agencies.

New York City's Vaccine Outreach Aims To Dispel Mistrust Among Communities Of Color

New York City is trying to build trust for coronavirus vaccines by doing pop-up food banks and flu vaccine clinics at churches and community centers in minority neighborhoods.

Longtime Illinois House Speaker Steps Down Amid Corruption Probe

The nation's longest serving state house speaker in modern history, Democrat Michael Madigan from Illinois, stepped down from the speakership. He was driven from power by a federal corruption probe.

When The Giants Of Indian Classical Music Collided With Psychedelic San Francisco

In May of 1970, at a San Francisco concert venue best known for reverberating with the sounds of the Grateful Dead and Jefferson Airplane, three masters of Indian classical music took the stage for a celebration of Indian ragas. The concert was recorded by another legend of the time: Owsley Stanley, the man who designed the Dead's innovative sound system, as well as making what was reputed to be the best LSD of its day. That recording is now available as a live album, titled Bear's Sonic Journals: That Which Colors the Mind . On that night, Indian sarod master Ali Akbar Khan was joined on stage by sitar player Indranil Bhattacharya and a 19-year-old percussionist named Zakir Hussain . Hussain had just arrived in America a few months before, occupied with finding his way around the country and understanding the slang: "Words like 'far-out' and 'groovy' and all weren't quite registering," he says. The language of the hippie generation may not have clicked for Hussain, but sitar maestro

Limericks

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Lightning Fill In The Blank

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Predictions

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Wuhan's Lockdown Memories One Year Later: Pride, Anger, Deep Pain

A year ago, on January 23, 2020, China imposed an absolute lockdown in the Chinese city of Wuhan. For more than two months, nearly all of its 11 million residents could not leave their apartments. Anyone displaying symptoms was taken to hastily-built quarantine centers to prevent family infections . A scene from Jan. 25, 2020, in Wuhan: Health workers in protective garb walk next to patients awaiting medical attention at the Wuhan Red Cross Hospital. Hector Retamal / AFP via Getty Images The legacy of the lockdown has splintered Wuhan's residents, who have conflicting memories of those 76 days. For many, Wuhan is largely back to normal, and most of its residents want to move on. Song Feifei, who's in her late 20s and works at a snacks store along Wuhan's famous Jianghan promenade, thinks the lockdown was worth it. "The lockdown wasn't so bad, except for having no freedom. Just give us the Internet, and we young people can stay at home forever," she says, joking darkly. When my NPR

The Vaccine Rollout Will Take Time. Here's What The U.S. Can Do Now To Save Lives

While the country's attention is fixed on the rollout of the vaccine and the arrival of a new administration, the coronavirus pandemic rages on. In many parts of the U.S., case counts and deaths are still sky-high. And new variants of the virus are worrying scientists and prompting new restrictions across the globe. Despite widespread COVID fatigue, public health experts say practicing mitigation strategies is as crucial as ever to save lives. But which strategies have proven most effective? There is still wide variation in what local and state governments are willing and able to enforce. Should masks be mandated or only encouraged? Should indoor dining be limited or halted? Different places have taken widely different approaches, and this patchwork approach has meant outbreaks keep flaring up again and again. We know what works to slow the spread, says Dr. Ashish Jha, public health policy researcher and dean of Brown University's School of Public Health. That is, find ways to prevent

Democrats Weigh Whether Iowa Should Stay First In Line For 2024 Election

While it's only 2021, a major question facing Democrats this year and next will be what to do about the presidential nominating calendar and whether Iowa, in particular, should retain its prized place at the front of the calendar in 2024. Iowa's decades-long lock on the nominating process has been under threat since last year's disastrous caucus, when results were delayed for days due in part to a faulty smartphone app that was supposed to make things easier for precinct captains when they reported results. Ultimately, the Associated Press never declared a winner in the contest due to problems with the vote count, which was administered by the Iowa Democratic Party. Iowa's voters are also older, more rural and more white than many other states and it's seen as increasingly out of step with the Democratic mainstream, which increasingly relies on voters of color and young people for its support. President Biden's newly-installed pick to lead the Democratic National Committee, Jaime

Aditya Prakash Ensemble: Tiny Desk (Home) Concert

Every January, I attend globalFEST at a New York City nightclub and see some of the most fantastic music I'll experience all year. Now, given the pandemic's challenges and the hardening of international borders, NPR Music and globalFEST moved the 2021 edition from the nightclub to your screen of choice and shared the festival with the world. We called it Tiny Desk Meets globalFEST . We presented 16 artists in intimate settings (often behind desks donning globes), all hosted by African superstar Angélique Kidjo . Performing from their home base in Los Angeles, Aditya Prakash Ensemble highlights songs borne from South India's Carnatic tradition. Prakash uses his voice as an instrument to tell powerful, emotive stories — which he reimagines in a fresh, dynamic way. Aditya Prakash Ensemble's modern take on traditional music mixes in jazz and hip-hop and features a diverse L.A. ensemble. This set took place during the third night of our 2021 festival. -- globalFEST SET LIST "Greenwood"

Vox Sambou: Tiny Desk (Home) Concert

Every January, I attend globalFEST at a New York City nightclub and see some of the most fantastic music I'll experience all year. Now, given the pandemic's challenges and the hardening of international borders, NPR Music and globalFEST moved the 2021 edition from the nightclub to your screen of choice and shared the festival with the world. We called it Tiny Desk Meets globalFEST . We presented 16 artists in intimate settings (often behind desks donning globes), all hosted by African superstar Angélique Kidjo . There are few performers as "alive" as Vox Sambou, whose energy and soul transcends the virtual space. He starts his performance at Tiny Desk Meets globalFEST with a short moment between himself and his son, overseen by a painting of his mother, highlighting the ways we pass down traditions from generation to generation. Based in Montreal, Quebec, Vox Sambou writes and performs in Hatian-Creole, French, English, Spanish and Portuguese. His music is a joyous fusion of Haitian

"How Ike Led" By Susan Eisenhower

Few people have made decisions as momentous as Dwight D. Eisenhower (Ike), from D-Day to Little Rock, from the Korean War to Cold War crises, Ike relied on a core set of principles. In her warm and illuminating book, Susan Eisenhower reveals how Ike led as a strategic leader, relying on a rigorous pursuit of the facts for decision-making. After making a decision, he made himself accountable for it, recognizing that personal responsibility is the bedrock of sound principles.

Even In Isolation, Rhye Makes Music For Us To Come Together