News

The Berkshire Athenaeum, the Pittsfield, Massachusetts library, made it a practice not to ask people who were sleeping outside to move along. But now, after an accidental fire that damaged a window, loitering is banned when the library is closed.

NPR's Ailsa Chang talks with Holly Martinez, the executive director of the California Commission on the Status of Women and Girls, about how closing the gender pay gap could help reduce homelessness.

E-cigarettes have transformed nicotine use among U.S. teens in less than a decade, repopularizing it and creating a new generation of users. How regulators act now will determine the future of vaping.

Cybersecurity experts recently gathered in New York to talk about how to defend against a technology that doesn't yet exist. Quantum computing would usher in advances — and national security threats.

A Black Vietnam veteran is suing the Department of Veterans Affairs for discrimination, according to records obtained by FOIA. The VA says it's studying how to address a history of racial bias.

The law that divides the Colorado River between seven states is turning 100, and it's being strained beyond what its drafters could have imagined.

NPR's Ari Shapiro talks with travel nurse Grover Nicodemus Street about the surge of three different infectious diseases ahead of the holidays.

A power outage at a Houston water purification plant caused water pressure to drop and left the city of about 2 million people under a boil water notice. Some school districts cancelled classes.

From sci-fi to the streets, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors considers a policy proposal on whether or not the San Francisco Police Department can use robots as a deadly force.

NPR's Juana Summers talks with drummer Terri Lyne Carrington, who compiled a book of lead sheets by women composers after she couldn't find one herself. Her book is called "New Standards."