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Showing posts from January, 2023

Prosecutors file charges against Alec Baldwin in fatal shooting on movie set

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Enlarge this image Alec Baldwin attends a news conference at United Nations headquarters on Sept. 21, 2015. The actor has been charged with involuntary manslaughter in the fatal shooting of a cinematographer on a New Mexico movie set in 2021. Seth Wenig/AP hide caption toggle caption Seth Wenig/AP Alec Baldwin attends a news conference at United Nations headquarters on Sept. 21, 2015. The actor has been charged with involuntary manslaughter in the fatal shooting of a cinematographer on a New Mexico movie set in 2021. Seth Wenig/AP SANTA FE, N.M. — Actor Alec Baldwin and a weapons specialist have been formally charged with involuntary manslaughter in the fatal shooting of a cinematographer on a New Mexico movie set, according to court documents filed by prosecutors Tuesday. Santa Fe District Attorney Mary Carmack-Altwies filed the charging documents naming Baldwin and Hannah Gutierrez-Reed , who supervised weapons on the set of the Western "Rust." The filin

Bob Born, the 'Father of Peeps' and Hot Tamale candies, has died

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Enlarge this image This photo provided by Just Born shows Ira "Bob" Born. Born, a candy company executive known as the "Father of Peeps" for mechanizing the process to make the marshmallow chicks, died Sunday. He was 98. Just Born via AP hide caption toggle caption Just Born via AP This photo provided by Just Born shows Ira "Bob" Born. Born, a candy company executive known as the "Father of Peeps" for mechanizing the process to make the marshmallow chicks, died Sunday. He was 98. Just Born via AP Ira "Bob" Born, a candy company executive known as the "Father of Peeps" for mechanizing the process to make marshmallow chicks, has died. He was 98. Just Born Quality Confections, the 100-year-old family-owned company Born led for much of his life, said Monday that he had died peacefully on Sunday. Born began his life in New York City on Sept. 29, 1924. His father, Sam Born, was a Russian immigrant who started Just

Nursing home owners drained cash while residents deteriorated, state filings suggest

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Enlarge this image New York state records show nearly half the state's 600-plus nursing homes hired real estate, management and staffing companies run or controlled by their owners, frequently paying them well above the cost of services. Meanwhile, in the pandemic's height, the federal government was giving the facilities hundreds of millions in fiscal relief. Maskot/Getty Images hide caption toggle caption Maskot/Getty Images New York state records show nearly half the state's 600-plus nursing homes hired real estate, management and staffing companies run or controlled by their owners, frequently paying them well above the cost of services. Meanwhile, in the pandemic's height, the federal government was giving the facilities hundreds of millions in fiscal relief. Maskot/Getty Images After the nursing home where Leann Sample worked was bought by private investors, it started falling apart. Literally. Part of a ceiling collapsed on a nurse, the air cond

Ukraine's defense minister pushes for fighter jets, even as training begins on tanks

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Enlarge this image Ukrainian Minister of Defense Oleksii Reznikov attends the meeting of the Ukraine Defense Contact Group at Ramstein Air Base in Ramstein, Germany, Jan. 20. Michael Probst/AP hide caption toggle caption Michael Probst/AP Ukrainian Minister of Defense Oleksii Reznikov attends the meeting of the Ukraine Defense Contact Group at Ramstein Air Base in Ramstein, Germany, Jan. 20. Michael Probst/AP KYIV — Ukraine's Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov says he's optimistic Western allies will eventually supply his country with advanced fighter jets, including U.S.-made F-16 fighter jets, and adds that Ukrainian forces are poised to start training on newly committed advanced battle tanks "as soon as possible." "What is impossible today is absolutely possible tomorrow," he tells NPR. Speaking with NPR on Saturday, Reznikov said he hopes Ukrainian troops will start training on Leopard 2 and Abrams tanks, which Germany and the U.S. prom

Human Rights Watch urges investigation of alleged use of landmines by Ukraine

KYIV — A human rights group says it has documented "numerous cases" of Ukrainian forces firing landmines into territory that was controlled at the time by Russia. In a new report , Human Rights Watch suggests that Ukraine scattered so-called petal mines in and around the city of Izium. Petal mines are prohibited under the 1997 Anti-Personnel Mine Ban Treaty, of which Ukraine is a signatory, because of their ability to indiscriminately maim and kill. The report contradicts previous claims, including from Human Rights Watch itself , that Ukraine has only used anti-vehicle mines since Russia invaded in February 2022. Those types of mines are generally permissible under the laws of war. "Russia has used these weapons in even greater numbers than Ukraine in a much more widespread fashion in different parts of the country," Steve Goose, the director of Human Rights Watch's Arms Division, told NPR. But, with these revelations, Ukraine's "moral high ground h

Scant obesity training in medical school leaves docs ill-prepared to help patients

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Enlarge this image wagnerokasaki/Getty Images wagnerokasaki/Getty Images Tong Yan grew up in a Chinese-American enclave of Los Angeles in a family that revered food, but thought little of those who carried excess weight. "Definitely there was like an implicit fattist kind of perspective, like small comments that are made about people's weight," Yan says. Obesity did not affect him or his family, but a friend — who wasn't even that heavy — became the butt of jokes. "Also implied was that people who are obese are lazy and not motivated," he recalls. It wasn't until medical school at George Washington University, that Yan thought deeper about weight stigma, which is widespread in U.S. culture. In year two, he attended an educational summit on obesity put on by one of his professors. As part of the summit, Yan took an implicit bias test that identified his slight bias toward thinner people. Patients also shared personal tales of discrimination fa

AI is predicting the world is likely to hit a key warming threshold in 10-12 years

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Enlarge this image Demonstrators pretend to resuscitate the Earth while advocating for the 1.5 degree warming goal to survive at the COP27 U.N. Climate Summit, Nov. 16, 2022, in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt. Peter Dejong/AP hide caption toggle caption Peter Dejong/AP Demonstrators pretend to resuscitate the Earth while advocating for the 1.5 degree warming goal to survive at the COP27 U.N. Climate Summit, Nov. 16, 2022, in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt. Peter Dejong/AP The world will likely breach the internationally agreed-upon climate change threshold in about a decade, and keep heating to break through a next warming limit around mid-century even with big pollution cuts, artificial intelligence predicts in a new study that's more pessimistic than previous modeling. The study in Monday's journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences reignites a debate on whether it's still possible to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius, as called for in the 2015 P

A community is on edge after a man threw a Molotov cocktail at a New Jersey synagogue

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Enlarge this image Police in Bloomfield, N.J. are looking for the suspect who hurled a Molotov cocktail at the entrance of a synagogue early Sunday morning. Surveillance video shows him wearing a ski mask and skull and crossbones top. Bloomfield Division of Public Safety/Screenshot by NPR hide caption toggle caption Bloomfield Division of Public Safety/Screenshot by NPR Police in Bloomfield, N.J. are looking for the suspect who hurled a Molotov cocktail at the entrance of a synagogue early Sunday morning. Surveillance video shows him wearing a ski mask and skull and crossbones top. Bloomfield Division of Public Safety/Screenshot by NPR Authorities are searching for the suspect who threw a Molotov cocktail at a New Jersey synagogue over the weekend, an incident that caused no damage but rattled the community nonetheless. Surveillance footage shows a man lighting the wick of the bottle and tossing it at the front door of Temple Ner Tamid just after 3:19 a.m. on Sunday m

QUIZ: Test your knowledge of spillover viruses, starting with ... what are they?

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Enlarge this image Malaka Gharib/NPR Malaka Gharib/NPR After three years of living with an unprecedented pandemic, how much of your knowledge has changed about how these catastrophes start? Like, what exactly is a "spillover"? Where do viruses like SARS-CoV-2 come from? And how often do they ... spill over? Take our quiz and test your knowledge. Loading... Hidden viruses: how pandemics really begin NPR is running a series on spillover viruses — that's when animal pathogens jump into people. Researchers used to think spillovers were rare events. Now it is clear they happen all the time. That has changed how scientists look for new deadly viruses. To learn more, we traveled to Guatemala and Bangladesh, to Borneo and South Africa. We have a quiz for you to test your spillover knowledge. But we'd also like you to quiz us. Send your questions about spillovers to goatsandsoda@npr.org with "spillovers" in the subject line. We'll answer questi