NPR News

The Johnson & Johnson vaccine pause in the U.S. – because of reports of rare cases of potentially fatal blood clots in a small number of vaccinated women – could have global ramifications.

Even though the J&J vaccine so far has had very limited distribution outside of the United States, it's slated to provide more than a billion doses to the global fight against COVID.

J&J is authorized in, among other countries, Brazil, Canada, Peru, Chile and New Zealand (although none of those countries have received shipments yet).

Fear was the air we breathed. There was talk of joy, too, of course: There was music, and dance, and "getting happy." But there was also fear, always the fear. And I didn't know I didn't have to be afraid.

The Sackler family has spent decades making a name for itself in philanthropic circles, with sizable donations to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Louvre, the British Museum, Harvard University and Yale University, among other institutions.

But as the public began to scrutinize the source of the family's money, many museum wings and buildings that once displayed the Sackler name have removed it.

When COVID-19 took hold, financial support unsurprisingly topped the list of priorities for most nonprofits who provide direct assistance to people in the live music industry. But, as weeks off of the road turned into months and now over a year, mental health remains a major concern for those whose stages have sat blank and silent for so long.

The United States will withdraw all remaining troops from Afghanistan by the 20th anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks, President Biden announced Wednesday, turning the page on a conflict that has cost trillions of dollars and the lives of more than 2,300 American troops.

Bernie Madoff, the financier who orchestrated what is thought to be the largest Ponzi scheme in history, has died. He was 82.

He died Wednesday at the Federal Medical Center in Butner, N.C., the Federal Bureau of Prisons confirmed, and had been serving out a 150-year sentence.

The Biden administration is moving to reverse a Trump-era family planning policy that critics describe as a domestic "gag rule" for reproductive healthcare providers.