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NPR's Scott Simon speaks with author Amy Jo Burns about her debut novel, "Shiner," set in the West Virginia mountains.

Samantha Bee is the host of the late night comedy show Full Frontal, so we've invited her to play a game called "Full Backtal." Three questions about the people who stand in for actors when a posterior shot is required, and the star is either unwilling or unqualified to do it. Click the audio link to find out how she does. Copyright 2020 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

Updated at 1:55 p.m. ET Little Richard, the self-described "king and queen" of rock and roll and an outsize influence on everyone from David Bowie to Prince, died Saturday. He was 87 years old. Wayne Chaney, his longtime bandleader and tour manager, tells NPR that Little Richard died at his brother's home in Tullahoma, Tenn., after a battle with cancer. Rolling Stone was the first to report on his death. With his ferocious piano playing, growling and gospel-strong vocals, pancake makeup and outlandish costumes, Little Richard tore down barriers starting in the 1950s. That is no small feat for any artist — let alone a black, openly gay man who grew up in the South. He was a force of nature who outlived many of the musicians he inspired, from Otis Redding to the late Prince and Michael Jackson. His peers James Brown and Otis Redding idolized him. Jimi Hendrix, who once played in Little Richard's band, said he wanted his guitar to sound like Richard's voice. The late David Bowie was 9

Die EU-Kommission hat wegen der Corona-Pandemie eine Verlängerung des Einreisestopps nach Europa um einen weiteren Monat empfohlen. Zuletzt gab es immer mehr Forderungen, Deutschland solle die Kontrollen an den Grenzen zu seinen Nachbarländern aufheben.

Die EU-Kommission will eine Verlängerung des Einreisestopps nach Europa bis zum 15. Juni. Die Lage in Europa und weltweit bleibe wegen der Corona-Pandemie instabil. Entscheiden muss aber letztendlich jedes Land für sich.

Die Sterberate Corona-Infizierter in Russland ist extrem niedrig. Die Regierung verweist bei der Frage nach den Gründen auf den Erfolg der russischen Strategie – einige Bürger dagegen trauen der Zählweise der Toten nicht.

Nach dem Ausbruch des Coronavirus in einer Fleischfabrik in Coesfeld werden die Lockerungen teilweise verschoben. Mit mehr als 50 Infizierten pro 100.000 Einwohner gilt der Kreis als Risikogebiet.

Die Corona-Auflagen beschäftigen auch die deutschen Gerichte. Denn mittlerweile sind rund 1000 Eilanträge von Klägern gegen die Einschränkungen eingegangen, so der deutsche Richterbund.

In den USA haben allein im April 20 Millionen Menschen ihren Job verloren, infolge der Corona-Pandemie. Präsident Trump versucht, durch Optimismus gegenzusteuern, und zweifelt die Zahl der Todesopfer an.

Viele Länder planen in der Corona-Krise ihre Rückkehr zum normalen Leben. Doch wer lockert, riskiert auch steigende Infektionszahlen. Der WELT-Überblick zeigt, wo sich die Entspannung rächt – und wo es Hoffnung gibt.

Der Konflikt zwischen seiner Partei und Boris Palmer spitzt sich zu: Die Grünen fordern den Tübinger Oberbürgermeister auf, die Partei zu verlassen, der Beschluss fiel einstimmig. Palmer weist die Forderung entschieden zurück

In der Fleischfabrik Westfleisch in Coesfeld hat sich das Corona-Virus in den letzten Tagen rasant verbreitet: Mindestens 151 Mitarbeiter sind infiziert. Trotzdem ist lange nichts passiert.

Die Coronavirus-Pandemie bestimmt weiterhin das Leben überall auf der Welt. Laut Robert-Koch-Institut liegt die Reproduktionszahl in Deutschland derzeit bei 0,83 – ein leichter Anstieg zu den vergangenen Tagen. Sehen Sie alle Entwicklungen hier live.

Nicht nur in Deutschland wurde am 8. Mai der Opfer des Zweiten Weltkriegs gedacht. In Großbritannien feierten Menschen Menschen gemeinsam auf den Straßen – und die Queen wandte sich in einer Ansprache an die Bürger.

Wer eine Reise nicht antreten will, hofft, dass sein Geld von der Rücktrittsversicherung zurückerstattet wird. Doch die zahlt nur bei nachgewiesener Krankheit – und nicht bei Pandemien wie dem Coronavirus. Vor allem ein Vorgehen ist riskant.

In vielen Staaten vor allem Skandinaviens nutzt fast die gesamte Bevölkerung eine digitale Bankverbindung. In Deutschland sind es 86 Prozent. Vor allem Jüngere aber nutzen lieber das Smartphone als den Bankschalter

Der Strompreis ist auf ein Rekordhoch gestiegen – nicht zuletzt wegen der Energiewende. In kaum einem anderen Land zahlen Verbraucher so viel für Elektrizität wie in Deutschland. Doch mit ein paar einfachen Tricks lässt sich viel sparen.

Die allgemeine Reisewarnung ist die höchste Eskalationsstufe der Hinweise des Auswärtigen Amts. Normalerweise wird sie nur für Kriegsgebiete und besonders gefährliche Regionen ausgesprochen – jetzt gilt sie weltweit. Was Reisende wissen müssen.

In den kommenden Monaten könnten viele Kreditnehmer in Zahlungsschwierigkeiten kommen. Schon nach kurzer Zeit können Banken dann das Darlehen kündigen. Doch es gibt Hoffnung. Das sollten Verbraucher jetzt wissen.

Wenn der Rasen nur langsam wächst und sich Moos breit macht, könnte es am pH-Wert der Erde in Ihrem Garten liegen. Ist die Erde „sauer“, hat also einen niedrigen pH-Wert, hilft die Zugabe von Kalk. Was Sie darüber wissen müssen.

Egal ob in Fugen, an Wänden oder an Fenstern: Schimmel in der Wohnung sieht nicht nur alles andere als schön aus, sondern ist auch gesundheitsschädlich. Wir erklären Ihnen, was Sie gegen Schimmelbefall tun können. 

Für fast alles, das verloren gehen kann, ist ein GPS-Tracker ein nützliches Gadget – mit ihm lässt sich bestimmen, wo zum Beispiel das gestohlene Fahrrad abgeblieben ist oder wo man das Auto geparkt hat. Hier erfahren Sie, was Sie im Vorfeld über die Nutzung wissen sollten und welche Produkte ihr Geld wert sind.

Endlich Fotos schießen wie die Profis. Mit Spiegelreflexkameras ist das möglich. Doch Sie kennen sich mit den angesagten Kameras noch nicht gut aus? Wir stellen Ihnen die beliebtesten Einsteigermodelle vor.

Wer in Corona-Zeiten lieber zur Arbeit radelt, sollte seinen Arbeitgeber ruhig nach einem Dienstfahrrad fragen. Weil sich das für beide Seiten lohnt, haben Sie gute Argumente, um Ihren Chef zu überzeugen. Diese Regeln sollten Sie kennen.

Brückenteilzeit heißt das neue Schlupfloch, das Privatversicherten den Wechsel in die gesetzliche Krankenversicherung ermöglicht. Die Flucht aus dem teuren PKV-Tarif funktioniert unter ganz bestimmten Bedingungen.

Sattgrün und dicht. Ihren Rasen pflegen Sie richtig, wenn Sie diese vier Regeln befolgen: Ihren Rasen vertikutieren, kalken, düngen und lüften.

Zahlungen per Karte oder Handy nehmen in der Corona-Krise stark zu, manche Experten sagen schon den finalen Tod des Bargelds voraus. Doch so schnell wird das nicht gehen. Nach Covid-19 könnten Scheine und Münzen ein Comeback erleben.

Ab dem 28. April werden Geschwindkeitsverstöße deutlich härter bestraft und Radfahrer besser geschützt. Der Schilderwald wird größer, und der Führerschein ist viel schneller weg als bisher. Das steht in der Novelle der Straßenverkehrsordnung.

Viele Privatversicherte bereuen ihren Eintritt in die PKV und suchen nach einer Möglichkeit, sie wieder zu verlassen. Normalerweise ist das extrem schwierig. Doch die Corona-Krise ermöglicht einen solchen Exit. WELT erklärt, wer jetzt die Chance dazu hat.

Viele Senioren möchten mobil telefonieren und Apps zur Organisation des täglichen Lebens nutzen. Allerdings sind moderne Smartphones häufig auf jüngere Nutzer zugeschnitten. Doch es gibt Ausnahmen. Hier erfahren Sie, worauf Sie beim Kauf achten sollten.

Ein satter, grüner Rasen ist der Traum jedes Hobbygärtners. Ein solcher Rasen braucht dafür sehr viel Pflege und das Rasen lüften ist dabei ein wichtiger Teil. Wir zeigen Ihnen, wie einfach das geht.

Die Königinnen Anna und Elsa und die Figuren aus „Toy Story“ kommen nun als Tablet zu ihren jungen Fans. Für kleinere Kinder können die Geräte sinnvoll sein, größere werden eine Funktion missen.

Bei jedem dritten Gebrauchtwagen in Deutschland soll der Tacho manipuliert worden sein. Selbst die elektronische Überwachung ist nicht fehlerlos. Was Käufer tun können, um nicht übers Ohr gehauen zu werden.

Spaß macht es nicht unbedingt, aber wer einen Garten hat, muss regelmäßig den Rasen mähen. Vom Rasentraktor bis hin zum Mähroboter – hier erfahren Sie, welcher Rasenmäher zu Ihnen passt und welches das beste Modell ist!

Blue Knights Drum & Bugle Corps is excited to announce the Color Guard Staff for the 2020 season!

After several weeks of closely monitoring the situation--in coordination with DCI and other drum corps--the Blue Knights have made the difficult decision to cancel our planning for the 2020 summer national tour.

With the cancelation of WGI and DCI seasons, Ascend Performing Arts is working diligently to come back stronger in 2021 but need your help. Together we can make it possible for members of the Blue Knights Ensembles to “March On” into 2021.

Meet our Alumni Spotlight for this month: Tracy Avila!

What is your name: Ricky Grasso What year(s) did you march in the Blue Knights? 2014: Trumpet, Rookout 2015: Administrative Staff 2016, 2017, 2018: Tour Director Present – Administrative Consultant  What section? Trumpet, then administrative ????  Where did you attend high school? Newtown High School – Sandy Hook, CT Education beyond high school? University of Bridgeport (Bridgeport, CT) B.A. Mass Communications, concentration:

Updated on April 13 at 5:06 p.m. ET Forget living paycheck to paycheck. Many families have lost work during the pandemic and are running out of cash as they wait for unemployment checks and government rescue money to arrive. These are highly unusual times, and family budgeting recommendations are also unconventional. Kathy Hauer, a financial planner based in Aiken, S.C., says she's telling people to do things she has never recommended before: "Defer as many payments as possible and worry about it later." But, she says, don't just ignore all the bills. Make sure to call all the companies and ask for forbearance — either a delayed payment or a new payment plan. This is an especially hard time for lower-income families who don't have a lot of wiggle room in their budgets, Hauer says. They may not be able to borrow money from other family members. If they have bad credit, they can't qualify for personal loans from banks. Many also don't have credit cards or are close to maxing those out.

Editor's note: This is an excerpt of Planet Money 's newsletter. You can sign up here . A majestic unicorn Pixabay In late March, the scooter-sharing company Bird invited about a third of its employees to attend a thirty-minute "COVID-19 update" via Zoom. The meeting only lasted about two minutes, and it wasn't really an update. With what one employee later described as a "robotic-sounding, disembodied voice," an executive told the 406 employees they were fired. "It felt like a Black Mirror episode," the employee said . (Bird later issued an apologetic statement, saying the employees got severance pay and extended health insurance. Their CEO's salary is also supposed to get cut to zero). The Bird layoffs are part of a widespread collapse in the startup world right now. Billions in investment dollars are drying up. Companies are going bankrupt. Thousands of workers are losing their jobs. Martin Pichinson, a Silicon Valley veteran, says the downturn caused by the coronavirus is

About 17 million people have applied for unemployment benefits in the U.S. in recent weeks. It's an astonishing number that's nearly 10 times what the system has ever handled so quickly. But, by one estimate , that money is still not flowing to about half of those people who desperately need it. And others are only getting a trickle of what they should be receiving. Many people have been out of a job for a month now. That's a long time to be without your income in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic. "It's really intense and it's really frightening," says Nicolena Loshonkohl, a hair stylist NPR has been checking in with in Roanoke, Va. She's a single mom with a 2-year-old daughter. As a regular employee at a local salon, she says it was pretty easy to file for unemployment online. And she's now started to get payments. Loshonkohl feels fortunate about that. But so far, she's only receiving $340 a week. And that doesn't cover her rent, health insurance, food and other basic costs of

Updated at 8:43 a.m. ET The number of people filing for unemployment climbed by another 5.2 million last week as the toll of the nation's economic dive amid the pandemic continues to mount. That number is down from the revised 6.6 million in the week that ended April 4, the Labor Department said . But in the past four weeks, a total of 22 million have filed jobless claims — nearly wiping out all the job gains since the Great Recession. The dramatic reversal followed a decade of spectacular growth in jobs that brought the unemployment rate to near 50-year lows along with record low jobless rates for blacks and Hispanics. Now the job market is on its knees. Don't see the graphic above? Click here. The unemployment rate is expected to surge in coming months , with many full-time workers pushed into part-time jobs or not working at all. The economy lost about 700,000 jobs in March — ending 113 straight months of increases. And overall job losses are likely to be 10 to 20 times that big in

Updated at 4:04 p.m. ET $600 per week. That's what the federal government is now offering to people who've lost their jobs because of the coronavirus. For many workers and employers, that money is a godsend — a way to keep food on the table while also cutting payroll costs. But the extra money can create some awkward situations. Some businesses that want to keep their doors open say it's hard to do so when employees can make more money by staying home. "We basically have this situation where it would be a logical choice for a lot of people to be unemployed," said Sky Marietta, who opened a coffee shop along with her husband, Geoff, last year in Harlan, Ky. Their goal was to provide good coffee, good Internet service and some opportunity in a community that has been starved of all three. "We're very committed to helping to transform the downtowns and main streets in eastern Kentucky," Marietta said. When the couple advertised for workers, nearly 100 people applied for just a handful of

Editor's note: This is an excerpt of Planet Money 's newsletter. You can sign up here . US Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell ANDREW CABALLERO-REYNOLDS / AFP via Getty Images As the global economy shuts down, the U.S. Federal Reserve has begun sending billions of dollars to central banks all over the world. Last month, it opened up 14 " swap lines " to nations such as Australia, Japan, Mexico, and Norway. A "swap line" is like an emergency pipeline of dollars to countries that need them. The dollars are "swapped," i.e., traded for the other country's currency. The Fed has also started allowing around 170 foreign central banks that hold U.S. Treasury bonds to temporarily exchange them for dollars. Sending billions of dollars abroad in the middle of a historic economic crisis might seem crazy: As America's economy crumbles, why are we moving our precious dollars *out* of the country? The answer has to do with the Fed's unique position in the global economy. Dollars are the lynchpin

When the British economy ground to a halt a few weeks ago, Reda Maher suddenly found himself among the ranks of the unemployed, alongside untold millions of other people around the world. But unlike many others, Maher can rest easy, knowing that money will keep flowing into his bank account until he's called back to work. "I woke up a couple of hours later than I normally would. I won't lie," Maher said one afternoon earlier this month. "I took a nice long masked and gloved walk. I've got a remote personal training like fitness session in about 20 minutes." The United Kingdom recently began paying 80% of the salaries of workers laid off because of the coronavirus pandemic. The government caps the pay at about $3,000 a month, but many employers, including the London-based video streaming service where Maher works, add to what the government hands out. Maher also doesn't need to worry about being left without health care coverage, thanks to Britain's National Health Service. Across

Updated at 8:46 a.m. ET The number of people forced out of work during the coronavirus lockdown continues to soar to historic highs. Another 4.4 million people claimed unemployment benefits last week around the country, the Labor Department said . That brings the total of jobless claims in just five weeks to more than 26 million people. That's more than all the jobs added in the past 10 years since the Great Recession. Still, the pace of job losses is slowing. About 5.2 million filed during the week that ended April 11 and last week was the third consecutive week of declines. Don't see the graphic above? Click here. The coronavirus crisis has suddenly ended a decade of remarkable job growth. The unemployment rate, which sank to nearly 50-year lows, is expected to soar into double digits. The pace of job losses has the broader population worried. A Gallup poll found that a quarter of working Americans believe they will lose their jobs in the next 12 months. That's a record high. The

Angelita Wynn has driven a school bus for six years. Wynn was driving the kids back home on her afternoon run in Pittsburgh one day in March when she got word her job was going away. Over the radio. "Our dispatcher came across the radio saying that school was closed, so that's how I found out," Wynn said. "And that's the last time I've been in the bus." Her favorite thing about her job was the sense of freedom it offered, where driving can get you from one place to another. Her least favorite thing: It didn't pay a living wage. Wynn notes that most school bus drivers are retired or married to someone who brings in another income. "If you don't fit in those categories it can be a struggle," she said. She typically collects unemployment during the summer when school is not in session. But the abrupt layoff this spring and a weeks-long delay in getting her jobless benefits has thrown her for a loop. "My bank account is in the negative," Wynn said. "I've had to rely on savings that will

"You can't really have a concert if you can't have an audience," David Roode muses. His career as a concert trombonist in Cincinnati went abruptly on hold when stay-at-home orders took effect in March. "I had months of gigs that were just canceled." Roode and his wife, a concert pianist, have done some recording while on lockdown in Cincinnati. And they've tapped into savings they typically rely on during the slower summer months. "If I kind of burn through my summer money now, then when the summer comes and there's no work, there might be more of a problem," Roode says. He's done some soul-searching about the role of a musician during a pandemic. "The medical professionals are the ones who are on the front lines who are really making a difference," Roode says. But he thinks artists and performers will eventually be in demand again. "I really think when this is all over, people are going to want to go hear concerts and they're going to want to have that experience." Read more stories