NPR News

Before President Biden declared Juneteenth a federal holiday this week, the day — which memorializes the day in 1865 that enslaved Texans found out they had been freed — was mostly celebrated by Black folks in Texas. So we decided to talk to Christopher Williams, a Houston-based chef. Williams says people who are newly learning about Juneteenth can partake in the food and traditions, but should first and foremost acknowledge what the day represents, "before you throw that hot dog on the grill or whatever you're going to do. Know what this is really about."

Catherine Serou, a U.S. citizen studying in Russia, has been missing since she got into a car with a stranger on Tuesday. The authorities in Nizhny Novgorod, 250 miles east of Moscow, have started a criminal investigation and are searching a forested area outside the city where Serou's cell phone was last picked up.

On the day of her disappearance Serou managed to send a text message to her mother in Vicksburg, Miss. — the last sign of life from the 34-year-old graduate student and former Marine.

Americans are now able to visit the European Union again, vaccinated or not.

Six years ago, Saudi Arabian authorities arrested Mustafa Hashem al-Darwish and charged him with attending anti-government protests years earlier, when he was 17. According to Reprieve, a U.K. nonprofit that investigates human rights abuses, a court found al-Darwish guilty and sentenced him to death, despite the fact that he was a minor at the time he allegedly attended the protests.

More people will be commemorating Juneteenth this year now that it’s a federal holiday with parades, pageants and celebrations filled with food.

After a contentious debate, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops has voted to move forward with a process that could call into question the eligibility of politicians like President Joe Biden to receive Communion.

The bishops voted 168-55 in favor of drafting "a formal statement on the meaning of the Eucharist in the life of the Church," officials announced on Friday afternoon, the final day of their three-day virtual meeting. Six bishops abstained.

“Wake: The Hidden History of Women-Led Slave Revolts” not only tells the stories of women-led revolts but also author Rebecca Hall‘s efforts to uncover that history.

Host Callum Borchers speaks with Hall about her part-graphic novel, part-memoir.

Book Excerpt: ‘Wake’

By Rebecca Hall

Arizona’s Democratic senator Kyrsten Sinema says her ‘brand’ is bipartisanship. Sinema isn’t an everyday senator. We talk with Arizonans about Sinema’s life story, what she stands for, and what she’s really trying to accomplish.  

David Simon created two of TV's most groundbreaking series about the failure of the war on drugs, set in the neighborhoods of Baltimore: HBO's The Corner and The Wire.

Still, even as he allows that those shows — with their visceral look at the intersection of race, policing, violence and tragedy — may have helped people question five decades of failed drug policy, Simon says he remains a "cockeyed pessimist" on the question of whether the war will ever end.