NPR News: 05-21-2026 5PM EDT
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Live from NPR News in Washington, I'm Ryland Barton. Secretary of State Marco Rubio says President Trump prefers a negotiating settlement with Cuba, but that the likelihood of that is not very high right now. The administration's been ramping up the pressure on the communist government there to change its system, as NPR's Michelle Kellerman reports.
A day after the Department of Justice announced an indictment against former Cuban President Raul Castro, Secretary Rubio kept up the pressure, describing Cuba as a national security threat for its connections to Russia and China.
And the other thing that poses a threat to the national security of the United States is to have a failed state 90 miles from our shores run by friends of our adversaries.
He would not say if the U.S. would try to arrest the 94-year-old Castro, as the Trump administration did with Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro earlier this year. Rubio was speaking on the tarmac in Florida before heading to Sweden for a NATO meeting. Michelle Kellerman, NPR News, the State Department.
The Minnesota woman convicted of leading what prosecutors say was the nation's largest COVID fraud scheme today... received a 42-year federal prison sentence. Matt Sepik of Minnesota Public Radio reports.
Amy Bach ran a nonprofit called Feeding Our Future. She and her dozens of co-defendants exploited pandemic rule changes and lax oversight to steal nearly $250 million from federal child nutrition programs. While Democratic Governor Tim Walz was not implicated, the scheme happened on his watch and was a major factor in his decision earlier this year not to seek re-election.
Matt Sepik from Minnesota Public Radio reporting. Metta has settled a lawsuit brought by a rural eastern Kentucky district, Breathitt County Schools, just weeks before the case was set to go to trial. NPR's Shannon Bond reports it's one of more than a thousand districts around the country that are suing social media companies over mental health harms to students.
The school districts say they've borne the costs of supporting students harmed by excessive use of social media. The Kentucky case had been selected as the first school district lawsuit to go to trial in Oakland in June. The district settled with the other defendants, YouTube, Snapchat and TikTok last week. The terms of the settlements were not disclosed. A spokesperson for Meta said in a statement, quote, we've resolved this case amicably and remain focused on our longstanding work to build protections, end quote, citing teen accounts and parental controls. Meta has already lost cases in California and New Mexico state courts over alleged harms of its platforms to children. Shannon Bond, NPR News.
The U.S. Commission of Fine Arts approved the design for a triumphal arch President Trump wants to build at the entrance to the nation's capital. He says Washington, D.C. needs an arch because it's the only major Western capital without one. His version would rise on a traffic circle between the Lincoln Memorial and Arlington National Cemetery. At 250 feet high, critics say the arch is too tall for the region. You're listening to NPR News from Washington. Colorado Democrats have voted to censure Democratic Governor Jared Polis for commuting the prison sentence of an election conspiracy theorist. Former county clerk Tina Peters was sentenced to nine years in prison for stealing her county's voting data.
The governor's spokesperson says his decision was based on the facts of the case. Climate change is making rainfall heavier in Britain. NPR's Lauren Frayer reports on an unlikely creature that's been brought back from extinction to help.
West London's Greenford tube station used to flood. Please mind the gap between the train and the platform. Until a new family moved in nearby. I crept up to their rather muddy doorstep. Their home is made of sticks because these new neighbors are beavers. Sean McCormick is a local veterinarian who started this project. The city was planning to build a levee here.
Big diggers and earthworks and expensive engineering works, it would have cost hundreds of thousands.
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