Arts & Life

Dutch police in a town north of Amsterdam are investigating an explosion outside of a coronavirus test center early Wednesday.

Police say the explosion went off at about 6:55 a.m. outside of the center in Bovenkarspel, a town about 40 miles northeast of Amsterdam. There were no injuries from the blast. Investigators told local media that the explosion appeared intentional, as remnants of an exploded metal cylinder were found outside of the building.

Updated at 11:15 a.m. ET

In a day of protests that was among the deadliest in Myanmar since last month's coup, at least 18 people were reportedly killed on Wednesday, a day after Southeast Asian foreign ministers issued a tepid call to end to the violence.

This is unbearable.

I wrote that one-sentence review to myself about half-way through reading Klara and the Sun, Kazuo Ishiguro's just published eighth novel.

Lest you think that doesn't sound like much of an enticement, know that I've probably written something like that sentence about every Ishiguro novel I've read. He is the master of slowly deepening our awareness of human failing, fragility and the inevitability of death — all that, even as he deepens our awareness of what temporary magic it is to be alive in the first place.

The new Netflix film Moxie, directed by Amy Poehler from the book by Jennifer Mathieu, tries to stuff a lot of things into two hours. It's a story about Vivian (Hadley Robinson), a 16-year-old girl trying out the idea of a political self for the first time via a feminist zine (the titular Moxie) that she secretly begins publishing and stacking up on top of the hand dryers in the school bathrooms. The zine leads to the formation of a Moxie club, and then to something of a movement.

Around the corner from where I live in small-town Virginia is a Kroger's grocery store. According to its website, the store sells 20 flavors of Lay's potato chips: classic, wavy, wavy ranch, baked, barbecue, sour cream and onion, salt and vinegar, lightly salted, cheddar and sour cream, limon-flavored, honey barbecue, sweet southern heat, dill pickle, flamin' hot, flamin' hot and dill pickle, cheddar jalapeno, jalapeno ranch, lime and jalapeno, kettle-cooked, and kettle-cooked mesquite barbecue.

Many residents of Jackson, Miss., remain without running water three weeks after a winter storm hit the city.

The water outages in Jackson began Feb. 15 as a winter storm swept across the state. The storm brought devastating, bitter cold to the South and hit the region's critical infrastructure hard--highlighting major vulnerabilities in the area's power grid and water system.

Just in time for pothole season, the latest report card on the nation's infrastructure shows that the needs are great but funding is lacking.

Many of the country's roads, bridges, airports, dams, levees and water systems are aging and in poor to mediocre condition. And they're in need of a major federal investment to keep from getting worse and to withstand the harsh effects of a changing climate, according to the American Society of Civil Engineers.

The power struggle that led to conservative social media site Parler abruptly firing its founder and CEO John Matze last month became so acrimonious that when Matze was sacked, he was also involuntarily stripped of his entire stake in the company, according to people familiar with Matze's exit.

Updated at 7:11 p.m. ET

Neera Tanden, President Biden's controversial nominee to head the Office of Management and Budget, has withdrawn her nomination. Biden said in a statement Tuesday he had accepted her request.

"I have the utmost respect for her record of accomplishment, her experience and her counsel, and I look forward to having her serve in a role in my Administration," Biden said. "She will bring valuable perspective and insight to our work."

For the first time in nearly three decades, the state of Georgia voted to put a Democrat in the White House. Then it added two U.S. senators from the Democratic Party. And one person central to turning Georgia blue is the voting rights activist and former state legislator Stacey Abrams.

Abrams tells All Things Considered that the Democratic swing was "extraordinary," but "not wholly surprising," adding that the "numbers had been moving in our favor" in recent years.

At least eight journalists in Myanmar have been detained by authorities while covering protests against a coup that took place last month. Six of those journalists, including 32-year-old Associated Press reporter Thein Zaw, have been charged with violating a public order law.

Utah lawmakers are considering creating a new state park in celebration of a spectacular find of dinosaur bones.

The proposal for Utahraptor State Park, approved by the state House last week and now moving through the Utah Senate, would create a park near the spot where a geology student found a bone sticking out of the sun-bleached ground in 2001.

The Trump administration was all about loosening rules for businesses. But Gary Gensler, President Biden's nominee to head the Securities and Exchange Commission, has a very different mantra.

"When there are clear rules of the road and a cop on the beat to enforce them—our economy grows and our nation prospers," Gensler told members of the Senate Banking Committee.

The need for a tough cop on the beat during the pandemic is clear to Rohit Chopra - Biden's pick to head the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

Can gambling profits support the newspaper business? The company that owns the Toronto Star is betting on it.

Torstar Corporation announced Tuesday that it would launch an online casino brand later this year, pending approval by the Alcohol and Gaming Commission of Ontario.

Nearly as soon as the tear gas settled on the U.S. Capitol grounds on Jan. 6, the conspiracy theory began to pick up steam.

"Earlier today, the Capitol was under siege by people who can only be described as antithetical to the MAGA movement," Laura Ingraham told her viewers on Fox News that night. "They were likely not all Trump supporters, and there are some reports that antifa sympathizers may have been sprinkled throughout the crowd."

University of Arkansas students Anna Cook and Elizabeth Kimbrell are in different political parties but they’re best friends. They join Here & Now‘s Tonya Mosley to talk about what kind of politics they envision for the future.

This article was originally published on WBUR.org.

Dr. Seuss Enterprises announced Tuesday that it will no longer publish six Dr. Seuss books, including “And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street” and “If I Ran the Zoo,” because of their racist and insensitive imagery.

Here & Now‘s Callum Borchers talks to Juanita Giles, founder and executive director of the Virginia Children’s Book Festival.

Singer, songwriter and percussionist Bunny Wailer, an icon of reggae music, died in Kingston, Jamaica, on Tuesday morning. He was 73 years old. Wailer was a founding member of The Wailers, alongside Bob Marley and Peter Tosh.

His death was reported initially by Jamaica's Observer newspaper, which said that he had been unwell since enduring a second stroke in July 2020.