NPR News

Isabel dos Santos, the billionaire former first daughter of Angola who is said to be one of Africa's wealthiest people, has been accused of rampant financial misconduct in order to line her own pockets.

The allegations, announced Wednesday by Angola's top prosecutor, come just days after a major media investigation released more than 700,000 documents related to dos Santos' business empire — and the questionable conduct that built it — in what has become known as the Luanda Leaks.

Airports around the world are screening travelers from certain parts of China for symptoms of an illness that has sickened more than 600 people and killed at least 17. The illness, caused by a novel form of the coronavirus, originated in the city of Wuhan, China, and the bulk of the confirmed cases are in China.

Updated at 2:20 p.m. ET

The Environmental Protection Agency is dramatically reducing federal pollution protections for rivers, streams and wetlands — a move welcomed by many farmers, builders and mining companies but opposed even by the agency's own science advisers.

EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler, who announced the repeal of an earlier Obama-era rule in September, chose to make the long-anticipated announcement Thursday in Las Vegas, at the National Association of Home Builders International Builders' Show.

The new Comedy Central series officially called Awkwafina Is Nora From Queens uses the shorter title Nora From Queens in its own animated graphics.

Nothing about the music Samantha Fish makes suggests that she's ever been shy. Bold and expressive, it shows off her considerable talent – but it took a bit of a push for Fish to get on stage for the first time.

Updated at 2:25 p.m. ET

House impeachment managers are resuming their prosecution of President Trump in the Senate on Thursday, outlining how the law applies to what they see as the president's "corrupt scheme" with Ukraine to tilt the 2020 election in his favor.

The Democrats plan to focus on Article 1 of impeachment, abuse of power. They will take up Article 2, obstruction of Congress, on Friday. Read the articles here.

The International Court of Justice in The Hague has ordered Myanmar to prevent a genocide of the country's remaining Rohingya Muslims — the target of a brutal army crackdown that led to the deaths of tens of thousands.

Presiding Judge Abdulqawi Ahmed Yusuf, reading the unanimous opinion of the 17-judge panel, said the United Nations court "is of the opinion that the Rohingya in Myanmar remain extremely vulnerable" after the 2017 crackdown in the country's western Rakhine state.

Before she wrote Silver Tongue, out later this month, Torres' Mackenzie Scott stopped writing music altogether. After releasing three albums of searing, searching guitar rock, Scott says she needed to reassess. It's a "delusional pursuit," as she calls it, to try to make a living as a musician right now. Did she even still want to do it? What was even worth writing about?

More than three in five Americans are lonely, with more and more people reporting feeling like they are left out, poorly understood and lacking companionship, according to a new survey released Thursday. Workplace culture and conditions may contribute to Americans' loneliness.

Vladimir Munk remembers the day he walked free from Blechhammer, a sub-camp of Auschwitz in eastern Germany.

"I was happy," Munk says. He was sick and starving, but he had survived.

The Soviet Army liberated Auschwitz on Jan. 27, 1945. The concentration camp in Poland is where more than a million people, mostly Jews, were murdered during the Holocaust. This Monday, on the 75th anniversary of the liberation, Munk is traveling back to Auschwitz for the first time since he was imprisoned there.

The U.S. Department of Transportation is considering tightening the rules for taking service animals on planes after increased customer complaints and lobbying from the airlines who think current regulations are too lenient.

Morning Edition's series called One-Hit Wonders / Second-Best Songs focuses on musicians or bands whose careers in the United States are defined by a single monster hit, and explains why their catalogs have much more to offer.

In this installment, Rolling Stone contributing editor Anthony DeCurtis talks about living in Atlanta in the early 1980s, when the band The Georgia Satellites hit No. 2 on the pop charts with its debut single. Read DeCurtis in his own words below, and hear the radio version at the audio link.

In a case with potentially profound implications, the U.S. Supreme Court's conservative majority seemed ready to invalidate a provision of the Montana state constitution that bars aid to religious schools. A decision like that would work a sea change in constitutional law, significantly removing the longstanding high wall of separation between church and state.

Three firefighters helping fight Australia's bushfires were killed Thursday when the C-130 tanker aircraft they were operating crashed south of the capital, Canberra.

"Tragically, there appears to be no survivors as a result of the crash down in the Snowy Monaro area," Shane Fitzsimmons, the Rural Fire Services Commissioner for New South Wales state, said at a news conference.

He said the tanker "impacted heavily with the ground and initial reports are that there was a large fireball associated with the impact of the plane as it hit the ground."

Updated at 8:45 a.m. ET

Wuhan's public health authorities say they are in a "state of war" as they quarantine the Chinese city in an attempt to halt the spread of a never-before-seen strain of coronavirus.

"Strictly implement emergency response requirements, enter into a state of war and implement wartime measures to resolutely curb the spread of this epidemic," urged a committee of Wuhan's top officials. "Homes must be segregated, neighbors must be watched."

Updated at 9:49 p.m. ET

The matter before the Senate isn't just President Trump's conduct; it is no less than the fate of the Constitution and America's role in the world, House managers said on Wednesday.

With the ground rules having been settled in the early hours after sometimes-bitter litigation between the House delegation and Trump's legal team, senators returned Wednesday afternoon to hear the formal opening of the case.

Democrats are going first with 24 hours over three days to present their arguments for removing Trump from office.

On Jan. 24, 1966, Sen. Everett Dirksen of Illinois was thirsty on the Senate floor.

And so, for a moment, he put aside debate on labor law and asked the presiding officer of the chamber a question, his signature brawny bass voice amplifying its importance: Could he have a Senate page fetch him a generous helping of milk?

New Jersey became the first state in the country to enact a law that guarantees severance pay for mass layoffs, according to the bill's sponsors this week.

The legislation, signed by Gov. Phil Murphy on Tuesday, ensures that businesses with 100 or more full-time employees pay their workers one week of severance pay for every year of service whenever widespread downsizing or plant closures affecting 50 or more employees is on the horizon. The law also requires employers to give workers at least 90 days notice when such changes are imminent. That's up from 60 days.

Utah has become the 19th — and most conservative — state in the U.S. to ban "conversion therapy" for minors. The widely discredited practice, aimed at changing a patient's sexual orientation or gender identity, is now formally barred in the state after the new rule took effect late Tuesday.

A spokesperson for Republican Gov. Gary Herbert, who directed licensing regulators to make the change, confirmed the move to NPR on Wednesday.

Amtrak will dump a policy that led to two people who use wheelchairs being told they'd have to pay $25,000 for a train ticket that usually costs just $16, the rail service announced Wednesday.

"After further review, Amtrak has determined to suspend the policy in question," said Amtrak spokesperson Marc Magliari. "It was never meant to be applied to this situation. And we apologize for the mistake."

He spoke shortly after a group of people with disabilities demonstrated outside an Amtrak station in Illinois, chanting: "We will ride."

One of the architects of the CIA's torture program for the accused Sept. 11 terrorists testified Wednesday in a Guantánamo Bay courtroom that he eventually came to believe that those torture techniques had gone too far and verged on breaking the law.

Deborah Dugan, the suspended head of the Recording Academy, made many stunning allegations in her discrimination complaint filed Tuesday with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC).

Music is a kind of family inheritance for Georgia Barnes. The stories she tells of her relatives usually come back to music or dancing some way or another. Her dad used to play in an electronic group called Leftfield.

"My bedroom was actually Leftfield's studio," she says. "It was keyboards, drum machines, wires, bits of percussion, microphones."

The circumstances of David Olney's death have been widely reported, not least because people were struck by what seemed like a poetic end for such a poetic presence. Onstage last Saturday during the 30A Songwriters Festival in the Florida panhandle, Olney reportedly paused mid-song and bowed his head to his chest, suffering another heart attack.

Former Vice President Joe Biden is defending his record on Social Security, amid increased criticism from the campaign of Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, which has repeatedly pointed to Biden's willingness as a U.S. senator to back spending freezes for Social Security and other entitlement programs.

The candidates' back-and-forth culminated — as most disputes in modern presidential campaigns do — in dueling Twitter posts Tuesday night.

Forecasters in southern Florida had warned a sharp cold snap could bring a high chance of falling iguanas – and that's just what happened: The National Weather Service's office in Miami says immobilized iguanas began falling from the trees after temperatures plunged into the 30s and 40s early Wednesday.