PBS NewsHour

Monday marks the 80th anniversary of the liberation of the Nazis' Auschwitz-Birkenau extermination camp, where an estimated 1.1 million people, mainly Jews, were murdered during the Holocaust.

One of the youngest survivors was an 8-year-old Polish girl named Rutka who moved to Canada after World War II and took the name Rachel Hyams. Rachel's daughter, Audrey Hyams Romoff, is now retracing her mother's steps.

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3 days ago | [YT] | 1,608

PBS NewsHour

On Friday, the U.S. Senate narrowly confirmed Pete Hegseth to serve as President Donald Trump’s secretary of defense. In this role, he will oversee the U.S. military, its budget and policy.

Vice President JD Vance cast the tie-breaking vote to confirm Hegseth. Three Republicans – Sens. Susan Collins of Maine, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Mitch McConnell of Kentucky – voted against Trump's choice.

Hegseth is a veteran who served with the Army National Guard in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. He received two Bronze Stars during his time in the service. He then went on to join Fox News as a contributor and was a co-host on “Fox & Friends Weekend.”

Hegseth faced allegations of sexual misconduct and excessive drinking, and received criticism since his nomination for his controversial views on women, diversity and religion in the military.

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PBS NewsHour

Cecile Richards, an abortion rights and feminist activist who served as president of Planned Parenthood and its Planned Parenthood Action Fund advocacy organization, has died. She was 67 years old.


“Our hearts are broken today but no words can do justice to the joy she brought to our lives,” her family said in a statement on her social media accounts. In 2023, Richards was diagnosed with glioblastoma, a fast-growing and aggressive form of brain tumor.

Early in her career, Richards, daughter of the late Texas Gov. Ann Richards, was a labor-rights organizer and helped with her mother’s gubernatorial campaign. She later moved to Washington, D.C., where she worked on Rep. Nancy Pelosi’s congressional staff.


The Planned Parenthood Federation of America named Richards its president in 2006. She was a frequent presence in the news as she defended the nonprofit reproductive health care organization.


Richards called the inclusion of birth control coverage in the Affordable Care Act one of her proudest achievements.



“I was sitting in the Planned Parenthood office, and President Obama called, and he said, ‘Cecile, I just wanted you to know – I'm about to announce at the White House that, from now on, birth control will get covered by all insurance plans at no cost for all people,’” she said in a 2022 episode of the PBS show “Tell Me More with Kelly Corrigan.” “I felt so honored to be the person who got the call, but, obviously, it was millions of people that had made that happen.”


After her departure from Planned Parenthood in 2018, she founded a women’s political action committee called Supermajority. She had recently founded a project called Abortion in America that sought to share reproductive health stories from Americans across the country.


Last year, Richards told The 19th, a nonprofit news outlet that reports on gender, politics and policy, that she thought it would be “a long time” before the reproductive rights that had been protected under Roe v. Wade – overturned by the Supreme Court in 2022 – would be restored.


“For people who face challenges based on race, geography, income, and more, these inequities are deep-seated, intersectional and much more difficult to eradicate,” she said. “We need to be ready for a multi-year fight.”

1 week ago | [YT] | 6,028

PBS NewsHour

Moments after taking the oath of office, President Donald Trump began his inaugural address to the crowd gathered inside the Capitol Rotunda, saying that “the golden age of America begins right now.”

“During every single day of the Trump administration, I will very simply put America first,” he said.

The inauguration ceremony, including the swearings-in, is taking place indoors this year, a last-minute change to the pomp and circumstance due to extreme cold forecasted for the nation’s capital.

Watch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=huPuz...

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PBS NewsHour

David Lynch, a groundbreaking avant-garde filmmaker and director known for the television series "Twin Peaks" and the films "Eraserhead" and "Mulholland Drive," has died at the age of 78.

His family announced his death on Facebook, writing, "There’s a big hole in the world now that he’s no longer with us. But, as he would say, ‘Keep your eye on the donut and not on the hole.’"

They did not include a cause of death, but in 2024, Lynch revealed he had been diagnosed with emphysema.


Born in Montana in 1946, Lynch attended the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts in the 1960s. Lynch later moved to Los Angeles and studied filmmaking in the early 1970s at what's now known as the American Film Institute Conservatory. While at the school, he started working on his first feature-length film, "Eraserhead," which was released in theaters in 1977.

He would go on to find mainstream success with his next film, "The Elephant Man," starring Anthony Hopkins and John Hurt. The 1980 film earned eight Oscar nominations, including one for best director.

In the late 1980s, Lynch developed the surreal murder mystery "Twin Peaks" with former "Hill Street Blues" writer Mark Frost. The landmark series premiered in 1990 on ABC, and Lynch revisited “Twin Peaks” in a 1992 feature film and a 2017 revival season on Showtime.


Some of his other works include the 1986 film "Blue Velvet," 1990's “Wild at Heart,” the 1997 film "Lost Highway" and 2006's "Inland Empire."


Lynch, a four-time Oscar nominee, received an honorary Academy Award for lifetime achievement in 2019.


Photo by Glenn Hunt via Getty Images. This image has been converted to black and white.

1 week ago | [YT] | 3,167

PBS NewsHour

Formaldehyde — found in composite lumber, plastics, paints and glues used in many homes and offices — poses “an unreasonable risk” to human health, according to the EPA.

And, a recent ProPublica investigation found that formaldehyde causes far more cancer than any other airborne pollutant.

"It's incredibly pervasive. Formaldehyde is essentially ubiquitous," ProPublica's Sharon Lerner told PBS News' John Yang. "Indoors, the concentration is particularly high because lots of products emit it, like furniture, flooring, sometimes even clothing. But it's also outdoors and pretty much everywhere outdoors."

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2 weeks ago | [YT] | 632

PBS NewsHour

Monday marked four years since the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol, when a mob of then-President Trump’s supporters smashed their way into the building under the false belief that the 2020 election had been stolen.

PBS News' William Brangham sat down with two NPR journalists who were there that day and have been covering the impacts ever since.

Watch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rvmSm...

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3 weeks ago | [YT] | 1,053

PBS NewsHour

Former President Jimmy Carter has died at the age of 100.

Carter, a Georgia peanut farmer and governor, defeated Gerald Ford in 1976 to become the nation’s 39th president.

During his presidency, Carter orchestrated the Camp David Accords, bringing Egyptian President Anwar Sadat and Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin together in 1978 to lay a foundation for peace in the Middle East.

Carter also had to address multiple catastrophes during his single term in office. Among them were the Iranian hostage crisis, rising inflation and a nationwide shortage of gasoline. In the 1980 presidential election, Republican Ronald Reagan decisively defeated Carter.

After the White House, the former president and his wife, Rosalynn, founded the Carter Center to advance peace, democracy and health policy worldwide. His work in diplomacy earned him the Nobel Peace Prize in 2002. Carter also volunteered with Habitat for Humanity and taught Sunday school in his hometown of Plains, Georgia.

In February 2023, age and illness forced the former president into home hospice care. Later that year, Rosalynn Carter, his wife of 77 years, died at 96.

Photo by David Hume Kennerly/Getty Images.

1 month ago | [YT] | 6,842

PBS NewsHour

Baseball Hall of Famer Rickey Henderson has died at age 65.

Nicknamed “Man of Steal,” Henderson is the MLB's all-time leader in stolen bases and also holds the league's record for most runs scored. Among his many achievements — like winning one Gold Glove and three Silver Slugger Awards and being named the American League’s MVP in 1990 — he was also selected for 10 MLB All-Star Games.

Henderson's professional baseball career began when he was drafted in 1976 to the Oakland Athletics and he made his league debut in 1979. He went on to play for a total of nine teams over the course of two decades: the Oakland Athletics, New York Yankees, Toronto Blue Jays, San Diego Padres, Anaheim Angels, New York Mets, Seattle Mariners, Boston Red Sox and Los Angeles Dodgers.

Henderson was inducted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame in 2009 and the Bay Area Sports Hall of Fame in 2020.

1 month ago | [YT] | 1,594

PBS NewsHour

Eighteen-year-old Gukesh Dommaraju is the world’s newest chess champion — and the youngest. Dommaraju defeated defending titleholder Ding Liren at the World Chess Championship in Singapore this past week.

PBS News' John Yang sat down with author and content creator Levy Rozman, known online as GothamChess, to discuss what the future of competitive chess looks like.

"What excites me the most is right now we've got a lot of innovators, we've got people coming in, trying to speed the game up," Rozman said. "And the biggest problem that chess has is that it's not a TV product in a sports form. ... We need to make it digestible and understandable for people at home."

Watch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tWSFG...

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