Becky Sullivan

Four years ago, the Robert E. Lee statue in Charlottesville, Va., was at the heart of a violent white supremacist rally that left a counterprotester dead.

Now, a museum dedicated to Black culture and history has put forward a new proposal: Melt the statue down and use the bronze to create new works of public art.

The Jefferson School African American Heritage Center's proposal, titled "Swords into Plowshares," calls for commissioning an artist-in-residence to create the new artworks, which would be gifted to the city of Charlottesville upon completion.

Expressing "shock and sadness" at the incident that has shaken Hollywood, actor Alec Baldwin says he is cooperating with the police investigation into the shooting on a New Mexico movie set that killed the film's cinematographer and injured its director.

After a turbulent summer in which she withdrew from most of her events at the Olympics and gave emotional testimony before Congress about being abused by a team doctor, Simone Biles says she is "still scared to do gymnastics."

On Wednesday afternoon, Enes Kanter, a center for the Boston Celtics, traded his uniform for a t-shirt bearing an image of the Dalai Lama, and read a pro-Tibet message that has prompted Chinese broadcasters to take the Celtics off the air in China.

"My message for the Chinese government is 'Free Tibet.' Tibet belongs to Tibetans," Kanter said in the video, describing restrictions, imprisonment and "cultural genocide" he attributed to Chinese rule and calling Chinese President Xi Jinping a "brutal dictator."

It's long been known that the Vikings were the first Europeans to make the long journey to the Americas, arriving in what is now Canada sometime around the end of the first millennium.

But a new article in the journal Nature is the first to pinpoint a precise date: 1021, exactly 1,000 years ago — beating the arrival of Christopher Columbus by nearly 500 years.

The owner of three escaped zebras in Maryland has been charged with three counts of animal cruelty after one of the zebras was reported last week to have been discovered dead in a snare trap.

Prosecutors have recommended probation in a plea deal for Jamarcus Glover, the man whose drug dealing led Louisville police to the home of Breonna Taylor in March 2020.

According to court documents obtained by NPR, Glover entered guilty pleas last week. Prosecutors have agreed to drop most of the charges he faced and are recommending up to 8 years of probation.

For the first time in three years, the Taliban has agreed to allow health workers from the United Nations to begin a nationwide polio vaccination campaign in Afghanistan, according to the World Health Organization and UNICEF.

From phony package delivery notices, to fake requests from banks for personal information, to supposed COVID-19 contact tracers looking for a photo of your vaccine card — text message scams are on the rise in the U.S., costing Americans millions of dollars.

Even as the federal government has worked to crack down on robocalls, scam texts have boomed in recent years, and that has captured growing attention inside the Federal Communications Commission.

For hundreds of public employees in the state of Washington, where a new vaccine mandate for state employees went into effect this week, Monday was their last day on the job. That includes a sergeant with the Washington State Patrol who told KUOW that he had made an appointment to turn in his patrol car and equipment.

The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled in favor of police officers in two cases involving qualified immunity, the controversial legal doctrine that protects police officers accused of misconduct.

The two cases concerned police officers accused of using excessive force when responding to domestic disturbances. In one, officers used beanbag rounds and a knee on the suspect's back to subdue him; in the second, officers shot and killed the suspect after he approached them while raising a hammer.

Early Tuesday morning, Melissa Breyer set out to do her usual volunteer work — collecting the bodies of migratory birds who had died colliding with skyscrapers in downtown Manhattan.

CBS thought it had a win when it announced The Activist, a reality show where six contestants would compete in a variety of activism-themed contests before appearing at a summit of world leaders in Italy — a format that press materials called "awe-inspiring," "ground-breaking" and sure to "inspire real change."

But in the week since the network's announcement, backlash has come from all corners — including an apology from one of the program's own hosts.

It was for only about a minute that a cat dangled perilously from the upper deck of Hard Rock Stadium in Miami Gardens, Fla., with nothing but an American flag — outstretched 30 feet below — to break its fall.

But the drama gripped thousands of fans who had ostensibly come to watch a university football game between the then-No. 22 Miami Hurricanes and the Appalachian State Mountaineers on Saturday.

Just a month after rainfall was recorded for the first time ever at Greenland's highest point, the island is expecting up to four feet of snow from the remnants of Hurricane Larry — the rare tropical storm to stay intact so far north.

Hurricane-force gusts topped 100 miles per hour at Kulusuk Airport near Greenland's southeast coast. At Tasiilaq, the largest town in the region, sustained winds reached 55 miles per hour, with gusts of over 90.

The Food and Drug Administration said it has ruled on whether some electronic cigarette products can remain on the market, but that it's also delaying action on products made by Juul, which accounts for 40% of the e-cigarette market.

The highest teleconference in the land is soon coming to an end.

After more than a year of conducting arguments remotely, the U.S. Supreme Court announced it will resume in-person oral arguments this fall, beginning with the slate of cases to be heard in October, November and December.

A judge in Ohio has reversed an earlier emergency order that required a hospital to administer ivermectin to a COVID-19 patient against the hospital's wishes. The anti-parasitic drug is most commonly used in the U.S. as a dewormer in animals.

MARCELINE, Haiti – Authorities in Haiti have postponed the start of school across the country after last month's 7.2 magnitude earthquake destroyed schools and homes across Haiti's southern peninsula.

It is the latest unwanted disruption to education in Haiti, where instruction has been interrupted repeatedly over the last two years due both to COVID-19 and the gang violence and kidnappings that have terrorized much of the country.

Two hours before the final of the men's 100-meter T51 race in this summer's Paralympic games, Peter Genyn arrived at the venue to find his wheelchair badly damaged.

"We had just arrived 45 minutes before the warmup, and we had three flat tires and a broken compensator. Everybody did everything they could to help, including the Dutch team," the Belgian athlete told the Olympic Information Services after the race Friday.

When Pete Buttigieg, the secretary of transportation, announced last month that he and his husband Chasten had become parents, the congratulations were many but the details were few.

At the time, they expressed their excitement but did not share any additional information about their new child, saying only "the process isn't done yet."

Now, the good news has doubled: On Saturday, the Buttigiegs announced they have welcomed not one but two children — a daughter and a son.

After a close upset loss in the U.S. Open, a tearful Naomi Osaka told reporters she may take an indefinite break from tennis — marking another setback in what has been a turbulent, difficult year for the tennis superstar.

LES CAYES, Haiti — When shaking started on the morning of Aug. 14, Dr. Antoine Titus was still in bed.

It was 8:29 a.m., and the 32-year-old emergency room physician was about to get up and get ready for work at the general hospital in Les Cayes.

What should have been an ordinary Saturday at the ER instead became a day he cannot forget. For what seemed like 10 minutes, Titus watched the earth shake and homes collapse as his neighbors — the ones who survived, at least — prayed and cried.

Samoa will be led by a female prime minister for the first time in its history after an appeals court ruling ended a months-long constitutional crisis in the Pacific island nation.

In a major escalation of pressure on NFL teams to vaccinate as many players as possible before the start of this fall's season, the NFL says that teams will forfeit and be slapped with a loss if a game is cancelled because of a COVID-19 outbreak among their unvaccinated players — and neither team's players will be paid.

CIA Director William Burns says he has redoubled the agency's efforts to uncover the cause of Havana syndrome — the mysterious set of ailments that has afflicted more than 200 U.S. officials and family members around the world.

There is broad agreement that the restaurant industry is rife with sexual harassment.

The University of North Carolina has become the first college athletics program to organize group licensing deals for its current student athletes, in the latest development of the sea change transforming college athletics.

The death rate from COVID-19 in the U.S. is rising steadily for the first time in months as the nation grapples with a renewed burst of cases in what's become "a pandemic of the unvaccinated," the head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Friday.

The seven-day average of new cases has increased by nearly 70% to almost 30,000 per day; hospitalizations are up 36%. And deaths from the virus have risen steadily in recent days, reversing a months-long downward trend that began in mid-January.

With Euro 2020 and the Stanley Cup in the books, the NBA Finals nearing an end, baseball past the All-Star break, and the Olympics a week away — sports are running full steam ahead, even as cases of COVID-19 tick up across the U.S.

Many stadiums and arenas in the U.S. have allowed fans to return at full capacity with many dropping mask requirements following a year of pandemic restrictions that prevented spectators and travel.

Plans for the Tokyo Olympics, which bring together athletes from around the world, are going ahead as scheduled next week.