A joint inquiry by NPR's Planet Money and Investigations teams found that more than $1 billion of unused dollar coins are the wasteful byproducts of another failed congressional effort to replace the dollar bill in everyday commerce.
Another time, another plague
Itâs buboes not bubbles that occupy The Plague Letters. Kate Griffin talks to its author about past (and present) horrors
14 May, 2021 â By Kate Griffin
Detail from a copper engraving of Doctor Schnabel (Dr Beak), a plague doctor in 17th-century Rome
Despairing medics are baffled by a deadly epidemic. Wealthy Londoners abandon the city for their country retreats. Those who remain go warily about their business; one eye on the mounting death tolls, the other on neighbours who flout the rules of quarantine.
If this sounds horribly familiar, itâs a quirk of fate that in Vikki Valentineâs hugely entertaining novel