WASHINGTON
Hazy sunshine illuminated the suburban landscape as Eric Forbes settled into the seat of his Friday afternoon train.
It was Sept. 12, 2008, 4:22 p.m. Forbes, 56, an administrator at Cal State Northridge, was headed home to be there in time for his son’s first school dance. Relaxing, he watched out the window as the train rolled north from the Chatsworth station then banked to the left, heading for the narrow tunnel under the Santa Susana Pass. The curve allowed Forbes to see down the track. Motion caught his eye.
“I saw this train coming at us,” he recalls. A thought flashed through his mind: “There’s only one track there.”
The signing of the bill ended a standoff with Congress and paved the way for millions of Americans to get economic relief as the coronavirus pandemic surges across the country.
Julie Dermansky for NPR
toggle caption Julie Dermansky for NPR
In March of 2020, Robbie Dennis was transferred to the Louisiana State Penitentiary, known as Angola. The CDC first recommended that Americans wear masks on April 3; prisoners at Angola didn t receive them until June or July, Dennis says. Julie Dermansky for NPR
The equation for COVID-19 hot spots has been clear since the earliest days of the pandemic: Take facilities where people live in close quarters, then add conditions that make it hard to take preventive measures such as wearing personal protective equipment or keeping socially distant.
Major outbreaks in nursing homes this spring shocked the nation. Now, residents of those facilities are among the first in line for the vaccine.
Updated Dec. 24, 2020 9:41 am ET
Boston Red Sox manager Alex Cora fielded questions for more than 30 minutes at last week’s winter meetings, an annual tradition of the baseball offseason that moved from a hotel ballroom to Zoom this year. He was asked about slugger J.D. Martinez’s disappointing 2020 season, the team’s hole at second base and pitcher Eduardo Rodríguez’s health standard questions for somebody in Cora’s position.
What was more telling was what didn’t come up: the Houston Astros’ sign-stealing scandal that rocked the sport and cost Cora his job just 11 months ago. A day earlier, A.J. Hinch, the skipper who oversaw the cheating Astros in 2017, went through the same exercise in his new role leading the Detroit Tigers and the tone was the same.