State and National News

In the 1960s, Janis Joplin was an icon of the counterculture, a female rock star at a time when rock was an all-boys' club.

"At that point in time there weren't too many women taking center stage," biographer Holly George-Warren says. "Janis created this incredible image that went along with her amazing vocal ability. ... [She] was very, very different than most of the women that came before."

The U.S. may now keep some troops in northeast Syria, Defense Secretary Mark Esper said on Monday. It is the latest in a series of consequential pivots the Trump administration has made in its Syria policy.

Esper said the troops are needed to secure oil fields from falling into the hands of ISIS and profiting from them, The Associated Press reports. But most recently it was Russian mercenaries, not ISIS fighters, who tried to seize the oil fields and who were repulsed by U.S. airstrikes, NPR's Tom Bowman reports.

As the country awaits a federal court ruling on whether the Affordable Care Act is constitutional, opponents of the legislation have mostly stopped calling for a complete overhaul.

Julie Rovner (@jrovner), chief Washington correspondent for Kaiser Health News, tells host Jeremy Hobson how the Trump administration has weakened — but not destroyed — Obamacare.

More than 70 percent of American adults drink alcohol.

It’s a rite of passage that can become a life-long habit. And even for those who choose not to imbibe, drinking can feel like a quintessential part of adulthood.

But for some Americans, those habits can slip from occasional and innocuous to frequent and potentially fatal.

Why does Ukranian journalist Nastya Stanko want to continue being a journalist?

Well, she says one reason is because when you live in Ukraine, it’s never boring.