While most of the United States’ prison systems have struggled to vaccinate inmates, those in California and some other states have outperformed vaccination rates among the general public. And experts say their success may offer clues about how to persuade skeptical people outside correctional facilities to get vaccinated.

“You could have no one taking it, but then if everyone’s taking it and then you’re in this small group of people — the peer pressure could work in a pro-vaccine way,” he said. “People want to return to unlimited movement throughout the prison, and they want their rec time back, and they want visits. And if they feel like there’s some weak links that are resisting, then I think there’s more pressure on those people.”

US gas prices hit their highest level in seven years during a busy Memorial Day weekend, as Americans traveled to meet up with friends and took much-needed vacations.

What's happening: Data from GasBuddy shows gas in the United States is at its most expensive since 2014. AAA puts the national average at $3.05 per gallon, up from $2.90 one month ago and $1.98 a year ago.

In the United States, inflation data released Friday showed a 3.6% rise in prices in April from one year ago, as energy prices jumped 25%. Excluding the cost of food and energy, prices rose 3.1%.

The COVID-19 pandemic proves that the world needs a pandemic treaty, says WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus. It's the one major change, Tedros said, that would do the most to boost global health security and also empower the World Health Organization.

More than two dozen world leaders said in March that they support an international treaty or framework on pandemic preparedness and response, signing a letter whose signatories notably did not include the U.S., China or Russia.

e." While Tedros acknowledged progress in reducing the numbers of COVID-19 cases and deaths, he stressed that much work remains to end the pandemic, calling it "a monumental error for any country to think the danger has passed."

President Biden's budget proposal fulfills a campaign promise to remove a longstanding ban on federal funding for most abortions known as the Hyde Amendment.

Abortion rights advocates have praised the move; a statement from Planned Parenthood President Alexis McGill Johnson called the Hyde Amendment "racist, sexist, deeply unjust" and thanked Biden for working to remove it.

Biden reversed his longtime position on Hyde, joining other Democratic hopefuls in saying he would work to overturn it. "If I believe heath care is a right, as I do, I can no longer support an amendment that makes that right dependent on someone's zip code," Biden said in June 2019.

Lebanon is facing economic collapse. Since late 2019, the country's currency has lost over 90% of its value, and people's life savings are locked up in banks that have imposed discretionary capital controls. The financial meltdown has pushed half of Lebanon's population below the poverty line, according to the

Political turmoil has exacerbated the crisis. The government resigned after hundreds of tons of ammonium nitrate -- neglected and mismanaged for years by Beirut port officials -- exploded, leaving more than 200 people dead and thousands more injured. The heart of the city still stands disfigured with countless buildings damaged and destroyed.

The latest political dispute is between Prime Minister-designate Saad Hariri and President Michel Aoun. Hariri has promised, once he finally has a government in place, to stop Lebanon's collapse and restart negotiations with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) over a desperately needed bailout.

Benjamin Netanyahu's run as the longest-serving Israeli prime minister may be coming to an end. Naftali Bennett, leader of the small right-wing party Yamina, announced Sunday evening he is working toward a coalition agreement with Yair Lapid, leader of the centrist party Yesh Atid, to join a new government.

"After four elections and a further two months, it has been proven to all of us that there is simply no right-wing government possible that is headed by Netanyahu. It is either a fifth election or a unity government," Bennett said.

The "change" coalition will likely be made up of parties from the right to the left of Israeli politics, but it would still almost certainly need some sort of outside support to reach the 61-seat threshold. That support may come from outside the government, such as one of the Arab parties, most likely the Islamist United Arab List, led by Mansour Abbas.

The idea that the coronavirus could have leaked from a lab in Wuhan, China — instead of jumping from animals to humans — was dismissed as a conspiracy theory by many scientists a year ago. That has changed now.

"this needs more investigation," she said Thursday in an interview with NPR's Rachel Martin on Morning Edition. "And saying that this needs more investigation doesn't mean the virus leaked from a lab. But we need to investigate that and figure that out because it really does have implications for how we'll prevent the next pandemic."

Hundreds of men in Ethiopia's restive region of Tigray were released on Thursday evening, eyewitnesses and aid workers said, following a CNN report into their detention that prompted international outcry.

"They take us out one by one and torture us," the man said. "This is the third time I've been beaten by soldiers like this. People here start running and are scared every time they see someone wearing military uniform. The world has to hear our cries and do something -- we are living in terror"

One aid worker told CNN that the soldiers had accused the detainees of being members of the Tigray People's Liberation Front (TPLF), the rebel group leading the resistance against Ethiopian government forces and their allies. "The soldiers kept telling us they did this because these men were TPLF, but the raid was indiscriminate. How did you know who was TPLF and who wasn't?" the aid worker said.

One in 10 people charged in the US Capitol insurrection are veterans or current servicemembers, according to a CNN review of court documents and Pentagon records.

A quarter of the defendants with military ties are also connected to right-wing extremist groups, like the Oath Keepers and Proud Boys. These groups had a big presence at the January 6 riot, and they've attracted significant attention from federal prosecutors investigating the attack and from Pentagon officials who are coming to grips with the problem of extremism in the military.

This is perhaps the most comprehensive analysis to date of the outsized role that veterans played in the insurrection. They represent 10% of all defendants charged in the riot, but only make up about 6% of the US adult population, according to government statistics from recent years.

On Wednesday, a court in the Netherlands issued a landmark ruling against Royal Dutch Shell — an oil company already pledging to cut its carbon emissions to net zero by 2050 — ordering it to act faster.

The cost of building new wind and solar power has fallen dramatically. Electric appliances and heat pumps could conceivably replace natural gas in homes. And after Tesla proved that battery-powered vehicles didn't have to be glorified golf carts, the entire auto industry is racing to pivot toward electric vehicles

Meanwhile, governments around the world — particularly in Europe and China — have been promoting green technology through increasingly aggressive incentives and penalties.

The landmark Roe v. Wade Supreme Court decision establishing the right to abortion arrived in January 1973. It happened during a month of milestones in a long season of American convulsions. Former president Lyndon B. Johnson died the same day Roe was handed down, two days after Richard M. Nixon was sworn in as president for a second term, and a day before Nixon would announce the Paris Peace Accords ending the Vietnam War — or so the country believed.

Now, nearly half a century later, the Supreme Court has agreed to take up a case that could finally undo Roe’s vast expansion of the judiciary’s power. But such hopes have been disappointed in the past.

Now perhaps the court will finally come to grips with the consequences of that unconstitutional ambition to be the “decider in chief” of all divisive issues. In deciding to hear a case next fall involving a Mississippi law that bans most abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy (Roe drew the line at six months), the court will, in effect, weigh the right of states to establish their own abortion laws without regard for Roe and Casey.

Workplace mass shootings are rare, but the killing of eight people by a fellow employee at a Northern California rail yard on Wednesday marks the third such rampage in under two months.

That could foreshadow a rise in this type of violence after the nationwide shutdown of businesses due to the COVID-19 pandemic, says Jaclyn Schildkraut, associate professor of criminal justice at the State University of New York at Oswego.

Another reason we may see more workplace attacks is that potential perpetrators, who've likely been in isolation over the last year, have had time to plan, Schildkraut notes. "One of the things that we know about shooters, especially those who target schools or other specific public spaces, is that they don't usually wake up and snap."

AUSTIN, Texas — Texas is poised to remove one of its last major gun restrictions after lawmakers approved allowing people to carry handguns without a license, and the background check and training that go with it.

The Republican-dominated Legislature approved the measure Monday, sending it to Gov. Greg Abbott, who has said he will sign it despite the objections of law enforcement groups who say it would endanger the public and police.

Texas already has some of the loosest gun laws in the country and has more than 1.6 million handgun license holders.

For the company, it represents a big strategic bet on the rise of electric vehicles — one that nearly every rival automaker is also making. And it's also a symbol for the vision of America that President Biden has been promoting: made in America, pairing blue-collar roots and high-tech ambitions, fighting climate change without making compromises.

Behind all this buzz and boosterism is an incredibly daunting challenge for the auto industry. According to a report out this week from the International Energy Agency, for the energy sector to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions to net zero by 2050, electric vehicles would need to go from 5% of global sales to 60% in less than a decade. Five years later, in 2035, all new cars would need to be electric.

Ford's not the only one hoping there's a big pool of would-be buyers who aren't interested in a Tesla or a Nissan Leaf but would happily spring for an electric version of their favorite pickup.

In one, Israel is simply defending itself against a fresh attack. In the other, Israel’s bombardment of Gaza is the latest example of a desire to punish and humiliate Palestinians. These two narratives are not reconcilable, which makes reasoned discussion an exercise in futility.

Despite inching toward the Democratic Party’s left flank on various domestic- and foreign-policy issues, the Biden administration has fallen back on the usual formulas, offering robotic recitations about “Israel’s right to defend itself.” On Thursday, President Joe Biden said that he hadn’t seen a “significant overreaction” from Israel, while failing to mention a word about Palestinian deaths.

Hamas leaders see anger against Israel building among ordinary Palestinians, and they see an opportunity to weaponize it. They send rockets across the border and invite destruction because they wish to project relevance and rally domestic support after years of diminished popularity. Hamas is not a bunch of crazed lunatics. Selfish, self-serving, and cavalier toward Palestinian life, its leaders are acting according to a traditional rational-actor model.

In a 28-second video, which was posted to Twitter this week by a spokesman for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel, Palestinian militants in the Gaza Strip appeared to launch rocket attacks at Israelis from densely populated civilian areas.

But his tweet with the footage, which was shared hundreds of times as the conflict between Palestinians and Israelis escalated, was not from Gaza. It was not even from this week.

The false information has included videos, photos and clips of text purported to be from government officials in the region, with posts baselessly claiming early this week that Israeli soldiers had invaded Gaza, or that Palestinian mobs were about to rampage through sleepy Israeli suburbs.

A bombing near a school in Kabul on Saturday killed at least 50 people, many of them young students.

At least 100 people were wounded in the attack, according to Interior Ministry spokesman Tariq Arian, the Associated Press reports. He told the AP that casualties could continue to rise

Afghan President Ashraf Ghani blamed the Taliban, but a Taliban spokesperson condemned the attack and denied responsibility. Islamic State militants have also carried out attacks in the area in the past.

Awash in grief and anger, we invaded Afghanistan after 9/11 to hunt down Osama bin Laden and punish the Taliban for letting him turn a maze of caves into a launching pad to attack America.

Even then, it was clear that our attempt to turn Afghanistan and Iraq into model democracies was not going well. Touring those countries, Gates could barely leave the small secured zones.

Gates told reporters he had only just learned the “eye-opener” that the Taliban were attracting so many fighters because they paid more. Generals in Afghanistan said the Taliban were giving fighters $250 to $300 a month, while the Afghan Army was paying about $120. So Gates, employing the American way of throwing more money at a problem, got the recruits a raise to $240.

When the pipes carrying oxygen to critically ill Covid-19 patients stopped working at a hospital in the southern Indian state of Karnataka on Sunday evening, relatives of sick patients used towels to fan their loved ones in an attempt to save them.

Last week, after oxygen ran out at one hospital in India’s capital, New Delhi, 12 people died. The week before that, it was 20. On Monday, four sick people died in a hospital in Madhya Pradesh State, in central India, after family members said that there, too, the oxygen had run out though officials denied that.

Medical oxygen has suddenly become one of the most precious resources in India, and the need for it will continue as the surge of coronavirus infections is hardly abating.

The number of children contracting COVID-19 in the U.S. is much lower than the record highs set at the start of the new year, but children now account for more than a fifth of new coronavirus cases in states that release data by age, according to the American Academy of Pediatrics. It's a statistic that may surprise many: Just one year ago, child COVID-19 cases made up only around 3% of the U.S. total.

Experts link the trend to several factors – particularly high vaccination rates among older Americans. The U.S. recently announced 100 million people were fully vaccinated against COVID-19. But other dynamics are also in play, from new COVID-19 variants to the loosening of restrictions on school activities

As older portions of the population get vaccinated and we're still seeing circulation, it just stands to reason that the kids who are not eligible for vaccination yet are going to make up a larger share of that pie. I mean, the hope is that the overall pie itself gets smaller — the number of infections overall. But yeah, if it's circulating, it's going to hit the people that are most vulnerable, which are the people that haven't been vaccinated.