News

About a year since launching, Vine says it has more than 40 million registered users.

National

How Vine Settled On 6 Seconds

8:53pm August 20, 2013

by Laura Sydell

According to numbers released Tuesday, Twitter's one-year-old video-sharing app Vine now has about 40 million registered users. The app lets users shoot a maximum of six seconds per Vine, so we wanted to know why the limit's set at six seconds and not a second longer.

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Teenagers turn to their phones and social media to find rides.

Teens Use Twitter To Thumb Rides

5:25pm August 20, 2013

by Bianca Brooks

Need a ride to the party or the concert? Instead of making endless phone calls, these days teens turn to social media to arrange transportation. It's called ridesharing, a form of cyber-hitchhiking used by a generation that isn't rushing to get a driver's license or dream car.

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Mingma Tshering helps care for his nephew, whose father died on Everest in 2006. Mingma worked on Everest for the first time this past spring.

World News

On Mount Everest, Sherpa Guides Bear The Brunt Of The Danger

1:46pm August 20, 2013

Sherpa guides are 10 times more likely to die than commercial fishermen, the most dangerous, nonmilitary occupation in the U.S. But they're offered little financial protection by companies who charge Western climbers thousands of dollars for a trip up the mountain.

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Heavy rains in Australia in 2010 and 2011 flooded farmland and homes, like these in the Queensland state town of St. George, seen here on Feb. 7. 2011.

How Extreme Australian Rains Made Global Sea Levels Drop

9:19am August 20, 2013

by Richard Harris

Sea level has been rising steadily as a result of global warming. But in 2010 and 2011, levels dropped sharply by a quarter of an inch. A new analysis says that's because extraordinarily heavy rainfall got trapped in inland Australia.

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National

One By One, California Agents Track Down Illegally Owned Guns

8:57am August 20, 2013

by Richard Gonzales

California is currently the only state with a program to confiscate guns from residents prohibited from owning firearms. To find them, agents comb through a database of people who legally owned a gun until mental illness or a brush with the law rendered them no longer eligible for gun ownership.

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BlackBerry smartphones on a table during a "BlackBerry Brunch" in June in Berlin.

The End Of Buttons: The New Gesture-Control Era

6:58pm August 19, 2013

by Elise Hu

The newest smartphones are abandoning both physical and on-screen buttons in favor of gestures. As with so much behavior change ushered in by technology, the change happens before we take wider notice.

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NPR CEO Gary Knell Announces He's Leaving

6:58pm August 19, 2013

by Mark Memmott

Knell joined NPR in December 2011. He came after the resignation of Vivian Schiller, who left after two high-profile controversies. Now he's moving to National Geographic for what he says is an opportunity "I could not turn down."

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The San Francisco Public Library has been digitizing its historical document collections for years, including the scrapbooks of famed homicide detective Theodore Kytka. The SFPL is among scores of libraries and archives adding their digital collections to

Education

Combining The Nation's Digitized Libraries, All In One Place

6:58pm August 19, 2013

by Laura Sydell

Libraries have been digitizing their collections for years, but the materials can be hard to find. Enter the Digital Public Library of America. Worried that Google has an outsized hand in digitizing books, the DPLA is combining, on one site, the digital collections of libraries nationwide — free.

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The olinguito (right) was discovered while a researcher was sifting through specimens at The Field Museum in Chicago. On the left is a North American raccoon.

Science

Meet The Olinguito, The Newest Member Of The Raccoon Family

5:44pm August 19, 2013

by Rhitu Chatterjee

This cousin of the raccoon is the first new carnivore discovered in the Western Hemisphere in 35 years. Native to the Andes Mountains of Colombia and Ecuador where it's still living, the olinguito was actually first identified in a Field Museum specimen storage room in Chicago.

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Cars In America: Is The Love Story Over?

5:29pm August 19, 2013

by NPR Staff

America once had a love affair with the automobile. But a new study shows just how much air has been let out of those tires, and the millennial generation seems to be ambivalent toward owning cars or even acquiring driver's licenses.

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