For two years, Sudan had looked to be on the path to democracy — leaving behind decades of violent military dictatorship to become a pocket of stability in the turbulent but strategically important Horn of Africa region.

But Monday's military coup d'etat has turned that on its head, taking U.S. officials by surprise and sparking fear that a failure of democratic transition there could encourage coups elsewhere and lead to a loss of U.S. influence in the region.

A federal judge declined to block the execution of John Marion Grant set for Thursday.

A hearing for an injunction took place on Monday at the federal courthouse in Oklahoma City. Judge Stephen Friot ruled that Grant’s execution can go forward despite his status as a plaintiff in a lawsuit challenging Oklahoma’s lethal injection protocol.

The U.S. has given 200 million COVID-19 vaccine doses to countries in need and has said it will give a total of 1.1 billion by 2022. Yet public health specialists say several more billion doses are needed around the world. Steve Inskeep of NPR's Morning Edition interviewed Gayle Smith, coordinator for global COVID response and health security at the U.S. State Department, to learn more about global vaccine distribution.

Two men who needed help up a steep rock in British Columbia were saved thanks to a group of Sikh men who unraveled and removed their turbans to create a makeshift rope. The steep rocks led to rough, raging waters near a waterfall.

First came the tourists. Next comes the business. Blue Origin says it will create a new privately owned space station in orbit around the Earth — what it calls a "mixed-use business park" in space.

The company announced the plan months after completing its first human space flight on the New Shepard launch vehicle, an endeavor that included taking a paying customer into space.

Facebook's rank-and-file employees warned their leaders about the company's effects on society and politics in the U.S. — and its inability to effectively moderate content in other countries magnified those dangers. Those are two of the main takeaways from thousands of internal Facebook documents that NPR and other news outlets have reviewed.

The documents, known collectively as the Facebook Papers, were shared in redacted form with Congress after whistleblower Frances Haugen, a former Facebook product manager, disclosed them to the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Barack and Bruce. Obama and Springsteen. The Boss and Mr. President. Or maybe you can just call them renegades.

Launched in February, the Renegades podcast consisted of a series of candid conversations between iconic musician Bruce Springsteen and former President Barack Obama, recorded in the summer of 2020 during the height of the pandemic.