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The search for Jelani "J.J." Day is officially over, as the coroner's office in LaSalle County, Ill., identified a body found in a river as Day's. The Illinois State University graduate student had been missing since Aug. 24; the cause and circumstances of his death are being investigated.

When we're young, it's easy to imagine ourselves as always being on the right side of history. We like to think that, if we were trapped in cruel or barbaric societies, we would be the brave ones stepping in to stop injustice.

A surprising influence helped author Devon Price understand what's wrong with closely associating our worth with our work. Their pet chinchilla, Dumptruck. "He's never been productive in his life," Price says. The social psychologist and author of Laziness Does Not Exist says Dumptruck is pretty much the opposite of productive, and frankly, rather destructive.

A widely discredited GOP-led review of the 2020 election in Arizona's largest county has concluded that Joe Biden did indeed receive more votes there than President Donald Trump.

Tens of thousands of Black girls and women go missing every year. Last year, that figure was nearly 100,000. Yet their cases hardly ever grab national headlines.

A journalist in California is doing what she can to try to change that, by telling as many of their stories as she can — and hopefully helping them get the justice they deserve.

This story is part of "The Basics" from The NPR Politics Podcast. Each week, we will explain one key idea behind the news we talk about on our show. Subscribe to The NPR Politics Podcast here.

The task keeps coming back like a bad penny: Congress soon must raise the debt ceiling again. It will be almost the 100th time it has done so.

The Democratic-led House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol has issued subpoenas to four former Trump administration officials, including former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows and strategist Steve Bannon.

When schools reopened recently in Afghanistan, only boys in grades 7 through 12 went back to class.

Taliban leaders told girls that they must wait.

"The explanation that we got from the Taliban is that this is just a slight delay, as they are working on operating procedures for girls," said Christopher Nyamandi, director of Save the Children, an aid group, in Afghanistan.

Goliath groupers can be as large as a refrigerator, weigh 800 pounds, and are found prowling near Florida's coral reefs. Their large size makes them nearly fearless and easy prey for fishermen and divers with spearguns.

Felicia Coleman, a marine biologist and former director of Florida State University's Coastal and Marine Laboratory calls it "a big damn fish." Her husband, marine biologist Chris Koenig, says some they've studied have been 7 1/2 feet long.

Game Highlights

Rebecca copes with the death of her father and tries to figure out what to do about her new relationship with Sam. Ted walks himself through a panic attack with Dr. Sharon's help. And Jamie surprises Keeley with a confession.

Play-By-Play

Rebecca

The opening image of this week's episode is meant to represent the hard truth that New Year's Eve revelers in Times Square are gross. Well, they were gross, back when there were any, back when people crowded together without fear. So perhaps trash nostalgia is the appropriate emotion as the maintenance crews clean up after last week's big New Year's bash. Let's get right to these warm memories of early 2020, a time we all are eager to relive.

"I grew up playing video games, since I was probably five years old," says Michelle Zauner, better known as the brilliant songwriter behind Japanese Breakfast. Her and her dad would play Super Nintendo together: "The two of us really loved this RPG [role-playing game] called Secrets of Mana. After school, at night in the den, we would play ... I think that was the first time I realized that games could be a real art form."

Alma (Maren Eggert) is an archaeologist in I'm Your Man, scientific in her approach, skeptical by nature, but even by her own standards she's asking Tom, the charming lug sitting opposite her in a dance club, some pretty odd questions for a first date.

"What are the sixth and seventh lines of your favorite poem?"

"What's the second-to-last letter of that poem?"

"What's 3,587 times 982 divided by 731?"

A group of 10 advocacy groups has formed the Offshore Wind for North Carolina coalition, or OSW4NC, to lobby for funding, legislation and anything else that will get wind turbines turning off the North Carolina coast.

More than one-third of the 56,000 North Carolina government employees included in Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper's executive order compelling them to get a COVID-19 shot or face weekly testing have not been fully vaccinated, according to new state data.

Law enforcement officials are getting vaccinated at the lowest rates, though the state said it is still processing a large set of data from the Department of Public Safety. Less than 53% of the 21,804 employees within that department who are subject to Cooper's directive have been fully vaccinated.

Waves, inland runoff and a record tidal surge from Hurricane Florence in September 2018 battered the Marine Corps Air Station at Cherry Point, whose northern perimeter borders the Neuse River southeast of New Bern.

To reinforce the damaged riverbank, a Department of Defense program in late 2020 granted $1 million to support the planting of 2,100 linear feet of living shoreline.

An agency which accounts for missing U.S. soldiers said Thursday it has accounted for a North Carolina man who served in World War II and disappeared during a battle.

The Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency said in a news release Thursday that it identified U.S. Army 1st Lt. James E. Wright of Parkton.

Wes Martin spent days in the Wilkes Medical Center emergency room in early September, his wife Jeri at his side. To pass time and take their minds off Wes' sudden respiratory condition, she started a daily Facebook post titled, "Tales from the ER."

He's a theatre arts teacher at West Wilkes High School, and Jeri said his students message him daily.

"He's beloved by his students, and I know they miss him," she said. "They love doing shows, and they can't do them without him. It affects a lot of people in the community when just one person gets sick."

An audit has found Durham police officers uploaded body-camera footage late and sometimes mislabeled it, potentially jeopardizing evidence.

The audit found the Durham Police Department has policies, training and equipment, but it couldn’t confirm that supervisors conduct random reviews to ensure compliance, The News & Observer reported. The audit found that the body-camera program, which began in 2017, had 293,502 videos and over 50,000 hours of footage by 2020.