Ah, the unassuming shipping container. It's really nothing more than a big steel box with a couple of doors. At any given time, millions of containers are piled on ships plying the world's waterways. Battered by weather and waves, they are packed with just about anything you can imagine — exotic fruits and vegetables, cheap clothing and electronics, parts for cars and trucks. "Globalization, as we know it today, would not have been possible without the container," says Marc Levinson, an economist, a historian and the author of two books on shipping containers. These days during the coronavirus ..read more

Copyright 2021 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org ..read more

The dates for the 2022 Rochester Lilac Festival have been announced, and while there will be some changes compared to this year’s event, the format will be the same as 2021 in one key aspect: The festival will continue the three-weekend format. Week One will be May 6-8, Week Two will be May 12-15 and Week Three will be May 19-22. Monroe County Executive Adam Bello and Rochester Mayor Lovely Warren made the announcement on Tuesday, noting that the three-weekend format was put in place this year to accommodate COVID safety requirements. But Bello said that the weekend format “was such a success ..read more

Copyright 2021 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org ..read more

Copyright 2021 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org ..read more

For the first time in its history, Boston is inaugurating a newly-elected mayor on Tuesday who is not a white man. Michelle Wu – who's Asian American, is the first woman and first person of color elected to lead the city. While many are hailing it as a major turning point, others see it as more of a disappointment that the three Black candidates in the race couldn't even come close. Many in Boston were hopeful that this would be the year, in this time of racial reckoning, that Boston might elect its first Black mayor, as most of the nation's 30 largest cities have already done. Three Black can ..read more

President Joe Biden and Chinese leader Xi Jinping talked by video link on Monday night in an effort to dial down tensions that have eroded trust and raised the specter of conflict between the world's top two economies. It was the first time since Biden took office 10 months ago that the two leaders had meet face-to-face - albeit by video from nearly 7,000 miles apart - to try to find ways to coexist and keep an overtly competitive and at times acrimonious relationship from deteriorating. A senior Biden administration official said the three-and-a-half hour dialogue was "respectful and straight ..read more

All of the counting and recounting is not over yet, but as of Monday night it appeared that Monroe County Democrats were poised to take control of the county legislature for the first time in about three decades. If the numbers hold up, the Democrats would have a narrow 15-14 margin on the county legislature. That's similar to the margin Republicans now hold. With the county board of elections spending hours on counting absentee ballots and affidavit ballots on Monday, it appeared Democrats were leading in: LD 13 – Democrat Michael Yudelson is leading Republican Matt Borkowski by about 100 vot ..read more

Authorities have issued an Amber Alert for a missing 14-year-old boy from Rochester. Rochester Police on Monday night activated the alert for James Fernandez Reyes, saying that they are investigating a child abduction that happened on Myrtle Street at about 4:30pm on Monday. Police say Reyes was taken under circumstances the lead police to believe he is in imminent danger of serious harm and/or death. Reyes is described as a Hispanic male, about 14 years old, 5’3”, 120lbs, with brown hair and brown eyes. He was last seen wearing a black jacket, blue pants, and white Nike Air Force One sneakers ..read more

For more than a month, students at Howard University in Washington, D.C., have been fighting for answers from the school administration as they protested poor housing conditions on campus . But on Monday, an agreement with protesters at one of the nation's top historically Black universities had been reached, the school announced in a tweet . The specific details of the negotiations between students and administration were not immediately available. NPR reached out to Howard University; they did not immediately respond to requests for comment. The university's president, Dr. Wayne A. I. Freder ..read more