Richard Thompson has been making music for a very long time. From his days in the late 1960s as a teenage guitar player and songwriter with the seminal British folk rock group Fairport Convention to his roaring partnership with then-wife Linda Thompson, and his many years as a solo artist beyond.

Duke University in North Carolina has announced that it will require students to have a COVID-19 vaccine when they return this fall. And the list of campuses with such policies is growing.

The U.S. economy added more than 900,000 jobs last month. For most White House officials, that would be considered a banner number. For Janelle Jones, the top economist at the Labor Department, there is much more work for the Biden administration to do.

Jones, the first Black woman to ever hold her position, says it would take a year of similar jobs reports just to get back to where the economy was before the pandemic. But even then, she says, getting back to the status quo is not enough.

When an assailant stormed a grocery store in Boulder, Colo., last month and fatally shot 10 people, the suspected weapon of choice — a Ruger AR-556 pistol — captured immediate attention. Not for what it technically was — a pistol — but for what it more closely resembled — an assault-style rifle.

Former Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid says during his 30 years in Congress, and years earlier as a U.S. Capitol Police officer, a fencing system for the Capitol was not top of mind.

"That was never, ever considered when I was the leader, or when I served on the Capitol Police force — never considered," said Reid, who served in various congressional roles from 1983 to 2015 and as a Capitol Police officer in the 1960s while attending law school.

There are officially more storms occurring during the Atlantic hurricane season, according to updated storm records from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

NOAA defines the average number of storms based on activity over a 30-year period. On Friday, the agency announced the new period runs from 1991-2020. Previously, NOAA used the period from 1981-2010.

The Small Business Administration yesterday launched with great fanfare a long awaited portal that would allow arts venues closed down by pandemic to apply for grant money to cover rent, utilities, insurance and other accumulated expenses. The site went live at noon, but was wracked with so many technical issues that the SBA decided to shut the portal down indefinitely.

Kristy Miller's dogs, Oreo and Dabo, often start barking right on cue when she joins a Zoom call from her home.

And much too often, Miller hears herself ask a single, exasperated question over the piercing yaps of her dogs: "Can you hear me?"