NPR News

It's one of those good news/bad news stories. A study in the medical journal The Lancet found that people around the world — in countries rich, poor and in the middle — are living longer. But here's the rub. You can't count on living those extra years in good health.

Chefs may now be celebrities, farmers our food heroes, and small-batch producers worthy of culinary canonization. Yet the workers who make up one of the largest groups in the American food system rarely get a mention: truckers.

"When you sit down to eat at the table, give a little thought to how this food got to your house. In most cases, it's been in the back of a trailer, driven for some distance by one of America's truckers," says Todd Dills, senior editor of Overdrive Magazine.

Funeral services were held Friday for slain Harris County Deputy Darren Goforth. He was shot to death a week ago as he pumped gas into his police car. Police called it "an unprovoked execution-style killing."

Updated at 5:30 a.m. ET

More than 1,000 weary Syrian refugees were greeted with food and applause at the Austrian border after arriving by busloads from a long, chaotic journey through Hungary.

Some of the refugees had walked westward for hours on Friday after officials refused to let them board a train at a Budapest rail station. They had covered up to 30 miles on foot — about one third of the way to the border — before the Hungarian government supplied buses to carry them. Authorities in Germany and Austria agreed to accept them.

It was a sad day in Houston, as the family, friends and colleagues of Harris County Sheriff's Deputy Darren Goforth attended his funeral Friday. In an apparent attempt to ease their grief, a couple who were at the gas station where Goforth was killed came forward Friday to tell the family that after he was attacked, they had sat with the deputy to wait for help.

Editor's Note: This report contains a racial slur.

A new play reveals some little-known history about the land that became New York City's Central Park: People used to live there.

Beginning in 1825, about 300 people — mainly free African-Americans — lived in a village that spanned a portion of the park's 843 acres in Manhattan, between 82nd and 89th streets, east of Central Park West. It was called Seneca Village.

By now, you've probably seen the photo of Aylan Kurdi, the 3-year-old refugee from Syria who died with his 5-year-old brother and mother after their small rubber boat capsized on its way to Greece. You might remember his Velcro shoes. His red shirt. His lifeless body lying face down in the sand.

After spending the night in jail, Rowan County Clerk Kim Davis tells her lawyers, "All is well," adding that she slept well. She also says she is prepared to stay in jail. And her legal team says the marriage licenses that were issued by the clerk's office today are invalid.

"She has a clean conscience, even though she's incarcerated behind these bars," attorney Mat Staver said Friday afternoon.

French authorities have formally confirmed that a piece of debris found on the French island of La Réunion in the Indian Ocean in July belongs to Malaysia Airlines Flight 370.

The Boeing 777 vanished on March 8, 2014, en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing. From Paris, reporter Jake Cigainero tells our Newscast unit that the mystery surrounding the plane and the 239 people aboard is far from solved.

Cigainero reports:

A New York City teacher was arrested today after allegedly crashing a drone into the stands during the U.S. Open tennis tournament Thursday night.

Citing police, The Associated Press reports that 26-year-old Daniel Verley has been charged with "reckless endangerment and operating a drone in a New York City public park outside of prescribed area."

President Obama took to Facebook Thursday night to comment on a photo of an Iranian father and son posted by the popular photography blog Humans of New York.

The blog, which began in 2010 as a series of portraits of people on the streets of The Big Apple, has become something of a global phenomenon. Creator Brandon Stanton has recently been in Iran, sharing images and stories of people and life there.

We're not shy about our affinity for the Cherokee Purple, a purplish package of sweet, acid and savory tomato greatness.

Joe Biden doesn't sound like a man who's preparing for a grueling presidential campaign.

The vice president's latest remarks on a potential 2016 bid came Thursday night, questioning whether he has the "emotional energy" to run so soon after his eldest son, Beau, died from brain cancer in May.

Kim Davis, a clerk in Rowan County, Ky., is in jail for refusing to issue marriage licenses after same-sex marriage became legal. A same-sex couple received a marriage license in Davis' office Friday morning from a deputy clerk.

But the controversy isn't over. It has divided the crowded campaign trail into those who stand with Davis, and those who don't — plus one in the middle.

"What's wrong with you, buddy? What's wrong?" a man says to his dog in a video uploaded to YouTube last month. The pup moans pitifully and trips over himself. He's having trouble blinking. He gazes into nothingness; his eyes are a deep, black abyss. He's wobbling on his paws. The man's words dissolve into laughter. He knows the dog is high as a kite after thieving a potent marijuana brownie.

It's a sad state that's becoming increasingly common.

Updated at 9:50 a.m. ET

The Labor Department says the U.S. economy added 173,000 jobs in August, a figure that fell short of expectations but nonetheless appeared to shrug off turmoil in overseas markets, particularly China.

In a separate survey, the department's Bureau of Labor Statistics said the unemployment rate had dipped to 5.1 percent — a seven-year low.

Updated at 7:41 p.m. ET

Saudi Arabia's new king is at the White House on Friday and Iran is expected to be high on the agenda. The Obama administration has been trying to reassure Gulf Arab allies that a nuclear deal with Iran doesn't mean that the U.S. will turn away from its other concerns about Iranian activities in the Middle East. To prove that, the U.S. is stepping up military sales to Saudi Arabia.

On the way to his son's baseball game on Long Island, sports writer J.R. Gamble tells me that his son, J.C., is quite a ball player.

"I have a lot of clips and highlights that I show people of him doing amazing things — jumping over catches, hitting balls right-handed, hitting balls left-handed," Gamble says.

Part of the reason his son is so good at baseball, Gamble explains, is that he started at an early age — a very early age.

The photographs of 3-year-old Aylan Kurdi, his lifeless body washed up onto a Turkish beach, forced the current refugee crisis onto front pages, home pages and Facebook feeds across the world this week.

"The image resonates personally before it resonates professionally," David Miliband, president of the International Rescue Committee, and the former British foreign minister, told NPR. "Anyone's who got children can't help but think of the worst for the moment."

In a new sign that Iran might consider freeing Jason Rezaian, a powerful Iranian politician tells NPR that there are "practical" ways to liberate the Washington Post reporter and other American prisoners. He then sketched the outline of a trade.

"That's one way," Ali Larijani, the speaker of Iran's Parliament, tells NPR's Steve Inskeep.

The Justice Department says it will beef up legal requirements for using cell-site simulators, an increasingly controversial form of surveillance technology that secretly gathers data about mobile devices.

Under the new policy, federal investigators will be required to get a warrant from a judge demonstrating probable cause, in most domestic criminal probes. Agents will need to explain to judges how the technology is being used. And they'll be directed to destroy volumes of bystanders' data "no less than once daily."

In the annals of ill-conceived public relations campaigns, the egg industry's war on Just Mayo deserves at least a mention.

Just Mayo is a product that looks like mayonnaise, tastes like mayonnaise and yet contains no eggs. The company behind it, Hampton Creek, has been getting lots of attention.

Josh Tetrick, the company's founder, has big ambitions. "If we're successful, there are a lot of [food] industries out there that are going to have to adjust," says Tetrick.

More than 1,500 tractors driven by angry farmers snarled Paris traffic this morning, NPR's Eleanor Beardsley reports. In an ongoing protest movement, farmers across the country have been up in arms about high taxes and low prices on their goods.

The Associated Press reports:

"They're facing increasingly slim margins they blame on cheap imports and high payroll charges, which they say make them unable to compete against producers in Germany and Eastern Europe. The farmers are seeking tax breaks from the French government and EU action."

U.S. federal prosecutors are seeking the extradition of London-based day trader Navinder Singh Sarao on charges of market manipulation that they say triggered the May 6, 2010, "flash crash" in which the Dow lost 10 percent of its value in a matter of minutes.

It was made public Thursday that Sarao, 36, who was arrested in the U.K. in April with bail set at $7.5 million, was being formally charged in the United States.

When President Obama spoke to the Democratic National Convention in Colorado seven years ago, he tried to call a truce in one of the nation's long-running social debates.

"We may not agree on abortion. But surely we can agree on reducing the number of unwanted pregnancies in this country," he said to applause.

Not long after that, Colorado launched an experiment aimed at doing just that. The results have been dramatic — but efforts to expand the program using taxpayer money have hit a political roadblock.