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Euen Kerr of Minnesota Public Radio reports on the popularity of the 101 fiberglass statues of Snoopy that are spread around St. Paul. The city commissioned the representations of Charlie Brown's dog to celebrate the 50th anniversary of native son Charles Shultz's Peanuts comic strip. Many of the statues will be auctioned this weekend, with proceeds going to a Charles Shultz memorial scholarship fund.

NPR's David Welna reports that for weeks, free of charge, Chicagoans have been able to pick up ping pong paddles and play at any one of three hundred tables set up around the city. It's an attempt to let residents and visitors have some fun whenever the mood and wind seem right.

NPR's Michele Kelemen reports that the tragedies of the gulag archipelago still haunt the Siberian mining city of Norilsk. Stalin deported prisoners to this frozen region in Russia's far north to mine some of the world's richest deposits of nickel, palladium and platinum. Today, construction crews plough up miners' bones from mass graves in the industrial wasteland.

NPR's Gerry Hadden reports that a traditional form of Cuban music and dance that is rarely heard on the island is thriving in one part of Mexico. In the streets of the port city of Veracruz, you can often find live danzon concerts, and dozens of couples dancing to the melody. Even young people have fallen in love with the danzon. A local danzon troupe has toured the US, Canada and Europe.

The longest continuously running radio program in the world ended today. Rambling with Gambling was 75 years old. It had been on WOR in New York City since 1925 -- always hosted by someone named John Gambling: father, son and grandson. It was a morning program that started as an exercise show and became light talk, music, news and traffic & weather.

Noah talks with Beverly Lennen, Deputy Chief of Police for Santa Fe, about the usually high number of calls about skunks in her city. The animals are having a hard time finding food because of the dry weather, and so have come to town for Santa Fe cuisine. They've been feasting on leftovers in garbage bags and compost piles.

Most people don't think of rivers when they think of Los Angeles, but in fact, the city does have one. And as Laura Sydell reports, activists are working hard to beautify that body of water which has become much more closely associated with scary scenes in movies than a bucolic retreat for local residents.

Frank Browning reports on an effort to reduce the number of heroin overdoses in San Francisco. The city has the dubious distinction of the highest rate of heroin overdoses in the country. A group called UFO -- You Find Out -- is trying to teach drug users how to shoot up more safely, and medical techniques like CPR to save lives.

Magic City Acceptance Academy in Birmingham, Alabama, is the first school in the South with the mission to affirm LGBTQ+ students.

This week the Texas Legislature passed a law making it LEGAL to carry a concealed weapon. Daniel talks with Democratic Texas state legislator Ron Wilson who authored the bill. And officer Mike Robbins, a Chicago city policeman who opposes laws that legalize the carrying of concealed weapons and who has worked against the passage of similar legislation in Illinois.