Miles Parks

NPRreads is a weekly feature on Twitter and on The Two-Way. The premise is simple: Correspondents, editors and producers from our newsroom share the pieces that have kept them reading, using the #NPRreads hashtag. On Fridays, we highlight some of the best stories.

This week, we bring you three ...

You can take your drinks outside on Bourbon Street, but you can no longer bring your smokes indoors.

Effective Wednesday, New Orleans has banned smoking in bars, restaurants and casinos.

The New York Times published an intriguing look at the city's nightlife spots as the ban went into ...

A man in a wheelchair, who rolled off a subway platform and fell onto the tracks at a Washington, D.C., metro stop Tuesday, was rescued by two people who immediately jumped down to save him.

The fall, and the subsequent rescue, was captured by a D.C. Metro surveillance camera. The ...

The Committee to Protect Journalists released its annual report on the 10 Most Censored Countries today, with Eritrea, North Korea, and Saudi Arabia leading the list.

The list comes the same week it was announced that Washington Post reporter Jason Rezaian is being charged in Iran with four ...

A farm in Iowa is going to destroy more than five million of its chickens in an attempt to curb the spread of the highly infectious avian flu.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture confirmed the H5N2 avian influenza outbreak Monday, adding that the agency says that there is ...

Norway is going to eliminate FM radio in less than two years, the country's government announced, becoming the first country in the world to do so.

Norway is planning to transition completely to digital broadcasting in January 2017.

The Digital Audio Broadcasting (DAB) system offers a number of ...

The prime minister of Japan, Shinzo Abe, said Monday that his country is nearing a major trade agreement with the United States, according to an interview with The Wall Street Journal.

Abe told the Journal that he hopes to come to an understanding with President Barack Obama when he ...

The wait is over for Cubs fans.

Well, not the more than 106-year wait for a World Series Championship, but the wait for arguably the most exciting young slugger in baseball to join their club.

Power-hitting Kris Bryant, who is widely considered the most talented prospect in the ...

The Federal Emergency Management Agency is demanding that more than 3,600 people pay back almost $24 million in disaster grants they were given years ago in error.

It's not hard to reach presidential candidate Ryan Shepard; he doesn't have a media relations office or a slick-tongued press secretary.

Shepard, 40, is a bartender at Roc Brewing Co. in Rochester, N.Y., while also working toward a bachelor's degree in creative writing at nearby SUNY Brockport. He plans to ...

Target has agreed to pay $10 million to settle a class-action lawsuit related to the company's 2013 data breach.

Court documents show hacking victims could get as much as $10,000 apiece.

U.S. District Court Judge Paul Magnuson indicated a hearing Thursday in St. Paul, Minn., that he planned to grant ...

Dallas Seavey won his third Iditarod in four years, crossing under the burled arch in Nome on Wednesday morning.

Seavey finished the 1,100-mile sled dog race in eight days, 18 hours, 13 minutes, and six seconds.

Emily Schwing of Alaska Public Media reports that Seavey "made the ...

Anyone who has meandered through an Ikea store can see the potential for hide-and-seek: the gargantuan hollow tubs, the high-hung rugs concealing whole walls, ottomans.

Well, don't get any big ideas.

Ikea announced Monday that it will no longer allow games of hide-and-seek at its stores in the Netherlands, after ...

A brutally cold season that featured buried cars and bizarre warnings, culminated Sunday night as this winter officially became Boston's snowiest ever.

As Dan Guzman of member station WBUR tells our Newscast unit, snow that fell Sunday night pushed the city past the seasonal record set ...

Lawyer Stephen Jones, hired yesterday by members of Oklahoma University's disbanded chapter of Sigma Alpha Epsilon, said today he's hopeful he can avoid a lawsuit against the school but he's not ruling one out.

Jones, who is most widely known for defending Timothy McVeigh in the Oklahoma City bombing trial, ...

Although the Internet was ablaze with speculation and jokes about why Russian President Vladimir Putin hasn't been seen in public for more than a week, the country's presidential spokesman says there's no truth to the rumors.

Putin's just fine, according to the Kremlin.

Spokesman Dmitry Peskov says ...

Updated at 6:57 p.m. ET

Ferguson, Mo., Police Chief Thomas Jackson will step down in the wake of a scathing Justice Department report that accused the city's police and court system of racial bias, Mayor James Knowles said at a news conference Wednesday.

Knowles called Chief Thomas Jackson's ...

Updated at 5:15 p.m. ET.

It may have been politically rude, but was the open letter 47 Republican senators sent to Iran this week illegal?

As of Wednesday afternoon, more than 160,000 people had signed a petition asking the Obama administration to pursue federal charges against ...

An "unknown quantity" of toxic chemicals leaked into the Houston Ship Channel on Monday after two ships collided, the U.S. Coast Guard said. A portion of the Gulf Coast channel was closed immediately and remained closed as of Tuesday afternoon.

Residents of a nearby community were warned to stay indoors ...