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Jazz has always been a music of continuum, its secrets passed down across generations. Benny Green is a shining embodiment of this process: A pianist originally inspired (and eventually endorsed) by mid-century modernists like Oscar Peterson; An apprentice to two of the music's greatest mentors, Betty Carter and Art Blakey; A conservationist of the bebop idiom, and a joyful guardian of its lexicon.

Icelandic composer Ólafur Arnalds was in a hotel lobby somewhere in Asia when he first saw a modern version of a player piano. This particular one was tapping out The Beatles' "Yesterday."

The man who died from exposure to the Substation Fire burning east of The Dalles was trying to save a neighboring property from burning, and Wasco County officials appeared for the first time Thursday to suggest that a fire raging east of The Dalles was human-caused.

New music is always in season on Thistle! This week it's all about the albums that have been gathering in our North Carolina and Scottish mailboxes just waiting for an hour of your time. Included in this week's show are Dylan Foley, 14-year-old Iona Ritchie, The Bevvy Sisters, and Dougie MacLean.

One in five working coal miners in central Appalachia who have worked at least 25 years now suffer from the coal miners' disease black lung. That's the finding from the latest study tracking an epidemic of the incurable and fatal sickness.

Updated at 5:10 p.m. ET

The White House withdrew the nomination Ryan Bounds to be a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit Thursday afternoon amid allegations of racist writings.

The Senate, on a party-line vote Wednesday, ended debate on the controversial nomination, with a confirmation vote expected Thursday. But instead, the nomination was pulled.

Made in America, an annual music festival founded by Jay-Z and produced by Live Nation, may be forced to leave its home on the streets of Philadelphia as of 2019.

The office of mayor Jim Kenney told reporters on Tuesday that the festival's signature location in front of the Philadelphia Museum of Art was causing problems for the city. Jay-Z and other festival organizers have fired back, saying that the event's site is being moved without discussion, and that the mayor's office made its plans public without first informing the festival.

California will be staying in one piece, at least for now, after the state's supreme court ruled that a proposal to divide California into three cannot be placed on the ballot in November.

It's a rusty old bucket of a plot contrivance: throw a bunch of strangers together on a boat and roil the waters with a big storm or a white whale. But, in her latest novel, The Last Cruise, Kate Christensen demonstrates there's life yet to be found in what may appear to be the creakiest of fictional premises.

Their words helped ensure Larry Nassar will spend his life behind bars, and on Wednesday, the "sister survivors" of the disgraced sports doctor's abuse accepted the Arthur Ashe Courage Award at the 2018 ESPYS in Los Angeles.

Dressed in glittering gowns and with hands gripped, more than 140 women gathered onstage to share the prize awarded to athletes whose bravery "transcends sports," as the audience rose in a standing ovation.

Sarah Klein, a former gymnast who said she was among Nassar's earliest victims three decades ago, was the first to address the audience.

Updated at 3:19 p.m. ET

The Federal Reserve got a rare piece of advice from the president Thursday. The central bank is an independent agency and usually the commander in chief doesn't comment directly on Fed policy.

"F*** you, f************ you," goes the pitched-up sample of Jamie Foxx that opens "I Might Need Security," one of four new songs Chance The Rapper debuted overnight, just a day after he quashed rumblings of a surprise album release. The songs — "Work Out," "Wala Cam," "65th & Ingleside" and "I Might Need Security" — mostly stick to Chance's playbook of sunflowery productions and earnest lyrics squeezed through his adenoidal chirp.

Each spring, barnacle geese migrate more than 1,800 miles from the Netherlands and northern Germany to their breeding grounds in parts of Russia above the Arctic Circle.

The journey north usually takes about a month, and the geese make multiple stops along the way to eat and fatten up before they lay their eggs, says Bart Nolet of the Netherlands Institute of Ecology and the University of Amsterdam.

Democrats on the powerful Senate Banking Committee said Kathy Kraninger is not qualified to be the director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the agency the White House has nominated her to run.

Republicans at her nomination hearing Thursday said her management experience at the White House Office of Management and Budget qualifies her for the job.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg is clarifying remarks he made about whether his platform should remove content posted by Holocaust deniers, saying he wasn't defending them when he commented that it was hard to know their intentions. His initial comments set off intense criticism earlier this week.

Tall, dreadlocked Josh Scheper knew he was out of place as he surveyed the scene at a Santa Ana, Calif., parking lot on a Sunday morning this past April. And the 46-year-old loved it.

Hundreds of people waited in line at stalls for vegan food, but few people looked like the Los Angeles resident. Nearly everyone in the crowd was young and Latino, as were the chefs. The food on sale was Mexican — but not hippie-dippy cafe standbys like cauliflower tacos, or tempeh-stuffed burritos. Instead, chefs reimagined meaty classics that were honest-to-goodness bueno.

It's as if the pianos were haunted. Somewhere about midway through this Tiny Desk, as Icelandic composer Ólafur Arnalds performed on his electronic keyboard, two upright pianos were playing lilting melodies behind him, absent any performer at the keys. And yet these "ghosts," along with Ólafur's band of strings and percussion, put together some of the most beautiful music I've heard at the Tiny Desk, made all the more mysterious through its presentation.

A Texas nonprofit that works with families separated at the border has turned down a $250,000 contribution from Salesforce, a company under pressure for its work creating software for the U.S. Customs and Border Patrol.

It has been an epic clash of media titans worthy of a blockbuster movie itself like, say, the X-Men — notably a property of 21st Century Fox. And as with any blockbuster franchise, there are already sequels lined up.

The broadband, cable and entertainment giant Comcast announced Thursday that it would withdraw from the field, conceding defeat in its audacious bidding war for most of the entertainment assets of Fox, controlled by the Murdoch family.

2018 Slingshot band Mt. Joy has had a fruitful year. From festival appearances to nationally televised studio sessions, the band has seen a burgeoning growth in support and notoriety. In the midst of all this success, the band members still recall their humble yesteryears and marvel at their steady rise to indie-rock stardom.

Jeff Rosenstock has always made music for the slow days after the end-times, and "All This Useless Energy" is a kick-the-can punk ballad for crawling out of aimlessness toward a purpose.

When Saudi Arabia started allowing women to drive last month — a historic shift in the last country in the world to ban women from getting behind the wheel — Samah Damanhoori was watching closely from California. The 29-year-old Saudi woman has a lot at stake.