State health officials are forecasting a drop in coronavirus cases after several months of rising counts culminated in a surge in COVID-19 infections last month. That's according to Alaska's public health models that predict future trends, though they can be highly variable. Starting in June, the state was experiencing rising numbers of new infections including large outbreaks in seafood processing facilities that brought concerns about health care capacity, especially in Anchorage. The models now show declining numbers going forward. "Recently we've been fortunate that our cases have started to trend downward," Dr. Anne Zink, Alaska's chief medical officer, said at a media briefing Thursday.  

It was the worst of the worst. Good young men. Running for their lives. Nowhere to hide. The fire was relentless. This month marks the 83rd memorial anniversary of the worst forest fire disaster in Wyoming history when it comes to loss of firefighter lives. In an obscure and difficult place to reach called Blackwater, a group of forest rangers and Civilian Conservation Corps firefighters lost their lives on Aug. 21, 1937. Lightning started the fire that burned some 1,700 acres in the Shoshone National Forest west of Cody. Although the fire began on Aug. 18, it slept and was not detected until two days later. Some 58 men were deployed in the area. A weather event called a "dry cold front" was instrumental in the fire blowing up and engulfing the crew that died. Nine men perished immediately and another six died later of their horrific burns.  

When everyone who tests positive for coronavirus in your community gets a call from a public health worker asking them about their contacts, and those contacts are then asked to quarantine, that can be a powerful way to keep the virus from spreading. But contact tracing can do more than that: At scale, the data gathered in those calls also offers vital information about where transmission is happening in a community. That data can drive policy, and even guide individuals in assessing what's more or less safe to go out and do in their communities. NPR has surveyed the health departments of all U.S. states and territories three times to ask about contact tracing capacity — first in April, then again in mid-June, and most recently in late July. The latest survey, done in collaboration with the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, also asked states about contact tracing data: what they were gathering and what they're making public.  

VIDEO: Prankster Stephen Gilchrist Glover, better known as Steve-O, was removed from a Hollywood billboard to which he taped himself Thursday. Glover posted a selfie on Instagram, showing several layers of what appears to be black tape covering his body from his armpits to his thighs. Video of him being removed from the billboard showed he only wore what appeared to be white underwear underneath the tape. "There is zero chance of me falling, and it's important to me that we not waste any valuable city resources on this," he wrote in the post. Nonetheless, images posted on Twitter show firefighters gathering below the billboard, in the 1700 block of North Cahuenga Boulevard, preparing to remove him from the billboard and lower him back to the ground. The LAFD confirmed they were at the scene and that one or more lanes may be shut down until the apparent rescue operation is completed.  

A Lebanon firefighter who was injured in an explosion at a hotel on Christmas Eve morning last year is telling what happened. Capt. Jeffrey Egner was one of two firefighters who were injured in an explosion at the Element Hotel in Lebanon on the morning of Dec. 24. According to the Lebanon Fire Department, they received an alarm just after 5:15 a.m. from the hotel on Foothill Street. "The whistle on our roof actually went off with box alarm, so it was a little eerie to begin with," Egner said. He added that when they arrived, the hotel was dark. When they got inside, someone led he and Firefighter Todd Hamilton to the first floor. "And as we were going down the hallway, we noticed a puddle of water on the ground, coming out from underneath a doorway, figuring that was odd and that was probably where our issue was," Egner said.  

Eric Retterbush has never liked taking photos of people. The practice feels invasive and risks overlooking the beauty of, say, a wheelbarrow or a particularly striking façade, he says. It also teeters on voyeurism. How many in the throng of a bustling Burmese market—one of the countries he works in as a travel guide (his day job)—have been photographed without their permission? Wasn't it Honoré de Balzac who said all physical bodies were made of ghostlike images, "an infinite number of leaflike skins laid one on top of the other," and repeated exposure to a camera stripped these—that is, the very essence of life—off? No—street photography, candid portraiture, a shot of someone who doesn't know you—it was never Retterbush's pull. And yet, for the past four months, it has been people who are the subject of Retterbush's photos.