Nearly 2,000 people in New Zealand are gearing up to spread a little joy by giving a gift to a stranger. The gift exchange is run by the country's postal service and is now in its seventh year.
David Greene talks to journalist Pablo Medina Uribe about the crash that killed 76 people. There were five survivors. The plane had taken off from Boliva and was on its way to Medellin.
After years of virtual stalemate, the Syrian government has made its largest advance into rebel-held areas of the city of Aleppo. It changes the map in the Syrian civil war.
In Havana, thousands of mourners will spend another day paying tribute to Cuba's former leader Fidel Castro. With his death, Cubans are wondering if change on the Caribbean island will accelerate.
Cubans are mourning the death of Fidel Castro this week. His ashes are on display in Havana until Wednesday when they will begin the journey across the country — the reverse route Castro and his rebels took to seize power in 1959. He is to be buried on Sunday in Santiago de Cuba.
The city of Mosul, Iraq, is under heavy fire as Iraqi troops try to free the city from ISIS control. NPR's Ari Shapiro talks with the International Rescue Committee's head of Iraq programming, Alex Milutinovic, about conditions in the city.
Among the Miami Cubans celebrating Fidel Castro's death are surviving veterans of the failed Bay of Pigs invasion that tried to retake Cuba in 1961. For these men, news of Castro's death has been bittersweet.
President Obama reached out to Cuba mostly through executive orders. But those can easily be undone by Donald Trump, who is much more critical of the Cuban leadership.