NPR Stories

China is planning to launch an uncrewed spacecraft to the moon on Tuesday, which will shovel up lunar rocks and soil and bring them back to Earth. If successful, it would be the first time any country has retrieved samples from the moon in more than 40 years.

Across the country, public officials are urging people to stay home and stay safe during the upcoming Thanksgiving holiday amid a dramatic rise in new cases of COVID-19 in nearly every state.

It took more than 12 hours, but an elephant in India's southern state of Tamil Nadu has been rescued after plunging into a well.

The elephant had wandered into the village of Dharmapuri from a nearby forest when it fell into the well, which an official for the Indian Forest Service estimated to be about 50 feet deep. The well did not have a barrier and had been obscured by bushes.

Moncef Slaoui, the chief scientific adviser for Operation Warp Speed, says that some Americans could start receiving a COVID-19 vaccine by the second week of December.

One of the experimental drugs that President Trump received while he was battling the coronavirus has been approved for emergency use by the Food and Drug Administration. The drug, made by the biotech company Regeneron, is the second antibody treatment to win emergency use approval from the FDA.

The treatment combines two antibodies — casirivimab and imdevimab — and administers them together by IV. In a clinical trial of about 800 people, the combination was shown to significantly reduce virus levels within days of treatment.

Georgia's nearly 5 million votes in the presidential race will be counted for a third time, as President Trump's campaign has formally asked for a recount because his loss is within the legal margin for that request.

Updated at 11:23 a.m. ET

Following yet another legal setback for the Trump campaign, Republican Sen. Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania called on President Trump to accept the outcome of the Nov. 3 election and move forward with the transition process in order to protect his presidential legacy.

We know a lot about the Industrial Revolution. What it looked like, its historical significance and details of life during the time.

But what about how it smelled?

A new team of researchers, historians and computer scientists will explore the answer to that question and others like it. Funded by the European Union, the team behind the $3.3 million project called Odeuropa will spend three years identifying and recreating historical smells. It was announced this week and begins in January.

Khaled Taleb steps out of his vehicle high on a mountainside in northern Lebanon, and surveys the charred remains of the cedar forest he fought to save. A black carpet of the trees' burned needles crunches underfoot.

Armed with only gardening tools and cloth masks, Taleb and four friends spent the night of Aug. 23 on this mountainside battling a wildfire that swept up from the valley and engulfed this high-altitude woodland of cedars and juniper trees.

This year's election was among the most anticipated and perhaps most consequential in U.S. history.

But it was not an easy election to celebrate. The results rolled in over several days and sometimes seemed confusing. Even now, President Trump has refused to concede. While the outcome is not really in doubt, it is still disputed by the ousted president and his most fervent followers.

A federal judge handed the Trump campaign a definitive loss on Saturday in its final attempt to delay the certification of votes in Pennsylvania, where President-elect Joe Biden leads by more than 81,000 votes.

This year's G-20 summit began Saturday with a call for world leaders to mount a united response to the coronavirus pandemic.

In opening remarks, King Salman bin Abdul-Aziz Al Saud of Saudi Arabia, which hosted the virtual two-day meeting, applauded initiatives by G-20 nations to invest $21 billion in global efforts to combat the pandemic and $11 trillion to bolster the global economy.

One of the most prolific spies in modern American history, who delivered hundreds of classified American documents to Israeli intelligence during the waning years of the Cold War, is now a free man.

The Justice Department announced Friday that former Navy intelligence analyst and convicted spy Jonathan Pollard has completed his parole. Pollard's attorneys say the 66-year-old plans move to Israel.

Cases of COVID-19 are rising at an alarming rate in nearly every state as the nation approaches Thanksgiving.

The cumulative case count passed 12 million on Saturday, six days after the previous million mark was crossed, which was six days after the previous million.

An arrangement to allow air travelers between Hong Kong and Singapore to forgo quarantine has been delayed after Hong Kong reported a spike in coronavirus cases.

Hong Kong announced Saturday a delay of at least two weeks to the air travel bubble as the city confirmed 43 new cases — including 13 cases that officials have not been able to trace.

Nearly two dozen rockets rained down on the Afghan capital Saturday, killing at least eight people and marking an inauspicious start to a day that Secretary of State Mike Pompeo had earmarked for discussing peace efforts in Afghanistan.

A spokesperson for the Afghan Interior Ministry said that the attacks launched from two vehicles hit at least six different neighborhoods of Kabul. In addition to the dead, at least 31 people were injured in the attack.

Donald Trump Jr. has become the latest member of the president's orbit to test positive for the coronavirus.

"Apparently I got the 'rona," the president's son told his Instagram followers late Friday.

"You wouldn't know it based on anything that I felt or have seen," he said. "I've been totally asymptomatic."

Updated at 3:09 p.m. ET

The chief executive over the Voice of America and its sister networks has acted unconstitutionally in investigating what he claimed was a deep-seated bias against President Trump by his own journalists, a federal judge has ruled.

The Emmys have always had a soft spot for politicians. In the past two decades, the annual television awards have dealt out nods or outright wins for a slew of famous names: There's Selina Meyer, for one, not to mention Josiah Bartlet and Claire and Frank Underwood, among others.

Rachel and Joe Shenk raise turkeys on a small farm in Newport, N.C. The turkeys are a traditional commercial breed known as Broad Breasted Whites that they raise just for Thanksgiving.

"They're not very smart, but they make up for that by being really friendly and interesting," Joe said. The birds are a favorite of the Shenk family, and they respond specifically to Joe's gobble calls, echoing them back to him.

The couple will harvest the birds the weekend before Thanksgiving, but for weeks now, they've been fielding orders.

As the child of immigrants from Hong Kong, Erica Woo didn't grow up with Thanksgiving. It was just a day off from school and a holiday she read about in books.

"But somewhere, about 25 years ago," Woo remembers, "our neighbors and very dear family friends said, 'You've never had a New England thanksgiving? You're missing out! Come on over!'"

And since then, they've spent every Thanksgiving together. Over the years, Woo's neighbors have taken her under their wing.